Announcing: Survivor Wishlist Initiative

Helping survivors of abuse in the Church in material need

Many of you know that we meet with survivors of abuse in church settings every week.

As we have met with survivors, we have seen firsthand how the reality of trauma, especially institutional or religious abuse, rarely stays confined to the emotional or spiritual realm. It also can completely upend a person’s life, leaving someone to navigate severe financial strain, housing insecurity and one medical crisis after another.

We cannot do as much as we would like to at this early stage of our growth to support survivors in material need. But one thing we decided to do as a start was to create an anonymous Survivor Wish List.

We are partnering directly with survivors in our network who are facing serious material need and asking them to add to a wish list with items they need.

Every two to three months the recipient of this wishlist will change.

You may wonder how often we speak to survivors who are struggling and the answer is actually quite often.

We are currently walking alongside survivors who are:

• Living transitionally in motels or even their car

• Facing chronic medical issues that prevent them from working

• Struggling to afford everyday essentials

One survivor recently shared a quote with us from the author Lucia Berlin that reflected their situation:

Poor people wait a lot. Welfare, unemployment lines, laundromats, phone booths, emergency rooms, jails, etc.

We want to reduce that waiting.

We want to encourage and show the brave survivors we speak to that they are not alone, that we all see them, and that, along with their spiritual needs, their immediate, physical needs matter deeply to God and to us.

We hope you will join us in supporting this initiative to provide in a “little way” for some of the material needs of the survivors we meet with.

Please consider sharing this post with friends, family, or your parish community!