Chapter 13: Being a Volunteer – Learning About Unconditional Love

I was called to the Refuge. The house had a pay phone and sometimes when I picked up and heard the beeps I knew it was the Refuge and my heart would sink as to what I would find as they only called in an emergency. I could hear children screaming in the background. I raced down there to find a guy at the door screaming at a woman inside, the woman screaming back and both of them in a tug of war with a screaming child – everywhere screaming. I managed to push the woman and child inside and slam the door and then spent an hour calming her and everyone else down. I had to hope that he would be gone by the time I walked home. That day was the only time I left the Refuge and wept as I walked home – for that woman, for all the women in there, for the life they didn’t have that I was going back to, for the system that was stacked against them.

I had been involved at various points of my life with a number of projects as a volunteer, partly because of my left-leaning views on helping those the state was neglecting to care for, partly because of my Christian principles of helping those less fortunate than myself and partly because of the ‘feel good’ factor that comes from volunteering. But the volunteering that had the most impact on me was being part of a support group for the women living in the Refuge.

My life at that time was easy. I loved living in the small market town of Loughborough. Martin would walk to work and I would spend my days playing squash at the local leisure centre, meeting other mums and toddlers and making memories for Emily. I had decided to take three years off work to care for her and I loved my life with her.  I was also making friends with some great women, including Stella next door.

Stella was friendly with a roar of a laugh and was always positive, despite the awful things she saw in her job as a social worker. She introduced me to the Refuge Support Group not long after I moved into my house. Emily was not yet six months old. I met with them and they accepted me, so I joined them. The support group consisted of 10 to 12 women who met regularly to discuss the residents, their needs and how we could support them. The women who turned up at the door were always welcomed into the Refuge and the person on the support group who was on the roster that week would be called.

The Refuge was a couple of streets away from me. It was a large, old, detached house in its own grounds with trees around it. Its stately exterior belied the chaos that went on inside.

Women would arrive at any hour of the day and night, usually with small children in tow, who would be shivering and crying.

Sometimes the woman didn’t even have the chance to grab her purse – much less any clothes –she just grabbed her children and fled, fearing another beating as soon as her husband returned. The police at that time were of no help at all and rarely responded to calls reporting screams coming from the house next door. “It’s just a domestic,” would be their response.

Life inside the Refuge was somewhat chaotic. It was always noisy – children shouting and crying and fighting and women shouting at their children and swearing as they recounted stories to each other. The lounge was large, with comfy sofas on every wall. It always had assortments of clothes hanging over the backs of the sofas and in the middle of the floor. Toys would be strewn all over the room. There would be children on potties and nappies being changed. The large kitchen never seemed to be free of a sink of dirty dishes and there were dirty mugs on every surface. There were house rules for the women which were largely ignored. The person on the rota for the support group would tidy up and clean up and make endless cups of tea for whoever wanted them and sit and listen. She would stay for a couple of hours.

My nature was very much as a rescuer at first – I’ll take you to the doctor; I’ll find a solicitor for you; I’ll make your appointment for the dentist. The women on the support group held me back and explained that wasn’t the way we worked. The women who came into the Refuge had spent their whole lives being controlled and told what to do. We were not going to do the same.

We would help if we were asked, but not unless we were asked.

Sometimes the women didn’t want our help, thus exercising the first bit of freedom they had. Sometimes they did.

I remember one of the women, Linda, who asked me to go with her to an appointment with a solicitor. Emily was in the buggy sucking her home-made rusk spear when we set off. I was watching the bumps as we went along to minimise the real danger of Emily missing her mouth and taking her eye out. Linda was tall and very slim. She was quite striking to look at, with a narrow face, high cheek bones, huge, warm brown eyes and long brown hair that she usually tied back in a ponytail. She had a deep rasping voice, owing to her constant smoking and her eyes were darting right and left as we walked. I asked her if she was okay.

She said, “He knows where I am and said he would come after me.”

This was new information for me. I tried to stay calm.

She continued, “But it’s okay because I picked up a kitchen knife and it’s in my bag.” She opened her bag and showed it to me.

There wasn’t a trace of drama as she said this but my heart started racing. I was starting to look around me as we walked. Many years later, Emily was horrified to think of the danger I could have put her in but, at the time, my concern was for Linda. I never doubted my ability to protect Emily. We were fine that day but the day she went back to the house to pick up some clothes, we asked for police protection, which duly arrived. I took Linda in my car (without Emily!) and gave her some black bin bags.

“You have five minutes to get in there and stuff these bags with clothes and come back.”

She did so, and all was fine.

We were lucky that day.

Eventually, I became the first part-time paid worker they had, partly because I lived nearby and was always available. I learned many things working at the Refuge.

One of the greatest things I learned was about being non-judgmental.

We never judged the women for the decisions they made. I remember Diane, in her 20s, small with brown hair and a round smiling face who asked me to come into her room and sit on her bed.

She said, “I’m going back to him tonight.”

I knew full well that she was heading straight into another beating but the only thing I said was, “Are you sure that’s the best thing for you to do right now?”

“Yes,” she said calmly. And off she went.

The next day she was back with a bruised face, a lopsided smile, an eye that didn’t look like it was in the right place on her face, and a broken rib. No one said, “See, that’s what happens,” or, “Why did you go back when you knew what he was like?” or, “That was a silly decision you made.” No, she was welcomed back into the Refuge, where she would be loved and supported. This scenario might be played out a number of times before she had the strength to make the decision to never go back to him.

The other thing I learned about was unconditional love. It was my first experience of seeing unconditional love in action and seeing the impact it had when you just provided an environment of love and allowed people to experience it and grow within it. No story demonstrated this better than Brenda’s.

When Brenda arrived she looked like she should still have been at school but here she was with two small children. She was tiny and frail looking – pale skin, listless eyes that looked down most of the time, straight, lifeless hair that clung to her scalp and hung limply down the sides of her thin, angular face. She always wore a black polo neck, with long sleeves and trousers. Winter or summer, she dressed the same. She rarely spoke to the other women or to those on the support group. We just made sure she was comfortable and would ask if there was anything she needed. She would always shake her head and look down. Every now and again, especially in summer, one of us would suggest she wore something else so she wouldn’t be so hot in her usual attire. She would always shake her head. Bit by bit, day by day, she started to engage with the other women who were there. She saw many women come and go during her stay. Held in the love that the support group continuously fed into the house, Brenda gradually opened up.

It was like watching a flower blossom from being a tight bud.

One day she told me the story of her black jumper.

“My husband wouldn’t let me wear anything else. He said he wanted every bit of skin covered so other men wouldn’t see the smallest square of flesh. I couldn’t even roll up my sleeves. He ordered me about from morning until night, demanding cups of tea or food or to pass him a magazine so he didn’t need to get up. I would have to stop what I was doing immediately and give him what he wanted or else he would beat me and know that the bruises wouldn’t be seen because I was covered up all the time.” Her voice was low and she spoke in a deadpan way – no dramatics or expression in her telling. She continued, “One day, when I was pregnant, he kicked me downstairs and I started to miscarry. He had gone to sit in the lounge and I was crawling into the kitchen when he shouted at me, ‘Brenda come here.’ I crawled on my hands and knees into the lounge. He said, ‘Turn over the TV channel.’ He couldn’t reach the remote control from where he was sitting. I crawled, bleeding all the while, to the TV and switched channels for him. That’s when I decided I had to leave or I knew he would kill me.”

I had heard many stories from the women in the three years I was involved with the Refuge but somehow, Brenda’s story stayed with me. She had been reduced to a non-thinking punch bag for her husband. But, gradually, she came out of her shell. She was safe and the environment she was now in – loud though it was, was 100 times better than the one she had left. All the women staying there respected each other. Women were listened to if they wanted to talk and left alone if they didn’t. It was the first time many of them had ever been accorded any respect at all.

We would each take an area of responsibility – I volunteered to be the representative to the Council for Women’s Aid (the organisation that set up all the Refuges). Loughborough, at that time, was a conservative council. Had it been a Labour Council, I would have been able to go in, raise my voice and demand housing for the women in the Refuge, as was their right. But that approach wouldn’t work with the Tories. I needed a different strategy. The chair of housing was Mr Whittaker. He was a tall, corpulent man who had attended too many dinners and drunk way too much in his life. He presented a jolly, friendly face but his eyes were dead and, as I got to know him, I realised that his friendly face did not reflect his steely heart. I made an appointment to see him and dug out the clothes I used to teach in – I knew that dungarees, sandals and no make-up wouldn’t cut it.

I always referred to him as Mr Whittaker and he always referred to me as Mrs Robertson (I was still using my married name at that time). I made sure I looked like one of his wife’s friends might. I gave him nothing to take exception to. He would send for tea and biscuits, which we would have from china crockery and our conversations would always go the same way, “How are things at, what do you call that place again?” and he would smile kindly at me.

I would tell him who was in there currently and what their housing situation was. I knew it would be up to him who he moved to the top of the list to be rehoused urgently. Although the Council had a statutory obligation to rehouse women and children who have left their marital home because of abuse, it was an obligation they usually ignored and it was down to Mr Whittaker’s whim as to whom would get rehoused.

Once he told me, “You know, Mrs Robertson, I think that some of these women get beaten on purpose so they can be rehoused and then their husbands join them. It’s just a way to get a house ahead of the queue.” He smiled and continued looking at me and took another sip of his tea from his china cup.

I’m not sure how I stayed in my chair and stopped myself from running at him and head-butting him.

I smiled back and said, “That’s very interesting, Mr Whittaker, because of all the women who have come through the Refuge I haven’t come across one woman who that would be true of. You must have come across different women than me. But if you find such a woman, please do let me know because I would be fascinated to meet her.”

After my meetings with Mr Whittaker, one of the women would usually be housed within two weeks. Once, when I was leaving his office I said, “Oh, by the way, Mr Whittaker. I’m doing some volunteer work for the probation service and am visiting one young woman with a small baby and a partner in prison. She is living in a council caravan which is damp and mouldy and the baby isn’t well. She’s a very good mother and I’ve been passing her a lot of my baby’s clothes but it’s very hard for her to keep warm in the caravan. If you could do something for her I would be so grateful.”

He smiled and took her details and said confidentially, “Leave it with me, Mrs Robertson.”

She was housed within a week.

Some of the support group weren’t happy with my sycophantic approach to Mr Whittaker. We would have fiery discussions about whether the means justified the end. I always held on to my position, “Look, my job is to get these women rehoused. They won’t thank you for your left-wing rhetoric when they are still living here in 18 months.” We never agreed on the strategy, but I got a lot of women rehoused.

My learning about being non-judgmental and the effect of unconditional love has been instrumental in my own development.

I saw so many women in the Refuge who seemed unable to leave abusive relationships. It taught me a valuable lesson that we can never really understand anyone else’s pain and it doesn’t help people to be criticised for decisions they make when they feel like they have no choice. The best thing we can do is to stand – or sit – in solidarity with them. I would hear people speak about abused women and they would comment that such women had no courage. Yet how many people are called on to find that kind of courage – to leave a home and a husband who they loved (because they usually did) and take their children who he loved (because he always did) to go with nothing – absolutely nothing – to a strange location, a strange house, strange housemates and not know where their next meal would come from, never mind their clothes. The women who came and stayed and started a new life for themselves and their children had an inner strength that I have rarely seen demonstrated so definitively. Those of us who are privileged and have not had to face such trials sometimes find it hard to even understand them. Sometimes it is nigh impossible to ‘walk in another’s shoes’.

But since my time in the Refuge, I can see the strength in every woman I meet when I look into her eyes.

There was another great impact on my life from working in the Refuge. I had previously been a teacher for seven years and was used to telling people about things I knew a lot about and they didn’t. Yet, I didn’t know anything about these women’s lives. I wasn’t there to teach them anything. I was there to facilitate their learning and self-development by providing support. This distinction between training and facilitating would be instrumental in my future work as a management consultant, especially when running focus groups for women in organisations. That learning from 40 years ago is still with me. A trainer gives people information and tells them how to perform better. A facilitator draws information out of people and creates a space for them to have their own insights and identify their own areas for improvement.

And Brenda? She became a part-time worker for the Refuge after I had finished and a huge support for women newly arriving at the Refuge. I saw her in the street months later and she crossed the road rather than acknowledge me. A friend pointed out that after we have seen someone at their most vulnerable, when they come out of that darkness they don’t want to be reminded of the darkness they used to inhabit. Nothing to take personally here. Brenda was fine. Job done.

Photo

During my volunteering days.

Questions For Reflection

Have you ever been a volunteer? Why motivated you to consider volunteer work? What have you learned from it?

A Blessing While You Reflect

“May this work challenge you towards

New frontiers that will emerge

As you begin to approach them,

Calling forth from you the full force

And depth of your undiscovered gifts.”

From John O’Donohue: Benedictus