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We build safe, educated, and empowered communities where survivors of abuse rise as SurThriVors. 🌟 About SASSI Coach Christine 🌟

👋 Hello there!

I'm Christine, and I'm here to share a glimpse into my journey—a journey marked by resilience, growth, and a fierce commitment to helping others.

🛠️ My Story:
Through life's trials and tribulations, I've emerged as a survivor. I've navigated through deep waters of trauma and abuse, facing challenges that tested my spirit and strength. Yet, in the darkness, I found a glimmer of hope—a beacon guiding me towards healing and transformation.

💼 What I Do:
I am SASSI Coach, dedicated to helping women and men overcome various types of abuse, achieve profound emotional healing and begin to develop healthy relationships. Every day, I pour my heart and soul into helping you reclaim your inner strength and confidence, striving to make a meaningful impact in the lives of those who have walked similar paths to mine. My journey fuels my passion to create positive change and empower others to rise above adversity.

🤝 Who I Serve:
My work is centered around serving women and men of abuse, domestic violence, and/or toxic relationships. Whether it's offering support, resources, or a listening ear, I am here for you. You are not alone in your journey, and together, we can navigate towards a brighter, more hopeful tomorrow.

🌱 Join Me:
This page is a space for connection, inspiration, and growth. Let's walk this journey together—sharing stories, offering support, and building a community rooted in resilience and compassion.

🌟"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do." – Edward Everett Hale

Thank you for being a part of my story.

30/10/2026

What if the person everyone calls “easygoing” has simply learned that disagreeing comes with consequences?

Think about that.
The person who always says, “Whatever you want.”
Who never picks the restaurant.
Who apologizes for asking a question.
Who changes their mind the moment someone seems irritated.
We might describe them as accommodating.

But in a relationship marked by coercive control, those behaviors can develop because expressing a preference repeatedly leads to criticism, intimidation, or punishment.

And there's an important distinction.

Being agreeable isn't evidence of abuse. Being afraid of the consequences of disagreeing is something we should take seriously. When someone spends years managing another person's reactions, they may lose confidence in their own judgment.

Even after the relationship ends, making a simple decision can feel unfamiliar.

Having the freedom to choose and feeling safe enough to express what you want aren't always the same thing. Reconnecting with your own preferences can take time. Sometimes it starts with small decisions, exploring an old interest, or discovering what you enjoy without having to justify it to anyone.

And here's what I want people to recognize.

That person who always says, “Whatever you want” may have opinions you've never heard.
Dreams they've stopped mentioning.
Interests they've pushed aside.
A personality that has spent years being carefully managed around someone else's reactions.

Imagine what we might discover about that person when they no longer have to make themselves smaller.

At SASSI™, our SurThriVor philosophy is about recognizing the whole person beyond what they survived.

Not just their resilience. Their interests. Their ambitions. Their humor. Their opinions. Their right to define a life that belongs to them.

We're exploring this in our latest blog, Healing Loudly: I Didn't Survive All That Just to Disappear, on the SASSI Village Foundation™ website.

Read it here: https://bit.ly/3Wxcoxl

Because surviving abuse should never become the only thing the world sees when it looks at someone.

Education is Prevention. 💜

23/10/2026

Maybe they thought about leaving.
Maybe they even made a plan.
Then something happened.

A threat.
A bill they couldn't pay alone.
A child who needed somewhere safe to sleep.
A person they thought would help who told them they were overreacting.
And suddenly the decision that looked so obvious from the outside wasn't obvious at all.

We talk about leaving an abusive relationship as though it's one decision.

But for some survivors, it's a series of decisions made while trying to understand the risks, protect the people they love, and find options that may not be available yet.

And sometimes the person making those decisions has spent years being told they can't trust their own judgment.

That's what people miss when they say, “I would've left.”
They see the relationship.
They don't see all the choices that were taken away, the resources that weren't there, or the consequences someone was trying to avoid.

Then, when a survivor finally tells us what's happening, we start making decisions for them.

You need to leave.
You can't go back.
Why are you still talking to them?
We may think we're helping.

But someone who has experienced control doesn't need another person deciding what they must do to deserve support.

Survivors are not weak. And their choices are not ours to grade.

If someone trusts you with their experience, ask what they need. Listen to the answer. Offer what you can without making your support conditional on their next decision.

And if you're a survivor reading this, you don't have to convince anyone that your circumstances were difficult enough.

You deserve dignity and support right now.
You have no idea what that decision cost.

We're continuing this conversation at the SASSI Village Foundation™ because understanding abuse changes how we respond to the people experiencing it.

If something here challenged what you've believed, we'd love for you to get to know our mission and the change we're working to create. Visit our website and stay in the conversation with us.

https://sassivillage.org/

Education is Prevention. 💜

16/10/2026

We ask why someone stayed quiet.
Maybe we should be asking what happened when they tried to speak.

Maybe they said:
“He gets angry when I go out.”
“I have to explain everything I spend.”
“It’s easier if I just don’t bring it up.”

And somebody answered:
Every couple fights.
Are you sure it’s really that bad?
Then leave.
Maybe that was enough to teach them:
Don’t bring it up again.

Sometimes silence starts after someone finally says something. And that means Domestic Violence Awareness Month cannot only be about encouraging survivors to “speak up.”

We need to talk about the people they’re speaking to.
Do we listen?
Do we minimize?
Do we interrogate?
Do we immediately tell them what they should do?
Do we decide whether what happened was “bad enough”?

Because someone who has experienced control does not need another person taking control of what happens next.

We Don’t Do Silence is not an order for survivors to speak.
It’s a challenge to the rest of us to become safer people to speak to.

This week on The Village Voice, we’re going further into The Cost of Silence, including what can keep someone quiet during abuse, what can happen after they finally say something, and why leaving doesn’t automatically give someone their voice back.

If this made you question something you once thought about silence, keep learning with us on The SASSI Village Foundation™ blog.

You can read more here: https://sassivillage.org/the-village-voice-blog-1/f/the-cost-of-silence

And if you're recognizing pieces of your own life in this conversation, SASSI Coach Christine offers another door for support when you're ready.

Education is Prevention.
This October, We Don’t Do Silence. 💜

08/10/2026

You get the invitation.
For a second, you're excited.

Then your stomach drops a little.
Because saying yes means more than going out with your friends.

It means the texts.
The questions.
The mood when you get home.
Maybe the accusation that you care more about them than your relationship.
Maybe another argument that lasts until you're too exhausted to keep defending yourself.

So you say no.
Again.

And from the outside?
It looks like you made a choice.
That's what I want us talking about this October.

We spend a lot of time asking whether someone was allowed to do something.
Were they allowed to see friends?
Were they allowed to have money?
Were they allowed to wear what they wanted?
Were they allowed to say no?

There's another question we need to ask:
What happened when they did?

Because someone can technically have a choice and still spend their life calculating the consequences of making it.

Eventually, they may stop going.
Stop asking.
Stop disagreeing.
Stop buying.
Stop calling.
Stop doing anything that might start another fight.

And the people around them may never realize how much their world has changed.

This is why The SASSI Village Foundation™ doesn't want Domestic Violence Awareness Month to stop at “domestic violence exists.” We want people to recognize what abuse can look like while somebody may still be calling it normal.

This October, The SASSI Village Foundation™ is going beyond awareness.

We're helping people recognize what abuse can look like while they may still be calling it normal, and building a community rooted in education, safety, choice, connection, and what comes next.

See what SASSI is building beyond awareness: https://sassivillage.org/
Education is Prevention.

This October, We Don't Do Silence. 💜

02/10/2026

Maybe you’ve done this.

Something keeps happening in your relationship and you can’t quite explain why it bothers you so much.

So you start searching.
Is this gaslighting?
Are they a narcissist?
Is this emotional abuse?
Is this coercive control?

And suddenly you’re reading lists, watching videos and replaying six months of conversations trying to figure out what to call them.

Because finding the right word can feel like proof.
See? This is real. I’m not imagining it.

But what if, for a moment, you stopped trying to figure out what they are?
What if you looked at what keeps happening?
What happens when you say no?
What happens when you disagree?
Can you bring up something that hurt you without the entire conversation becoming about your reaction?
Do apologies lead to different behavior?
What have you stopped doing because dealing with the reaction wasn’t worth it anymore?
Are your choices getting bigger, or smaller?

Those answers matter.

You don’t need to successfully diagnose another human being before you can trust what you are experiencing.

At the same time, words like gaslighting, narcissistic personality disorder and coercive control have real meaning. Learning what they actually describe can help us recognize when something is being mislabeled, and when something serious has been minimized for far too long.

Accuracy matters in both directions.

Your hurt doesn’t need a bigger word to make it real.
But sometimes the right word helps you finally understand the pattern.

So we want to hear from you:
What’s one psychology or relationship term you hear all the time that you wish people understood better?

And if this has you questioning the difference between a label, a behavior, and a pattern, stay with that curiosity.

There’s more for us to learn about the words we use, what they actually mean, and what we may miss when we’re so focused on naming the person that we stop noticing what keeps happening.

That’s the conversation we’re having this week on The SASSI Village Foundation™ blog in Words Mean Something.

Come learn with us.
Visit the link here: https://sassivillage.org/the-village-voice-blog-1/f/words-mean-something

Education is Prevention. 💜

25/09/2026

You can leave the home where a pattern started and still carry parts of it with you.

That's one of the harder truths about breaking generational cycles.
Maybe you promised yourself you'd never yell like they did.
Never control someone the way you were controlled.
Never make your children walk on eggshells.
Then one day, you recognize something familiar in your own behavior.

That's the moment we need to talk about.
Because understanding where a behavior came from can help us understand ourselves.

It also gives us a chance to ask:
What am I doing with what was handed to me?

Breaking the cycle requires more than recognizing what hurt us. We have to look at what we're repeating, take responsibility when our behavior hurts someone, get support when we need it, and learn what healthy can actually look like.

Sometimes one person has to be the first to say:
I know where this came from.
I can see where it's showing up.
And I'm choosing what happens next.

We’re going deeper into what breaking the cycle actually looks like on The SASSI Village Foundation™ blog this week.

You can read it here: https://sassivillage.org/sassi-village-foundation/f/breaking-the-cycle-starts-with-one-person

Education is Prevention. 💜

18/09/2026

I knew when not to ask.
When to stay quiet.
When someone’s mood had changed before they said a word.
When not to bring up what happened last night.

Nobody taught me this.
I learned the room.

As a child, I didn’t think:
I’m adapting to what’s happening around me.
I thought:
This is home.
Then I grew up, and some of those lessons came with me.

“Don’t ask” became “I don’t need anything.”
“Don’t make it worse” became “I hate confrontation.”
“I’m fine” stayed “I’m fine.”

For years, I may have called those things personality.
Quiet. Private. Independent. Easygoing.

Until the harder question showed up:
Is this who I am?
Or is this who I learned I needed to be?

That’s where something can begin to shift.

Because understanding where a pattern came from isn’t about blaming the past, or using it to excuse what happens next.
It’s about recognition.

I learned silence kept the peace.
Now I’m learning my voice matters.

And once we can recognize what we learned, we can begin deciding what we want to carry forward, and what stops with us.
Learned does not mean permanent.

This is why we believe education has to go beyond awareness. When we understand what we learned, what we carried, and what may still be showing up in our lives, something different becomes possible.

See what The SASSI Village Foundation™ is building beyond awareness:
https://sassivillage.org/

Education is Prevention. 💜

11/09/2026

“The kids didn’t see it.”

Maybe.
But they felt the room change.
They noticed who got quiet.
Whose mood everyone checked.
When it wasn’t a good time to ask a question.
And what everyone learned to call “normal.”

Children don’t have to understand abuse to start learning what gets normalized.

REALITY CHECK:
Children aren't only watching what happens.
They're watching what happens next, too.

The apology.
The boundary.
The different choice.
The adult who asks for help.
They're watching what gets repeated, and what someone finally decides will stop with them.

This week on the SASSI Village Foundation™ blog, we're going deeper into something we don't talk about nearly enough:

What do children learn from the things adults think they didn't see?
And what happens when those lessons follow us into adulthood?

Read “They Were Never ‘Just in the Other Room’”:
https://bit.ly/4cBs###

Don’t stop at awareness. Keep learning.
Education is Prevention. 💜

04/09/2026

Nobody ever sat you down and said:
“Everyone else should adjust to one person’s anger.”

You just watched it happen.

You noticed who stayed quiet.
Who apologized first.
Who kept the peace.
Who everyone tried not to upset.
And eventually, you learned the rule.

That’s the thing about “normal.”
Sometimes it’s just what happened often enough that you stopped questioning it.

So I’m curious: What’s something you grew up thinking was normal that you see differently now?

You don’t have to share your whole story. Even one phrase counts.

At The SASSI Village Foundation™, we believe education gives us the language to recognize unhealthy patterns earlier—and the opportunity to question what we’ve been taught to accept.

Learn more about our mission and what we’re building: https://sassivillage.org/

Education is prevention. 💜

28/08/2026

When did “whatever you want” become your answer?

Where to eat.
What to do.
Whether to go.
What you think.

After a while, I got so used to considering everyone else's reaction that I stopped noticing how often I was leaving myself out of the decision.

I could read a room in seconds.
But ask me:
“What do YOU want?”
That answer was harder.

That's one of the quiet ways we can lose pieces of ourselves.

One swallowed opinion.
One automatic apology.
One “it's fine.”
One “whatever you want.”
Until considering everyone else feels automatic.

At The SASSI Village Foundation™, we believe education is prevention. When we recognize how identity can erode in small, everyday moments, we can start hearing our own voice again.

If this feels familiar, you don't have to figure it all out alone. Alongside leading the Foundation, I work one-on-one with women rebuilding self-trust, finding their voice, and creating a life that includes them again.

This Week's SASSI Stand™
Before you say “whatever you want” this week, stop for a second.
Ask yourself:
What do I want?

And here's what I'd love to know:
What's one small thing you've started choosing for yourself again?

Tell me in the comments. Your answer might help another woman recognize herself too.
Education is prevention. 💜

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http://www.sassivillage.org/

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