Practical Resources for Living With, Leaving, and Recovering From Abuse

A list of things that might help, sorted by when you might need them

This is not a packing list. No one can tell you what belongs in a go-bag or a moving box, because no one else knows your house, your schedule, or the person you live with.

Some of this you may already have. Some of it you will never need. What these things have in common is that they are easier to have before you need them than to find at the moment you do. Read the stage you are in and take what applies.

Living With Abuse · Leaving and Returning · Leaving Forever · Recovering · Get Help Now

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Most product names below link to Amazon. If you buy through one, I get a small commission at no extra cost to you. It does not change what I recommend, and it does not change the price you pay.

Buying leaves a record.

On Amazon the record is the order history, the confirmation email, the delivery notice, and the box at the door. Order history cannot be deleted, only archived, and archived orders stay findable. Recently viewed items and recommendations follow the account too, so your browsing history shows even when you buy nothing.

If someone else can reach the account, the email, or the doorstep: have your secrets delivered to an Amazon Locker or Counter pickup point, a trusted person’s address, or go to a store and use cash. Another option is a second Amazon account that person has never had access to, set up on a device they do not control, used only for safety purchases. Gifts, groceries, and the ordinary weekly order stay on the old account. Mixing the two is how a fire escape ladder ends up in an order history you cannot clear.

Living With Abuse

They live there. They have keys, they have every room, and anything you add or change is something they can find and ask about.

Staying is a decision people make, for reasons that are theirs. It does not stop the abusive behavior. There is no telling when the next time comes, only that it does. Whether you are staying for now or working out how to leave, there may be a night you have to get out of the house. Leaving for a night and coming back is not a failed attempt at anything.

Think of the time you live with the abuser as a gathering phase. You may never need any of it. If you do, you will need it ready, because nobody buys a fire escape ladder in the minute they have to get out of a second-story window. Everything below gets bought early, kept somewhere safe, and left alone until it matters.

Safety planning means working out what you might need, where you can safely keep it, and how you would leave or get help. Your best guesses about how they react belong in the plan too.

Coming back has its own timing. If you can, return in the clothes you left in, with no bag on your shoulder. If they think you took nothing, they look for nothing.

A Phone They Do Not Know About

A phone on the family plan is a phone whose call log and bill someone else can read. A second one exists so a call does not have to go through that.

Prepaid phone. Check with a domestic violence center first. Many hand out phones and minutes cards at no cost. Otherwise the cheapest one that makes calls will do. Not shared with anyone, and not in your name if the store does not require it.
Prepaid airtime card. Bought with cash, so no statement shows a phone company you supposedly do not use.

Keeping a second phone is a reasonable thing to do. The only person who will not see it that way is the one you are keeping it from, which is why where you keep it matters more than which one you buy. Keep it switched off, and check the charge on a schedule you can remember.

Getting Out of the House

Two things decide whether you can leave quickly: whether you can get through a door or a window, and whether you can get into the car. Keys go missing at exactly the wrong moment.

Magnetic key box or decorative key hider. Holds a spare car key somewhere outside the house. A taken key should not be the thing that decides whether you can leave.
Two sets of extra keys. Keys you used to get out are keys they will look for when you come back, and some will ask to see them outright. Keep a second set somewhere else, so finding the first one does not put you back at nothing.
Headlamp. Hands free, which matters on a ladder or carrying a child, and it lights where you are looking without turning on a room light. A phone flashlight needs a hand you may not have.
Fire escape ladder. Most apartments have one door. If the person you are avoiding is at it, a second or third floor window is the way out rather than a backup. With young children, or a real fear of heights, this does not solve the problem and the plan needs something else.

Care of the Documents

Paperwork is what a shelter, an advocate, or an attorney will ask for, and it is the hardest thing to go back for. Gathered early, it also needs somewhere to sit.

Expanding file with labeled tabs. Keeps birth certificates, court paperwork, insurance, and financial records in an order you can work through with an advocate or an attorney.
A container that does not look like one. A hollowed book, a false cleaning bottle, a can with a screw base. It holds a key, a card, or cash without announcing that anything is kept. Whatever you pick has to belong where you put it, because the one unfamiliar object on a shelf is the one that gets picked up.
Small lockbox with a key. A key cannot be watched and memorized the way a combination can.
Hardware-encrypted USB drive. The PIN pad is built into the drive, so it does not depend on software on whatever computer you plug it into.

No storage method is completely secure. A locked box tells whoever finds it that something was worth locking. A drive can be lost and a PIN can be forgotten. Copies held by someone you trust are often safer than copies held at home.

Money They Cannot See

Money in a shared account can be seen, moved, or spent without you. Money that is not in an account cannot.

A prepaid card bought in a store with cash. Not on a statement, not attached to your name. Do not order one online, because the order is the record you were avoiding. Cash does the same job with nothing to buy, and neither one has to live in your wallet.

Finding Out Whether You Are Being Watched

Start with the free step. Both iPhone and Android warn you when an unknown Bluetooth tracker is travelling with you, and both let you scan on demand. That costs nothing and catches the most common kind.

RF and hidden camera detector. The radio side listens for anything transmitting nearby. The camera side is a ring of red lights around a small red filter: you look through it and sweep slowly, and a lens reflects the light straight back as a bright dot.
GPS tracker detector. For a vehicle. Wired units fitted to a car do not announce themselves the way a Bluetooth tag does.

Finding something is not the same as removing it. A tracker that stops reporting, or a camera that goes dark, tells the other person you found it and roughly when. If you find something, talk to an advocate or the police before you touch it.

They will not ask about it. Asking why the tracker went quiet admits what they were doing. That does not mean they let it go, only that you will not be told what they try next. Watch what they do rather than what they say. A change in their routine, their questions, or their temper that lines up with something you changed is information.

Keeping Your Own Phone and Laptop Private

Your own devices are the ones most likely to be picked up and looked through. A passcode nobody knows and a pass through the sharing settings cost nothing. These cover what settings cannot.

Privacy screen filter. A film that makes a phone or laptop screen unreadable from the side. It does nothing about someone reading over your shoulder. From the side, it buys the second it takes to close the screen.
USB data blocker. A small adapter that lets a cable carry power but not data. Plugging a phone into a shared car or a computer that is not yours can copy what is on it.
Signal-blocking pouch. A lined bag that stops a phone sending or receiving anything while it is inside, so your phone reports no location for as long as it is in there. It also makes the phone unreachable to you, so it only works if the second phone already holds the numbers you need. Treat it as short-term cover rather than somewhere to keep a phone.
Webcam cover or electrical tape. Covers a laptop camera. Not the microphone.

Quiet

Noise is a tool in some houses. Turning the volume down does not change what is happening, and it does buy back enough quiet to think.

Silicone spray lubricant or WD-40. Silences a hinge, a window track, a gate latch, a screen door. Anything you may need to open at four in the morning without it announcing you. Silicone works on more surfaces and leaves less smell than oil.
Noise-canceling earbuds or earplugs. Banging on walls, slamming cabinets, yelling, breaking things. Being frightened and needing to think clearly at the same time is hard enough without it. Earbuds that block outside sound also stop you hearing someone approach.

If You Want an Alarm

A siren does one thing, which is to make what is happening audible outside the house.

Personal safety alarm. A keychain siren loud enough to carry past the walls.

An alarm only works if someone hears it and acts. That means asking a neighbor, ahead of time, to call 911 the moment they hear it. That is the entire request. They do not need to know why, they do not need to come over, and they do not need to be involved past dialing.

If You Want a Weapon

Three conditions, and they all have to be true. You know how to use it, you are willing to use it, and you are willing to live with the possibility of it being used on you.

If any answer is a no, do not buy one. A weapon you will not use is a weapon you have handed the other person.

Pepper spray. The most commonly carried option. Some states limit the strength, the canister size, or who is allowed to buy it.
Stun device or Taser. A stun gun requires contact with the attacker. A Taser fires two electrodes through the air and can also be used in close contact. Laws on both vary widely and they change. Check what applies where you live, and where you travel, before you buy.

A firearm is not a link on a resource page. That is a conversation with a local instructor about training if you need it, and with an advocate about whether it makes you safer at all.

Records

What you write down now is what you will have later, when the details have run together and someone asks you for dates.

Domestic Violence Safety Plan Workbook. Staying safer whether you stay or leave, with the space to write your own plan rather than read someone else’s. Sold here as a PDF, and on Amazon in paperback and Kindle from my author page.
Verbal Abuse Incident and Pattern Log. A repeating structure for what happened, when, and what followed, so eleven separate entries can be read as one pattern. Sold here as a PDF and not on Amazon.
The bundle of both. The log and the workbook together, sold here as PDFs.
Voice recorder, or the phone in your hand. A phone records video as well as sound, and either one is a record. Recording laws vary widely between states and countries. In some places recording a conversation without the other person’s consent is a crime, and a recording made that way can create legal problems for you rather than help you. Ask a local advocate or an attorney what applies where you live before you record anything.

Leaving and Returning

Leaving is not one thing. Sometimes you go because tonight is not safe and you expect to be back. Sometimes you go and do not return. You can set out doing one and end up doing the other, in either direction, and neither one was a mistake.

The Go Bag

A bag is for the version of leaving where there is no time to gather anything. It only has to cover the first day or two.

Duffel or backpack. The larger the bag, the more it matters that it lives somewhere outside the house.
High-capacity power bank. You may not have a wall socket for a while, and a dead phone costs you every number in it.
Multi-device charging cable. One cable that fits every device you are responsible for.

Where the bag lives matters more than what is in it. A packed bag found at home can be worse than no bag. Work, a trusted person’s house, or a rented locker are better ideas.

The Car

A car that will not start is a plan that will not work. Both of these fix the common failures without needing another driver.

Portable jump starter. A flat battery on the night you need to leave is a different problem from a flat battery on an ordinary day.
12V tire inflator. A slow puncture should not decide anything.

Shoes and a coat, in the car. People leave barefoot. Whatever is already in the car may be all you have for a while.

Children

Almost nothing that protects a child is a purchase. Who they go to, what word means go now, which room they use, and knowing not to step in. Those decisions do more than anything that can be bought.

Do not take the child’s GPS device. It reports to an account, and an account can be opened by whoever set it up or whoever knows the password. A device that logs where your child is also logs where you are.

Pets

Some shelters take pets, and some arrange fostering through a partner organization. Worth asking before you assume a pet is what keeps you there. The hotline below can tell you what exists near you.

Soft-sided pet carrier. Folds flat, which matters when it has to live somewhere unremarkable until it is needed.
Slip lead. One loop over the dog’s head. Nothing to buckle, no collar to find first, and it fits in a coat pocket.
Travel food and water bowls. Useful enough to leave in the trunk without drawing a question. If they belong in the bag instead, put them there.

Free and worth doing now: check your pet’s microchip registration and make sure the name and phone number on it are yours and current. That registration is what decides who a found animal goes back to.

Leaving Forever

There is nothing to buy in this section, and that is not an oversight. Leaving for good runs on housing, money, and legal help, and no product supplies any of those. What it needs from you early is the paperwork, which is under Living With Abuse further up this page.

People leave more than once. If you go back, nothing you gathered stops being useful and nothing you worked out is undone.

Recovering From Abuse

After separation the risks change rather than end. Most of what follows is about controlling who can find you, see you, or reach you, and about sleeping in a place that is yours. The last two sections are not about safety at all.

Checking What Came With You

A tracker in a bag or a box moves house with you. Sweeping before you unpack is easier than sweeping around furniture later.

RF and hidden camera detector. Sweep the car, the bags, and the boxes before they go into the new place, then sweep the new place once you are in it.

The calculation changes once you have gone. Before you left, pulling a tracker announced that you knew. Now it may be the thing that tells someone your new address. If a device turns up, tell whoever is handling your case.

Stalking

You cannot stop someone driving past your house. You can make each time countable. A camera at the door does the same job for visits, and that is under Your Door below.

Dual-lens dash camera. Records the road ahead and the inside of the car. If someone follows you, a plate number on video is worth more than a description you tried to memorize while frightened.

A stalking case is built on dates, not on how frightening it was. One drive past the house is nothing on its own. Eleven of them, each written down with the date and the time, is a pattern, and a pattern is what an attorney or a judge can use. Write down every one, including the ones that felt too small to count. The Verbal Abuse Incident and Pattern Log is built for that.

Stalking is a crime in all fifty states. What counts, and what a protective order can do about it, varies by state. A local advocate will know yours.

Your Door

A rental limits what you can change. Apart from the screws in the first one, all of these go in without a landlord, an electrician, or a hole in the frame.

Door reinforcement kit. A long strike plate and three-inch screws that reach the stud behind the frame. On a forced door the frame gives out before the lock does.
Portable door lock. For a rental where you cannot change the hardware, and for hotel and temporary stays.
Door and window contact alarms. And a plan for what you do if you hear one.
Motion sensor floodlight. Battery and solar models need no electrician and no landlord permission.
Video doorbell. A record of who comes to the door, which matters if you are documenting contact, and a record of how often the same person comes back. Set it up on a new account, with a new email address and a password nobody has ever had. Check the shared-user list. Footage lives with the company and can be requested from them.

Mail and Paper

Your new address travels on paper, and most of that paper arrives without you asking for it.

Micro-cut shredder. Cross-cut is the minimum and micro-cut is better. Anything carrying your new address is worth shredding, including delivery labels peeled off boxes. Shred your bank and credit card statements too, because those are what someone uses to open accounts in your name.

Rest

Sleep is the thing that goes first and comes back slowest. None of this treats anything. It removes some of the reasons you keep waking up.

Blackout curtains. They stop light getting in, and they stop anyone seeing in.
Weighted blanket. Some people find the weight lessens anxiety. It is not a treatment for anything and it does not suit everyone.
Earplugs. A new building makes unfamiliar sounds, and at first every unfamiliar sound gets checked.
White noise machine. Covers hallway and street noise in a building with thin walls.

Being Heard

The bruises get asked about. The rest of it does not, and you may have spent years having your version of events corrected. Wanting to be heard after that is not weakness and it does not go away because you moved.

Writing paper, envelopes, and stamps. Letters come out differently than anything typed, and nobody interrupts one. Some of them go in the post. Some of them are written to people who will never read them.
A new journal. Not a worksheet and not a record for anybody else. Use it however you need to, including badly, including one line a week, including lists of things you are angry about.

Something Other Than “This” to Think About

Recovery is not only the paperwork and the locks. At some point the house is quiet and the problem is what is in your head. None of what follows treats anything. It gives your attention somewhere else to be for an hour.

A book that has nothing to do with any of this. A novel, a history, a thriller. Something you used to enjoy.
A starter kit for something you have never done. Watercolors, embroidery, coloring books, bread, a cheap keyboard, seeds. You do not have to be good at it. An hour where the only thing you decide is what color goes next does the job.
Over-ear headphones. For music, an audiobook, rain, a guided meditation. The apps that carry those are mostly free and the headphones are the part worth spending on.

Get Help Now

Free, and nothing to sign up for. Advocates can talk through timing, shelter, pets, and what the law is where you live.

National Domestic Violence Hotline 800.799.7233 · text START to 88788 · live chat at thehotline.org
Deaf Hotline Video phone 855.812.1001
StrongHearts Native Helpline 844.762.8483 · text START to 844.762.8483
Love Is Respect, for teens and young adults 866.331.9474 · text LOVEIS to 22522
Outside the United States Contact your local domestic violence service or your emergency number.

All of the above are United States services. If you are reading this on a phone the other person can reach, a call to any of these numbers appears in the call log and may appear on the bill.

The Safety Plan Workbook, the Incident and Pattern Log, and the bundle of both are sold here as PDFs. Buying direct leaves no Amazon order history, no confirmation email from Amazon, and no box at the door. Each product page also links to the same file sold under a plain, unrelated title, for anyone who needs the purchase and the download to look like something else. Not everyone needs that, and needing it says nothing about how bad things are.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Product links on this page are affiliate links.

Nothing on this page is legal, medical, or safety advice, and no product listed here can make anyone safe, prove abuse, or replace advice from a professional who knows your situation.