-Meathead Movers was started in 1997.
Our first experience of moving someone who was a victim of
domestic violence happened within the first year sometime.
I was the one who received the call and could hear the panic
and just the frantic nature of what she was going through.
-We let the shelters know that if at any time they need to move somebody
out of a situation to call us and we move the victims of domestic violence 100% for free.
-Unfortunately, the calls kept coming.
We didn’t plan on this turning into a big part of what we do.
It’s something that we reacted to.
-The first time I that I tried to leave him was when my son was like 3 months.
Yes. Like seven times.
Yes. Always.
He went like 2-3 times to my previous jobs.
Where I would get fired because he would scream, do…a lot of things.
The last time that he hit me, my son was in back of him.
And my son called the police.
And he told them, “He’s my daddy. And he’s the one who hit my mom.”
It was my son. He was almost gonna be 8 years.
My son said, “You’re not going to anything else to my mom because she’s not alone.
We already growing up. We’re not babies no more.”
-Frankly, no one should ever live in fear of violence in their own home.
No man, woman, or child should ever have that over their heads.
Human Options is an Emergency Shelter that helps men, women,
nd children that are fleeing domestic violence.
What we try to do here is maintain an anonymous location that nobody knows where we are.
-The moment they reach that shelter, they reach that safe house,
they’re now out of that controlling atmosphere that they were in.
They’re out of that dangerous situation.
-They might have a bag packed with some essentials, but often times
they’re coming here literally with the clothes on their back.
-At the beginning, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to come.
I could do everything on my own. I could work.
I could get by with my family and everything.
My only thing is that I was with a person who always was really bad with me.
And I didn’t want to go back to that place.
-They can stay here up to 45 days, typically.
Sometimes it’s less than that just depending on what their
goals are and how they meet those goals.
And then they move on to a situation that they decide is best for them.
-For Transitional Shelters, all of our referrals come from Emergency Shelters.
We will let Emergency Shelters know when we have space available at our shelters,
so the referrals are really based on available space.
For 6 months, there’s a pretty standard program that all the mothers go through.
And then after those 6 months are complete,
we help customize it to what their needs are.
In addition to providing resident care they get:
-There’s one project, it’s called The Monster and Me, it gets them talking about some
of the things they deal with internally because of the
violence, because of the domestic violence,
because of what they experienced.
-I knew that it was safer here, but I was not able to talk to no one.
I was so scared. I was thinking, like, everybody knows him.
Everybody’s going to tell him what I’m doing.
Everybody’s going to tell him where I am.
My kids used to talk low… “Mom nobody’s hearing us?
Mom are you sure no one knows where we are? They’re not going to tell my dad?”
-There’s a power and control that is very present in domestic violence.
And what all of these classes do is we give them the skills they
need to have power and control over their own lives.
And a big component of that is identifying what key life skills they’re missing,
and providing the supports to help them develop those key life skills.
-When I talk to Sister Ilene, she told me that I need to get, like,
confidence in someone so that I was not by myself.
I remember one mom, she used to not talk.
She used to just stay closed in her own apartment.
And she reminded me of how I was at the beginning.
So I started talking to her and telling her things about me.
It was like trusting someone who didn’t know nothing about me.
So I realize that everyone who comes here comes with a lot of problems,
and we don’t trust no one. It’s not only working and taking care of family.
It’s not all that. That’s why they teach me that sharing is caring!
I didn’t know nothing about that!
-When the survivor of domestic violence is ready to move out of their Transitional Shelter,
the shelter will contact us, and we’ll provide the moving
services on the back end as well.
-See all the fat? It goes away when you cook them.
It’s a good fat. You don’t have to put nothing else.
So my neighbors tell me, “Why don’t you do tacos?” I was like, “I don’t got no money!”
So they start getting chicken, beef, onions, cilantro. So I was like,
“This looks like a picnic.”
They said, “No, it looks you’re going to cook for us later on.”
Then one of them said, “Why don’t you do this for a living?”
So that’s why I started cooking.
My catering company’s name is Reyna’s Tacos.
-When I really noticed how big of an impact this was,
we’re unloading everything, and her children were there.
And when you put children in that type of situation, it takes it to a whole other level.
-Often times when children are living in a domestically abusive household,
what could happen is that behavior can kind of trigger down to them.
-I mean really when you think about breaking the cycle of domestic violence, obviously
if you can do a lot with kids, generational breaks are important.
-I have a boyfriend. Yes. He’s really respectful.
He loves my kids. That’s the first thing. He loves my kids.
My dream is to have my own restaurant.
And I want my kids to be part of it.
Because it’s been really hard to go from nothing to something that we have. That we own.