National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma, and Mental Health

A single moment of light is a beginning. The work of sustaining it is what carries healing forward — long after any single month has ended.

As we close Threads of Light, we want to leave you with something to carry into the days, and the years, ahead. A Wildflower Path: Healing in Hard Times is one of our most-loved resources — a gentle companion for survivors and those who walk alongside them, rooted in the understanding that healing unfolds in its own season.

For those who want to go further, our companion webinar series, A Wildflower Path: Navigating Wellness Through Life's Seasons, offers six sessions of practical mind-body-spirit practices — free, accessible, and especially helpful when words are not enough. Open to anyone touched by trauma, whether through personal experience or in supporting others.

Over the past month, we moved through four threads together: understanding, holding, weaving, and shining a light forward. Thank you for weaving alongside us.

The light does not end here. Neither does the work.

Access the toolkit and webinar series: https://ncdvtmh.org/toolkit/a-wildflower-path-healing-in-hard-times/

Healing rarely happens in isolation; it happens across sectors, across families, and across the relationships that sustain us. This phase honors the cross-sector and family-centered work that ties this field together.

Weave West Virginia is one place where that work is taking root.

Our state pilot supports individuals and their families experiencing intimate partner violence and substance use coercion, building the kind of cross-sector collaboration that helps survivors stay safer, healthier, and more connected to the care they choose. It is a program whose name, fittingly, carries the campaign's metaphor into real-world practice.

Learn more: https://ncdvtmh.org/our-work/cross-sector/weave-west-virginia/

We are honored to share that our Associate Director, Gabriela Zapata-Alma, and Research Director, Heather Phillips, will co-present at the Trauma Research Foundation's 37th Annual Boston International Trauma Conference — one of the longest-standing gatherings of trauma researchers, clinicians, and practitioners in the field.

Their session, "Systems and Public Health Approaches to Interpersonal Violence", brings NCDVTMH's two decades of work at the intersections of gender-based violence, trauma, mental health, and substance use into conversation with the broader trauma research community.

We are proud to see this work travel — and grateful to the Trauma Research Foundation for convening a space where systems-level and public health perspectives can shape the future of trauma-informed practice.

For survivors of intimate partner violence, the path to healthcare is rarely a straight line. Stigma, fear of judgment, fear of losing custody, and the lasting effects of coercion can make it harder to access the care that supports long-term well-being — even when that care is exactly what is needed.

Survivor Health Connections exists to help survivors find — and stay connected to — the care they deserve.

Working alongside survivors, advocates, and healthcare partners, we are building stronger pathways between domestic violence services and the healthcare resources survivors actually want and need — from mental health and substance use treatment to primary care, reproductive health, and beyond. The work is rooted in a simple idea: survivors should be met as whole people, across every system they touch.

This is what weaving looks like in practice. Threads carried between sectors. Connections built with care.

Access this resource library: https://ncdvtmh.org/our-work/cross-sector/survivor-health-connections/

On Tuesday, May 27, NCDVTMH is hosting a special Mental Health Awareness Month webinar in partnership with Esperanza United: Centering Connection: Latin@ Parent/Caregiver–Child Healing in the Context of Intimate Partner Violence.

This webinar highlights how therapists and advocates can support healing within the parent–child relationship in ways that center safety, empowerment, and building on personal and community strengths.

Featuring a new annotated bibliography and best practices tip sheet, this session emphasizes survivor-centered approaches that promote safety, strengthen relationships, and support mental health across generations.

Register now! https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_0sqoIg19Twi6AUvogq8New

Survivors are often shined on in ways that scrutinize rather than support — screened, surveilled, separated from those they love. The light that exposes is not the same as the light that warms.

The work of holding is the work of a different kind of light. Care that witnesses without burning. Presence that steadies without exposing. The kind of attention that says: I see you, and I will not use what I see against you.

This kind of holding does not happen by accident. It is built — in advocacy programs, in supervision practices, in the daily decisions about how to care for the people who care for survivors.

This week, we are honored to share Circles of Support: Responding to Stress and Crisis in Advocacy Work, a brand-new survivor-centered guide for advocacy programs caring for advocates, organizations, and survivors at once. Grounded in an Accessible, Culturally Responsive, and Trauma-Informed approach, it offers a five-step framework for building programs that hold without causing harm.

Access the resource here: https://ncdvtmh.org/resource/circles-of-support/

Mental health coercion is a pattern of abuse in which an intimate partner uses a survivor's mental health — real, fabricated, or induced — as a tool of control. Diagnoses turned into threats. Medications sabotaged. Fears of psychiatric hospitalization held overhead. Every emotional response reframed as proof of instability.

For many survivors, this experience happens in silence. It shapes a life, often without ever being recognized as part of the abuse.

Understanding is where every other thread begins.

This week, we are sharing two resources designed to bring this pattern into shared awareness. Our newly released fact sheet, What is Mental Health Coercion?, is written for survivors who may recognize themselves in its pages, and for anyone — friends, family members, advocates, providers — who wants the language to better understand and accompany someone they love.

Alongside it, our Mental Health Coercion Palm Cards, including cultural adaptations, were built for the practitioners and advocates holding these conversations in real rooms with real people, often at the moments when language matters most.

Check out these resources at: https://linktr.ee/ncdvtmh

This May, we are turning toward the intersections — where domestic violence, mental health, substance use, and trauma meet, and where single-issue systems too often leave people invisibilized.

Threads of Light unfolds in four movements: Understanding what has lived without language. Holding one another with care that witnesses rather than exposes. Weaving healing across sectors, families, and communities. Shining the light forward — into policy, practice, and the days beyond May.

Throughout the month, we will share new resources, well-loved favorites, and stories drawn from more than two decades of partnership with survivors, advocates, and frontline providers.

Every thread carries healing forward. Weave alongside us. 💜