Rebecca Bender Initiative

Thank you to Every Page Foundation for your generous support of Elevate Academy and the survivors we serve. Your partnership helps create pathways toward economic empowerment, career readiness, and long-term stability for survivors of human trafficking. We’re deeply grateful to stand alongside organizations that believe every survivor deserves the opportunity to rebuild, grow, and thrive.

There are so many incredible opportunities and events around mental health I am seeing flooding my feed.

To my survivor friends and family: YOU ARE NOT BEHIND. Tackling our mental health is a daily task. Healing from extreme trauma, managing our triggers, our heightened responses, grounding techniques, feeling left out or really far behind in life or career - these are daily for us. While we’ve been learning and gathering tools like a fat kid gathers cake, trying, pleading to feel “normal” don’t let all the events around you feel overwhelming or that there is still so far to go, so much to do. You are not behind! You are right where you’re supposed to be for all you’ve been through and life will continue to unfold beautifully, one day at a time.

So take in the resources. Learn. Stay curious.

But don’t let the noise make you feel like you’re not doing enough.

Your journey is not behind schedule.
It’s unfolding in real time, in the exact way it needs to.

“I feel more confident navigating professional spaces…”

That sentence right there?
That’s the shift.

From surviving → to leading
From silence → to advocacy
From uncertainty → to direction

This is why we do what we do.

👉 Want to help more women get here? Partner with us.

Patty trained in Boston this week and look who was there! We LOVE getting to see Elevate Graduates in person and so grateful when our paths cross in real life. Zooms are great, but theres something special about being together, hugging, laughing.

Eileen is one of our graduates. Eileen D**g is a Former Global Goals
Ambassador. She is the Founder/Executive Director of Hope Pyx Global. Ms. D**g
advises and trains governments, law enforcement, and multilateral institutions on human rights, gender based violence, transnational organized crime, technology, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), leadership, strategies and policies. Drawing from both lived and professional experience, she addresses survivor-centered, culturally and linguistically sensitive care for survivors. D**g is the author of Amazon’s #1 New Release, “Thank Your Predator: A Guide
to Trauma Recovery from Abuse”. A TEDx speaker, she has addressed the
UN High-Level Political Forum in commemoration of the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons.

She is out using her past for purpose! Great job Eileen