An abuser isn't abusive 24/7. They usually demonstrate positive character traits most of the time. That's what makes the abuse so confusing when it happens, and what makes leaving so much more difficult.

— Miya Yamanouchi

Be your best proponent, ally, and advocate.

— Asa Don Brown

Change is inevitable. Progression is a choice. We all move, but are you going to move forward?

— Ricky Maye

Domestic violence is any behavior involving physical, psychological, emotional, sexual or verbal abuse. It is any form of aggression intended to hurt, damage, or kill an intimate person.

— Asa Don Brown

Don’t ever forget you are beautiful, although your life, your past and your present situation may be ugly. You are beautiful.

— Ricky Maye

Do you notice the abused of your society? Take a decision, make plans, strategize, to begin to proclaim and establish justice in your world.

— Sunday Adelaja

For animals that are overworked, underfed, and cruelly treated; for all wistful creatures in captivity that beat their wings against bars; for any that are hunted or lost or deserted or frightened or hungry; for all that must be put to death...and for those who deal with them, we ask a heart of compassion and gentle hands and kindly words.

— Albert Schweitzer

From New Delhi to New York, from Durban to Rio; women and girls are being hunted down by rapists, abused by pedophiles and emotionally decapitated by a society that is becoming increasingly hostile to the womenfolk

— Oche Otorkpa

He loves me so he hurts met try and make me good. It doesn't work. I'm just too bad And don't do what I should. My memory has so many different sections and, like all survivors, there are so many compartments with so many triggers. I'll remember a smell which reminds me of a man which reminds me of a place which reminds me of another man who I think was with a woman who had a certain smell — and I'm back to square one. This is the case for most survivors, I believe. When we try to put together our pasts, the triggers are many and varied, the memories are disjointed — and why wouldn't they be? We were children. Even someone with an idyllic childhood who is only trying to remember the lovely things which happened to them will scratch their head and wonder who gave them that doll and was it for Christmas or their third birthday? Did they have a party when they were four or five? When did they go on a plane for the first time? You see, even happy memories are hard to piece together — so imagine how hard it is to collate all the trauma, to pull together all the things I've been trying to push away for so many years.

— Laurie Matthew

I am ugly. I am black inside, rotting and putrid.

— Aimee L. Salter