Their spiritual poverty is a condition in which the self has dissolved into the relationship of abuse. What is important to notice about these brief excerpts is the writers’ focus upon themselves. They want something for themselves, an important move toward identifying themselves more as survivors of violence or abuse than as victims. This distinction, one a new observer might not initially see, is striking for leaders of the Center for Nonviolence because a woman who is still a victim believes the resolution to violence and abuse revolves around changing the abuser, whereas the woman who is a survivor understands that she must leave the abuse^{Endnote 3} and create a life without it. According to Judith Herman (1997) and Jenny Horsman (2000) who explore intersections of leaving abuse and literacy, even when a woman^{Endnote 4} attempts to leave abuse, the leaving is not linear or immediate, like turning off a switch, but rather tentative and vulnerable to the weight of old habits. To be effective teachers of women leaving abuse, then, teachers must be aware of the cognitive, perhaps even paradigmatic, shifts occurring for the student.