IT HAPPENED to ME: I Worked as an Advocate on the National Domestic Violence Hotline
I believe the feeling I have for the women I call “hotline divas” is more like that of war buddies. The hotline divas are the only ones who understand what I have been through. They have been through it as well. They are the ones who still pick up the phone every time it rings — and it does ring over 20,000 times a month — and say, “National Domestic Violence Hotline. Are you in a safe place to talk right now?”
For several years, I was an advocate on the National Domestic Violence Hotline. I answered an average of 35 calls a day (or 175 calls a week). I spoke to callers in English and in Spanish. In the time that I worked on the Hotline, I answered over 20,000 calls.
When I was offered a job on the Hotline, I underestimated the difficulty of being a Hotline Advocate. At the time I was working at a domestic violence shelter in the Southwest. There I did intake interviews, counseled the residents, changed sheets, answered the crisis line, cooked dinner, scared away bears that came down out of the drought-stricken mountains to eat out of the dumpster, broke up fights between residents, looked away when residents smoked pot in the backyard, didn’t look away when residents smoked meth in the bathrooms, etc.
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