By Eileen McNamara, Globe Columnist | May 3, 2006

It is awards season, time to honor the select with crystal clocks, gold pens, and brass plaques.

Sometimes, we celebrate the silly, as when Boston College gives ''Saturday Night Live" comic Amy Poehler its Distinguished Alumni Award.

Sometimes, we commemorate the outrageous, as when Big Dig contractors pay tribute to Matthew J. Amorello, chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, for his supervision of one of the most mismanaged public works projects in modern history.

On rare occasions, though, we take public notice of individuals who have earned their stranding ovations through guts and grit.

Tomorrow night, in a Newton hotel ballroom, 450 people will give it up for 12 women who rebuilt their lives and the lives of their children after escaping violent relationships.

Leaving was the first step. They will be toasted for taking the second step, the one toward self-reliance.

The 12 women, who will not be fully named here to ensure their continued safety from abusive former partners, are graduating from a transitional assistance program known, appropriately, as The Second Step. More than an emergency shelter or a safe house for women fleeing domestic violence, The Second Step was founded 14 years ago to ''help these women get their lives on track," in the words of Jennifer London, a spokeswoman for the program.

In that time, more than 450 women and their children have passed through the two residences operated by The Second Step. Its nonresidential services have helped more than 1,300 other women. By its own accounting, 84 percent of the women who have completed the residential program now live in permanent housing, 79 percent no longer rely on welfare, and 94 percent did not return to the abusive relationship that left them homeless in the first place.

Gladys is at the end of one uneasy path and the beginning of another. Living ''in a new place with women and children you don't know" was uncomfortable when she came to The Second Step, she says. Initially uncertain about the program's mandate that women look for work or continue their education, Gladys says she felt unqualified for the former and too old for the latter, ''but I've come quite a long ways."

From ''helping me to secure financial assistance to motivating me, even helping me with my homework," the program helped her find her footing in a more independent life.

''I thought I would go for nursing, but, after what I've been through, I realized that human services was my calling," she says. Now working toward her bachelor's degree, she says she knows ''it will be hard, but I can do it."

A woman who graduated from The Second Step last year recognizes the doubt and the determination. She found her way to the program after fleeing an abusive home.

''We didn't have to worry about our basic needs," she says. ''My son was 2½ at the time, and he wasn't talking yet. The staff connected me with someone from Early Intervention who worked with my son a few times a week, and he soon started talking."

With the help of a tutor, she took the SATs and applied for scholarships. She is now in the nursing program at Simmons College.

''When I left The Second Step, there was always someone checking in with me to see how things were going," she says. ''And now I can still call if I have a question. My son is now 4 years old, and we are living in our own apartment. I feel like I can move forward now."

What she would tell Gladys is that she is part of a community of women that will be with her, even as she strikes out on her own. ''Eventually you have to move on, but I still have a very good relationship with The Second Step," she says.

So good, in fact, that this successful graduate will be there tomorrow night to join the standing ovation for Gladys and her newly self-reliant sisters.


© 2006 The Boston Globe