The Big Take Back, Behind The Chapters: Chapter 1 Where Silence Begins

I walk through Chapter One of my memoir and tell the story behind the story, including the moment I learned that silence could feel safer than speaking. I connect childhood innocence, family love, and hidden trauma to the decision that finally sets me on the path of truth, healing, and taking my life back. 
• why early childhood experiences become the foundation for identity and self-worth 
• how one safe adult can change a child’s survival story 
• the way trauma can whisper and teach silence as protection 
• why resilience can coexist with unhealed wounds 
• choosing honesty and truth telling as the first step toward healing 
• reflective questions to help you find where your silence began 
• getting professional mental health support and naming the origin of trauma 
• writing The Big Take Back to help others break cycles and build legacies 

*Donate or get involved today by visiting www.thehousehumanity.org. 

*Pick up your copy of the big take back, What I Left Behind, by going to my website, www.b3unstoppable.net. 

If you're looking for a transformational speaker for your organization, you can visit that same website, www.b3unstoppable.net. 

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Transcript

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Opening Reflection And Charity Invite

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Some fires destroy you. Others rebuild you. From trauma to triumph, your pain can become your purpose. Let's become unstoppable.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Here at the House of Humanity, we serve those families in need. Donate or get involved today by visiting www.thehousehumanity.org. So join us because here at the House of Humanity, we are truly making a way.

Meet Dr. Bree And The Series

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Welcome to the very first chapter of The Big Take Back. Behind the chapters. I'm Dr. Bree and I am the author of The Big Take Back, What I Left Behind. And over these next several weeks, guys, I am going to be walking you through this book one chapter at a time, like we do in life, right? One day at a time, we're going to go one chapter at a time. And this book is not simply, this is not going, this show is not going to be simply like a book review, right? It's the story behind the story. And there are many things that I didn't get the chance to write in write in this book because I wanted, I didn't want the woe, uh woe is me, right? I just wanted to share my story and show you what I took back, what I left behind. I wanted to show you how my past does not define who I am today. So there are things that I wrote in these pages that I couldn't fully explain and print because some moments have to be spoken. Some of my emotions have to be felt. And with that being said, guys, I pray that this, that this, as I share my journey, you'll begin to recognize pieces of your own.

Childhood Innocence And Early Belonging

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So today's conversation, I want to go ahead and jump right on in with chapter one. And that's where the silence began. And I believe that every one of us, when we enter this world, we enter the world the same way. Each and every one of us, we arrive in innocence. Every child arrives in innocence. We don't know negativity, we don't know fear, we don't know failure, we don't know rejection, we don't know trauma, we don't even know shame. All we simply know and trust that as children, right? As children, we depend on the adults that are around us. We are dependent on them to teach us, right? We are dependent on them to teach us the way that we're supposed to go. We're dependent on them to teach us the way to go. We are dependent on them to teach us what love looks like, what safety feels like, and how to maneuver in this world around us. Because those early years become the foundation that we stand on for the rest of our lives. For the rest of our lives, what the foundation you teach your child is what they're going to carry through the rest of their lives. But so for me, from birth until about the age of nine years old, I the life I felt, uh it was full. It was uh I laughed freely, I played, I dreamed, I felt love. And I wasn't carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. You know, even though my parents were young and trying to figure out life themselves, life for me never skipped a beat. Um, what I recognized today is that my parents were doing the best they could with the life that they had. Now we're talking about way back in the 50s and the, you know, the um the latter part of the 40s, you know, 40, 49, uh, 50s and the 60s, right? They were doing the best they had with the life that they had, you know, the best they could with the life that they had. Life wasn't perfect growing up, you know. We all know that, you know, dating back all the all the way to slavery and the things that our parents and grandparents and great-great-grandparents and those before that we had to deal with a lot. Okay, so I know that no family is perfect. No family is perfect, not one, right? But yet, um, growing up through all these ages, and even in my own, there was still warmth, there was still laughter,

A Grandmother Who Felt Like Home

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um, there was still love. And I believe that one of the greatest gifts God God has ever given me was my grandmother, Rosalie Brown. Uh, she was my safe space. She was the one who made life look easy, like life was full of love. She helped my mother in raising me. Um, there was a that was the place with my grandmother where my heart could rest. I knew that I was in good hands with her. I was never hungry. I was, you know, she showed my mother um how to raise a child. Uh, with my grandmother, I always felt seen and protected. Unconditional love, unconditional love. She didn't have to fix everything around me. You know, she just was just doing being the best grandmother any little girl uh could have. And her presence alone remind reminded me that I mattered. She gave me so many things that she just instilled in me, like sit up with your back straight, cross your legs, you know, because I was I grew up as a Catholic schoolgirl, you know, grew up in the Baptist church, you know, I've grown up through many religions. And she would teach me how to be a young lady, how to speak, you know, how to sit, how to talk, you know. Um, she was just uh one amazing adult in my life. And looking back, I realized how powerful one safe adult can be in a child's life. Sometimes one person's love becomes the reason a child survives what they never should have experienced. And one thing my grandmother was strong. She was strong and she was resilient, and she just did not understand defeat. Okay, she didn't understand defeat. And like many children, I witnessed things I wasn't old enough to understand. Again, but children are always watching. That's what us as adults we need to recognize that children are always watching, they're always listening and absorbing. Even when adults we think that children aren't listening or they don't know what's happening, they probably are, guys. They are, you know, they probably are. And I'm speaking as a grown woman now, and at 55, I can go back and know even looking at my grandchildren. I'm like, they're such a sponge. Okay, they're such a sponge. They're seeing, they're hearing, and now they're observing everything. So we think that they don't know what's going on, but they really do. The problem is children don't often have the language, right, to explain what they're feeling. They don't know how to process confusion and they don't really uh know how to process pain. So as children, what do we do? We just simply carry it. We just simply keep carrying it throughout our time in our life. And what I didn't understand then, that uh what I understand now is I didn't realize that some experiences quietly change the way a child sees themselves. Uh, not it doesn't happen overnight, but it happens little by little, by time by time, by year by year, you know, when you keep witnessing things, it starts to change who you become. All of the innocence and

When Silence Becomes A Shield

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the fear and stuff starts to creep in. So when silence became my safety, it was one of the biggest lessons from this chapter. Um, is that trauma doesn't always come with flashing lights like a warning signal? You know, it doesn't go woo, woo, woo, you know, a warning. Here it comes. Sometimes trauma just whispers. It whisters, whispers real silently. Sometimes it settles quietly into your life, and sometimes it teaches you that staying silent is the safest thing you can do, right? When you're a little child, when you're a little girl, that little boy, you witness things and you be like, Oh, I think it's safer if I just be quiet. And that became my survival strategy was to be quiet and maybe I'll be okay. Silence, not because I didn't have a voice or anything, because you know, um, we I had a voice, but you know, back now I grew up in the 70s, right? And the big thing that um, if some of you remember was children are to be seen and not heard, you know, that was a big thing in my family. Children are to be seen, not heard. But because somewhere along the way, I learned that my voice didn't feel safe. You know, my voice didn't feel safe. Again, I grew up in love, you know. I always knew um that, you know, um my grandmother was love, you know, or you know, my mom wasn't too much around. So, but my my go-to person was granny and grandpa, you know. Uh grandpa was a quiet man, he always was a quiet man. But uh granny was that was my again, that was my God's gift. But um as a child, when you witness something as I had to start off witnessing, uh, fear is what silenced my voice. I was afraid, not of my grandparents or my mother. I was afraid and fearful of my abuser because he was, you know, the big cousin, the older cousin. So it was like, yeah, you know, you you better be quiet because, you know, you don't want to get beat up by him. You know, we um as children, we all, there were a few of us that lived with our grandmother. You know, she was the kid provider for us all. You know, again, our parents were young, doing what, you know, young parents do. And our grandmother was our, she was our caregiver. So, you know, um, we all stayed with her. So fear didn't come from those that loved me to start off. It came from someone with inside the family. And many people think that trauma only happens during a major event. Uh, sometimes trauma develops, develops through what isn't said or what isn't protected, right? Or what isn't explained, or maybe sometimes it what isn't healed. What I didn't understand then as a little girl is I thought adults knew everything. I thought that difficult seasons would simply just pass, right? And like, you know, I this this will blow over, or you know, just silence myself and maybe it won't happen again. But I believe that uh everyone experienced, I believe that everyone experienced life the way I did. Uh I didn't well not experience the life way I I just knew that I what I know now is that everybody has different different life situations. Okay. Um everybody has experienced life in their own way, but I didn't realize that what I was beginning to carry would follow me into adulthood, right? Even though we all came in the world one one way with innocence and everything, um, somewhere along the lake, the along the way, certain things, uh, trauma, like again, it doesn't ring a bell, but certain things just slowly creep into our lives. And I just didn't realize that I would carry some of those things uh into my adulthood, my my teenage years. I couldn't see how childhood uh shapes identity, how silence can grow into fear, or see how fear becomes a limitation. Because again, as a child, what is that? You know, what are these emotions? These are emotions that we begin to learn. But what I understand now today is this I understand something completely different. Uh, and one thing I will say is children are resilient. I was a resilient child. I was a resilient child, a resilient young adult, and a resilient adult. Uh, but resilience doesn't mean that we aren't wounded. Okay, a child may smile while silently carrying questions that no one has ever answered. A child can grow into an adult who functions what who functions very well because I was a well-functioning adult and I would act out sometimes, and the adults didn't understand it. And that was because I had some behind the scene things that I was carrying, you know. Um, but as an adult, we can function, there are adults out here every day that are functioning very well, still carrying unhealed pain and um just carrying that around with them every day. And healing

Choosing Truth Over Fear

SPEAKER_02 14:10

doesn't begin until the moment we stop pretending that nothing happened, and that's where um in um about the age of 53, I will take y'all into that. How I made that decision is you know, I'm gonna stop pretending that nothing happened. Like I want to heal because healing begins when we finally tell the truth. When we finally tell the truth and look at ourselves and say, hey, this has been happening to me. I don't want to do this anymore. This is it. I'm leaving it behind. So that's what I had to do. I had to tell the truth to myself and not bury it underneath things and act as though it didn't happen. So I left it behind. And one of the reasons that I wrote this book is because I made that decision. I made that decision that I refuse to carry silence anymore. No one will silence my voice or my feelings or my worth or my identity. I refuse to carry that silence into the next chapter of my life. I left behind belief that my story should stay hidden. Why should my story stay hidden? You know, that's just still continue. I don't want to be, I want to be able to live life and live it freely and abundantly, just as God commanded and said that I could. God said that I could have everything that I wanted. So why am I going to stay stuck in this realm of fear and pain and trauma? I don't want to stay there anymore. So I left behind that shame. I left behind pretending that everything was okay. I was searching, I knew that I needed some help. And that's what I want to tell people that you have to first make that decision because you can't get anywhere unless you make a decision for change. That is just the truth. That is the truth that I want everybody to know. And I left behind the fear of speaking my truth. Once you get rid of fear, you are unstoppable. You are unstoppable once you make that decision. That fear will no longer control your life. Okay, because silence may protect you temporarily. Silence is, I'm gonna say that again. Silence will only protect you temporarily. That is what sets you free, and that is the truth. The truth is what sets you free. It doesn't matter what anybody else thinks or whatever anybody's opinions are. That's the other thing. We have to stop worrying about what the next what the next person thinks or what somebody is gonna say or how they're gonna feel. I'm in the season of I don't care. You know, I don't care what you think about me. You can bring up my past. Somebody recently tried to hurt me with my past. I laughed at it, like, because that's how freedom works. When you free yourself, nobody can hurt you. Like, did you try to hurt me with something of my past? It just rolled off of me, rolled off of me. It was the funniest thing, and we have to learn that freedom. Uh, freedom for for us is something that we need to learn, that we need to take it back. Our freedom first, freedom of mind, freedom of self-worth. That way, nobody in fear, that way, nobody but nobody can take that away from you. And I want you

The Questions That Start Healing

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uh to reflect on this. If you are listening today, I want you to leave a few questions and uh leave you with a few questions. What message did you learn as a child? What message did you learn? Who made you feel safe? Who helped you shape your identity? And was there a moment where your silence became your protection? And what are you still carrying today? Because I would hate to have been through all of these things, these trials and tribulations in my life, and just keep being stuck in that that realm. I want to take y'all back to a movie. Now I'm a big uh Marvel comic, right? I'm a big Marvel comic. So I love all of Marvel. I'm a Marvel head. So if you watch Doctor Strange, right? Um, when he was in that time um, time warp or time circle where he said, Marmamu, you know, I've come to make uh I've come to bargain. And Marmamu, he found out how to take time and keep just rewinding it back. And you know, Marmamu got tired and he was like, Stop this, you know, what is this? Make it stop. Because Dr. Strange said he had all day. He had uh he, I mean, not that he had all day, but he had all the time in the world just to keep making his uh Marma uh Marmamu's uh life just a live in hell with just repeating the same thing of him killing him, right? So I look at that as why do I want to be stuck in the same hell over and over and over again? There has to be a way out of this cycle, right? I don't want to carry this world of pain, fear, and hurt no more. I want to, I always wanted to go back to life as a child before you know nine years and below. Like, why can I live a normal life? I just want to live a normal life. Like, why am I, you know, why am I still walking around in this circle of pain? I don't want to be here anymore. Okay, so ask yourself, what are you still carrying today that no belong no longer belongs in your future? Because I realized I wanted a future and a better life for my children, my grandchildren. So I can't stay here. I can't stay in this realm of hurt pain and confusion. I need to figure it out, but I need to make a decision that I'm gonna learn how to figure that out. And I know that these aren't easy questions. They aren't easy questions, but they're honest questions, right? They're honest questions, and healing is always a beginning with honesty. Healing begins with honesty. We have to be honest with ourselves, okay? We can go out there and lie to everybody else and make everybody else think what they want to think. You know, there are a lot of people out here that are suffering, but they are trying to make the world believe that they are okay and I'm this and I'm that. When on the inside, you are just you are torn up, you are destroyed. Get some help, make the decision to get some help. Don't stay stuck in that realm. Whatever hurts you, address it. Address it, be honest with yourself. So again, I I wrote this book, okay, about in chapter one. And chapter one isn't about blame, it's about understanding, it's about recognizing where the silence began so we can. Finally understand where healing begins. Right? That's what I had to do. I had to understand and recognize where the silence began for

Getting Help And Naming The Trauma

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me. I went to a place called the Rush Home in Chicago. Now, as you all know, I am a military veteran. And I suffered from a lot of things, even in my military career. It's like the trauma just kept going on and on and on and on. And then after retirement, you know, I faced so many things. And I just had to sit down. After losing my nephew, I lost a lot of people in my life. I know that you all have heard the story of me just the fear of losing people, uh, the fear of just um not being able to voice my pains and my trauma without people looking down on me or you know judging me. So I went to, I had when I lost my nephew, uh, my last nephew, I said, I can't do this no more because it was just totally destroying me. Uh, I felt a sense of I should have been there, I could have helped, I could have done something to help him because I um also suffer from mental health, so I can help somebody. I was always trying to help somebody, but I also had to realize that I had to help myself first. I had to help myself first before I can even begin to help anyone else. That was another way of being um, that was my way of staying in that stuck place, just pushing everything that I had going on to the side, just so I can help anybody else. But what good was that doing? That wasn't doing me any good because once something would happen, I would spiral back. Okay, something would happen, I would spiral back into my own ways of feeling helpless. So I made that decision. I made that decision to go get some help. And I went to the rush home, and um, I was in that program for a couple of weeks, and it was the best thing that I could have ever done. Uh, it helped me to go back in time and realize where did it begin? Where did the silence begin? And once I realized that that silence began as a little girl under the age of 12 being molested by a family member. That was the first silence of my voice. And because he was uh mean, he was older, I just I was I was in fear. That was my first time in fear. It made me to believe that things were my fault, and I I mean, I didn't even know what happened. Like, what just happened here? You know, I didn't understand it, but I knew that it was wrong, and now I'm gonna get in trouble too. That was the first step, that was the first introduction to my fear, and you know, um, that individual was a bully to me throughout the years of my life. Throughout again, guys, this book is a small read, but I again I started to write this big memoir just to put everything that happened to Dr. Bree in that book for the world to under finally understand me and why, you know, these things were happening. I also uh in the mind frame, but once I went to the

Writing For Survivors And Ending Cycles

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rush home, I was angry, y'all. I was angry. Like, why did this happen to me? Why nobody didn't save me? Right? And I was started, I'm gonna write and I'm gonna tell the world my story because I'm mad and I'm angry. But then I had to realize that for what? I don't want to write a book to let the world know what happened to me. We all have a story, you know. I didn't want to write the book because I want to just put people on blast and I'm angry at what happened to me. No, no, no, no. I thank God for being the head of my life because instead of being angry about what happened to me, I began to have the heart to help so it doesn't happen to anyone else. So I really wrote this book for people to read this book who have stories, who have pains, traumas, and fears, to read this book and recognize where did your silence begin? Where did it begin? Where did it all start from? Seek the mental help that you need. There's nothing wrong with seeking mental help. And I'm not talking about seeking it from, like we used to say in the military, the barracks lawyers that had no kind of uh uh training or no kind of professional training to help you. You know, now I am not, I will sit here and I will tell you, I am just a survivor of trauma. I am resilient and I am here to guide, lead, and help you. But at the end of the day, seek professional help to help you get through those times of trauma and pain and confusion and hurt and loss of identity so you can finally become and understand who you are and who God created you to be. And remember that you can only begin healing when you understand where the trauma originally came from. Okay. I thank you so much for spending this time with

Chapter Two Preview And Final CTAs

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me. Um, and if this conversation spoke to you today, I encourage you to pick up your copy of the big take back, what I left behind. Uh, it is a good, powerful, good, short, powerful read to get you on your way to living the your life and the purpose that God has, uh, the purpose that God has you in. Uh, we'll pick back up uh next time. We'll continue with chapter two, where we will begin exploring how patterns are formed and how or what we can experience early in life. Can how we can uh forgive me for me uh messing up my words, guys. In chapter two, we'll begin exploring, okay, how patterns are formed and how we can and how what we can we experience early in life can quite quietly shape the decisions we make later, right? And until next time, I want you to remember this. You cannot become who God called you to be while holding on to what broke you. I am Dr. Bree Charles, and this is has been a pleasure to go through the big take back behind the chapters, and I look forward to speaking with you again in chapter two. You all stay blessed. I thank you for joining me, and I'll see you on the other side.

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Daddy, there's water dripping on my face.

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I shouldn't have waited. I knew this was gonna happen. A new roof feels like you have a brand new house.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

I love my new roof. Awesome. We look like we have a new house.

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Pick up your copy of the big take back, What I Left Behind, by going to my website, www.b3unstoppable.net. And if you're looking for a transformational speaker for your organization, you can visit that same website, www.b3unstoppable.net. Until next time, this is Dr. Bree Charles reminding you it's time to take it back. And we're doing that by breaking cycles and building everlasting legacies.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

Some fires destroy you, others rebuild you. From trauma to triumph, your pain can become your purpose. Let's become unstoppable.