COCKEYSVILLE, Md. — Debbie Filling opened Soiree Salon in Cockeysville 14 years ago with a simple mission: making people happy.
What she and her staff do goes far beyond hair styling – they help people be their best selves.
WATCH: Salon training focuses on spotting domestic abuse signs
"Sometimes people come in here not feeling so good about themselves and leave with more confidence," Filling said.
"I think there's a joke that people say, you know, when I'm going to my hair salon or the stylist, I'm going to my counselor or my therapist, because they do talk about personal things," said Amanda Lee, consultant and founder of The Lee Consultants.
She provides state-approved training as part of Maryland's new certification required for cosmetologists and barbers.
The training helps salon professionals recognize signs of domestic abuse – something Filling has seen firsthand is critically important.
"We were getting ready to close one night, and a young woman had kind of knocked on the door and wanted to come in and get her hair done," Filling said.
The timing was unusual – unscheduled and at the back door near closing time.
"As we got closer, we could see that she'd been crying, and she looked really pretty sad, so we opened the door to talk to her, and we never really knew that night what was going on," Filling said.
After a haircut, the woman left feeling better. Something in what the stylist did seemed to help, and she started coming back regularly.
"She would talk to that stylist about the domestic abuse that was going on in her home, the things she was enduring," Filling said.
The stylist wasn't sure what to do, but she could see the woman was in a bad place.
"Some of these signs of domestic violence do not necessarily mean, oh, this is abuse. The abusive part is where the behaviors are in order to exert power and control," Lee said.
Based on what information the stylist could find online, she did her best to be there for the woman in some way.
"She would listen and kept talking to her on her different visits," Filling said.
Eventually, the woman stopped coming, leaving everyone wondering what might have happened. Now this training provides language to maintain the chair as a safe space to open up – if the client wants.
"Nothing about this course, though, is trying to make the stylists become fixers or be therapists or even try to solve the problem.
It's just about making sure that it's a safe place for their clients," Lee said.
Something Filling's stylist instinctively did right was creating privacy.
"There was an area where the stylist would take this client when she was coming in that was a more private, quiet spot so that she could talk if she wanted to without feeling like other people could hear her," Filling said.
Amanda says that was a good move. Now with training, if there is a next time, Filling and all her stylists will have their own confidence in how they listen.
"With this new regulation that's come in for us, it feels like perfect timing and very necessary," Filling said.
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