Women's Rights
Fierce Advocacy
At 19, I was pregnant and living in my car. I remember waking up stiff and cold in the front seat. I remember counting change to decide between gas and food. I remember feeling so invisible that I wondered if anyone would notice if I simply disappeared. Someone did notice. For three months, I received public assistance from welfare, and Meals On Wheels. (they made an exception for me). Three months. That small window gave me a place to stand long enough to find work, find a home, and start building a life. Every building I fell off as a stuntwoman, every member who walked into Elite Fitness Zone, every stage I have stood on traces back to that season when a little help reached me at the exact moment I had nothing left. So when I hear programs for women dismissed as handouts, I think about that young woman in the driver's seat. She did not need a lecture. She needed a bridge. Most women in crisis do. And when you give a woman a bridge, she rarely crosses it alone. She carries her children across with her. And pays it forward for the rest of her life.
Freedom Is Younger Than You Think - Many of the rights women rely on today are younger than a lot of the women reading this. Until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed in 1974, a woman in America could be turned down for a credit card or a loan in her own name unless a man signed for her. It wasn't until 1988 that a woman could get a loan for her own home. Opening accounts, and leaving a marriage were often out of reach without a husband's approval or a court battle to prove she deserved to go. The right to divorce an abusive man. The right to a credit card with my own name on it. The right to own my own home. Every one of those rights is an exit door. As a behavior profiler, I study how control works. Control depends on one thing: making sure the other person has nowhere to go. Money, housing, and legal freedom take that power away. That is why I will never be quiet about protecting them.
The Causes Closest to My Heart Unchained At Last (unchainedatlast.org) Child marriage is still legal in 38 of the United States. Girls are being married off before they are old enough to vote, sign a lease, leave a shelter on their own, or legally get a divorce. Unchained At Last fights to end child marriage for good and helps women and girls escape forced marriages. No child should be handed a marriage she cannot legally walk away from.
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (missingkids.org) I spend much of my work studying how predators think, how they groom, and how they hide in plain sight. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children works every day to bring missing children home and to stop exploitation before it spreads. Their work is the other side of mine, and I am honored to stand behind it. If You Are the Woman in the Car Right Now I see you. Where you are today is not where you will stay. Asking for help is not weakness. It is strategy, and it is courage. Help exists, and you deserve every bit of it.
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1.800.799.7233
NCMEC Missing Child Hotline: 1.800.843.5678
How You Can Stand With Me Learn about these organizations. Donate if you can. Share their work if you cannot. Vote for the protections women and children depend on. And when you see a woman struggling, remember that three months of help once changed the entire direction of my life. It could change hers.
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© 2026 Amy Jo Honey. All rights reserved.