About MidChix & MadHens

MidChix are Connectors. Like middlemen, we strive to connect women to information, people, and resources that help them be smart, strong, and safe. We connect women’s small businesses and nonprofits with social media solutions that help them grow.

MadHens are Champions. We care about the well-being of women and girls and strive to educate others in order to end violence against women. We are committed to raising awareness and seeking answers to the issue of gender-related violence.

My name is Gretchen Seefried…MidChix & MadHens is an organization I founded to honor women. Having evolved from roots as a social networking site, M&M is now a blog and movement committed to personal and professional empowerment of women through social exchange and social media. We provide women’s small businesses and organizations with affordable social media services, and women with a place to share their stories.

Here’s our own story…

The Story of MidChix & MadHens

Last fall I had coffee with the CEO of Safehouse Denver, an emergency shelter and non-residential program for women and children who are victims of domestic violence. She shared this little known statistic with me:

1 in 4 women will experience domestic abuse in her life.

That’s twice as many as who will get breast cancer. Throughout October, everywhere I turned, there were pink ribbons and walks, t-shirts and caps, 5Ks and shopping-for-a-cure events. But October wasn’t just Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it was also Domestic Abuse Awareness Month. Problem was, not many of us were or are aware.

The reason that domestic abuse is so insidious is that people don’t talk about it, run for it, shop for it, or wear it on their sleeve. It’s a dirty little secret, except that it’s not little. It’s gigantic and becoming an epidemic. Yet, because no one talks about it, awareness is scarce. Time has come to bring this secret out from behind closed doors and take a stand for your sisters, mothers, daughters, and best friends. Because with the statistics of 1 in 4, chances are pretty high that one of these women in your life will experience domestic abuse.

The very next morning I had lunch with Kathy Robertson. After her daughter Abigail, a 21-year-old student at Metro State, was brutally stabbed and shot to death in December 2007, Kathy and her husband Chuck, founded an organization called Abby’s Voice for The Prevention of Domestic Violence. Abby’s attacker had become furious when she broke off their brief dating relationship; his rage, over the course of several months, escalated from harassment, to vandalism, to stalking, to murder.

Did you know that among women ages 16-24, 1 in 3 have been in an abusive relationship?

At first these statistics floored me. Then I remembered Suzanne, my freshman college roommate. Suzanne was from a wealthy suburb in northern New Jersey. She’d made it clear from day one she wasn’t interested in making friends. When her boyfriend, Wayne, came to visit early in the semester, I found out why…he didn’t want her to.

Wayne was in law school, which meant he was several years older than Suzanne; maybe that had been the initial draw… When he came to visit, I had to bunk with our suitemates. So it wasn’t until I was in our room’s adjoining bathroom one afternoon that I heard him hissing profanities at her and then, suddenly, the sound of her slight body hitting the wall.

When I screamed, she screamed back “Leave us alone!” I was so stunned, so shocked, so incredulous, I didn’t know what to do. And so I did nothing.

I don’t know what happened to Suzanne. At the end of the year, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. It’s only now, as these statistics sink in and I think of my own two daughters, 16 and 21, I realize it’s time to do something. High time.

The same day I met Kathy, I attended an evening event sponsored by Transitions Global, where founder James Pond introduced two teenage survivors of human sex trafficking. I heard their numbing stories along with accounts of pervasive violence used against girls as young as six.

As I began reflecting on all of these disturbing events, I thought too about a young married friend (and new mother) who’d recently confided how her husband was constantly criticizing her, putting her down, and challenging her. Another close friend has been talking for years about her spouse’s daily fury. Actually, if I count up friends with similar stories, I’d run out of fingers.

The more I thought about it, the madder I got. Then I remembered what many men say when women get mad, and I got even madder.