Stay With Me

The first six months of 2026 at Stay With Me.

Photo 1 & 2 - Stay With Me Under the Oak Tree 🌳
Our first event of the year. These gatherings continue to be one of our favorite parts of Stay With Me. So much of what we do starts here before it makes it into a meeting room.

Photo 3 - Community
Attending events, panels, and strategic meetings with the Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force. Collaboration will always be the most powerful tool we have in this work.

Photo 4 - LINE 24
LINE 24, all the way. Planning sessions and development meetings as we continue building what we believe will become a powerful new way of reaching women in the s*x industry.

Photo 5 - Outreach Training.
What started as simply sharing what we’ve learned has grown into something we deeply love. Every training becomes richer, more practical, and more meaningful. We can’t wait to equip many more outreach teams in the years ahead.

Photo 6, 7 & 8 - The Netherlands 1
Our first trip to the Netherlands this year. We spoke at meetings and organized a large Stay With Me event for professionals together with Victoria Sinis.

Photo 9 & 10 | Marked by Choice
The season where our biggest event yet was birthed and executed. Marked by Choice, first edition, in collaboration with Casa de Blanca Tattoo.

Photo 11, 12 & 13 | The Netherlands 2
More events, more education, and more training. A privilege to invest in both familiar faces and new teams stepping into outreach work.

Photo 14 | Office hours
Many hours spent in homemade offices working on the Stay With Me Working Group, LINE 24, partnerships, reports, and meetings. In Dutch, we say “ik heb vierkante ogen” (“I have square eyes”), meaning you’ve spent so many hours behind a laptop that your eyes have turned square. That’s probably a pretty accurate description.

All of it serves one purpose: helping women who want to leave the s*x industry do so successfully.

One thing we’ve learned over the years is that people rarely fit neatly into our categories.

One of the things I always say during Stay With Me trainings is that the s*x industry is not black and white.

There’s always another story. Another perspective.

And if we fail to understand that, we lose our impact very quickly.

When people ask what we do, it often leads to eye-opening conversations.

One reality that many people find shocking is that some victims are tattooed as a form of branding, ownership, or control.

Last week, I attended a law enforcement conference where images of these tattoos were shown alongside many other horrible realities of exploitation. I immediately felt I wanted to share some of this here on our timeline, so more people can recognize what these markings may look like and understand how they are categorized.

Exploitation is often hidden in plain sight.