GREENFIELD — As Resilience Center of Franklin County staff and advocates prepared for the Friends of RCFC’s 17th annual fundraiser, they learned that the organization had lost $20,000 of funding through the Massachusetts Office for Victim Assistance.
Nevertheless, Mary Kociela, former co-director of the Resilience Center of Franklin County that was once known as the New England Learning Center for Women in Transition (NELCWIT), said the crew was committed to spreading a message of hope to the 150 attendees at the sold-out event held at Terrazza on Thursday, titled “Power to Persevere.”
An hour and a half of speakers and $35,000 later, Kociela said she felt the night achieved that goal.
“We were all feeling so fulfilled by the end of the night, feeling like people left with a sense of hope,” Kociela said in a phone interview on Friday. “In these times, we need to feel connected by each other and uplifted by each other, so we feel like we can make a change.”
Former Resilience Center of Franklin County Co-Director Mary Kociela speaks at Thursday’s “Power to Persevere” fundraiser at Terrazza in Greenfield. Credit: AALIANNA MARIETTA / Staff Photo 
Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan speaks at Thursday’s “Power to Persevere” fundraiser at Terrazza in Greenfield. Credit: AALIANNA MARIETTA / Staff Photo 
Keynote speaker Laurie MacLeod speaks at Thursday’s “Power to Persevere” fundraiser at Terrazza in Greenfield. Credit: AALIANNA MARIETTA / Staff Photo
The fundraiser supports the work of the Resilience Center of Franklin County, a Greenfield-based social service agency that provides sexual and domestic violence crisis services for Franklin County and the North Quabbin region.
The night began with a performance by musical group Two for Jazz with vocalist Arlene Robbins and a buffet dinner before the speeches started.
Mal Petty, a former crisis line advocate, asked the audience an unexpected question: Who was following the Artemis II space mission that launched on April 1?
“So you might be thinking now, ‘Is Mal going to compare domestic and sexual [violence] survivor advocacy with a NASA mission into deep space?'” Petty said as the audience lowered their raised hands and laughed. “Yes, yes I am.”
They then evoked astronaut Christina Koch’s definition of a crew “as a group that is in it all the time, that moves together with the same purpose, gives each other grace, holds each other accountable, and whose cares and needs are beautifully and dutifully linked.”
“RCFC and all of our partner organizations here may be surrounded by what can feel like an unimaginable amount of darkness, whether it’s personal pain or systemic harm, or barriers to healing, barriers to care, but we are undeniably in it together, meeting the unique challenges of each survivor as we pursue this mission of eradicating domestic and sexual violence from our communities,” Petty said. “And we are truly in it all the time.”
Even during the dinner, advocates were on call ready to respond to the organization’s hotline, Petty said.
“The Earth is a lifeboat in space, and this community — everybody here and everybody who’s not here, but is an ally and a partner to us — this is the lifeboat of Franklin County,” Petty closed.
Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan introduced the night’s keynote speaker, retired local judge and former prosecutor Laurie MacLeod. During her talk, MacLeod reflected on the evolution of her fellow judges’ understandings of the “nuances of domestic violence” that she witnessed during her time on the bench.
She described a training that revealed these nuances by asking new and veteran judges to answer, “Where should a domestic violence survivor go?” when facing challenges like a boss threatening to fire them if they miss another day of work; an abuser picking up a survivor’s children and threatening that the survivor will never see them again if they do not return home; and an abuser locking out the survivor’s puppy before they heard its yelps.
“Does she stay or does she go?” MacLeod asked. “The experienced judges had never seen anything like this, had never had any kind of training that was trauma-informed in any of their domestic violence training.”
After reflecting on the progress she helped lead, MacLeod made a confession to the crowd.
“When Mary called me and asked me to speak tonight … I said to Mary, ‘I’d rather curl up on my couch than try to have some words of optimism to a crowd like your crowd,’ but I am here because I think it’s really important,” MacLeod said. “Things are bleak, funding is down, you all know. … Our spirits are really down, but it’s not the time for us to get down. We have to rise up to that.”
She then shared the stories of three memoirs with the audience, “A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides” by Gisèle Pelicot, the French survivor who suffered decades of sexual assault at the hands of her husband who repeatedly drugged her and invited strangers into their home to sexually assault her; “Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President,” by E. Jean Carroll, who sued President Donald Trump for sexual abuse and defamation; and “Nobody’s Girl” by Virginia Giuffre, a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring.
“The overarching thread of these stories, these memoirs, these beautiful authors who came forward and exposed themselves, is that shame must switch sides,” MacLeod stressed.
Members of the Resilience Center of Franklin County’s team also outlined the organization’s mission, the impact of their work and the challenges they must clear.
“Even the fiercest support has limitations in the face of larger systems — that is a difficult truth to hold, and one that we discuss often,” the center’s Program Director Annie Pollak said. “What I always come back to, and what I remind our team, is this: we can always offer humanity, steadiness and belief. … On our crisis line, we can be a steady voice in the middle of the night, saying, ‘I’m here with you.’ Our advocates bring warmth and support into courtrooms, police interactions and medical exams, standing beside survivors so they do not have to face those moments alone, and sometimes that is what carries someone through.”
“We chose the name Resilience Center because it embodies our clients, our community and our staff,” Executive Director Amanda Sanderson added. “They are resilient forces of good who work against systems that make it difficult to help people escape and heal from domestic and sexual violence. They are the backbone of the agency and the people who make our services possible.”
Direct service advocates Emily Millspaugh and Natidra Anderson then took the microphone to give audiences a glimpse into their work at the center — from barriers to affordable transportation; to “fresh strangulation marks” and survivors’ stories of “being pushed, punched, thrown and being verbally degraded;” to discovering an abuser opened 30 credit cards in her name; to leaving a 20-year relationship of “coercive control.”
“Being a survivor myself, I had a deep desire to be there for people in a real way, to offer support and understanding and care,” Anderson said, “especially in moments that feel overwhelming.”
Through tears met with applause, Anderson added, “Over time, I realized that this work doesn’t just change the people that we support, it changes us as well.”
“When we face these problems as a community,” Millspaugh said, “we dissolve the power that shame can take over our lives.”
