When Jill’s husband of nearly 25 years threw her out of the house, she had two belongings: her car and her dog.

She knew a shelter wouldn’t take her 65-pound yellow lab mix. But she was willing to sleep in the car with Scarlett rather than leave her behind with her abuser. They ended up couch-surfing among relatives and friends for a year.

Finally, they moved into an apartment through Lydia’s House, an organization that provides transitional housing for survivors of domestic abuse. (I am using Jill’s first name due to concerns for her safety.)

The years of living in an abusive situation had taken a toll on both of them. When Jill’s husband went into one of his rages, Scarlett would go outside and hide, refusing to come back for hours. Scarlett started throwing up and developed inflammatory bowel disease.

“She’s very scared of loud, harsh words,” Jill said. Even if she hears people arguing on a TV show, she will leave the room and hide.

“She absorbed everything in that house,” Jill said. “I left as much for her as I did for me.”

Only about 10% of domestic violence shelters in the country allow pets, according to a study by the nonprofit RedRover. And nearly half of victims report delaying leaving their abuser for fear of harm to their animals. More than 70% of women entering shelters say their batterer had either injured, maimed, killed or threatened family pets for revenge or control.

Purina has donated services and money to make four apartments at a St. Louis-area Lydia’s House pet-friendly. They’ve also added a dog park near the complex.

Their work has helped Jill and Scarlett recover and heal together. Jill is 61 years old and disabled. She said the desire to protect Scarlett helped her get through her worst days.

“I don’t know that I could have done everything I did just for me. I was responsible for another life,” she said. “I knew I had to be brave.”

Her dog’s emotional connection to people goes beyond their bond.

Jill has seen Scarlett’s deep emotional intuition in action with strangers. During support group meetings, Scarlett seeks out a woman to sit in front of. It always ends up being the woman who had something traumatic happen to her that week or the one who breaks down in tears while sharing her story.

Scarlett just knows.

A few years ago, they were walking in a park in Arkansas. A young man in his late 20s was sitting alone on a bench. Scarlett kept pulling toward him and wanting to go near him. This was unusual for her: She doesn’t seek out attention from strangers.

But she was determined to get close to this man.

Jill finally took her over to him.

Scarlett put her paws up on his lap, laid her body across him and leaned up against his chest.

The man buried his face in her back and began to sob.

He was a veteran and had a service dog to help him cope with PTSD. His 4-year-old dog had had a heart attack and died a few days earlier, on Christmas Eve.

“She stood there with her front half on his lap and let him cry all over her,” Jill said.

That’s just what Scarlett does.

Jill got her when she was a 3-month-old puppy, and she will be 10 years old in January.

“She’s the Clark to my Lewis,” she says.

They are best friends and survivors.

Demetrice Phillips is telling an auditorium filled with students about a sensitive disagreement he has with his wife.

Whenever news breaks about another police officer-involved shooting anywhere in the country, she wants him to talk to their two young boys about what to do if they are ever stopped by the police. They are African American children, and she worries about their safety.

Phillips isn’t ready to have that talk with his sons, ages 8 and 3.

He’s a professor of business administration at Bristol Community College in Massachusetts, where he’s sharing this story as part of a panel.

He’s also a cop.

He says his day-to-day experiences with his fellow officers are so different than what he sees in the news. “They are fathers, husbands, just like me. We’re not looking to harm anybody,” he said.

He understands his wife’s fears, and is well aware of the controversial incidents involving police officers. But he’s not ready to go there with his children.

This was part of an emotional and difficult conversation, which I was invited to moderate, about race, identity and the assumptions we have about other people. Previously, I guided the same kind of discussion at John A. Logan College in Carterville, Illinois.

Both times, I was struck by the diversity of perspectives leading the discussion. A white woman talked about her response in incidents when her partner, a woman of color, is mistreated in front of her. A white mother talked about how she feels when she sees her biracial child ostracized. An African American woman shared her experience with a high school classmate who went off on her, using the n-word multiple times. She says she “read her like filth” in return. The principal refused to punish the classmate for her verbal attack and racist slurs because she had reacted to them. A middle-aged white man, a veteran, talked about having vastly different political views than most of his peers and family members. An immigrant learning English described the reaction one of her fellow students had when she scored the highest on a math exam.

“How is that possible when you can’t even speak English?” the classmate asked.

Each person revealed complex, often painful experiences, based on the assumptions and alienation that most Americans are reluctant to discuss. It makes sense that these conversations were hosted by community colleges, which by their missions, admit any and all people who want a higher education. They are set up to be inherently diverse, and the statistics bear this out.

About 8.7 million undergraduates were enrolled in public two-year colleges in 2016-17. In fall 2017, 44 percent of Hispanic undergraduates were enrolled at community colleges, compared with 35 percent of black students and 31 percent of white students. Overall, 34 percent of undergraduates were enrolled at community colleges, according to the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Maria Cormier, a senior research associate at CCRC, said that some level of tension is bound to surface when people coming from so many different backgrounds and walks of life come together to learn. The students themselves tend to have more life experience and complex lives outside of school.

“It’s fair to say community colleges increasingly realized that, in the face of low completion rates, there needs to be some acknowledgment of the challenges facing their students,” she said. This includes addressing issues like food and housing insecurity, and improving the environment around diversity and inclusion.

Martha Parham, senior vice president for public relations at the American Association of Community Colleges, said equity is directly tied to student success.

“That’s a big part of our agenda,” she said.

Sharing personal experiences helps advance that understanding, and community colleges can lead the way for other higher education institutions to foster those connections.

Phillips told the audience about taking his children to birthday parties and athletic events and encountering other parents’ assumptions.

Once, he dropped his eldest daughter off at a birthday party and came back a short time later. A white mother of another guest met him at the front door and said, “What are you doing here? Who are you?”

He explained that he was the father of a guest, and her demeanor changed.

“Before I was a police officer, I’m a black male,” he said. “It’s kind of a weird world I live in.”

We experience it in different ways, but we all live in this weird world together.

I came across this letter anonymously submitted to AgingCare.com, an online support group for caregivers:

“I am a middle child with four sisters. I am a widow. My children and grandchildren live in St. Louis, and my mother lives in Phoenix. I have taken care of my mother for the last eight months, away from my immediate family. I have done the very best I could taking care of my mother, but it has taken a toll on me physically and emotionally. I lost 25 pounds, couldn’t eat, was depressed, and had to have surgery so I could try to eat again. All of this made me realize I can’t do this anymore. The sisters are sending guilt- and shame-filled texts to try to change my decision, but I can’t. They are being so mean, saying I am being selfish. Not sure how I can deal with this. I would really like some advice.”

The letter struck close to home.

For 26 years, my parents cared for our elderly aunt in their home. They took turns with my father’s older brother and his wife. When you watch your parents, in their 70s, struggle to care for someone in her 90s, it opens your eyes to the massive gaps in elder care support.

And the caregiving crisis is about to get substantially worse.

About 34 million Americans are providing unpaid care to an older adult, often a family member. More than 75 percent of these caregivers are women.

“They are individually bearing most of the burden of one of America’s most pressing societal challenges: how to care for a population of frail elders that is ballooning in size,” Grace Gedye wrote recently in Washington Monthly. No one is prepared to handle the massive influx of demands the aging boomer population will add to an underfunded and incomplete government system, straining overburdened family caregivers and an inadequate healthcare workforce.

Between half to two-thirds of seniors will need some kind of long-term care, which is not covered by Medicare, and only partially covered by Medicaid, under specific conditions. The strain that the aging boomers are expected to put on Medicaid, and on their family members, is unprecedented.

And yet, there’s little public policy talk about it.

Lawmakers must begin seriously grappling with the issue, and family members need to have honest conversations about care and finances before a health crisis hits.

Mike Stith, 64, of Edwardsville, Missouri, knows all too well the toll caregiving can take personally. He was the full-time caregiver for both his parents for years before they died, having taken an early retirement when his mother got sick with cancer. He took over making major decisions for his parents, managing their health issues and helping with all the basic tasks of everyday life. And when his mother passed away and his father later moved in with Stith, it became a 24-hour, 7-days-a-week responsibility.

“You change your whole life,” he said. Stith now helps care for his elderly uncle in Kentucky, and spends one week every month there to keep up with his needs.

He says he ended up in the role by default -- no one else stepped up to do it. He hasn’t spoken to his brother since 2015 because he was so hurt by how he checked out of their parents’ situation.

“People think someone else will take care of it,” Stith said.

Caregiving for a relative is one of those family situations in which everyone has an opinion -- except the opinion that they should be the one providing the care.

If someone else has been doing the work, like in the case of the overburdened letter-writer, the bystanding family members should limit their comments to two simple phrases:

“Thank you,” and “How can I help?”