Hi Bonnie’s Blog readers, 

This is my first blog, so I thought I’d introduce myself: I’m Georgia, a member of the DVRE and Covid Response team at Bonnie Support Services.

I didn’t always work with women or in social work, I was actually in hospitality marketing before I got the job here. I took the job because I wanted to do something that aligned with my values. At first I wasn’t sure what that looked like, but after starting at Bonnie’s and having an amazing experience with my first client, I knew I had made the right move. 

I can still remember my first client it like it was yesterday…

Like many of the women we work with, Sophie’s* situation was complex. She had met a man online and moved to Sydney to be with him. She thought this was going to be the beginning of a happy and loving relationship. Unfortunately, she was wrong. What happened instead? Sophie was physically and emotionally abused. She rang Bonnie’s.

Sophie is a transwoman and accessing community and government services comes with an array of additional obstacles than those already faced by ciswomen. Sophie also has a disability, and at that time her only income came from a disability support pension. That’s only about $987 a fortnight. Packing up bags, moving again, in a new city, was near impossible without our support. 

She was on her way. 

I can still remember when Sophie, visibly upset, walked through the door. She told us that this wasn’t her first time in a women’s refuge. She’d been in them before with her mother when they both escaped her violent father. Being back here was overwhelming and brought back a lot of memories. We sat down together and I handed her some tissues and when things calmed down, I nervously shuffled around my notes and told her she was actually my first client. Looking up from her tissues, she smiled, and said:

“Don’t worry, we will hold each other’s hands through this.”

And we did. We got on like a house on fire and she even started doing her different character voices from her days as a performer that left us in stitches with laughter. The tears were gone. And so were my nerves. This was the right place for Sophie to be, and it was the right place for me too. 

Blog by Georgia, Bonnie Support Services DVRE and Covid-Response Worker.

Image sourced on CANVA.

* Name change for privacy reasons.