Conversations with My Sisters' Keepers
TRIGGER WARNING -
THIS PODCAST CONTAINS THE STORIES & EXPERIENCES OF THOSE WITH LIVED EXPERIENCES OF GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE. CONTENT MAY BE TRIGGERING.
Welcome to "Conversations with my Sisters' Keepers," dedicated to normalizing the trauma recovery experience of survivors of complex trauma and gender-based violence (GBV). We bring awareness, share stories, and promote healing-centered conversations for lived experience professionals and allies in the gender-based violence and recovery sectors. By sharing authentic stories and experiences, we hope to break down stigma, promote understanding, and celebrate the self-discovery within healing.
Together, we’ll explore strategies, resources, and insights to support wellness, recovery, and leadership. Join us as we challenge stigma, celebrate autonomy, and normalize the healing journey.
Let’s build a community of understanding and empowerment—one conversation at a time.
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Conversations with My Sisters' Keepers
Danielle Churly (Part 1): Turning Trauma into Advocacy
What if you could reshape your understanding of trauma recovery? Join us as we sit down with Danielle Churley, a seasoned survivor advocate with nearly a decade in the anti-human trafficking and gender-based violence fields. Danielle opens up about her personal journey through the cyclical nature of trauma recovery, emphasizing the importance of continuous care and the inclusion of marginalized voices.
We explore the myriad struggles and turning points in Danielle's recovery journey. Danielle shares the pivotal moments that signaled the need for more professional help and the significant impact these decisions had on her relationships. Through it all, she reflects on overcoming shame, stigma, and self-blame, while fostering self-awareness, self-love, and self-confidence. Her story is a testament to the ongoing nature of recovery and the motivation to create a safer environment for herself and others.
Danielle also discusses the transformative power of community support in the healing process. Highlighting groups like the Dufferin-Caledon Domestic Assault Review Team, she reveals how non-judgmental spaces and peer support have been crucial to her recovery. These groups foster not only a sense of belonging but also personal growth, allowing individuals to process their experiences at their own pace. Danielle's insights shed light on the importance of survivor leadership and the goals of the G100 Canada Anti-Human Trafficking Wing, aiming to promote wellness and develop survivor-led programs. Tune in to hear an inspiring story of resilience, healing, and advocacy.
Welcome to Conversations with My Sisters' Keepers, the podcast where we bring awareness, share stories, and promote healing-centered conversations for lived experience professionals and allies in the gender-based violence and recovery sectors.
I'm Shamin Brown, and together, we’ll explore strategies, resources, and insights to support wellness, recovery, and leadership. Join us as we challenge stigma, celebrate autonomy, and normalize the healing journey.
Thank you for joining us today for Conversations with my Sister's Keepers. Today we have our sister's keeper, danielle Churley, who is a dedicated survivor advocate with nearly a decade of experience in the anti-human trafficking and gender-based violence fields. Her advocacy work spans consulting, public speaking and participation on the Dufferin Caledon Domestic Assault Review Team Survivor Panel. Danielle's personal journey through child abuse, intimate partner violence, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation and sex trafficking deeply informs her approach to advocacy.
Speaker 1:Leveraging her lived experience in education and social service work. Danielle highlights systemic issues that perpetuate gender-based violence and champions the importance of continuous trauma recovery. She emphasizes the critical need for ethically engaging survivor leaders to prevent re-exploitation and support long-term healing. Currently, danielle is completing her social service work studies and aspires to further her education at the university level. Her advocacy includes speaking engagements, contributing to focus groups for organizations like the Women's Support Network of York Region. Danielle has also served as a residential support advocate and volunteer coordinator at Elora House, a safe house for survivors of sex trafficking at Elora House, a safe house for survivors of sex trafficking, and has frontline experience through both her professional roles and her volunteer work. In addition to her advocacy, danielle is an aspiring poet hoping to use her poetry as another powerful tool for raising awareness and fostering change. Welcome, danielle, and thank you for joining us here today.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, us here today.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah, these conversations with my sister's keepers are crucial for survivors and survivor leaders everywhere. It's time to advance beyond trauma-informed and resilience-based narratives of surviving, thriving and leading, and to embrace a healing-centered focus on wellness and recovery. Today, we aim to challenge the stigma and judgment many survivors encounter during their healing process. By sharing insights into our own recovery and wellness journeys, I believe that we can normalize the ongoing and cyclical nature of the recovery experience. What do you think?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think it's incredibly important to me to normalize the ongoing and cyclical nature of the recovery experience by sharing some of my own journey, and I'm honored to be here today to be able to do that. I recognize how important this is with my own experience with recovery because it has been impacted by shame and stigma which has created barriers to my healing in the past, and I want to help reduce the barriers for others. I recognize how it can be to be re-victimized and fall back into old habits when we don't pursue ongoing recovery, because I have experienced this myself with my own story. I am really passionate about talking about the importance of ongoing recovery and taking care of ourselves as survivors.
Speaker 1:I love that. Thank you so much, and you're not alone in that, because they are barriers to recovery and I've experienced them too, and I agree with you that that's part of why these conversations are so important. I wanted to quickly just put a plug in there for G100. We know that over the next three years, the goals of the Canadian G100 Anti-Human Trafficking Week, of which I'm currently the chairperson, are to promote lived experience leadership and autonomy, to support the wellness of lived experience staff, to develop survivor-led, informed and facilitated prevention and intervention programs. And to identify all allied organizations invested in survivor leadership. How do you feel about these goals of the G100 Canada?
Speaker 2:I love the goals of the G100 Canada because I think lived experience and leadership and autonomy are so valuable in the field and should be looked at more, and survivors have an incredible amount of insight to share and learn from. I myself have learned the most from other survivors and, like that, I've had the honor of crossing paths with. I also say it's incredibly important to include a diverse group of survivors because with human trafficking, our stories are all different. It's not one size fits all. It's the same with recovery and well-being as well too, so it's important to have various voices and organizations involved in the process and I think that's incredible.
Speaker 2:We all have valuable skills and insights to share and I know sometimes there are survivors who are often looked past. So having the opportunity to have different survivors come together and to share and to be a part of it is incredible. I know some things like marginalized identities and not fitting the stereotype of what a victim should look like in some people's eyes, and stigma and judgment can impact if a survivor is heard or not or is a part of an organization with leadership, and I have seen this in my journey throughout. For example, we know a large number of human trafficking victims in Canada are Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people and unfortunately, in my experience I've seen less Indigenous survivor leaders have the opportunity to share the way maybe I have as a white woman myself. So I think incredibly important to have all of those and be focused on the well-being of everybody and to hear the different stories and different insights and different input.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and see, I believe that here in Manitoba we actually do a really good job of creating that space for Indigenous folks. And that brings me to my next question when are you speaking to us from?
Speaker 2:in Canada. Yeah, from Ontario, just outside of the GTA, there we go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and tell me more about your community and what trafficking looks like in your community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there is many different stories and experiences, even within Ontario. My story is in the GTA kind of area and what I've experienced is intimate partner violence and being in a relationship and being exploited and trafficked that way. I think a lot of my survivor friends as well have experience to some extent too. There's a lot of different, various tactics used, whether it's online dating sites like family, friends, people in person, I think, sometimes like the music industry or film industry or things like that are also leveraged, especially in the GTA area. People who are trying to reach for those goals can be taken advantage of by people who know what they're doing really well. It is not known so well, so it's hidden really well in plain sight. Within my experience, it's trafficked at very well hotel, hotel brands, chains kind of thing. Places would stay all the time and it often went completely under their radar.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we've got a lot of underground. We've got Romeo pimps. That sounds lots of those kind of boyfriend type. If you love me, you'll do it. Entry points I heard you say things around family and friends too. So talking just about those different ways that grooming can occur interfamilial model, party model, romeo model yeah, all of those pieces. So you're seeing those things there. It sounds like those three that you mentioned were like the highlights in terms of what you've been seeing in Ontario.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, definitely the main kind of three that I've seen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, and then the online, which we know like it has actually tripled in Canada over the last few years. So according to Canada statistics, there's been some major growth. Yeah, you were talking a little bit about your story and kind of what things that look like for you. I want to create some space for you to be able to share whatever feels comfortable for you and whatever makes sense for you in terms of this conversation. Right, when we think about what some of the lived experiences you've had around abuse and trauma, evictions, mental health, whatever and there may be something else. Maybe that's not what you want to talk about, maybe there's a lived experience of another sort that you're wanting to bring some attention to, but I want to create that space for you to do that, thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd love to share a little bit about myself and my story. I grew up in a home with domestic violence, mental illness, addiction, parental incarceration and homelessness, as well as being sexually abused as a child, which I think contributed to my vulnerability as a teen and adult. Later in life and in high school, some really traumatic things happened with my family and I ended up leaving my parents' home, which left me fairly vulnerable, and I experienced intimate partner violence and sexual exploitation for the first time. That really impacted my ability to kind of function in the world. And I did get out of that situation and I started to recover and I started to go to school and I started to work in the anti-human trafficking and gender-based violence field.
Speaker 2:But I found that during that time I shoved down so much of what happened to me that, because it wasn't fully dealt with, it made it easier for me to be vulnerable again and for those things to pop back up and for those things to pop back up and that's how I got into another abusive relationship that was financially, sexually, physically and mentally abusive and during that time I stopped going to school and I stopped working in the field for a little while it had impact Every aspect of my life consumed me for a while, and once that relationship ended, I met my trafficker, who I was sexually exploited by and trafficked for several months.
Speaker 2:I had met him online on a dating app and started seeing him and eventually he convinced me to get into sex work. But this ideal lens of doing massages and things like that, and then it not turning out to be what I expected and then being trapped in it for a second time and it it took several months for me to get out of that situation and then return to healing and go back to like field when I was mentally able to do yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that must have felt really challenging to have found yourself in that position again. I know for me when I repeat a mistake that I'm like I should have known better. Right and find myself there again. It has really made continued healing a little bit more challenging because it impacted my ability to trust myself. It impacted my sense of what I'm worth and why do I keep finding these guys also what the heck Like? Why is everyone doing this? What's wrong with me? So this had some of those extra layers to that healing journey when you have those really unfortunate experiences in the middle.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah. I found it really added to like my self-hatred and my self-blame and it became harder to overcome those things because, for lack of better words, I felt stupid and that took me a long time to process and work through.
Speaker 1:What was the turning point for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think ultimately it began with my sister and childhood best friend. When I was going through some of this stuff, I before the point where I had my final turning point. I had been met with backlash and being pushed to get out of the relationships that I was in and judgment, and I tended to hide and isolate those things and hide what was happening to me because I didn't want to hear it. I wasn't ready to. So when I was ready, when I just I finally felt like I had enough, I could not handle it anymore, I couldn't keep in. What was going on. It just broke down.
Speaker 2:My sister and my friend made space for me and helped me to figure out a plan and stay with them. And that's when I realized I need more help than I had previously thought, that I need to take the time to really work on myself and heal and get the support that I needed and that I didn't want to put myself through that or put anyone else I love through that ever again. And I could see how much it had impacted my sister and my friend and how much they cared for me and how much it was taking a toll on them. That really weighed heavy on my heart and, in turn, helped me come to those realizations and want to do it and want to keep them safe and myself safe and to really make the changes in my life that I needed to be able to do, to sustainably continue and do the things that I wanted to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So I'm hearing a couple of different things there. I'm hearing some of this. I was motivated by the desire to create a better space for my family members that didn't have so much fear or confusion or upset. But then that's also this other piece around wanting more for yourself yes, yeah, both definitely anything that you want to add to that.
Speaker 2:I think it got to a point, too, where my body and my mind had just had enough to and as hard as it was leaving, and there was almost several times that my traffic had very close to convincing me to come back, but knowing that I wouldn't be able to sustain it anymore, like I had lost a ton of weight, I was physically and mentally not doing well at all, I didn't recognize the person I was anymore whatsoever and I couldn't handle anything Like I felt like this, like fragile, broken thing, and I knew that I just like I couldn't keep going on like that. There's just I had to make a change there. I needed to do like. I felt it in my heart.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had so many turning points. For me, axset was like a very gradual thing Just because there were so many different layers of healing. I think even I may even still be experiencing turning points, but when we think about where I was and the amount of self-understanding or self-love that I had and the experiences I was having, I think for me my turning point was a desire to be a mother. That was something that was really huge for me. I lost the first kid I was really upset about that and also lost the second. Got him back later, got them all back later, eventually 16-year plan, yeah, but that was my turning point. That was my driving force Desire to be.
Speaker 1:We've all got something different, but it's interesting how we both had that piece around. The desire to it was for others right, not necessarily because they were asking us to make that change, but because we wanted better for them. So I think that's really valuable to notice about us. Yeah, absolutely. What are some of the things that you've struggled with along the way, both in early recovery and now? For example, some folks they find that their romantic life and you've talked about this actually a little bit in your earlier recovery and there was a relapse but like your romantic life, parenting, mental health, self-confidence we were talking about that or experiencing that in a new way before today's episode. What are some of the effects that you've experienced, or experiencing that in a new way before today's episode? What are some of the effects that you've experienced or struggles that you've experienced along the way? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I think it's impacted, like many aspects of my life, and there's been quite a few things that I have struggled with along the way, and some I've definitely overcome over the years and some I still am working on and think recovery is an ongoing lifelong process. But shame and stigma were really hard for me to overcome and it took a long time for me to accept and recognize everything I had been through or even admit the things that happened to me over the years, and even opening up to professionals about it was extremely difficult. I felt like what I'd been through wasn't bad enough to seek help, and I had a lot of self blame as well, too, about the things I'd been through, which is something I internally was conflicted about for a long time, because I knew I needed the help, but I also didn't feel worthy or like I needed it more than other people, if that makes sense and it sounds like when you say self-blame.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I just want to check in on that. When you say self-blame, I'm curious around the context blame for you in this.
Speaker 2:I think it was a lot of like why did I choose this guy? Why did I end up back in the situations that I'm in? How did I not see these things before they happened? How did I allow this into my life again like, how did I end up here and how did I like having that like self blame of I should have known better?
Speaker 1:I yeah, how did that impact you in your recovery then how does it impact you now?
Speaker 2:in my recovery and even now, like it definitely impacted the way I was able to love myself or to care for myself, especially within the beginning, or even reach out and ask for help.
Speaker 2:I think that it took a lot of courage and a lot of reassurance from the people around me that I needed the support and that I wasn't being selfish by taking it and reminding me that it was worth it and mattered was paramount to my kind of recovery because of that piece and how much I had that self-blame and as well as like even trusting people with my story and being able to share it, because I felt like the world would or people would see me in a light I didn't want to be seen and they would think of me in a way that like I was already thinking about myself and I would be judged or met with anger instead of grace. And it didn't turn out to be that way at all. When I seeked help, I got the support and love and grace that I needed. But I think that because I had so much self-hatred from the self-blame that I just I thought that's all like there was from my story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, that's so powerful. I can relate to so much of that On a topic you say shame and stigma related to sharing your story, and of course, you're sharing your story on this really broad. Who knows who's going to hear this? So right away, I come to what's changed and are you sure? Or about this episode, this podcast? Also, I want to throw in a disclaimer and a reminder to you that at any time that you change your mind, the episode can be deleted.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. How does?
Speaker 1:it feel to it's such a so big right, such a change from having those experiences and then being so boldly candid and transparent about your experiences today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it took a lot of work to get there. A lot of internal work, therapy, self-care, learning who I was again and finding myself past the trauma, as well as the domestic assault review team, has had a giant impact on my life overall and has shaped a lot of how I've been able to overcome things. I started on Dufferin-Caledon domestic assault review team after the first time. I was exploited and abused and I remained on it. I took some steps back when I was going through those things again, but I always was met with understanding and grace and welcoming arms and meeting me and allowing me to show up in the field in the way I was able to at the time and what I was ready for. And the coordinator of it, Laura she was a huge piece of that too, because she supported and encouraged me and encouraged my being.
Speaker 2:My recovery encouraged me to take steps back when I needed to and to come back when I was ready and to share the pieces that I was ready to at the times I was ready to and not rush it, which I think was huge as well and has become a healing aspect to me, to my story as well. I started with sharing anonymously on the domestic assault review team and giving my input more quietly or just doing smaller trainings and venues, and then eventually worked my way up to doing things like Heidi's Walk and sharing bigger pieces of my story and more vulnerability. And just seeing the way that people connect and respond to it has had a large part in that and being able to work through it on my own terms and to have the support of people who believe in me and care and see the things that maybe at some points in my life I couldn't see, and being willing to walk with me through those things until I got to the point where I could see it myself.
Speaker 1:I love that so much. I think that there's so much value in the space where I could just process at my own pace and I never thought about this in terms of a review panel or something which is more of like a work-based volunteer thing. I've always thought about it more in terms of like support circles. I personally had been a part of Dream Catchers, which is a program for survivors of sex trafficking ran by clinic in Manitoba and in its early days, when it first opened, it was the most amazing experience. We had lived experience counselors from BC who, like Ferry Winslow, ride or die, radical feminist, super transparent. She was with us. She wasn't, there was no ahead of us, behind us, she was with us.
Speaker 1:But that program, for me it was one of those. You can come and go as you please, right, you remember and you remember for life. And so I would stop for two years, three years, I wouldn't go. Number one I still had somebody who called regularly and checked in and was like hey, just checking to see how you're doing, just reminding you that there's group, not like annoyingly, but every few months. Or hey, we're all meeting for a barbecue, we'd love you to come. Or hey, we got some donations? Do you need anything? So, just like that sense of almost family, like you're connected and you don't have to do anything to be deserving. You don't have to do anything to be seen or loved or invited, you just have to be, and you could be in any way that you wanted.
Speaker 1:I would crash during the time that I had relationship breakdowns or started something new and scary because I hate freaking transitions I could go into that room and I could just sit there and cry.
Speaker 1:I didn't have to say a word. I could just sit there and cry and feel the energy of other women who were fighting to be their best selves, some who were in earlier stages of recovery than me, some who were in later stages of recovery than me. But the door was never closed and nobody ever looked at me and said oh my God, you have a social work degree. You shouldn't even be talking like that now or be feeling like that, because what I found is that the more that I healed and the more education that I got, the less people wanted to be a support in my life and the more they judged me for struggling. And that was a space where I could just process at my own pace and that is so important to our healing, and I love to know and to hear from you that can actually happen beyond a support circle. It can be something that's part of the culture of the spaces we're invited into.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah. It's been paramount to me, my recovery and to my journey and to have somebody who does the coordination and is on the team, like Laura, who may not necessarily be a survivor themselves but works in the field and meets us at that level and shows up as a peer and is able to encourage our strengths and to allow us to do it at our own pace, and also have a group of women who get it and understand and who all want to do the same thing and advocate and make change and understand the different levels of things that can come up or everybody's story is different like it's just to have that space. I've been incredibly lucky, lucky and incredibly grateful for it.
Speaker 1:If I were to ask you what's helped you most in your recovery, would you say that's it, or is there something else as well?
Speaker 2:I would say that, as well as like just connection and other survivors and the people who I love, who love me, and the professionals in my life and the connections that I've built throughout the recovery journey have been a huge part of that and, like survivors are other survivors are the ones that I have grown with and learned with and recovered with and been able to like, learn how to laugh and share joy again and to be happy, as well as the ones I've leaned on and cried to and been able to break down and be my most vulnerable self and be okay with that.
