An entire life’s possessions fit inside a single suitcase. She carries it in one hand and grips her child’s hand with the other as they walk toward the sheriff’s car waiting to take them away. Behind them, an affectionate, well-loved calico watches from beside an empty cat crate. The woman looks back at him one last time. She knows what leaving the cat in the care of her abuser could mean, but when the choice comes down to her child or the animal they love, she chooses her child and keeps walking.

For some survivors of domestic violence, fear for a pet can complicate an already dangerous decision. Research has documented abusers threatening and harming animals as a means of controlling their partners, and survivors sometimes delay leaving because they cannot find a safe place that will accept the animals who depend upon them. Women and children may experience further distress when leaving home also means losing a beloved animal companion.

In Northeast Georgia, however, a woman seeking refuge at Circle of Hope can make a different choice. She can bring the cat.

A Circle of Services

Circle of Hope accommodates pets, and staff described working with an outside organization to help families with additional animal needs, including emergency boarding and veterinary care. During my tour, staff spoke candidly about the reason behind the service: some survivors simply will not leave their animals behind. In our imagined departure, the mother can place the cat in her crate, climb into the sheriff’s car with her child beside her, and carry every member of the family toward safety.

The cat captures something that became increasingly apparent as I walked through Circle of Hope. Someone here has spent considerable time thinking about what leaving actually requires.

From a safe distance, escaping domestic violence can sound deceptively straightforward. A woman recognizes that she or her children are in danger, makes the decision to leave and goes somewhere safe. In reality, that decision can require her to dismantle nearly every practical component of her life at once. She may leave behind her home, income, transportation, possessions, childcare arrangements, and access to important documents. Her children leave their bedrooms, toys, friends, routines and schools. If she lives in rural Northeast Georgia, distance compounds nearly every one of those problems.

Research into rural intimate partner violence has repeatedly identified geographic isolation, limited transportation, fewer nearby services, shortages of affordable housing and childcare, and reduced economic opportunities as barriers that can restrict a survivor’s ability to leave. One U.S. study found women in small rural and isolated areas lived, on average, three times farther from intimate-partner-violence resources than urban women. 

Circle of Hope confronts those large problems through an accumulation of remarkably specific answers.

The evidence begins before you enter the building. Bicycles and tricycles sit outside. Beautiful playgrounds give children room to play, while the building contains areas created for children of different ages, including a room specifically for teenagers. Staff spend time with the children and form relationships with them, something I saw reflected in the potted plants lining the entryway, decorated and tended by the children who have stayed there.

Inside, the staff arranged the children’s play areas so parents can remain nearby while their children play, giving families the opportunity to spend time together while allowing children room to simply be children. 

Then there are the bedrooms. Instead of room numbers, flowers identify each one, adding a small touch of individuality to a place families may temporarily call home. Inside, residents find freshly painted walls, new furnishings, and bathrooms with granite countertops rather than the worn, cast-off furniture one might expect from a facility dependent on donations. The rooms feel deliberately cared for, reflecting the same attention I noticed throughout the shelter.

That decision carries little administrative significance, yet for a child walking through the doors of Circle of Hope, it can carry considerable human weight. Only hours earlier, she may have left her own bedroom without knowing when—or whether—she will see it again, while her favorite toys remain scattered across the floor, perhaps broken in the violence that preceded her departure, her books sit untouched on the shelf, and the stuffed animal forgotten in the confusion waits beneath the covers. She may understand exactly why her mother fled, or she may know only that the adults around her are frightened and that everything familiar has suddenly disappeared.

With that experience in mind, Circle of Hope pays attention to details that might otherwise seem inconsequential: employees described using scent, aromatherapy and ambient music to create a soothing environment, while flower-named bedrooms, freshly painted walls and carefully maintained surroundings offer children and their mothers a place prepared to receive them with dignity.

The shelter carries that same attention into the practical realities of childhood. Circle of Hope has a child advocate who helps families address educational needs and school arrangements. Staff discussed using protections available through McKinney-Vento when applicable so displacement does not automatically sever a child’s connection with her existing school. Maintaining something as ordinary as the same teacher, classmates, and school-day routine can matter considerably when nearly everything else in a child’s life has changed.

Circle of Hope also prepares for families who arrive with little opportunity to prepare at all. Staff showed me emergency clothing, car seats, booster seats, and other children’s necessities. They even discussed the need for larger Pull-Ups, including for some older children with additional developmental needs. Elsewhere in the shelter are washers and dryers, kitchen facilities residents can use, and programming that includes life-skills, financial, and cooking classes.

The Difference Is in the Follow-Through

These objects rarely make compelling fundraising language on their own. A booster seat lacks the emotional pull of a grand mission statement. A washing machine will probably never appear prominently in an organization’s annual campaign. Yet imagine arriving at a shelter at midnight with two children and discovering the next morning that one of them has nothing clean to wear. 

That practicality impressed me because I have spent enough time around nonprofit organizations to recognize the difference between an impressive list of services and the infrastructure required to deliver them. Programs can sound wonderful in promotional material while operating sporadically or existing with so few resources that clients struggle to access them in practice. I remarked on this during my Circle of Hope tour because, as I moved through the building, I could physically see the difference: supplies filled the shelves, children played in areas created specifically for them, and staff carried out the work they had described, so the services presented to the public existed as something tangible within the shelter rather than promises confined to a brochure.

Case management illustrates that distinction particularly well. Staff described meeting individually with clients, establishing goals, determining which resources they need and helping them access counseling and other services. 

In Northeast Georgia, transportation alone can turn an ordinary task into a serious obstacle. Circle of Hope staff told me that many clients arrive without access to a vehicle, forcing the team to coordinate rides to appointments and services. Uber and Lyft have proven unreliable enough in the area that staff prefer to transport residents themselves when possible and may arrange taxis when necessary. Anyone accustomed to driving twenty minutes to an appointment without thinking about it can easily overlook how dramatically that same distance changes when you have no car, limited money, and children traveling with you.

By this point in my tour, the individual details had begun to form a pattern. The flower names, playgrounds, teen room, pet accommodations, emergency car seats, transportation schedules and even the scent of the building all reflected the same habit of asking practical questions from the perspective of the person who would need the answer.

Suppose our imagined mother stays at Circle of Hope long enough to regain her footing. She works with her case manager, receives counseling and finds reliable employment. Her child goes to school each morning and plays outside in the afternoon. The calico settles into the temporary arrangement in the manner of cats everywhere, perhaps deciding within several days that the entire operation exists primarily for her convenience. Slowly, the contents of that single suitcase expand into something resembling ordinary life again.

Then the family encounters another problem: they need somewhere permanent to live.

Housing represents one of the most consequential barriers between emergency safety and lasting independence. A survivor can accomplish everything expected of her and still find herself searching for an affordable home in a region where housing supply already strains many working families. The problem becomes particularly acute when a parent must find housing she can afford on one income, within reasonable distance of work and school, while potentially rebuilding credit, savings and household possessions at the same time.

Circle of Hope has begun preparing a large answer to that problem. The organization plans an apartment development intended to help address the housing shortage. The project’s specific eligibility requirements, timeline and housing model should accompany the final published details as Circle of Hope confirms them, but its scale makes the project an important part of the organization’s next chapter.

The apartments also make sense after walking through the shelter because they extend the same question I encountered from room to room: what does this person need next?

Safety answers tonight. Case management begins answering tomorrow. Transportation gets her to the appointment. The child advocate helps preserve school. Pet accommodations keep another member of the family safe. Classes help rebuild practical independence. Housing determines whether the family can eventually close the shelter door behind them and open the door to a home of their own.

The Community Cost of Domestic Violence

The importance of that work extends throughout the community. Domestic violence occurs within individual relationships, but communities absorb many of its consequences through healthcare, workplaces, law enforcement, courts and other public systems. A CDC-led analysis estimated the lifetime economic burden of intimate partner violence among U.S. adults with a victimization history at nearly $3.6 trillion in 2014 dollars. Medical costs accounted for an estimated $2.1 trillion, while lost productivity among victims and perpetrators accounted for another $1.3 trillion. Criminal-justice activity and other expenses contributed billions more, and researchers estimated government sources would bear approximately 37 percent of the total lifetime burden.

Those enormous national figures become easier to understand when translated back into the institutions around us. Domestic violence reaches the hospital that treats an injury, the employer missing an employee, the deputy answering a call, the court hearing a case, and the school helping a child whose home life has abruptly changed. In a rural region where many institutions already operate with limited resources, effective intervention carries significance well beyond the walls of a domestic violence shelter.

How You Can Help

Northeast Georgians have an immediate opportunity to support that intervention. Circle of Hope will host Dueling Pianos on Saturday, 10/24/2026, from 5 to 9 p.m. at Piedmont University Arrendale Amphitheater. The fundraiser features donated treasures, bidding and raffles, with proceeds supporting Circle of Hope’s domestic violence services, housing support and advocacy. Tickets remain available at prices ranging from $5 to $60.

Moreover, Circle of Hope depends upon donations to keep many of these comforts and activities available to the families who come through its doors, and some of the needs are surprisingly ordinary. The shelter can use bicycles and tricycles for children, basketballs and other outdoor toys, stuffed animals and toys for children entering the facility, and soft blankets that can offer something warm and familiar during a frightening transition. Its gardens could benefit from seeds, pots, soil and lumber, as well as skilled volunteers who could help improve the garden areas. Teenagers have needs of their own, including Uncrustables and other nutritious, individually packaged snacks and drinks for their hangout area, while families regularly need hygiene products such as shampoo and conditioner, body wash, deodorant, toothbrushes and toothpaste, feminine hygiene products, hairbrushes and combs. Everyday household necessities—laundry detergent, cleaning supplies, paper products, diapers, Pull-Ups and new undergarments—can also help a family that arrived with little more than what they could carry.

These donations may appear modest beside the larger work of providing shelter, advocacy and case management, but they help make the life inside the facility possible. Circle of Hope has grown through the support of Northeast Georgia, and its continued care belongs to us as well. We, as a community, helped build this place, and we, as a community, can help maintain it.

Conclusion

Perhaps that is why, after touring a nearly 10,000-square-foot facility filled with programs and resources, I found myself remembering some of its smallest details. Circle of Hope began in an old farmhouse of roughly 1,800 square feet before moving into the present facility, completed in 2005, and the need has continued to grow. Yet the scale of the organization never quite explains what distinguishes it as clearly as the evidence of individual decisions made throughout the building.

A woman may arrive carrying everything she managed to save in one suitcase. Her child may arrive holding her mother’s hand and wondering where she will sleep that night. Between them sits a cat crate containing a bewildered calico who has no idea where the family is going.

At Circle of Hope, someone thought about all three.