Was The Bruised Young Woman I Saw in A Restaurant A Victim of Relationship Violence?

Holly Biggins
4 min readApr 29, 2023

The Possibility Leaves Me Wondering What I, Or Others, Can Do to Help

Photo by taylor hernandez on Unsplash

The young woman in this image looks remarkably like a young woman I recently saw in a restaurant. Only the young woman I saw had serious, fresh-looking bruises on her face. Disturbing to imagine, yes?

She walked nearby, about 10 steps behind a tall young man, as they were led to a table. I glanced at her, and then looked again because of the condition of her face. She looked me in the eyes. And kept walking.

Before and as I was leaving, I racked my brain about a possible way to connect with her, out of concern. Maybe she was in a car accident, or some other mishap. I obviously didn’t know. My instincts told me otherwise, from the slim set of cues and clues I observed.

I knew it was not a good idea for me to try to interact with her or slip her a note or any such thing. Not with her “date” sitting across from her. Upon leaving, I stood outside the restaurant for a while, still wondering if and what I could do. And didn’t come up with any feasible ideas. So, I left, not knowing who she was, where she went from there, what her situation was, or what her fate or even her immediate future might be.

--

--

Holly Biggins

Writing about current issues, places, people, mental health, wellness, neurodiversity, aging, relationships. Twin Cities metro area, Minnesota.