Dismissed True Stories

When Narcissists Try to Dim Your Light, Shine Anyway Stephanie's Story Pt 1

• The Survivor Sisterhood • Season 2 • Episode 9

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What happens when you finally break free from abuse but find yourself standing on unfamiliar ground? For Stephanie, a mother of two neurodivergent children and a survivor of narcissistic abuse, that first year became both a battleground and a sacred space of rediscovery.

"Nature loves courage," Stephanie reminds us. "When you open up to the world, it opens itself beyond what you can conceive." After enduring abuse from both her narcissistic mother and ex-partner, she found herself documenting every moment, writing furiously after putting her children to bed, turning her pain into words that would eventually become her pathway back to herself. This episode explores how gaslighting creates a desperate need to record reality when your perception has been systematically undermined for years.

The conversation delves into fascinating psychological patterns – how children of narcissists either become empaths constantly scanning for danger or develop narcissistic tendencies themselves. For empaths like Stephanie, this wiring created vulnerability to relationships where her contributions as a mother to two children with autism were constantly minimized, where her joy was mocked, and where her financial independence was undermined. When her ex laughed in her face about her creative ambitions, she made a powerful decision: "I'm going to prove this motherfucker wrong."

Whether you're freshly out of abuse or years into healing, this episode offers profound insights into reclaiming your voice, finding community, and daring to believe that joy isn't just possible, it's your birthright. Sharing stories becomes an exercise in "unlearning shame," turning personal pain into connection and validation that reminds every survivor they're not alone. Subscribe now to join a growing community where healing happens together, and discover why the world truly is a better place because you're in it.

FOLLOW STEPH ON SUBSTACK: 

https://lessonsindiscernment.substack.com/?fbclid=PAQ0xDSwK35mFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABpyUQ3Aycqlm_OOFodonAA6CgTb0wlwFJx7HSR_8G3NJVDMvwlYHHWTktDfN-_aem_QvapmSJDv7Wdh9jGSi6utg

FOLLOW STEPH ON INSTA: 

https://www.instagram.com/lessonsindiscernment?igsh=MWFibXRvY281djNpaA==

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233 OR text begin to 88788

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to Dismissed True Stories. Still haven't figured out an intro for these things, but I think that's my intro. Welcome back to DTS. Thank you so much for listening. Remember how last week I told you about the fact that we're like 300 downloads away from 1,000 monthly. I cannot wrap my brain around that one. I entered my stats into chat and I was like can you please break this down for me? And then I kept asking like, are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure? Because it just doesn't seem real. Thank you so much for being a supporter, for being a listener.

Speaker 1:

You have no idea how much just confidence in myself that you're giving back. I know that's kind of maybe that's self-centered to say. I don't really know. All I know is that, like since experiencing abuse, communicating has been one of my biggest insecurities. And getting back behind the mic again, like I just texted my friend Alex the other day and I was like holy cow, girl, like I feel the most me that I have felt in a long time. Being back behind the mic again. It feels like home. This is something that just runs in my blood. I love it so much. I feel like I get in a flow state back here in my little studio. If you haven't seen me on social media, my studio is literally a closet in my basement that I revamped. I put three-inch memory foam mattress stoppers on the walls and hung up extra curtains and put in extra carpets just to pick up the sound, so it's not bouncing all over the place. And this is my studio. And maybe one day we'll be in a really cool studio somewhere, I don't know. But here's to humble beginnings, but I'm just really freaking glad you're here.

Speaker 1:

So this week on Dismissed True Stories we are talking to a survivor named Stephanie and it's interesting to me that sometimes I will go into an interview having somebody reading somebody's story already and having some sort of idea of what they're going through. But then it ends up being something else entirely. And this is one of those episodes and we talk about how there's something that is so sacred about that first year after leaving abuse. You know it's chaotic, it's a tender time, it's terrifying, but also it's strangely so full of possibility. You can find yourself sobbing on the couch at midnight with a pen in hand writing down feelings you didn't know you had the words for that was me, in full transparency. But somehow that ink becomes a lifeline, and that's how it was for Stephanie.

Speaker 1:

In today's episode of Dismissed True Stories. I'm sitting down with Stephanie, a survivor, a mother, a truth teller, an author and a writer with a voice that cuts through shame with sunlight. Together we talk about what it means to grow up with a narcissistic parent, to grieve while raising children, to be silenced, gaslit, threatened and to still rise anyway. Also, if you hear a bunch of like thumping in the background, I'm so sorry. It's summer break, so my son and his elephant feet are stomping around up above me.

Speaker 1:

This episode is about reclaiming joy and finding community. Ah, I love that and daring to believe that you are allowed to live fully and loudly. So if you're like me, if you're like Steph and you've ever felt unseen, unheard or unsure of your strength, this one is for you. No, I was going to tell you something. I think what I was going to say is in my first year after leaving abuse, one of the things that I always felt like I had to do one was right, just because I felt like everything that I was experiencing there was so much there, and so a lot of the time I would put my son to bed and then I would go out into the living room and sit on the couch and like sob and then write everything that I was feeling, because I would have to. I'm the kind of person that like I have to get it out and then go back and read it to really understand everything that I was feeling.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's like a symptom of gaslighting for me personally and that's how it was interpreted In therapy I did. I did some EMDR at the end of last year and now I'm doing a bit of brain swatting in the last two months. But those therapies have taught me that gaslighting as as like an experience and, and over a prolonged period of time and coming from the people who you trust most. My abuse stemmed from my relationship with my ex-husband, but it also came from my mother, so it's sort of been like a lifelong experience for me to have my reality brought into question and my experience is kind of um, just diminished. And and at one point I was telling my therapist I was like you know, I'm no expert on this, but like I've done, you know so and so therapy. And she was like, well, you know, steph, you're, you're the expert of your own experience, like you are, and you need to start like taking ownership over that.

Speaker 2:

And I think the best way for me to do it I've. I'm like I have a degree in literature. I have always been told that I have like this gift for writing and and I feel it like I feel it, but I never really tapped into it until until I came out of abuse and that became like my saving grace was like writing down what happened to me and like letting it consume the page rather than like my soul, because it became too much and it's just been such a healing experience. So I hear you, it's, it's writing is one of the best tools when, when, when we come out of abuse, to understand sort of what happened to us.

Speaker 1:

I know that my journal from the time. So I didn't start writing until I was maybe a couple months before I left, and then I had the same journal the year after I left. Abuse when I say that that piece is like an artifact of my history. That is my baby. That journal is like something that I'm going to keep in a locked box in my closet for probably the rest of my life, Because that was the most terrifying and liberating experience of my life.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that first year, I feel for you and I feel like I see it a little bit in you, Just that feeling of being in that first year and having, when I first met my now boyfriend, the first date that we went on, he said to me, he said I don't know what it is about you, but I feel like I can feel how strong you are and I feel like when I look at you, I can see it. It's just like I don't know, have you ever heard that survivors of trauma like we speak a different language. It's almost like a superpower that we understand. Once you've been through something, you see it in somebody else. And I that's what I feel like like you just like have this aura like strength and confidence about you, Thank you.

Speaker 2:

That means a lot. Actually, I don't feel like a very confident person. I mean, I'm stepping into it more and more and I think, like learning to be on my own and like embracing solitude was such a tool for me to like get to my abusers were preventing me from stepping into. I feel like you heal, you become like. You have this ability now to heal others, and that's why I think the work that you do by like showcasing and and hearing other people's stories is so, so fucking important, because we don't really understand it once, once we come out of it, until we've heard other people's accounts of things that they have been through that are similar to ours, and it takes so much courage and so much strength to come out and speak.

Speaker 2:

I know personally, I was buried under a mountain of threats after I posted my first video, the one that I shared with you, the one that I shared with you, I think, within the first hour of it being posted, he sent me a defamation letter by email and the letter ended with like please govern yourself accordingly, and I was like you know that I shall. Like I shall. It's your story to tell. Yeah, I have every right to tell my story. I never even like named him. I mean, people who know us from our community know who I'm talking about. But you know you and others have no idea. So I'm not doing anything illegal.

Speaker 1:

I'm not stepping out of line by any means, and we don't care to know him.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly Like everything I'm sharing is the truth. It's quite an empowering feeling when you come from like an environment of lies and manipulation and there's still some of that going on, but my, like my truth outshines his lies by you know, a record amount, whereas before, when I was silenced, there's this thing when you come out of narcissistic abuse or come out of a narcissistic relationship in general, it's it's a narcissistic smear campaign and I was a victim of that and learning of that after I shared my story was a very traumatizing experience in itself, because I used to care so deeply what everyone thought of me and he knew that. He knew that too well and he used it to his advantage and, um, yeah, it just it. It outshines all of the darkness, is the light that I'm putting out, and sometimes it's sometimes it's dark and sometimes it's heavy, but most of the time I'm really happy and like I live a very fulfilled life for for the first time ever.

Speaker 2:

And yeah, I think it would take away from the authenticity if I was to like keep, keep the darkness to myself yeah um, rather than when you, when you start to actually feel your emotions rather than avoid them, they do this silly thing where they just go away.

Speaker 1:

The only way through it is through it, isn't that crazy.

Speaker 2:

I know. So yeah, I stopped avoiding and I just faced everything head on, and now nothing really scares me anymore.

Speaker 1:

I love that for you. I think that I'm still at a point where I'm trying to work through all of that. It's been five years for me, but I think for a very long amount of time of that I didn't want to feel the things.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you share a child, right? Yeah, am I? Yeah, how?

Speaker 1:

is that Interesting. However, he has a new partner and so I mainly co-parent with her, which isn't too bad, so, yeah, well, this one is so interesting to me because she said that when you've lived through long-term gaslighting from a parent or a partner or both, your reality stops feeling reliable. And what do we do when we have to survive? That? We document, we write, we record voice notes. I started video journaling. We journal, like our lives depend on it, because in a lot of ways, they absolutely do. That's how we say this happened. I felt this, I was here and it won't be erased. I want to talk about. I guess the biggest part of your story would be you growing up with a mother and that kind of planting or forming your perception of yourself. You said you had a difficult childhood. You dealt with a narcissistic parent and you had one person in your life who was a healthy role model for you, which was your grandfather, and you ended up losing him when you were 19.

Speaker 1:

Who was a healthy role model for you? Which was your grandfather? And you ended up losing him when you were 19. I felt for you there. Was it 19?

Speaker 1:

Correct, yeah, I felt for you there because I went through the same exact thing, but it was my grandmother and I think, and understanding why we walk into these relationships and deal with these relationships for so long. I think it's really important to understand that it's so layered because we already have a perception of ourself and then we're usually love bombed and kind of like sold this dream and they do a lot of future faking with you. But to understand your story, I thought that it was really interesting that you had recently lost someone and you had also dealt with a narcissistic parent that warped your sense of self and so you were feeling lost and confused and all these emotions, and let alone being 19. Like, I know that we're considered adult, but I was not adulting at 19.

Speaker 2:

No, we're extremely vulnerable and volatile too. Like I would not want to go back to those days. Like I would not want to go back to those days. I probably wouldn't do it any different if I had to go back. To be completely honest, like I learned so much. I just think I don't see my ex partner as this, like malicious love bomber from the get go who was, like you know, out to get me, and like we were very much wounded in similar ways.

Speaker 2:

That's something I touched on in my writing is that we both grew up with narcissistic mothers and our moms had a similar path in the mistakes that they made in our childhoods. So we bonded over that quite and like, quite instantaneously, yeah, and we sort of like drew out this map of okay, we're gonna have children of our own someday and we're going to do things the opposite of what we were raised in, and that sort of became like the guiding path to to how the relationship evolved so quickly. We became parents. He was 21 and I was 23 like we were babies. We were four years or three years, three and a half years, I think, into the relationship when I got pregnant and you know, as my story unfolds, pregnancy becomes quite a large trigger. I am a proud mother, but I'm also, like, extremely fertile. I get pregnant like incredibly easily, and it's been a challenge for me to navigate that with someone who you know, has since wanted to harm me in so many ways and has has successfully done so in the last year and and having to do with with my fertility and and whatnot. So, um, yeah, I think narcissism is, is is, um, and this is like the empath in me.

Speaker 2:

I think when you grow up with a narcissistic parents, you have like one of two outcomes. You either become an empath, where, like, your ability to feel other people's emotions is very heightened and that becomes like your mechanism for survival right, that's how you manage to get your needs met or feel safe is by like sensing when someone else is, is, you know feeling whatever range of emotions there is um. Or there's the other outcome, which is to become a narcissist yourself, and usually that comes from like inflation and you know being told by your narcissistic parent that you're a walking representation of every good thing they've ever done on this earth and you just sort of become a replica of them. But it's, it's built in shame. There's a a, there's a deep sense of shame that comes comes with that. I was made to feel ashamed of myself, whereas he was made to feel ashamed of others. So it became this like push and pull of of um. Well, we know the gaslighting techniques of like always bringing up past mistakes.

Speaker 1:

I wanted to stop right here because I think it is so interesting what she said about growing up with a narcissistic parent, how it does something to your wiring. You can either become the person who needs to control how you've seen people be controlled or the person who constantly scans for danger just to survive. If you're listening to this podcast, you more than likely fall on the scanning for danger side. That's why you'll often hear that kids of narcissists can either become narcissists themselves or empaths and I had to research this after she said it, because I was like I wonder if this is just a quote, because I've heard this before but I've never actually done the research. But research from the Journal of Personality Disorders actually backs this.

Speaker 1:

Studies show that kids of narcissistic parents often develop either narcissistic tendencies mirroring what the parent did to gain the parent's approval, or hyper-empathy as a survival response to the unpredictability and the emotional neglect. Empaths like Steph, like me, like you we grow up attuned to other people's moods, other people's comforts, and that makes us prime targets for abusers. I don't know. We must be a lighthouse with a beacon on our freaking forehead, because if you've ever wondered why you stayed or why you tolerated the intolerable, and maybe you're relating to Stephanie's story right now. It's not because you're weak. It's because you're wired to prioritize peace, and doing whatever you can to bring peace to a situation is how you cope, is how you manage, even if it's at your own expense.

Speaker 2:

Never making it about themselves, not taking accountability, all of those things. So the dynamic between him and I was very much like the foundation was already set. We were sort of we were built to fail.

Speaker 1:

But I think, like when you met, you said that he was 18 and you were 20. Yeah, you were both young and you trauma bonded, as you said, um, from the very beginning, um, and it seemed like sorry, it seemed like you know you both wanted the same things, um, but maybe in being built to fail with the sort of foundation that you all had laid, romantic abusive relationships do come from two very different people. Like there is the one empath who is like okay, hand me your burdens, they are my blessing and I will try to help you and fix you and work things through. And then there's just that, that other person that takes advantage of that person and they become like a vampire and just and just suck the life out of you.

Speaker 1:

Um, I want to talk about, um, your first pregnancy, because you said that you were about like three, three and a half years into your relationship. What did your relationship look like at the time? Did you experience other than the trauma bonding? Did you experience, like, any type of abuse before you got pregnant? Because statistics say, like, after you get pregnant, abuse usually will escalate. Can?

Speaker 1:

you kind of like walk me through what your relationship looked like.

Speaker 2:

So there was betrayal very early on in the relationship, like within the first year of us dating. He had cheated on me multiple times. An ex-girlfriend of his had reached out to me on my birthday to let me know that he was sending her some inappropriate messages and she wasn't engaging. But she wanted to let me know. And as soon as I confronted him, he gaslit me shreds, which was so indicative of what my future would look like down the line. But at the time I fully believed him. I was like, oh, she's, you know, she's manipulating me. This is like he would never do such a thing. It's my birthday.

Speaker 2:

I was in the shower while he was like sending apparently sending these photos Like happy birthday. Yeah, exactly, this couldn't have happened. But I believed him. And then, two years later, we were living together, um, and, and we sort of brought that instance back into the discussion and he admitted to me that what she was saying was the truth. So I I flipped out, I was ready to leave the relationship and when I called my mom to you know, gain, gain, sympathy or comfort she basically told me like you guys are living together now, like you should stick this out. Yeah, he's a good guy Like just you know it happened a long time ago. He's not like that anymore. Just forget it and move on. So you know, my mom and my ex have a lot in common.

Speaker 1:

I was just sitting here thinking like is that something that she would do? Is would she just forget it and move on?

Speaker 2:

I mean, I'm not too sure she cheated on my dad and and that's sort of how the relationship erupted between them. But um, and it was. You know it was a precarious situation and yeah, so that became a thing.

Speaker 1:

Hold the phone. I have to pause right here. Stephanie had called her mom, hoping for comfort, hoping for clarity after discovering betrayal, and instead she got a message that so many of us have heard in different ways. When in a toxic and abusive relationship, just move on, or it happened a long time ago. Here's the thing Her mom wasn't just ignoring the pain. This is what got under my skin so much. She was reenacting a script, because when Stephanie shared that her mom had an affair, something that obviously causes chaos in their family and their community but instead of accountability, it was swept under the rug. So what do you think you do when you're the one that caused all the chaos, all the rupture? You teach your family how to survive your shame. You model denial. You normalize betrayal. Model denial. You normalize betrayal. You raise your children in a home where truth is inconvenient and silence is accepted.

Speaker 2:

We did university like a couple months prior, and he was still in school and then I got pregnant, sort of by happenstance, and then a week later I had a miscarriage and that devastated us. And I think that the devastation was what was the indicator for us that we did want to start a family. So we kind of just impulsively decided like as soon as I don't even think I had a period between my miscarriage and when I got pregnant with Thomas, like we just instantly started trying and I got pregnant right away just instantly started trying and I got pregnant right away.

Speaker 1:

So um you said that, you said that um you guys grieved very differently.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So he, I went back to work like a week after my miscarriage and I was working over an hour away from our place of residence and I was like falling asleep at the wheel and it was just getting like very dangerous for me to go to work. So my doctor put me on medical leave and I ended up getting super, super depressed where, like I couldn't get out of bed for a couple months, and I was early on in pregnancy with this new child and I was early on in pregnancy with this new child and I was having a really hard time bonding with with the pregnancy because I felt very guilty, for I felt like I was replacing the baby that I had lost. And he, on the other hand, was he wanted to pursue like a stand up comedy career. So he was out at bars pretty much every night, like with friends doing stand up comedy and improv and things like that.

Speaker 2:

So we just had this like fracture in the relationship where I was I felt very neglected. I was I felt very neglected and I think that was like those were the first signs of abuse for me were like was like the emotional neglect and that was very much a replica of what I had experienced with my mom growing up when, when I had gotten pregnant the first, the first time, the one that I miscarried we told my mom right away and she reacted very, very poorly. Um, she basically said like you guys are ruining your life and blah, blah, blah. It put me in like a severe distress and I've I've sort of attributed that experience to my miscarriage for a while, because I was so like angry and distraught from her reaction and how selfish it was and I didn't talk to my mom until I was like six months pregnant with Thomas, like we didn't have any sort of interaction. And that's just how she is. Like I haven't spoken to my mom, not not a word. Since everything went down with my ex, like last fall Did she approve of?

Speaker 1:

you like, finally walking away from him for good.

Speaker 2:

Not really. No, I don't ever really get approval from my mom, like I stopped seeking it to be, quite honest, understandable, I think, yeah, I'm pretty much like so far removed from this relationship at this point and I've I've expanded so much since, since I've sort of called it quits with my mom, that I've realized that there's no, there's no, really there's no point in me going back to that.

Speaker 1:

How was she when you uh had your miscarriage?

Speaker 2:

um, like in the fall your first one. The first one she, she knew about it but she never reached out. She knew I was like upset with her for the way that she reacted. So she just she, can't take accountability. She's like a textbook narcissist in that sense. It's sort of crazy to me how it feels like they're literally all reading from the exact same textbook.

Speaker 1:

They're all the same, mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they're all the same. But again, it's this defense mechanism that they develop in childhood and it comes from shame. My mom is deeply, deeply, deeply ashamed of herself. She always and well, she always said that like she wished that I was a boy, which was hurtful, but beyond that, she was very like. She would always hold it against me that I was blonde and blue eyed. Because she was. She had brown hair and brown eyes and she was like oh, like you're so like privileged for being as beautiful as you are, and like you'll have life easy and this and that, but like it never came with with any sort of approval from her. It always came down to like my looks were the extent of what I had to offer to this world and it was something that I had over her. It was like my ex and my mom have so much in common, but he always hated her. He always hated her. He always said like she's jealous of you.

Speaker 1:

In short form, this made me question why don't narcissists get along, especially when they're basically reading from the same textbook? The answer in a one word competition. Narcissists need to dominate the emotional environment. They feed off of control, admiration and power. So when another narcissist enters the picture, someone who also demands the spotlight, who refuses accountability, who also manipulates, it's like looking in a freaking mirror and instead of bonding, they're going to hit heads. They're going to battle because there's only room for one in that emotional ecosystem, if you will, because your pain becomes their stage and only one of them gets to be the lead star.

Speaker 1:

I think that's interesting and heartbreaking for me to hear that you were experiencing abuse not only from a romantic partner, but also from your mother. At the same time, I couldn't imagine how alone and isolated you felt, especially while grieving something like a miscarriage. Because full transparency. I've had one too, and I've experienced also that the way that I chose to grieve was completely different from my partner, and I couldn't imagine not, I did not have support from him, but I did have support from other people and I'm I'm so sorry. I could not imagine that, but or I understand why you chose to cut her off. You said that a month after the loss, after your first miscarriage, you became pregnant. We touched on that and you ended up having your first son at the end of July of 2019. Yeah, and then you guys became common law. Yeah, kind of as soon as you became parents.

Speaker 2:

Yes, pretty much actually right before Thomas was born, and that was you know. We had been living together for over a year at that point, so we were already I live in Canada, so by any legal means we were already considered common law. But I had a tumultuous relationship with my dad growing up. My dad is now he's passed on, but he also had borderline personality disorder. There's no shadow of a doubt in my mind. His mother was a narcissist and he chose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven. And that was my mom. And so I ended up with a narcissistic mother and a father who is absent and volatile and aggressive and just overall like unpleasant.

Speaker 1:

So just a very quick break to explain what common law is for those listening outside of Canada or even unfamiliar with the term, Common law is a legal recognition of a relationship. It's kind of like a marriage, but without the paperwork. So in Canada, once you've lived together for 12 consecutive months, the law considers you common law partners. This means for things like finances, property rights and even parental responsibilities, for things like finances, property rights and even parental responsibilities, that can start to fall under similar legal frameworks as a married couple, even if there are no vows, no rings exchanged. So when Stephanie says they became common law just before their son was born, it means that they were officially recognized as sort of a unit, with all the emotional and legal weight that that carries. And, as you'll hear, that legal bond added a whole nother layer to an already complex relationship.

Speaker 2:

I have been wanting to get rid of my dad's name forever. My dad's name was Stefan, my name is Stephanie, so my name was literally one letter off from his and that sort of you know. It grinded my gears a lot. So, right before we had Thomas, I decided that I wanted to just get it over with, sign the papers and be able to take his name legally. So I did, and, and now both my children have all of the same last names on on their birth certificate.

Speaker 2:

But, um, you know, I've been asked this quite a few times on why I keep the name. Um, even after, after everything that's happened, and I don't intend on keeping it forever. Like I, I'm in love again and I think like there is a path forward for me and things will evolve eventually, but for the time being, it's my children's name and I've said it in one of my pieces of writing. Like I will single handedly restore honor to their name. That's something that I'm very keen on. So for the time being, my name remains what it is. But yeah, we'll see. That's all it really came down to was the name change. So that was the decision.

Speaker 1:

And kind of like running from what your dad meant in your mind and what he stood for. Yeah, so after you had um, you had Thomas, um. You got pregnant with your second son pretty close to um after after you had your first um, and then you write that both of your sons ended up diagnosed with autism and that diagnosis was something that was very difficult for both you and um, your partner Um, and in this timeframe and your relationship, you had both turned to substances to cope.

Speaker 1:

What did that look like for the both of you? What did that look like for your family?

Speaker 2:

It was very difficult. They were both well. They were born 12 months and 12 days apart, so already that was like an enormous challenge. So already that was like an enormous challenge. And then, within I think five to six months of my second son being born, my first son was flagged by our family doctor for autism spectrum disorder and you know it's such a shock. I remember so vividly feeling like it was like a hammer to the head and I just like I felt like a concussion and I just couldn't get over it. So I started smoking weed. I was like heavily into that and that was was my escape. That was like my way of getting away from from the you know hour-long tantrums or you know the stims and every, every indicator that was like blaring right at us that my kids had special needs and that this would be like a lifelong challenge for us. Um, which I will say like they've overcome with flying colors. They're now like I would consider them to be, like the stereotypical autistic kids that are like excessively smart and very, very sociable and like very lovable. They're like they're exceeding with flying colors. But that there's a reason for that. That's because we we were so keen on on um early intervention for them, but that the brunt of that fell on me 100% and it affected my career.

Speaker 2:

Um, I had given my job literally to my ex-husband when we were together and I got pregnant with my second son. So I was working for a local school board and for my mat leave they had asked you know who should cover it? And I had said to them that my husband at the time was available, so he covered my mat leave. And then when I got pregnant again, it sort of just made sense for me to hand over my permanent position so that he could keep the pay and the benefits and all that. What was your position? It was it's first French school. Specifically, I'm French speaking. So it's essentially like a student life counselor would be the direct translation, but you basically put on workshops with them. So it's essentially like a student life counselor would be the direct translation, but you basically put on workshops with them. You take care of everything in the school that's extracurricular, everything that has to do with outside of the classroom. So you know, for Christmas, for Halloween, for special events, you're the, you're the lead person for that, and it was a very interesting and fulfilling time in my life and I wish I could have done it for longer, but I gave all of it up so that he could have it and then I was working from home full-time with both kids at home. It was during COVID, so he was home as well.

Speaker 2:

His substance abuse was very much not limited to alcohol like he would smoke weed with me here and there, but alcohol became very prevalent for him and he has like a history of substance abuse in his family. It's something that's like been a trigger for him and and I remember when him and I first met, he would always tell me like I would never drink if I was upset. Like if I'm upset, that's like number one reason for me not to drink. And it became the opposite where we were now stuck at home all four of us all the time.

Speaker 2:

Our kids were both non-verbal, um, they were never aggressive, but they were like hurting themselves. They were having like very long tantrums that were difficult to manage and it got to a point where like it was 9 30 in the morning and he would pop open a beer and then keep drinking throughout the day. And I think the breaking point for me was was on my son Thomas's birthday one year. He like couldn't get out of bed because he was so hungover and he's a pretty like lanky guy, like he's pretty skinny, so you know it doesn't take much for him to get very much obliterated and his, his system has a hard time recovering. So his hangovers were pretty significant and that became like a big source of tension for us.

Speaker 1:

I want to name something that might not be obvious to you unless you've lived it Grief. Grief, especially unprocessed grief, can become a gateway to abuse. When Stephanie talked about losing her first baby and then getting pregnant again while still grieving, and then parenting two toddlers with complex needs during a pandemic, that's easy to understand how raw and heavy of a chapter in life that was and how easy it might have been to reach for something, anything to numb the pain. That's what weed was for her and that's what alcohol became for him. But here's the thing there's a difference between someone coping and someone completely checking out, and there's a difference between mutual struggle and then using the pain as permission to slip and to stop showing up or, worse, to start tearing someone else down.

Speaker 1:

According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, substance use doesn't cause abuse. I mean, I guess that opens up a whole argument between correlation and causation, but it often coexists with it, because the deeper truth is that substance can lower inhibitions and escalate behavior, but it doesn't plant the seed. The seed is always about power and control. So for victims like Stephanie, who are already carrying the weight of motherhood, emotional neglect and a partner spiraling out of reach. These quote-unquote coping habits become another form of abandonment and eventually another form of harm. That's the pattern Unprocessed grief leads to unchecked behavior, and unchecked behavior becomes normalized. And before you know it, the abuse isn't just emotional or verbal anymore. It's structural. It's your career, it's your stability, it's your joy being handed over or chipped away or just outright stolen and just like that you're surviving a whole new kind of storm.

Speaker 2:

Because he was drinking a lot, so he was hungover often, yeah, and when he was hungover he was so unpleasant and even when he was drunk he was unpleasant. So smoking when he was drunk he was unpleasant. So like smoking weed for me really did like become this like full-on escape because I could go to the garage and have like some alone time. Um, but in other areas of my life I was shouldering quite a lot and I was being told that I was not contributing enough and that was mainly pertaining to like finances and like work, because I didn't have like this nine to five job like he did, which was, you know, I will say again, it was my job before it was ever his. I was considered to be inadequate in that sense and that's something that's like. That's a big trigger for me still to this day is the employment.

Speaker 1:

Same. They really do all read from the same textbook. Because my situation was he used to say he had a nine to five and he used to say, well, if I'm going to go and put in eight hours and you're going to be at home, then you have to put in the same eight hours that I do. So, like he would like give me projects to do and then I would have to show him proof that I'm completing these projects as well and he would say that I wouldn't be contributing as much, even though I mean, we know what it's like as mothers to raise children but also work at the same time and take care of a house and all of their responsibilities that come along with that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that is also a trigger for me as well, I feel you there?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I've had a hard time maintaining employment, since.

Speaker 2:

Everything has happened Pretty much since that point. Actually, I was hired for a six-month contract as an editor for this like food subscription company and it was a lot of work but I could at least, you know, make it work within my schedule, so I wasn't necessarily stuck in meetings all day. I could work at 9 pm and, you know, have it be done the next day. So I was making it work for me. But then when, after my first son was diagnosed and then my second son was flagged for autism, it became like really overwhelming and I ended up having to leave that that employment early and and then further down the line, like that became fuel for him to to essentially imply that I was unemployable and unable to work, although he has seen me like I am a hustler at heart, like I have built businesses from scratch, I had an Etsy shop, like I was trying my best to contribute in ways that were driving me forward and things that I felt that I was passionate about and it was never enough, it was never going to be enough.

Speaker 1:

How is it that raising two neurodivergent toddlers, managing a household, cooking, cleaning, advocating for early intervention, running a business and still trying to be a person somehow isn't seen as real work? Some narcissists will always reach for the one thing that they think makes them superior, just so they can tear you down. For Stephanie's ex, it was a paycheck, just so they can tear you down. For Stephanie's ex, it was a paycheck. For mine it was hours logged on the clock. And for someone listening, maybe it was a college degree or the fact that he never raised his voice or that you were the emotional one. But here's what's really happening.

Speaker 1:

It's about control. It's about shifting the focus away from their shortcomings and shining a flashlight on yours, or at least convincing you that there's something wrong with you. And this tactic classic minimize your contributions, undermine your financial value, ignore the mental load you carry every single second of the day, and then hold it all over your head like it's proof that you're not enough. Let me be really clear about this being a stay-at-home mom is a full-time job. Time job so is caregiving, so is surviving. And if someone is using your unpaid labor as a weapon instead of a shared sacrifice, that's not partnership, that's power imbalance, and it's not just unfair, it's abusive. Did he ever kind of minimize the things that brought you joy too?

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah, yeah 100%, but that was like, that was him being threatened by my light, like that was him just.

Speaker 1:

I'm really glad that you say that, because I don't know that there. I know that there are other victims out there who may still be in a relationship, who are listening to this episode, who don't quite have the words for that feeling. Yeah, I was always made fun of because I was in radio and.

Speaker 1:

I love editing audio, I mean, that's why I have a podcast. And he would be like that and he would a podcast, and he would be like that and he would call me weird. And he would be like what are you contributing to the world? Like when you're just sitting behind your computer and blah, blah, blah. And I think that you saying like that's them being intimidated by your light and your joy. Bingo, babe, write that down, keep that and you're not good.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Because you're not wrong for the things that you love, especially when they make you happy and they're not hurting anyone else.

Speaker 2:

I know, after, in the fall like of last year, after I lost Alice, after I had the miscarriage again, everything sort of went to shit. I lost my job. I was a librarian at that point. I had been at the library for almost a full year and I was let go and instead of him stepping up to finally pay child support which is still an issue he hasn't paid any since our separation and it's been a year and a half now.

Speaker 2:

Um, he questioned like what I would do for work next, and I was like like I don't owe you that information. That's not, it's not up to you anymore. And he was like well, well, what is it like? What are you hiding? And I was like I, I am gonna, I'm going all in on my social media Like I, I don't necessarily know what's next, but I know that I want to create content like that that excites me, that drives me and that turned into writing and that feels way more authentic. But at the time I didn't really know and especially telling him was intimidating, because I knew his reaction and I was right and thinking because he looked at me, laughed at my face, like he went good luck with that. And then he turned around and walked away and in that moment I was like I am going to prove this motherfucker Right, like you're going to prove him wrong.

Speaker 1:

I loved what you said in your story that you sent to me. I hope this finds you unwell. You had said because you talked about going all in on your social media, and I talk about that too, in the sense of like healing happens in community. I fully believe that, and you said sharing my journey through healing as the furthest thing from easy, but it has proven shockingly rewarding just how much people relate to what I share. It's true what they say Nature loves courage. When you open up to the world, it opens itself beyond what you can conceive in your previous level of awareness, and I was like, yes, yes.

Speaker 1:

I like wanted to like slam my laptop shut because I was like, okay done, like I've read all that I've needed to read here.

Speaker 1:

But I just like that piece of you saying that you know, like I'm just going to go all in on this, I'm going to, I'm going to believe in myself, I'm going to go chase after something, something that like brings me joy. I cannot emphasize on this enough the fact that allowing yourself to do the things after leaving abuse, that like that make you happy and just give you like that smallest amount of peace, those are the things that you're supposed to be living for, and I know that we lose that in abuse. But then, like, once you open up and you start to find a community on whatever that is it could be writing, like you, or editing like me, or knitting, I don't care you find your community and then through that, you're also going to find validation for the person that you are, because you have to fight so hard to be, this person that you know deep down you are when you're in abuse, because someone is constantly telling you that you're never good enough.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I just I wanted to touch on that because I thought that that was so relatable and absolutely beautiful.

Speaker 2:

Thank you. To me, I think, like posting is an exercise of unlearning shame, like I was made to feel shame literally my whole life and he has been banking on that that I would feel so ashamed that I would maintain my silence and he would benefit off of it. And you know the first few videos I posted like you can see when you post a video how many people share your video. And there's this one video of like me laughing at myself in the mirror and I thought that was like so symbolic because I just like have learned to not take myself so seriously and like to enjoy my reflection. I used to not be able to look at myself in the mirror Like I was a shell of myself. That video you posted the other day saying you felt vacant.

Speaker 2:

I was in therapy and I remember to this day my therapist being like Can you name one hobby, one hobby that you have that's yours? And I couldn't, I couldn't for the life of me, come up with one single thing that lit me up besides like providing for my husband and my children. Like that was such a low for me and I'm I'm now at the point where I can't like there's not enough room, and on on both my hands to name all of my hobbies, like I'm so driven by so many different things and I am like feeling this sense of fulfillment now that I didn't have previously. But you know, yeah, he was just banking on on on my insecurities, on my shame, and I just said, fuck that.

Speaker 1:

These kinds of abusers, the ones who laugh in your face when you share your dream, or call your hobbies worthless or make you feel like loving something deeply is childish or embarrassing they're not being honest critics. They're being strategic. Strategic because they've lied to themselves and they want to tell themselves that they have to find a way to feel better than your power, because the moment that you start to feel good, you start to remember who you are, and the moment when you remember who you are, you become harder to control. This is part of the reason that I tell victims who are still stuck in abuse to find your anger. That's why Stephanie's ex mocked her. That's why so many survivors will tell you that their partner didn't just belittle them. They belittled the brightest parts of them. Remember how, in my story, I said that my personality was the thing that he started to attack the most and first in that relationship, because that was something that made me bright and that's what moments like this moment right here, that's what makes it so powerful, because when she says fuck that, she's not just rejecting him, she's rejecting every single lie that said that she had to minimize herself to be loved. Joy you'll find if you're still stuck in an abusive relationship. Right now, when us survivors reclaim it, even in the smallest ways, like laughing at their reflection or posting that first vulnerable video, we shift the entire story, the entire narrative. So if you're listening right now and there's something that brings you peace, that brings you joy, that brings you love, if you have something that lights you up, hold it close, protect it, share it whenever you're ready. I want to know, but never give it up because someone else has threatened you, because you shine too bright. I hit stop recording after I recorded that last bit Because I just I had to ground myself a little bit. I've been kind of mouthy. This episode no passionate. I've been passionate. This episode, I feel like last week really got me going and now this I'm just. I think I'm reaching the point of like finding my anger again and maybe that's just a really good educational tool for me. I don't know. Anyway, I think I'm just audibly processing, I'm sorry. Thank you for joining me for this powerful wow conversation with Stephanie. She's really been through it and she's still found a way to rebuild, to reclaim her voice and to say fuck that to anything that tried to keep her small.

Speaker 1:

If you're a survivor listening to this. I hope that you heard pieces of yourself in this story. It's powerful, it's badass. The heartbreak, the rage, the tiny sparks of joy, the rediscovery even of who you are beneath the shame, beyond the silence. And whether you're still in the thick of it, freshly out or years into healing, please remember that your voice matters. It is your story to tell and you will find your joy again, joy that's your birthright girl. It's not a bonus. So if this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who needs it. All right, like. Let's help these stories reach the victims and survivors who need to hear them. If you want to share your story, I do appreciate you sending me an email.

Speaker 1:

Dismissed true stories at thesurvivorsisterhoodcom. I'm pretty sure that's in the show notes. If not, I'll update it, I promise. Anyways, we're building something really freaking real over here, because healing happens in community and you don't have to do this alone anymore. Thank you so much for being here with me. I'll see you next Friday and remember the world is a better place because you are in it.

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Elissa

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