Kerryn Thrupp is the founder of Woven Earth – a charity that helps furnish the new homes of families who have fled violence. Her drive and passion to help others, comes from her own personal experience of leaving an abusive relationship. Here, she has written a letter for the many New Zealand women who are currently living in abusive homes, who might be quietly calculating whether it is possible to leave…
Welcome to our column, A Letter To… Some of our most well-known Kiwis and everyday heroes pen letters about a topic close to their hearts. Some of their names you will know very well, while other’s are kept anonymous to protect the privacy of the subjects. Whether it is a letter to a specific someone, or a group of people, or simply an open letter to broach a difficult subject, each letter is very different, but all will share one common thread; they will all be written from the heart. You can read our other letters here.
This month Kerryn Thrupp, the Founder of Woven Earth, has penned a letter to anyone who has been thinking of leaving an abusive relationship and home. It’s far from an easy path to walk – Kerryn unfortunately knows that all too well from her own experiences – but she has a message of hope for anyone considering leaving…
I know what you might be weighing up. The quiet calculations you make in your head, the way you scan a room before you speak, and the way your body feels before your mind has caught up – tense, alert, bracing.
You might not call it abuse yet. Or maybe you do, but the word can feel too heavy to hold.
You are not imagining it, and if you are thinking about leaving, even just in the smallest, depths of your heart, then something inside you already knows: this is not how my life was meant to go.
I also know this, and I also know that leaving is not a single moment. It’s not a door you walk through and suddenly everything is better, it’s a process that is messy, exhausting, emotional, and often far more complicated than anyone tells you.
When I left, I didn’t walk into safety and stability. I walked into survival.
Like so many women, I left with very little. There is no time to pack up your life neatly when you are trying to get out, it’s life or death. You take what you can carry and often, that’s just yourself and your children and everything else stays behind.
Leaving is one thing, but then where do you go?
People will tell you that leaving is the hardest part, but the truth is, what comes after can feel just as overwhelming, because once you are safe, the support can start to fade.
There are systems designed to help you get out – and thank goodness for them – but what happens in the days, weeks and months afterwards is where so many women fall through the cracks.
Then you arrive somewhere new… and it’s empty, not just physically, but emotionally too. An empty house, no beds, no couch, no plates, no familiar things to soften the edges of what you’ve just been through. Yet, this is where you’re expected to start again and rebuild enough to be strong.
You’re expected to create a stable home environment, often while navigating trauma, legal processes, financial pressure, and parenting on top of everything else tumbling around you. You’re expected to prove you can rebuild, while being given very little to do it with. And that gap? That’s where doubt creeps in, where exhaustion takes over and where the idea of going back can start to feel, wrongly, like the easier option.
I want you to hear this clearly: that feeling is not a failure. It’s a reflection of a system that does not yet fully support or recognise what it takes to start again.
You are not weak for finding this hard, you are human.
Read that again.
I remember what it felt like to stand in that space. Trying to piece together a life with limited resources, limited support, and a nervous system that was still in survival mode. Even asking for help felt like another battle, and being told there was nothing available at every turn felt like another door closing.
But I also remember the moments that made a difference, the people who showed up and the small acts of kindness that reminded me I wasn’t alone. Because here’s what I learned, rebuilding a life is not just about safety, it’s about clinging to hope at every turn, it’s about dignity and creating a space that feels like yours again.
That’s why I created Woven Earth. Because I couldn’t stop thinking about that moment, walking into an empty house after everything you’ve been through and how heavy that feels.
Today, we furnish homes for families who have fled violence. We fill them with beds, couches, kitchenware, children’s belongings, even fresh flowers on the table … not just the basics, but the loving touches that make a house feel like a home.
We do it because you deserve more than survival, you deserve a beginning.
We recently furnished our 1,000th home which represents more than 3,000 lives – families and children who have had to leave everything behind and start again. It’s a milestone I never imagined when this idea first took shape during the hardest time of my life, and if I’m honest, it’s bittersweet. Because every home we furnish exists because someone had to leave. Because every day people, young and old, male and female are escaping the living nightmare of violence only to find a nightmare of another kind unfolding.
Woven Earth also exists because they did leave, because they chose something different and they chose themselves.
Now, if you’re reading this and wondering whether you can do the same, I won’t tell you it’s easy.
But I will tell you this: it is possible.
There is a version of your life where you are not constantly on edge and where your home feels calm, safe, and yours.
You don’t have to have all the answers right now, you just have to hold onto that small voice inside you that says, “there has to be something more than this”, because there is.
And when you are ready … whether that’s today, next week, or months from now there are people who will meet you in that moment to help you rebuild.
But if you need an extra reason to leave, turn to your children, like I did and hear the words that I was told that gave me no option but to push on. “Do you want your son to turn out like his dad, and do you want your daughter to choose someone like him?” If the answer screams back a resounding ‘no’ like it did to me, then take that step, believe in your worth and that other narrative that whispers in the depths of your heart, not the voice that rages from the outside.
I want you to know that you’re not alone in this, even if it feels like you are, and leaving is not the end of your story.
It is the beginning of reclaiming it.
To learn more about Woven Earth and how you can support the charity through donations and help create more loving homes together visit: https://wovenearth.org.nz/