ABSTRACT
When I met her more than 18 years ago, Gloria was sitting on the porch of a local women's shelter, an old plantation-style house, somewhat rundown, but still grand in size. It was my first visit to the shelter and my initiation to being on its Board of Directors. Gloria, a middle-aged African American woman, was sitting in a wheelchair. Her husband had hit her with a sledge hammer and destroyed her kidneys. She was undergoing regular dialysis treatment. Gloria was soft-spoken, but something in her eyes left an indelible imprint on my psyche and a scar on my heart. Our brief conversation changed my life and became part of my cellular structure. It was disturbing, because I knew she was a part of me, and her reality a part of the world we all inhabit. I never saw Gloria again, but her story lived inside of me as if we had daily contact. Here on paper, Gloria's suffering and survival lives and breathes.
