Today we’d like to introduce you to Caroline Hammond.
Hi Caroline, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
The simple statement, “I’m a survivor of domestic abuse” carries weight and volume of surviving evil and moving past abuse into health and thriving. I’m currently at over 770 chapters about this journey for my website and speaking engagements. My own passion project, Safe In Harm’s Way and Epizon Strategy Solutions, have been under construction for four years now.
Safe In Harm’s Way is an international organization working with abuse survivors across the world. The US efforts are a non-profit 501 (c)(3) platform. We have trained survivors and work with advocates in South Africa, Costa Rica, Canada and Italy.
Our efforts will create an ever-expanding web of goodness for survivors and those they love. In doing so, we will create platinum platter lives and change the world. What is a platinum platter life? A life filled with only the best people, places, experiences, and honest love for everyone living on this beautiful spinning planet we call Earth.
At Safe In Harm’s Way, we allow survivors to create community and recognize the feelings in their relationship so that they can find the proper resources to build a life they are worthy to create. We focus on relationships- do they bring sadness, worry, lies, fear and pain? We take answers and supply resources and community so that they can create lives with joy, happiness, and safety, plus walk away from all that horrible anxiety.
Additionally, at Epizon Strategy Solutions, we offer corporate training enabling employers to discover abusers who use company resources to issue abuse- thus compromising corporate integrity, reputation, safety, and profits. This is a $8 billion problem for employers, and we intend to solve the problem, plus hold perpetrators accountable both personally and professionally. Epizon Strategy Solutions provides the tools and resources employers need to craft year-round training and awareness #BecauseYouNeverKnow who shows up at work every day hiding the emotional and physical bruises from home.
I want our customers to think, “Oh! There’s Caroline talking about domestic violence again.”
Hang with me for 97 seconds to explain why, please.
I know one thing as it relates to employees and the impact of domestic violence in the workplace:
The most beautiful, smart, outgoing, accomplished, and caring people also hide their bruises from home when they show up in the workplace, Teams call or ZOOM every day.
Like me. Like maybe you. Or your co-worker.
People you’d never guess are hurting due to the partners who force them to craft a perfect facade to the outside world.
So if I talk about Safe In Harm’s Way Foundation, Inc (our partner in the non-profit world) or Epizon Strategy Solutions consistently, it’s because I know it helps just one person feel less shame and less alone in the world.
Never fails. Every time.
I had a very dear friend recently say to me, “You’re working really hard to put yourself and your organization out of business.”
Yes. I guess I am.
Because one day, I hope everything I’ve begun to create with my team in the past five years won’t be needed.
You will just find me twirling in the sand by the Amalfi Coast, with crazy-curly-grey-hair-turned-to-dreadlocks, bright red lipstick, a Dave Matthews Band concert t-shirt, and a long-flowing skirt with my 17 grandkids.
Even then? That day will be just as amazing as today is because I am lucky to be in this world.
How did this all begin?
My love, my dearest, my soulmate had a nasty habit of exposing me to danger and abusive situations. Suffice it to say, the abuse included the following:
Financial abuse. (which I only discovered after I escaped, hiding accounts from me and refusing to allow me to take jobs which would have advanced my career so that he could keep me dependent upon him and making less money).
Physical abuse (which I had habitually come to excuse because he was a “really good man, with just a huge amount of stress”).
Mental abuse (which I had habitually come to excuse because he was a “really good man, with just a few flaws”).
Unsafe living conditions (inviting strangers into our home and our life without my knowledge or consent).
Drug use (while packing to escape our home, I found his drug paraphernalia hidden in the house).
While I had been faithful and monogamous, he had sought sex from strangers for the entirety of our relationship.
Once I decided to leave, and truth be told, I left numerous times over our years together (on average it takes seven times for a survivor to leave before actually staying away!). It took me almost ten days to craft my escape plan and almost seven months to fully implement.
I lost my 4500 square foot house and ended up changing clothes and cleaning up in hotel lobby restrooms because they are the cleanest. I slept in my car, on couches or house sat for friends. Constantly moving for fear if he found me, he would kill me and everyone I was with.
I had to write my name and potential next address on a post-it notes because there were times, I couldn’t remember my name and didn’t know where I would be staying that night.
All this while I was the number one person in my sales division and hiding everything I was experiencing at home.
Today? Well, my life is its best version of #platinumplatterlife.
A. FOUR NATIONAL AWARDS for Safe In Harm’s Way Foundation, Inc!
Yes, you read the big news correctly.
Four Purple Ribbon Awards for Safe In Harm’s Way Foundation, Inc.
Outstanding National Organization
Survivor of the Year for Caroline Markel Hammond
Best COVID-19 Response Plan
Outstanding Awareness Plan
Judged by a national panel of respected professionals from the domestic violence field. The Purple Ribbon Awards are the first comprehensive awards program and entries came from the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico.
B. My first book went to Best Seller status on the first day of launch. It’s called #SheWins 2 and it’s a collaboration of survivors who have overcome their abuser and built amazing new lives! Three weeks later my second book, “Dragon Slayers Wear Lipstick” debuted as an international best seller, too.
C. I was named an Inspiring Woman of 2020 by Vera Bradley.
D. My second book launches in three weeks!
E. We have a nationwide awareness program launching in late October under a collaboration we initiated with DomesticShelters.org which will see us in Time’s Square and out of home advertising across the USA; effectively eliminating the isolation abusers use to control their prey. Even abusers can’t limit what someone sees while driving, walking, or visiting doctor’s offices.
This is an alphabet listing I can get used to expanding! Life is so much better in the “after” of abuse. We have a tagline at Safe In Harm’s Way and it is a regular part of my vocabulary. Join us! Take our hand and let’s go change the world. Thank you for taking my hand in this interview. Our ability to increase the dialogue will reach the people who need it most, so they can find the resources they need to move toward healing.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Smooth rode? Nope.
It was a long road to achieve non-profit status. We had several donations to assist (Facebook birthday fundraisers and donations from a few friends). However, to create this non-profit I used my own money and retirement assets. I am currently about $80,000 in debt from creating this over the last almost five years. Our non-profit status, extremely delayed due to Covid, became official in April 2021. Now I will be able to raise funds to remove the debt and further our initiatives.
I made mistakes. I chose partners who didn’t respect the mission because “abuse is really ugly and sad”. Those mistakes cost me time and my own money. Their lack of respect and non-professionalism is still appalling to me.
But you know what was beautiful? People like Lauren Conaway at InnovateHerKC to create initiatives which led me to non-profit leaders in the community. These leaders like Katie Lord, Mary Ricketts, Sara Shipley, Jessica McClellan, Courtney Thomas and Brynne Brown invested their time and zone of genius with me so that I could progress quickly and stop making mistakes.
Ms. Brynne Brown even donated all her legal services to correct our non-profit status, saving me at least $7,000.00. I will always owe her a debt of gratitude, mad respect, and insane love for her effort to help us!
The fabulous women at Aureus who fiscally sponsored us to process the donations we did receive. Amazing people who stepped up when there was no other alternative.
My team at Safe In Harm’s Way- 16 powerful survivors from across the United States who help create content and offer perspectives for those most marginalized- people of color and the LGBTQ+ community.
My friends who support every big dream and wild idea with their own time and talent to guide me. They extend from coast to coast and across the world.
My children who had to heal from the abuse, just as I did. We are all still healing in our own ways and thriving at every turn.
The amount of beautiful and talented people who magically appeared to help us turn the tide and allows me to sleep at night despite the debt facing me.
Take all this and label in what my family calls being intentionally fearless. Moving forward, speaking about our abuse with confidence, patience and the truth….all while knowing our abuser still lives and works in the community where we live.
Surviving is a lifelong journey, it’s never a one and done. The gratitude far outweighs any obstacles and challenges. I remain forever happy to be living and breathing, doing this work. I sure would trade the pain but wouldn’t trade the gain.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
The one thing that separates Safe In Harm’s Way from other organizations is our ability to collaborate and belief in joining hands to change the world. For example, we were in the middle of building a zip code level platform for our website which would allow survivors to search for resources where they lived. This is vital as laws and policy differ from county to county and what might work in Idaho doesn’t in California. We were building it, and then we discovered DomesticShelters.org.
Side note: I am my father’s daughter. I loved to watch Ron Markel work a room, genuinely interested in others and connecting people he thought needed to meet. He remembered everything about folks- their partners, kids, kid interests, professional attributes, and talents. He never forgot a name. He went further and knew all his grandkid’s friends and their parents, too.
As my father’s daughter, I reached out to DomesticShelters.org and slowly worked our relationship offering to showcase them on our own platform. This has grown into a true professional love relationship where we are partnering with a Madison Avenue New York advertising agency (Neon) who are producing an awareness campaign for survivors which I know will change the world.
At Safe In Harm’s Way, we wanted to provide safe counseling in the face of a pandemic. We partnered with The Living Well. Their director, Nicole Bigelow, and I took our time getting to know each other and now have dual logos and collaboration offering folks at Safe In Harm’s Way the ability to tap into professional therapists and coaches on ZOOM group therapy sessions 7 to 8 times a week. Nicole, in turn, recommended me to a documentary film producer who will be showcasing my story in her 2022 documentary. Together, we have started a small group of non-profit beginners to lessen the mistakes I made in my journey.
This collaboration keeps extending as more people see what we do at Safe In Harm’s Way and want to partner with us, too. We have an entirely new initiative with two female go-getters who are working to teach survivors how to dress, market, engage as they search for jobs. Their founder, Josephine Thorpe, approached me and we will pilot the program in Kansas City using survivors from local shelters, folks with substance abuse layered into the equation and professionals to ensure the job skills needed after abuse can be supported and mentored by professionals who care and connect.
Our efforts at Epizon Strategy Solutions is really taking off as we have been in front of the United Way, Boston Scientific, IPG Health, Judge Associations, non-profits, marketers, and Chambers of Commerce training employers how to confront domestic violence.
The collaboration and efforts to engage everyone on the survivor’s journey allow us to differentiate ourselves and secure additional resources to the world.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
My family makes me happy. I have six kids (three I grew inside me and three humans they fell in love with), four dogs, four cats and a chosen family which fuels my life. My happiest moments are when the 70’s Spotify station is loud and everyone is in the kitchen dancing, making a Mexican feast and refusing to leave so we all make a huge nest and spend the night. Perfection.
My chosen family includes four other women Soul Sisters who meet weekly to discuss books and spirituality. My DAG (Daily Accountability Group) who meet every week to hold each other accountable with nutrition and goals. Plus, my Chosen Family of Kansas City folks who arrange travel, include me and my children at all events, and are the reason I can work hard and create my dreams. They all show up, even in the face of danger when I escaped, in every moment in time.
My Dave Matthews Band music friends lift and support me plus help me spread the word about Safe In Harm’s Way. Finally, the friends I’ve kept for over forty years now are still present and active in our lives.
Never having friends who want to dim your light but rather fuel your soul are a slice of heaven on earth. I have an army of them, and the resulting joy at this thought can bring me to tears, plus make me giggle at the amazing memories we have created!
Side note- We have friends who started out as professional contacts who held our first official fundraiser for Safe In Harm’s Way and allowed us to erase $13,000 in debt and begin an initiative to work with pharmacists as points of safety. WOW!! Top-notch people fuel our world in the form of Amanda Pfeifer and Kaleb Drinkgern at Destination Home Team at Keller Williams.
We are so damn lucky for it all.
Does it seem like I just offered an Oscar acceptance speech? Well, I did. Kind of.
Abusers work really hard to isolate their target from all the people they know and love. It works, because then the survivor is less likely to leave and get help. It’s why people stay in abuse. They have no one left to help.
These people I listed above all deserve an award bigger than an Oscar. I deserve one, too, because relationships with every single one of the folks listed grew bigger and better in my “after” of abuse.
If you’re facing abuse now, please know you can rebuild your life and connections, too. Promise. Life is so much better in the “after” of abuse when you reengage with people you lost contact with “before.”
Pricing:
- Hour Long Corporate Training Session: $5000 for Lunch and Learns, with expanded pricing based on training design and corporate needs.
- Survivor Services: Be a hero! Donations, both one time and monthly, in all amounts are welcome and appreciated. I don’t take a salary, so all money goes directly to survivor services. https://safeinharmsway.org/donation/
Contact Info:
Email: caroline@safeinharmsway.org
Safe In Harm’s Way: https://safeinharmsway.org/
Epizon Strategy Solutions: https://epizonstrategy.com/
Get to know me better: https://carolinemarkelhammond.com
Contact Info:
- Email: info@safeinharmsway.com
- Website: SafeInHarmsWay.org
- Instagram: @safeinharmsway
- Facebook: https://www.
facebook.com/SafeInHarmsWay - Twitter: @SafeInHarmsWay
- Youtube: Safe In Harm’s Way- You Tube
- SoundCloud: https://open.
spotify.com/user/ 31vpbnk5jlob4cg5xgzqekk6uxcu/ playlist/ 1BQ4MsUoC1YKq89o1GaXjb?si= ZWxjDlUbQUC95oAiCcSKag&dl_ branch=1 - Other: carolinemarkelhammond.
com
Image Credits:
Elements Design Studio, Kelly Powell for the professional headshots
