A Survivor’s Story Of Sexual Trauma

I share a story I’ve held close for more than 30 years, including childhood sexual abuse, rape, pregnancy, and adoption, and how silence from adults shaped my life. We name what trauma does to the body and relationships, then walk through what helped me rebuild self-trust and start healing without bypassing the truth.
• content warning for childhood sexual abuse, rape, pregnancy

If you need support right now, you can contact Rain, R-A-I-N-N, Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, 1-800-656-4673.
1-800-656-4673.
And there's a crisis text line called not called anything, it's a crisis text line, and it's 741-741.

Work With Me Individually (Texas Residents)

I offer trauma-informed therapy for high-achieving women navigating:

• Complex trauma
• Late-diagnosed ADHD or autism
• Nervous system dysregulation
• Relational pattern healing

If you’d prefer one-on-one support, book a free 15-minute consultation here:
http://linktr.ee/EmpoweringWellnessHub

Good Music for Healing

🎵 **Divine Woman Playlist (Apple Music):** https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/divine-woman/pl.u-leyl096uMoD885j

Transcript

Why I’m Sharing This

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Awaken Heart, a podcast for healing women who are navigating trauma, neurodivergence, and chronic stress. I'm Audan, a licensed professional counselor specializing in trauma recovery and late-diagnosed neurodivergent women navigating their unmasking journey. Today I'm sharing a story I've held tightly for at least 30, 31 years. It's not an easy story, but it's mine. And if you're a survivor, this is for you. This is my way of being as real, as not spiritually bypassing as possible. Because I can sit here and I can show up week after week and just preach to you, teach to you, help you understand how to heal. But I'm also a human that has experienced sexual trauma. And I think something that's skipped when it comes to healing is the sharing of the story. I think the more we share our stories, then maybe the more people will be held accountable. The more it's in not in people's faces, but the more it's talked about, not shunned, the better the growth can be. Okay, so content warning. This episode discusses childhood, sexual abuse, rape, and pregnancy. So please take care of yourself and stop listening if you need to. Taking a deep breath, getting ready for this episode. Because I am a survivor of rape, molestation, sexual harassment, coercion, manipulation, abuse. And at time and at the times of these incidents, no one cared. I was never outright told to get over it, but it was definitely implied. Adults went silent. Adults stayed silent. Adults continued like nothing happened. And honestly, most of these incidents, my adults in my family when I was little, don't even know about because they prove to not be safe people. My story today is a tough one. It's a story I've kept hidden, with only a handful of people knowing. My childhood backstory isn't pretty. I didn't grow up in a supportive, loving household. The memories I have of my mom are very few, and I remember her being tired and busy, too tired and too busy for me. When I was 13, she died in a car accident. That right there is enough to just spend take someone off the rocker for a little while, which it did. I lived in trauma for a while. And at that time, when I was with when my mom was alive, I lived with my mom, my two brothers, and stepdad. And my stepdad molested me from the age eight to the day that she died, almost nightly. So when my mom died, although a gigantic part of me died, I was relieved to no longer have to be around my stepdad. Because when my mom died, we moved in with my biological dad and stepmom. She didn't like me. She wasn't nice to me, but she didn't abuse me. So there's that. The neighborhood where my dad lived had a group of kids, school kids, and we were all became friends instantly. All the guys wanted to be friends with me, flirt with me. Most of them were a couple of years older than me. I'd never experienced anything like it before. One of the boys I started to like back, and I thought, what a wonderful thing to happen to me. Well, I've just lost my mom. Little did I know what was in store for me. I think I considered him my boyfriend. I don't know. Memories get fuzzy when it comes to details during all the traumatic times I've had. But one thing led to another, and I snuck him into my room one night thinking we were gonna hang out, maybe make out. We made out, before I knew it, we were having sex. And I can remember feeling like something wasn't right. Like that's not what I wanted. The last thing that I wanted was sex. It was quick and done, and he was out the window before I could even figure out what happened. Rumors started immediately about me. Months later, I realized at the age of 13 that I was pregnant. 13 and pregnant. No mom. Don't really know this dad character that I'm living with. Everyone's acting like my life should be okay and I shouldn't be sad or fucked up because I just lost my mom. I felt shameful, embarrassed, and I honestly just wanted to die. I hid it for so long. And even though my body showed signs, no one said anything. No one cared enough to notice. As long as I was quiet and stayed out of trouble, no one cared. I eventually had to tell someone. I told my stepmom and she told my dad, and they immediately took me to a lawyer to give the baby up for adoption because I refused my stepmom's offer of raising the baby herself. There was no fucking way I was going to let my dad and stepmom raise my baby. She had her son, and I saw how she parented. It wasn't happening. And I from a very young age knew I was leaving my family of origin as soon as I was able to, as soon as I turned 18. Like I said, rumors flew around school. I basically transferred to homeschooling and stayed inside so no one could see me. My family made it very clear to not tell anyone and to not let anyone see me pregnant. And life went on. I went back to school after having giving birth and giving the baby up for adoption. I endure the rumors and the stares and the people talking about me. I grew up. I pushed it down. I moved past it. I tried to talk to counselors, priests, religious leaders often about my trauma. And it was never taken seriously. I was told quite often that I was fine and there was nothing wrong with me. So I grew up. This is just how it was. All the pain, all the shame, all the weirdness around men, it was all there. And, you know, just been told that was normal. Get over it. So I grew up. I went in the military, got married, and had two kids, all the while wondering what happened to my first kid. Always wondering if he would ever seek me out, not knowing how to parent, and not knowing whether to tell my kids they had a brother somewhere or not. I chose not to tell them. 31 years later, the son I gave up for adoption reached out, and I had to face everything I'd buried. I had to tell my sons they have a brother. I had to explain to my firstborn why I gave him up, as if it wasn't obvious. I was, by the time I gave birth, I was 14, a child, a wounded, traumatized child who just lost her mother and had no one. To this day, no one in my family has asked me how I feel. If I'm okay about my story, if it's if it's it's like it's never happened. A shameful secret we don't speak of. I'm Voldemort. She who cannot be named. Sexual assault is not a one and done. It takes up a lot of space. And I don't want to breeze over the six years of constant molestation for my stepdad. I don't have much memory of my childhood based on experiences, vibes, and treatment I received. I get the feeling he wasn't the first, but he's the one I remember. He's the one who distorted my radar for healthy people, especially healthy men. The years I endured laid a blueprint of chaos, not trusting myself, not trusting others, but also trusting the wrong people, the wrong men, and searching for love and acceptance from unhealthy men. It set me up for a lifetime of doubt, insecurities, feelings of brokenness, feeling lost and shameful. And all the while, the family I had in my life, through all this, they saw all this happen to me. And all the while they constantly encouraged me to get married, to have kids. It's really, really fucking gross. And this is why I have this podcast, and this is why I'm a therapist. This is why I'm a life coach, and this is why I'm a yoga instructor. This is why I learn stuff every single day. At least several times a month, I try to learn something new so that I can help myself and help others in any way possible. And I spent, I did all this because I know what it's like to heal alone. I know how devastatingly hard it is to heal alone. I spent so many years centralizing men in my life, centralizing romance and partnership. Shit, I even centralized friendships that were not healthy. All for the sake of connection, all for the sake of feeling loved and chosen and safe. All the while neglecting myself, not advocating for myself, staying in places I knew I didn't belong. Healing is not easy. Social media makes healing look like easy work, but it's not. Healing comes in time, over time, and in its own time. I can remember feeling so numb for so long and wanting so badly to feel whole, to feel like enough, to feel worthy of good things. Self-help stuff can be helpful. Journaling and writing letters to myself, letters to the younger versions of me, letters to those who have harmed me helped. Therapy has done wonders for the methodology that reigns true for me and really genuinely helped me rewire old toxic, harmful beliefs with CPT, cognitive processing therapy, not to be confused with CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy. Time helped. Ending all toxic relationships helped. That included all my family of origin. Creating a life on my terms helped. Learning to advocate and not people please helped. Learning to love myself completely definitely helps day in and day out. Being my best friend is endlessly helpful. Creating routines and systems have helped me tremendously. Giving myself permission to be myself, whatever that looks like, wear what I want, do my hair the way that I want, not smile or be fake and bubbly anymore. That's all helped. Yoga saved me on so many levels. I did cord cutting ceremonies. I talked to the universe, light candles, do mirror work, I do somatic work. All that's helpful. Nervous system regulation and acknowledging my neurodivergence and honoring it has helped. If you can tell, it's a lot of things done over and over and over again. And it must be done with love, kindness, and compassion. I share all this to not say, look at me. I'm here to say that I am a voice of thousands that have endured in this in this season, this podcast. Part of my purpose is to be a voice that helps women feel safe, seen, and not alone. If you have your own experience or experiences, I want you to know that you aren't broken. And I'm so sorry you were sexually abused. No one deserves to be sexually abused or simply abused. Full fucking stop. You don't have to share on a large platform. Like you don't have to do this. But sharing your story in a safe space in therapy, in group therapy, and support groups with safe people is a way for us all to heal together. Our voices need to be louder. With no one arrested from the Epstein files and women and children being abused daily, we need to rise up in a sense. We need to be angry. And we need to express that anger with our words, actions, and our money. But I also understand if this is fire in me, like I understand that this fire in me may not be in you. You are allowed to stay numb, to be numbed, you are allowed to check out, and you are allowed to heal in ways that work for you. But I gotta be honest with you. I want to know every detail that's happening to anyone in the Epstein Files. I am so happy that the Rape Academy website was taken down. More things need to happen to the people in the Epstein Files. These huge systems that are in place to harm women, children, and men and boys need to be dismantled. And I think it starts with us sharing our story, with us not taking it anymore, with us not holding the shame, with us giving the shame to the people that deserve it. I'm not here to bash people, I'm not here to name names in a sense, but I'm here to say this has happened to me, this happens to my fellow women all the time, one and three. Have a story. Have a sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual trauma story. And if that's the case, if that's the reality, which it is, then we need to be louder. We need to take back what was taken from us, and that is our voice, that is our space, so that men can no longer just act this way. That's my story, my dears. That's me, that's part of my story. You know, at the beginning, there were a lot of things I listed that I endured, and this is just one blip. But these events that I explained have really shaped my life, have really shaped my mental. And it took a long time to get out from under that because finding a therapist, a good therapist, is really hard. It's like dating. You got to try them out, try them out, try them out until you find another one. I have done it so many times. It's very hard. Hence another reason I became a therapist, because I was like, I know I can do this, I know people deserve better. And that's what I did. This is me. And if any part of this resonated with you, if you're carrying your own story, your own shame, your own silence, I want you to know you are not alone, you're not broken, and healing is possible, it is attainable. It's not easy, it's not quick, but it's possible, and you deserve it. And the only person that's gonna give you what you deserve is you. One action step right now, excuse me, one action step right now is to acknowledge the pain, the hurt, the trauma, the experience in writing. Write it all out. Get some of these emotions outside of you. Be angry, be sad, be fearful, be anxious, be whatever comes up without judgment, and put your thoughts on paper. If you need support right now, you can call you can contact Rain, R-A-I-N-N, Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, 1-800-656-4673. 1-800-656-4673. And there's a crisis text line called not called anything, it's a crisis text line, and it's 741-741. And someone will talk to you, give you coping skills, give you support, give you validation. That was 741-741 to the crisis text line. And if you're ready to work with me one-on-one, all the info is in the show notes. But before we close today, I want to acknowledge something. If you've listened to this entire episode, your body may feel a lot of different things right now. Maybe you feel emotional, angry, heavy, numb. Maybe part of you is wondering why this experience or these experiences still take up some space all these years later. And I want to say it again: trauma is not one and done. It lives in the body, in the nervous system, in relationships, in the way we move through the world. But so does healing. And healing is not about pretending it didn't happen. It's not about becoming positive enough. It's not about forcing forgiveness. Excuse me, and it's definitely not about getting over it. Healing is learning how to stay with yourself with love, compassion, and gentleness in the places you used to abandon yourself. If you take one thing from today's episode, let it be this. What happened to you matters, and what happened to you was not your fault. And if you're ready for one small action, it's the riding and out. Let the anger, the grief, the confusion come. Not to re-traumatize yourself, but to stop carrying all of it alone inside your body. And if this resonated with you, please know that you do not have to heal in isolation. Safe therapy, safe community, safe support group, safe friendships, these things matter. They're out there. Being witness matters. Your voice matters. Thank you so much for letting me share your story, my letting me share my story with you. I I don't know how this will be received. I it's something I've toiled over when I went, when I started creating the sexual drama season and setting out the outline. I felt I needed to hold space for my own healing, for my own voice, to not live in shame or to keep it quiet and stay superficial. So I wanted to go beyond the surface level of healing and share my experience. Just so that we can have a community of people that can share safely, that know that you're safe here, that this is not just therapy jargon or spiritual bypassing. This is real shit. And I think we need to share. If we were in a retreat right now, and we were all sitting around a beautiful home relaxing or doing group, we would share. I would now pass the baton to someone else. So now I'm passing the baton to you. Open your notebook and share your story. I know how scared these conversations are, and I know how much courage it takes to even listen. Next week we'll continue the healing season series as we explore what happens when healing happens alone. I'm gonna take Friday off this week. I have some things going on this week. So this week is just the personal share, no bonus episode this Friday. But next week we'll get right back into it with episodes on Wednesdays and bonus episodes on Fridays. So until then, be gentle with yourself. Move slowly and remember you are not broken. You survived, and now you deserve the chance to heal. May your healing ripple outward, bringing a little more softness and freedom to the world. Protect your awakened heart, and I'll see you soon.