​When I was very young, my mother left my father. He had just beaten her pretty badly, and in the brief moment my father stepped outside, she ran frantically into my room and told me that we had to go and that we had to go NOW. We ended up at my aunt’s place, who hid us in her trailer, and drove us the next day out from New York to Florida. I spent that summer living in a motor home, bathing in public parks, and on the run from my father. Soon afterwards, however, we returned to New York because my father threatened to kill himself if my mother did not return. Current estimates are that, in Puerto Rico, a woman is killed every week, making it a site with the highest per capita femicide rate in the world for girls and women over the age of fourteen (ACLU, nd). Thanks to the Time Out Grant, from Vassar College (my alma mater) I interviewed and visit a variety of domestic violence shelters in Puerto Rico to understand what types of services were available. This project helped me document the experiences of survivors of gender-based violence in Puerto Rico and ultimately led to the creation of a senior seminar series on Violence Against Women.  I did this  so that no one could say, as they did to my mother, “we didn’t know” or “it couldn’t have been that bad”.