Beautifully Made

Beautifully Made is an organization that two girls, Kaylie Garcia, and myself, Elisabeth Schwartz created to help advocate and spread awareness against violence. Beautifully Made was created on July 16, 2011. We became an IRS recognized non-profit on August 12, 2012.

Kaylie and I started Beautifully Made when we delved ourselves into working with other outreach programs. We started out with small talk with local women at the women's shelter, and found ourselves in California, listening to people talk about the abuse they had endured. It went from 'Hi, how are you?' To 'Hi, I have been rapped everyday for 5 years' or 'My husband hits me' .

One night, we were sitting at a conference, listening to a woman (who we will call Cathy) talk about how she was rapped repeatedly, and had 4 kids because of it. Then, to support her children, went into prostitution. She ended up loosing custody of them, and hitting rock bottom. Cathy had no one to go to, no one who understood, no one who cared.

We went back the the college dorm we were staying in, and tried to fall asleep. At around midnight, we both got up, and started talking. We shared our stories with each other, we laughed, and cried, and broke down barriers that we had. Making us best friends, and sisters. We also decided to fight back. We knew we could help.  We knew that sometimes you just need to know you're not alone, you have someone who understands, someone to listen, and someone to lean on.

We created Beautifully Made right then and there. Right in the spot. We devoted our lives to helping people write a better story for themselves.

Cathy eventually got her kids back, got a real job, got married, and had two kids with her new husband.

...When you hit rock bottom, the only way to go, is up...