Our Story

Two survivors.
One bridge.

The Bridge for Women was founded by two women who know exactly what it feels like to be on both sides — lost in the fog of abuse, and standing on the other side of it.

"There is a moment when a woman realizes something is wrong — and she feels completely alone. The Bridge for Women exists to make sure she isn't."

— Laurien & Amanda, Co-Founders

Laurien Papa Bartuccio

Co-Founder

Laurien Papa Bartuccio

Writer · Entrepreneur · Survivor

Laurien left an abusive marriage in 2010 — not because someone finally said the perfect thing, but because something in her quietly realized she deserved more. What followed wasn't instant freedom or clarity. It was confusion, fear, financial stress, shame, and a deep sense of isolation.

What she didn't expect was the performance that came with it. When you are in that kind of relationship, you spend enormous energy convincing everyone around you that he's wonderful. Just having a bad day. Not that bad. You say it out loud enough times and people believe it — and eventually, somewhere along the way, so do you. There is a particular humiliation in being treated that way and then defending the person who treats you that way. It is exhausting in a way that is almost impossible to explain to someone who hasn't lived it.

"Psychological abuse doesn't leave bruises people can see. It leaves a woman who no longer trusts her own mind."— Laurien

Everything changed the moment Laurien realized her children were witnessing it. She understood then that staying wasn't just affecting her — it was shaping what her son would believe about how women should be treated, and what her daughter would believe about what she should tolerate. She knew she could not allow that legacy to continue.

What saved her wasn't a hotline or a shelter. It was an acting workshop with Burt Reynolds, where for a few hours a week she got to inhabit other people, speak in other voices, exist outside the story she was living. Her therapist told her to journal. She couldn't — she was too afraid he would find it. So instead she wrote fiction. She created characters and gave them the experiences she couldn't yet name as her own. One of those stories became her debut novel, Swing State, publishing May 11, 2026.

"I couldn't journal — I was too afraid he'd find it. So I wrote fiction instead. I gave my pain to characters who could survive it. That was the beginning of everything."— Laurien

What Laurien learned from all of it was simple: creative expression — writing, acting, storytelling — gives women a way to process what they cannot yet say directly. It was that realization that became the foundation of The Bridge for Women.

Co-Founder

Amanda Curbelo

Nonprofit Leader · Advocate · Survivor

Amanda experienced what so many women experience — and what so few people on the outside fully understand. The abuse was physical. It was financial. And it was psychological. Of the three, the psychological wounds are often the last to heal and the hardest to explain.

Psychological abuse works slowly and deliberately. It distorts a woman's perception of reality until she no longer trusts what she sees, what she feels, or what she knows to be true. It isolates her. It makes her question her own judgment. It recruits the people around her — friends, family, sometimes institutions — into a version of events that centers him and erases her. By the time a woman begins to recognize what has been done to her, she has often spent years being told, in ways both direct and invisible, that she is the problem.

"I wasn't weak. I was exhausted from convincing everyone — including myself — that everything was fine."— Amanda

Amanda also endured financial abuse — one of the most powerful and least visible forms of control. Abusive partners systematically dismantle a woman's financial security, leaving her with no resources and no easy way out. Leaving becomes not just emotionally terrifying but practically impossible. That is not an accident. It is a strategy.

"Everything shifted the moment I realized my children were watching. I could survive what he did to me. I couldn't survive what it was teaching them."— Amanda

What finally became undeniable for Amanda was what was happening to her children. That clarity cut through everything else. She left to protect them — and in doing so, discovered exactly how fragmented and insufficient the support systems are for women trying to rebuild their lives from the ground up.

Amanda brings to The Bridge for Women years of nonprofit leadership across Boys & Girls Club, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and Camelot Community Care. But what she brings most is the lived knowledge of what psychological, physical, and financial abuse actually does to a woman — and what she needs to heal that the existing systems simply do not provide.

Amanda Curbelo

How The Bridge Was Born

The moment that changed everything.

When Laurien and Amanda met, Laurien recognized something immediately. She saw the careful calibration in Amanda's eyes — every word measured, every expression managed, making sure nothing would cause a problem. And she saw something in his eyes too. A quiet, steady look she knew well.

The next day she said simply: "Your husband isn't a very nice person, is he."

Amanda opened up.

She later told Laurien that having her to talk to made all the difference — because it is too hard to talk to the people closest to you when you know they won't fully believe you. When you are with a master manipulator, they are skilled at making everyone in your circle believe the problem is you. Friends and family say you're being dramatic, it's not that bad — not because they don't care, but because they have only seen what he wanted them to see. A woman stops going to the people who love her most because she already knows what they'll say.

"She didn't ask me if I was okay. She already knew I wasn't. That was the first time I felt seen."— Amanda

What Amanda needed was someone who already knew. Someone who didn't need to be convinced. Someone who could say I recognize what I see — and mean it. That conversation is why The Bridge for Women exists.

Too many women are surrounded by people who love them but cannot reach them. The systems that exist are often crisis-only, fragmented, and built around the assumption that a woman must be ready before she can be helped. The Bridge exists for the woman who isn't ready yet. For the woman who is still convincing everyone he's great. For the woman who knows something is wrong but has no one in her life who has been there.

"We built what we needed and couldn't find. A bridge — not to rescue women, but to walk alongside them."— Laurien & Amanda

Their work is grounded in one belief: women are the experts in their own lives. The role of The Bridge is not to rescue or direct, but to walk alongside — to say I recognize what I see in your eyes — and to make sure no woman has to find her way out alone.

Ready to cross the bridge?

Whether you need support or want to give it — there's a place for you here.

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