Sono Leone Weatherall grew up around domestic abuse. She didn’t recognise what it was, but she knew it wasn’t right. She was used to the unsettling swiftness of women packing their children into cars to escape an unsafe home. Later, she was abused as an adult – and made her own escape. 

“You see it a lot but you can’t articulate what you’re seeing,” said the Butchulla and Garrawa woman “For myself, it was a call to DV Connect, throwing three big black garbage bags in the boot and saying to the kids, ‘let’s go on a holiday’ and finding myself in a refuge overnight.” 

Weatherall felt well-supported by mainstream frontline crisis services. But after the moment of crisis had passed, she felt like her safety net was gone.

“The trauma that you experience doesn’t disappear overnight once you’ve left,” she said. “Once women leave and after they’re in crisis, then how are they able to heal from the trauma, from that violent relationship? And then build themselves up with the right tools to… live out the dreams for [their] future.”

In 2014, Weatherall founded Strong Women Talking – a grassroots movement supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women through their long-term healing journeys. She believes the key to its success is simple: it’s built and run by the same women it supports. There are Elders, Aunties and Sisters in residence who are there to support a cultural framework of kinship connection. For Weatherall, this cultural integrity underpins everything. 

“It’s really important, when you go into an Aboriginal organisation [that] you’re seeing women that look like you, they sound like you,” she said “One of the comments we get a lot is, ‘Wow, when I rang your organisation, the young girl sounded just like a niece’, or ‘Oh I just loved the sister that picked up the phone, it sounded just like ringing home’.” 

Strong Women Talking runs an eight-week Healing Journey workshop based on Weatherall’s own journey, which she now describes as; “first a witness, then a victim, to survivor, to thriver”. 

“Seeing them literally break out of the cycle in front of your eyes – it’s really touching.”

After she escaped and before founding the organisation, Weatherall decided she needed to educate herself so she wasn’t returning to the same cycles. This involved determining her values – one of which was cultural connection. 

Strong Women Talking is built around regular daily practices that relieve the women who reach out for help of embarrassment.

“[It] looks like a woman coming in, and she’s greeted by an Elder or maybe a Sister, she’s given a hug, she’s offered a cup of tea,” said Weatherall. “All that shame and stigma of, ‘I’m coming here for domestic violence’ is just gone because it’s just the way we live and do things. Our cultural practice.” 

This goes well beyond the two-month program. After participants are finished they become part of the Sisters Connect group, meeting regularly for activities like arts and crafts – or maybe they just stay in touch. Some have even returned as facilitators, employed to run the healing workshops they once attended. 

“Being able to employ a First Nations woman that’s been impacted by domestic and family violence… Seeing amazing outcomes like women that have not even considered owning a brand new car be able to own a brand new car. We’ve been doing mortgage brokering workshops for women. Seeing them literally break out of the cycle in front of your eyes – it’s really touching. You just know you’re making a difference.”