What’s the first thing you picture when you hear the words “self-care?” Is it a luxury spa day complete with fluffy white bathrobes and rose petals? Maybe it’s something a little less extravagant and includes an at home facial while eating chocolates and reading an enthralling book. Whatever the case, self-care means so much more and is surprisingly much more attainable than what most of our first impressions might suggest.
 

Hollywood portrayals of sex trafficking tend to depict women who have been either picked up off the street or conned into traveling across the ocean in a shipping container only to be chained to their beds, starved, tortured, and beaten upon arrival. We are lead to believe that mysterious strangers with grand proposals or dark villains prowling the streets at night are inherently the enemy. We’re left with a renewed reassurance in the old “stranger danger” narrative of our youths and so are free to go about our daily lives free of concern.

Victims of violent crime face not only devastating emotional and physical distress, but often find themselves in financial difficulty following the crime. Financial stress adds additional burden to a victim’s healing process that is often overlooked. Reparations, Restitution, and county distributed emergency money are all ways of attempting to ease financial burden after violent crime.
 
Reparations