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What Happens In Mama's House...
Breaking The Cycle
OUR MISSION
Breaking Silence. Building Support. Creating Change.
What Happens in Mama’s House… Breaking the Cycle is a survivor-centered movement and symposium created to confront the silence surrounding familial sexual abuse, incest, and familial sex trafficking.
The initiative brings survivors together with mental health professionals, legal and judicial professionals, advocates, educators, and community leaders to create opportunities for education, connection, resource sharing, and collective healing.
At the center of the movement is a simple belief: survivors should not have to navigate their experiences alone.
Why This Conversation Matters
Familial sexual abuse can remain hidden for years behind secrecy, fear, shame, family loyalty, isolation, and pressure to keep what happens within the family private.
Even familiar phrases such as “What happens in Mama’s house stays in Mama’s house” can represent a culture of silence that makes it more difficult for survivors to speak, seek help, or understand where support is available.
Breaking the Cycle challenges that silence by bringing difficult conversations into the open and creating an environment where survivor experiences are respected, professionals can learn from lived experience, and communities can become better equipped to respond.
Our Purpose
Designed to educate, support, and connect.
Breaking the Cycle
Through keynote presentations, survivor-led conversations, professional education, breakout sessions, resource sharing, and cross-sector collaboration, the symposium works to:
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Increase understanding of familial sexual abuse, incest, and exploitation.
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Help participants recognize patterns of grooming, coercion, secrecy, and trauma.
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Strengthen trauma-informed responses to survivors.
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Connect survivors and families with meaningful resources and support.
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Improve collaboration between mental health, legal, advocacy, education, and community systems.
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Create opportunities for survivors to be heard without requiring them to disclose more than they are comfortable sharing.
A Survivor-Centered Approach
Survivors are not simply the subject of the conversation. Their experiences help shape it.
Breaking the Cycle creates space for lived experience to inform how professionals, organizations, and communities understand trauma and survivor needs.
Participation is grounded in respect, choice, confidentiality, and trauma-informed practices. The goal is to create an environment where survivors can engage at their own comfort level while professionals gain a deeper understanding of the realities behind the cases, referrals, and individuals they encounter in their work.
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Legal & Judicial Professionals
Breaking the Cycle is presented by Her Time, a program of Hang Time created to provide women with a supportive space for connection, encouragement, resources, and honest conversation around the challenges affecting their lives and communities.
Her Time's focus on creating spaces where women can speak openly and support one another provides a natural foundation for Breaking the Cycle and its mission to confront subjects that too often remain hidden.
Part of the Hang Time Community
Her Time is part of Hang Time, an organization founded by Charles Grady that brings individuals and communities together through conversation, resources, mentorship, support, and opportunities for meaningful change.
Breaking the Cycle extends that philosophy by creating a focused environment where survivors and the systems surrounding them can come together around one of the most difficult issues affecting families and communities.
More Than A Single Event
The inaugural Breaking the Cycle symposium was held on August 12, 2026 at UConn Stamford, bringing approximately 90 women together for a full day of education, survivor-centered discussion, professional collaboration, and resource sharing.
But the work is intended to continue beyond Connecticut.
Breaking the Cycle is being developed as a model that can bring survivors, professionals, advocates, and community partners together in communities across the country.
The conversation started in Connecticut. The goal is to keep it moving.
