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The Mending · Always here

Safety & resources

Free, confidential help, and ways to protect your privacy while you look.

If you need someone now

You don’t have to be sure it’s “bad enough” to call.

Calls and texts can show up on phone bills and logs. If someone checks your phone, use a safer one if you can. Numbers checked October 2026.

Quick exit

Leave in one tap

Every page of The Mending has a Quick exit button in the top right. On a keyboard, the Esc key does the same. Either one replaces this page with a weather site.

✕ Quick exit or press Esc

It can’t erase your history. Read on for more.

Devices

Your devices can be monitored

Quick exit swaps this page out of your back button, but other pages you visited may still show in your history. A private or incognito window keeps less. If it’s safe, delete just these pages from your history. Wiping everything can stand out.

Spyware, shared accounts, location sharing, cloud backups and family plans can all reveal what you do. If someone may be monitoring you, look for help on a device they can’t reach.

A trusted friend’s phone, a library computer, or a work computer if that’s safe. Abruptly changing passwords or settings can tip someone off. An advocate can help you plan the timing.

The Reality Journal and other tools save only in this browser. Each has a Clear all button. Clearing this site’s data in your browser settings removes everything.

Calls and texts to hotlines can show up in your call log and on a phone bill. Delete them if that’s safe, or use another phone.

Safety planning

A plan that fits your life

A safety plan is a personal plan for staying safer, whether you’re staying, getting ready to leave, or have already left. Leaving can be a time of higher risk, so plan with care.

One or two people you can reach, and a code word that means “call for help.”

Where you could go on short notice, day or night.

ID, birth certificates, bank details, medications. Copies somewhere safe, or with someone you trust.

Charged, with important numbers memorized in case it’s taken.

Try to stay near an exit and away from rooms with one way out or with things that could be used to hurt you.

Teach them how to call 911 and where to go. Remind them it’s not their job to protect you.

Make a safety planthehotline.org · step by step, with an advocate if you like

A note for the other side

If you see yourself in the other role

If, reading this, you recognized your own behavior, it took something to keep reading. That matters.

Shame pushes people to defend or hide. Accountability is different: naming what you did, without excuses, and changing it.

  1. Stop the harm first. If you feel close to hurting someone, leave the room, take a break, and call someone.
  2. Drop the explanations. Stress, drinking, your own past, or what they did may explain feelings. They don’t excuse choices.
  3. Don’t make them manage your change. They don’t owe you forgiveness, a second chance, or reassurance.
  4. Get skilled help. Look for an abuse intervention program, sometimes called a batterer intervention program. Anger management alone usually isn’t enough, because abuse is about control, not only anger.
  5. Call the Hotline. Advocates at the National Domestic Violence Hotline also talk with people worried about their own behavior. They treat callers with respect, and can help you find a program: 1-800-799-7233.

Worried about how you’re treating a child? Childhelp talks with parents too: 1-800-422-4453.

Change is possible. It takes time, honesty, and accepting the consequences of what has already happened.

Intervention programsthehotline.org · what they are and how to find one

Resources verified October 2026. In an emergency, call 911.