Ana’s Story: A Daughter's Journey to Freedom

What happens when love meets readiness, and freedom finally finds its moment?
In this powerful first episode of a new season, Heather Davis opens a new chapter of The Free Advantage with real stories, shared in real time.

This episode introduces the new video format and the beginning of the Journey to Freedom conversations. Heather sits down with her daughter, Ana (Ana Davis-Futch), to share their deeply personal story of struggle, resilience, recovery, and the long road toward healing. 

Together, they explore what it means to choose willingness, reclaim worth, and step into freedom when the timing is finally right.

✨The beginning of a new season centered on real stories and real recovery
✨Ana’s journey through addiction, abuse, and repeated cycles of leaving safety
✨The role of self-worth and how chasing love can lead us away from ourselves
✨The power of willingness and personal responsibility in healing
✨Why support systems matter, but change must come from within

This conversation is raw, honest, and filled with hope for anyone walking their own journey toward freedom.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello, friends, and welcome back to The Free Advantage. I'm your host, Heather Davis, and I want to invite you into a new season of real stories, real recovery, and real freedom. This show has always been about self-discovery, authenticity, and recovering a life of freedom. And this year, we are taking that journey together in a deeper way. You're gonna hear raw, honest conversations with people walking this path in real time. Stories of growth, healing, purpose, and becoming whole. You'll also hear from me as I reflect on these themes that rise from the stories, answer your questions, and offer small, meaningful takeaways that you can carry back into your week. This is not just a podcast you listen to. It's a place you belong where you are part of the conversation. Welcome back, friends. I'm Heather Davis, and this is the Free Advantage podcast. I am so excited that y'all are joining in because this year we're doing something different. We're going live with video. I'm so excited to be able to see you guys and for y'all to see me face to face. This year we are starting out, we're going to be doing real stories with real people from all over. Um, I want you to hear their testimonies, where they've come from, where they're going through, and their journey to freedom. And today I want to start off with my very first guest, and I'm very excited about this. This is my daughter, Anna. She is in town. She is joining me all the way from Florida. She's been visiting for a while and super excited to have you.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

I'm excited to be here. Um, A, because I'm excited to see y'all in general, but excited to just be a part to get to share because this is a journey that I've been watching and I have been living for over 10 years now.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

It's been a while. It's been a while. It's been a while. Um, Anna came to us about 10 years ago, right? It's been about 10 years. So she's been with us uh for about 10 years since 2015. 11. We're about 11. We're about 11. Um, she came to us in a very unconventional way. Um she was 18 when she entered into our lives. And over the past few years, we've gotten to know Anna very well, and she's lived with us. And um it was 2022 that we my husband and I adopted her. She we did an adult adoption and she became a part of our lives, and it's been a very long and wonderful journey.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

So I mean, that's something that we had been talking about well beforehand anyway, and just kind of waiting, I guess, for the right moment and for us to go through the stuff that we were going through. I still had a lot, a lot of healing to still go through before I was really ready to take a lot of those steps that I needed. But I uh to this day, it's like second nature to me. I'm like, I don't know what I was doing.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Well, we all go through that. We all go through those times where we don't know what we're doing. I even in this moment right here, um, getting ready to prepare for this video um has been crazy. I think I've been sitting on this couch for almost two hours just going, what is happening? Um, setting up everything. So no, everything ever nobody knows what they're doing. We just kind of jump in and and try to learn along the way. And it's so it is with our growth. Um, I'm super excited to have Anna on here. She's walked a very long journey. She has um started her healing journey many, many years ago and still on it. Still on it, as we all are. And so I'm wanted to have her on and I wanted her to share her story. Um, I'm excited for you to be my very first guest. I'm excited to be your very first guest. Yeah, it's warming my mama heart. So I'm excited. No, no, we we can't. It's too early.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

It is too early for us to get into the too early for tears. Well, we say that, but that's that's that's just us being authentic. It is, it is. You you get a you get around people who are emotionally available and who are so close to how you are in your healing and in your journey. And when you have conversations like this, I mean that's just that's just par for the course with us.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

It is par for the course. Laughter and tears. Laughter and tears, lots of laughter and tears. Correct. So yeah, so I'm glad. I'm glad you're here. I'm excited. I keep saying I'm excited a lot, but it's true. I'm very, very excited.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

We're gonna say it at least 37 more times before the end. Minimum.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Um, so I would like for you to start for me, please, if you would just kind of tell everybody and share how you came to this place, how you came to where you and I met, and how you kind of ended into our family and what your life was like that a little bit before, and and then carrying on and how you where we just why you are where you're at right now.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

I will banter. All right. Well, well, anyways, I've already been introduced, but my name is Anastasia Davis. I met y'all in well, I met my parents in 2015. It was the year I was supposed to graduate high school. And coming from a very interesting situation with my biological family, it's still a subject that we bring up today. It's still something that we have conversations about. You know, it took me a long time to get over a lot of the things that I had gone through when I was younger. And I met them in a really, in a really dark place, and in a place where I was not quite an adult. I wanted to be an adult, but I was also forced to be an adult way too early. And there's a lot that we had to do, and they kind of took me in. I had met um, well, now my brother, but I had met their son and kind of immediately became friends with everybody, kind of got my way in, and y'all took me in to let me finish my senior year. I was I was failing all of my classes. I was well, I mean, you you want the raw. I was on drugs. I was pretty much everything. I was as low as I could possibly be. And then coming into a space where it was an entire family of people who wanted to help me and who saw who I was as a person before I even knew who I was as a person. But taking me in, letting me finish my senior year, and making that separation with people who I thought were my guardians who were okay with just giving me to strangers at the time, giving the reins over.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

And I mean, y'all had that conversation. We did. I I remember I think the biggest thing I remember about during that time when you first came to us that no matter what kind of conversation we were having, you were always very excited to be there. You were very, very soft-spoken. Even though we're talking about how soft-spoken you still are right now. Was I? Yeah. Oh well. But when you were young, when you were young, when you were younger when you first came in, it was really bad. Yeah, you could hardly understand you. You mumbled a lot. Um, you couldn't look me in the eye. Um, it was very difficult. And I think I knew then it was very difficult for you. We were trying to really shrink yourself, not be seen, not be heard, not stand out. And it was really hard to watch. You were very such a beautiful, beautiful person. And and we knew immediately, right away, that you needed help. And it's hard knowing when the right time is to step in and when not to step in. And um, you know, but we knew you were an adult, so you know, we offered, we offered for you to come and stay with us, and we spoke to your biological father at the time, and he was um definitely in a way he was ready to kind of let go of that situation. To let go of the reins person. He was, right? You know, so and so you did. So you came and you were with us. I'm so thankful, respectfully.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

I'm I'm so thankful that that decision, whether at the time it really wasn't his decision at all, but it was something that y'all wanted to have that conversation with. And I'm so glad that that decision was made because me taking that step with or without him to be able to move out and to experience something different from what I had always lived, was the best, pretty much outside of my birth, like was the best thing that I could have ever done. And now my husband, but yes, and now you're married.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

So you've come a long way.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

We've come a long way. I was as she said, with me getting adopted in 2022 and from meeting them in 2015, like that's a long period of time where they have seen the ups, the downs, everything. So after I think 2015, moving forward, I I moved in and out a lot. Um, I didn't quite know who I was as a person. And it took me a long time to get to that place where I was comfortable doing a lot of those things. And I'm so thankful for y'all for your patience, for the growth, for the talks, the chats, the lessons, the time, the effort that you guys put in because I think about where I was at and how many bad decisions I made and going from one city to the next because I wanted to get out and I thought I knew best. And I was broken. I was a broken teenager who wasn't quite ready to step out of being a lost little 16-year-old, pretty much, is what I was I was stunted for. And I'm thinking now about all the places that I've been. And oh my god. I'm I'm surprised I'm alive, let's be honest.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Yeah. It was tough. I I remember when you left the first time, I was very unhappy. I was very unhappy. I think you blocked me that. I did. I was like, I blocked you at everything. I'm like, I don't want to talk, I can't, I can't.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

And I wasn't a daughter at that point. I was just someone who y'all had taken in. So we're not going to be able to do it.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

We had taken you in, and to us, you were already our daughter. We were already taking care of you. We already uh had that strong connection for you, but it was hard. It's hard to watch you go off knowing that the decisions you were making weren't the right ones. They weren't not even if they were right or wrong, they weren't good ones for you. You were not in safe positions, and then even that happened a couple of times. And the last the last major time was when we did come back and see you again. It had been really rough. And can you you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, which which one when you ended up which one when you ended up in Philadelphia.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Oh, talking about just how hard, how hard it really got. You want to talk about the raw. So I one of the times that we moved out, it was it was not a good situation with me being there. This was still a point where I had a lot of growing to do. I was still in a really dark place. Like even though I had taken steps to get better, there was still a lot of me, the old me that I was hanging on to. And it was it was time for me to go. And at that point, that's kind of what I needed. There was a lot of times where me going and doing the things I needed to do were all different growing points. But I had started it and I had moved with my biological aunt, who was like my best friend growing up. I had always taken, you know, from my biological mom, I would always go over to my aunt's house and I would always want to be with her and I would always want to hang out with her. But I think about all the crazy situations that she put me in. Um abusive, drug-filled houses when I was really, really young. Like she was really hardcore on drugs, and I didn't learn a lot of those things because I wasn't so aware until I was older, but I was gonna move back in with her up in Ohio, and I did. And I think I still have some of the pictures from the the bruises that I had gotten, and some of like I I was just I just saw a video of it. I think just uh not too recently, where we were celebrating something, and I'm just taking a whole bottle of Jaegermeister and we're just drinking it in the kitchen. And I I was like, I hate Jaegermeister, it's disgusting. Um but yeah, I had taken that first step and I had just gone on uh I think I remember you dropping me off at the Greyhound bus, and I had taken it up all the way up to Ohio to go move in because I thought that's where I wanted to be, and I moved back in with family, and it was I mean, again, uh just a terrible, terrible decision. And it was I was lonely, I was hurting, I missed y'all, and I didn't quite know what to do. So I did what I knew best, and that was chasing love, and that was chasing something else that wasn't what I had because I was still trying to fill this hole and fill this void.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Which is very normal. It's a very normal thing to do when you get into a place where you're finding yourself, you have low self-worth, your self-esteem is low, and no confidence. You've been in abusive situations since you were very little. Uh, chasing love is a very normal response, right? You were chasing that thing that gives you makes you feel wanted. Makes you feel wanted and needed, and uh, and that's what you did.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

I was really good at that too, just so we're clear. Um, that was a vice for me. It is that is that the is that the right term? Yeah. Me using a vice. That was that was one of my vices. Um and even up until my now husband and stuff like that, like I was even worried, like, am I still running around the same things? But I I did because of the relationships that my biological mom had had and a lot of those things, those are things that I fell to. Those are things that I was attracted to, those are things that I felt prey to was getting myself in situations where I where my worth wasn't appreciated because that's what I thought I deserved. And that took a really long time. And that's still something I I struggle with to this day. But after Ohio, I had I had found somebody in Pennsylvania. He was way too young for me, by the way, just so we're clear. But I didn't know that at first. And it was a really bad black male situation. I had decided, well, this guy is it. I'm gonna move up there and I'm gonna be with him, and it's gonna get me out of my situation in Ohio. And I picked up everything again and I had moved. I see you, I see you tearing up.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Yeah. It's it was a hard time. It was a hard time for me and your dad a lot. It was knowing, not knowing where you were and not knowing what was happening, but knowing that it wasn't good.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

No, I and again, these are just like I'm glad that I have the Snapchat videos and the videos and my memories, but I also hate looking back at them because I think about my time up there and I was blackmailed and I worked at the pharmacy at the time, and these are people that were heavy into drugs and other things like that, and they wanted me to get them opioids and prescriptions and do a lot of really, really illegal things that I refused to, by the way, just so we're clear. Um, but wanting me to do things that were so against my moral code, I you see, I'm missing a tooth now. That's where that came from as well. Like it was it was a terrible situation. I wasn't even staying in the same room as the person that I was with. I had to stay out on the couch and like everything was moved. Um, by the time everyone got up, I was just living in this really awful space. Um, again, I got right back onto drugs. I was smoking. I had videos of us, like I think I was smoking pot at the time because they had it. I was also drunk at the same time. I have videos of us dancing in the kitchen and I I can't even see myself.

SPEAKER_02 15:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

When you look back, it's hard, yeah. It it is hard. It is hard when you see yourself in your lowest points, but I'm glad that I have a lot of those too, because it's something to look back on and remind myself about how far I've come. And I thought I grew a lot then, but when you go through a lot of the self-healing and you look back and you take the time, I I'm so thankful that even though so much time has passed, that this time has passed because I'm way better than what I was. But I was it was it had come to a point. I think I was there for a year. I think I was up in Pennsylvania for a year. And it wasn't easy for you to get out. No. Um, that was a whole thing. Um, I I called you. I I called you and I was like, I'm that's it. I'm well, no, I didn't. It was close. I've told you that after I got out, but I I pretty much had to devise a plan because there was no me leaving, me even trying to get a car when a car wasn't supposed to be mine. It was the keys were locked in a way to where I couldn't ever get them. I wasn't allowed to leave in certain places that were far enough away where there wasn't a handle on me. We lived close enough to the job that I worked at at this little pharmacy. Um I could walk there. And even though I had a car, I wasn't allowed to use the car, so I had to walk. And I my coworkers knew the times that I would come in with bruises and black eyes, and they would be like, So, how'd you get that? They knew better. Yeah. And that's hard. And I was like, Oh, you know, I I make every excuse in the book. They're not stupid. And most time people aren't, because they would come in and they knew the family that I lived with. Yeah. Um man, I'm just I'm just over here rambling. But no, continue. You're doing great. I'm doing great. Thank you. I I'm thinking about it, and this older guy, I wish I could remember his name, but he worked with me. He was kind of an in-between from the front of the store back to the pharmacy, and he knew me every single day. He was such a he was such a nice man. He was such a a nice guy. But when I came in and I told my work, I was like, I have to go. And they understood. There wasn't anything about them where they were like, Oh, I can't believe you're leaving. We need you here. And they're like, No, I get it. You need to get out. These are things that they had been trying to tell me anyway, but I wasn't in that place. And we devised a plan. I took my last paycheck, I bought a plane ticket, I had him with me and my stuff, and he drove me to the airport. He drove me to the airport. I was supposed to go to the work that day, and I just I pretty much, since everybody was gone and I didn't have the car, I took my little suitcase to work with me. I walked with my little with my own.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

I mean, it's a miracle that you got out of there. I mean, thinking how the the control and the abuse, yes, um, and not letting wanting like you couldn't go anywhere, you couldn't do anywhere having to hide and sneak just to get a plane ticket to get to work. To I mean, you how long did you live at the airport before your flight? A week it was a week.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

It was right a yeah, a week. So I pretty much with my paycheck, I bought what I could afford. And at the time that was uh a week in advance or whatever, because I wanted to make sure that I had enough money to live too, and after paying everything else. But I had taken my my big Disney, my big red suitcase, and I packed it up as as best as I could, whatever was left behind. I mean, uh in my mind it was just stuff, and I was I got really good at moving from place to place. Took it to work, he took me to the airport, and they tried to come to the airport and contact me. While I was at the airport, I started getting videos of the bunny that I had gotten for him because he really wanted a bunny, how it had had a seizure and died, how the fish that I had left behind, I was sending, I was there was getting pictures of them dead and all this other stuff, and all this stuff that they could use to help put grievances on me or to make me feel awful and a good person. And yeah, to scare me, absolutely scare you into coming back and like almost like in a threatening type of way. Yes, and I did. I uh I stayed in the airport for a week before my flight, and what sucks is you can't get food in uh like in the food court areas before you get past TSA, and you can't get past TSA the day before your flight. At least that's how it was at that airport, right? Let me tell you how expensive it was living on like I I did a couple days where I got like the little snack chips or like they had one little hot dog stand or something like that that you had access to. And that's expensive, just so we're clear. Uh, not very nutritious either. No. I I think I got I think I had a bird poop on me as well while I was there. It was so bad. Um we'll never again do anything like that in my life. But you want to talk about the lowest. I didn't and you still didn't call us. You want to know why I didn't want to, I didn't want to, I didn't know how to gap that bridge because I had never been used to having people that I could legitimately rely on. I didn't have in my heart, I didn't know what that looked like. Even though you had opened it up and you had made yourself available, and there was no point where I would have called and you would have turned me away. In my heart, I didn't know those things. And it took a lot of work with me and a lot of more years, even past that, for us to work to be able to be in that place.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

But when you finally made it out, you went back to your biological mother. I did. I didn't that week. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

I washed my hair there. I I had I met a nice lady while I was there, and she she fed me at the airport. She was so nice, and I'm I'm still in contact with her today. She prayed for me and she was like, I can tell someone who's running away. She's like, You needed it though. Whatever it was, God God found me in the place where I was at, and He He met me. He met me and He sent people for me to be able to get out, to take care of you. He took care of you along your way. Oh my God, the amount of times he's probably like a very angry father, like, I can't believe you're doing what you're doing. But I mean, that's stuff that y'all had to deal with too. But yeah, I I moved from from that space and I moved back in with my biological mom and my stepdad, which that also right back to those were people that were alcoholics. Yeah. And we were going to the bar all the time. That was my first time really going to a bar in my adult age because I didn't really like alcohol like that. And I remember they would feed me drink after drink, and then we would go home. I'd be sitting in the back of the car just trying to focus on breathing and staying alive because I was so out of whatever it was. Nothing had changed. It was still the same situations that it was, and it I think it was harder.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

Well, when was the last time you had been with them? Because you had left them to go live with your dad. It had been a long time because of the situation she was in.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

I so I had gone back and forth a lot between my biological mom and my biological dad, but right before high school, right after middle school, I think is the last time I had really lived with her. I moved in with my biological dad. I had my so my my freshman, my sophomore, my junior year with him at one school in Indiana. Then we moved down to Georgia, my senior year of high school. That's when I met y'all. Yeah. So yeah, then you add a couple years after that. I had really, man, I'm I'm just thinking about it. Don't I hadn't really gotten a chance. I had already kind of cut a lot of those bridges where I didn't know her, she didn't know me. I had also started to grow and they had regressed, is what it felt like. So that was that was already a big, a big point for me. And I was I was in an uncomfortable situation. So I started looking for love again. I started looking for anything that could fill that void. And I met someone in Florida because that's where she lived. Um, that also turned into just more bad situations after bad situations, by so we're clear. But in the process of me finding this other person, I had finally found something safe. Again, that made me feel confident to get out of the situation that I was in because I was really good at putting myself in bad situations, but I wasn't really great at getting myself out of them, other than finding just the right excuse the the term, balls to the wall way to get it Well, I know how that goes.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

I know how that goes. You may not be my blood, but I've walked that same road. I I a lot of myself did the same things, right? It's the same mountain, right? We kind of went around the same mountain. Um my trials, my trials were different. Um, but I did. I searched for love in all of the wrong places as well for many, many, many, many years, running from one situation to the next. Um, and it didn't, it doesn't help, right? You you you're real good at getting yourself out of a bad situation and right into another one. Yep. Um and it and it was, and of course, and it's the nature of things is that as we do that, right? When we are suffering within ourselves, as we continue to to run from one thing to the next, you always seem to find the next worst thing. Yes. Um, that is at least was my experience, that it it was somehow worse than it was before. Um, you know, it just kind of you didn't feel like it could get worse, but it did.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

And each time it was, it was worse.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

Um because your pain is escalating, right? Your pain is escalating, it's looking for a way out. That's why you're running, right? You're looking for a way out, and you're gonna escalate until you hit a pivot point, right? Yep. Right. So, okay, so what continue?

SPEAKER_01 25:10

What happened? Um we I I had already found somebody else in Florida and that was kind of filling the void. I was already struggling with a lot of stuff from my biological mom and my stepdad having a lot of those traumas because I I mean he was very abusive. He was he was a drunk, he was very abusive. She had fallen into it, and it doesn't matter how many times I wanted her to be out of it, it just it wasn't that way. Now, granted, he's not as bad. He's not like he used to be, but I know him for what he was, and that was not something I was comfortable being around. And I knew I wanted to get out. We were already having issues. They weren't happy with the fact that I was there. Um, they liked seeing that I had grown, but they didn't like me being in their space because that messed with his routine and the things that they had. Right. It changed the element of control too. Um it did. It did because I wasn't I wasn't the same as what I used to be. I wasn't a scared little girl that could just, you know, rah. Do the things I want you to do. And I I think that that point really put it into perspective for me. And I think that was a big tie for me not wanting in and kind of that, you know, that was one of the several like instances that I had had in my life that had really uh put a growth path for me. Um, and I did, and I I got a hold of you again, and I was like, because I don't know how it was, but I knew you were in Florida.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

It was so weird.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

You talk about it, it's a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

So your dad and I he had gotten a job in Florida, and so we were traveling a lot back and forth between Florida and Georgia during that time. Um, and I had found out because you had been talking to um our son, you've been talking to Austin, and he had let me know. He's like, Oh, you know, she's in Florida. She's in Florida, and I was like, Oh my gosh. And I knew that your biological parent mother lived in St. Pete. So she wasn't very far away from where we were at all. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I'm like, you're literally like 10 minutes from me. Maybe. And so I I I messaged you on Facebook. You reached out. I reached out to you.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

You did that bridge that I was on. I did.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

I I was like, I couldn't, I couldn't stand knowing that you were just so close and that you were you were back, and I just knowing that things were like crazy. So excuse me. So I messaged you and you messaged me back, and I'm like, I want to come pick you up. And I did. So I came and got you. We went and had lunch. We were sitting out by the beach. We went I took you, I took you to the beach. Like, I don't know how you'd lived in Florida for as long as you had up until that point, and you'd never been and seen the water. So I was like, oh my goodness. So we went to the beach. So and it was just like we had picked up right where we had left off. And it was it was so good to see you, but I knew things were not It was hard, it was heavy. They were not well that you were not.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

They weren't uh and you didn't even really get to really fully understand or grasp the gravity of the things that I had put myself through. And I say that for a reason because I made a lot of those decisions and put myself through. Oh, and you hadn't told me.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

No, and she didn't share she didn't quite share right away yet, but but it took time, right? So that was in and that was in 2017. Was that in 2017? That was in 2017.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Yeah, don't ask me about the dates.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

There's only a couple dates that I really know because there was a lot in between. It was in 2017, and then you did. You had found another guy, you had gone and lived with him for a while. And then before you know it, um in this was probably in June of 2018. So a whole year had gone by and you were just kind of living and doing things. You're we were messaging back and forth, and I was getting the everything is wonderful, everything is great. Yeah, no, it was not great. Until it wasn't, until it wasn't, and then I was starting to get the phone calls, like I think it was so May, June of 2018. I was starting to get phone calls where like, oh okay, things are not well, right? And it really was I'm finally starting, things are not well enough that I I'm having to reach out.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

I was in contact, but I hadn't moved back in with y'all yet. And when you want to talk about jumping from one bad situation to the next, I had gone from one alcoholic to another. Now, the person I was with wasn't an alcoholic, but his mother was. Yeah. Was constantly on apps, had random guys coming over all the time, and would, I mean, not to is it sounds bad when I say it out loud, but also this is just this is the raw. This is what I I had to go through. She would have people come in that she would meet from probably like four or five different dating apps, and would essentially just let them sleep with her as long as she would cook for them when they came and as long as they brought her alcohol. Yeah. We were going to the store almost every single day, and she would go through a two-liter, like a two-liter thing of vodka every single day. Right. So this is the environment y'all were in. Yes. Because you moved in with him and his mom. Yes, with him and his mom. And the situations with him, I was just in another place. I think so much of myself and so much in my heart, I had gotten a taste of what it was like to grow. I had gotten a taste of what it was like to be in an environment where people want the best for you, where they talk to you about everything, and I was not in that environment. And every place I went, I was searching for that again. I was searching for something that was real and something that was authentic.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Um well, up until this point, so you had left in let's see, you had left in 2016. Was it? And then you came back for just a couple of months, and then you left again. So it was right, it's same in the same year. So 2016, so you haven't been back since 2016. Conversating with us for it was almost a year. Like a lot happened within like between 2016 and 2017, and then 2018. So we'd been in contact for about another year before you started really going, okay, right? And where I'm still having those conversations with you. We're talking over.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

Over the phone, and I'm telling you some of the things I'm going through, and you're like, what are you doing? You're like, get out. Not exactly like that, but kind of like get out.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

What are you doing? What are you doing? This isn't this isn't for you. You you're worth so much more. You're worth so much more, and you deserve better. And watching you continue to go down the same paths over and over again, knowing that it's destroying you. It was hard.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

And that's not something that you're just gonna be able to teach somebody. And and I I hate to say that you have to go through a lot of hard things to I'm hoping, I'm hoping that if you have your own journey, that you're not choosing to take the the wildest, most hardest roads to get to your point. But sometimes sometimes you need it. Sometimes you need to go through a lot of the hard things to really put to yourself into perspective about what it is that you want, where you want to be. But I'm I'm gonna be honest, I'm thankful. I'm so thankful that I had y'all as a support system because it was a lot of years and a lot of chats, and you going like, no, get out of there. I was so unhappy again, and even with the person that I was with and how terrible of a situation it was. But you know what? I clung on to that. And one of the friends we had made, several of the friends that we had made, knew that I was in a bad situation. Um, I had we had secretly in private, like it was just getting worse and worse. I I had devised a plan again, something that wouldn't put me in jeopardy, but something that would get me out of a situation. And in secret, again, I we had made plans and I had someone drive all the way down from Tennessee to come and pick me up. Didn't even tell him until he was there. Yeah. And I had I had just packed whatever I could again, and he was it was, I want to say amicable. There was nothing else that he could do. Right. But I was like, I'm leaving, and I did. And that person picked me up from there and drove me all the way to your house. Yep. And you showed up at my front door. Yep. And you know what? Those people that I had made friends with that don't get me wrong, I'm glad that they got me out of the situation. But several years past that, um, one of those friends is someone who ended up becoming my catalyst, someone who really uh again, it was someone I decided to be with, and it was just always filling this void. Oh my god, talking about it now, putting them all together in the timeline.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

And then you came. Then you came to stay. You so that was in July. In July of 2018, you came home. And you've been home ever since. Pretty much. You've been home ever since. So it was kind of crazy. It it was a whirlwind of emotions. Our house was full. Yes. We had several other um young adults living with us at the time who were finding their own journey and walking their own own walk and learning and and healing. It was a lot, it was a lot, it was a lot for all of us. The house was falling apart at the time. Oh my god, the flood. So think about the house flooded, great flood of it was it was a lot. There was a lot going on during that time. Um, but then Austin left for boot camp. He joined the Navy, and then a um, and then his girlfriend at the time had joined. And so they were out, and then it was just you and us for a long time. And that's really when the work started. It was really when the work started.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

Now, don't get me wrong, there's a lot that they had done and they had sat me down with that y'all had taken the time. We had done books, other things that you and I was just not in that place. Those are not things that I wanted. You want to talk about growth? Like I needed to be. You did it.

SPEAKER_00 34:35

I you fought us every step of the way. All of the inner work that it really takes.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

Now, it wasn't in a mean, like malicious no, I don't want it thing. I just didn't, I didn't know. No, it's in your quiet, subtle defiance. Correct. What a what is my the day of difficult demands? That's my yes, that was my birthday. The day of difficult demand. God, is it true? Um but us going through a lot of the things that we had gone through and me just one bad scenario after the other, it really I I keep I keep saying that it put it into perspective for me, but it really did. It put it into perspective about where I wanted to be and what things I really needed. And I, for my journey, I had to put myself through the ringer. I I had to really show myself that this isn't the life that I wanted anymore. This isn't what I wanted for myself. And until you make that conscious decision, when you make that effort, it's not something that you can how am I trying to word this? Like that is that is what starts changing in you to be able to want the growth, to want to do better.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

It is. So no matter how many uh things I say, no matter how many things I teach, no how much I preach, to books, I can read everything. How much coaching I've done, how much mentoring, it doesn't matter. The thing is, is that everybody you can know a lot of stuff because you knew, right? I did know. But you have to get to a place where you're willing to to do it for yourself, right? And then if you have because we all have everything that we need within us. We all have everything we need within us to find ourselves, to to be our truest selves, to find our way, to find our way back to God, to heal.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

And the other people are those support, right? Our coaches, our mentors, our parents, our friends, you know, they are the support that helps us through those things. But we each have to find that place within ourselves to be willing to do the work. And until you're there, you know it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 36:45

That's the thing. You have to make a conscious effort, like in your heart of all things, and you're like, this is what I want, and I'm going to be willing to put in the effort. Now that effort's going to be different for different people. Like, there's a lot of people that you can change drastically in a year. And obviously, I haven't gotten to the place that I'm at in now 10 years. So change and that growth looks different for different people.

SPEAKER_00 37:09

Well, don't don't give yourself no credit because from the from the beginning, right? It's it's gradual. It's the gradual baby steps from the day we first met you and to the the moment that we're sitting here on this couch right now. Like it is the far we've gotten, right? It's from there. It's been a far, it's a journey where none of us grow overnight, none of us grow in a day. There are those things that are that in an instant, right? We have those awakenings within us that change something that creates such a big impact. Sometimes it's the long road, the long journey of the harder things that we have to walk through. You know, I try to teach everybody learn smarter, not harder, right? Like, because we you know, we talk about working that way, but I really to me I'm like if other people have walked the path, right? And they have learned the things for you, why why why would we why would we do it the hard way? And the truth is because we sometimes we just have to.

SPEAKER_01 38:08

Um I I do it, every dot I do it, you do it, get it. Everybody does everyone in this family has been through, and we talk about it a lot, how everyone's story is completely different, but there's stuff that my dad has gone through that no normal human should have ever gone through, and how terrible it was, and the things that I have gone through, and the abuse, and I've you know, sexual assault, and a lot of things that were from my childhood, and your marriages, and the the torment that you've gone through with a lot of people that have been in your life, and that growth, raw, and you know, it doesn't matter how bad of things that you've been through, it doesn't matter what place you're in. There is never an incorrect time to start your growth. There's never a I'm too far gone or I'm I've been through too much. It's in your heart when you say I I want better for myself and I want to do better, like that is that is the time.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

That is the time, yes. I agree. And it that's what it also comes back down is to your willingness, right? Yes, you know. Uh one of my biggest things is this I can and I will. And it's because we all can do it. Nobody, nobody is past any point of any kind of return. We are all able, right? Yes, but we're not all willing. And it is it is being willing to say, okay, I need help. Okay, I'm ready. Okay, I want more, I want something different, and and I'm willing to do what it takes to do it. Yes, because it's not easy. It wasn't easy for you. It's not, by the way. It's not, it's not for any of us. You know, there are easy things, right? Um, you know, I talk about the risky path, and that is what it is. When we start out with that willingness, it it feels very, very scary just to make that step. It is. We're so comfortable in our pain, we're so comfortable in our suffering that it becomes this warm blanket that we cloak ourselves in, not realizing it is what is suffocating us. And letting go of that feels very risky. It feels very dangerous. It does. But it is it is imperative that we take that first step. It is very imperative we take that first step.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

When you're used to living in chaos, when you're used to living in danger, when you're used to living in just those situations that are toxic, like that's a really good word for it. Let's be honest. Like when you're in a toxic scenario and when you're out of it, you forget how to breathe clean air. You forget how to exist in an environment that is not what it is. Just just, I mean, exactly how you said it. That's how it is.

SPEAKER_00 40:43

That's that's really it's a really fantastic way to put it. Yeah, when you're living in to it's forgetting how to breathe clean air. It you forget your body's not accustomed to it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:55

You're not accustomed to being in in a space where where it's healthy. Just like if you if you get a goldfish, I don't know, like and this is a really weird analogy to put it. Like you get the goldfish, they're living in the really, really dirty fish tanks and stuff like that, and you change their water, it kill them. It kills them. It's true. It's true. I want to cry thinking about that now that we're sitting here talking about it, because that is that is so true for a lot of people. And you're just so used to your fish tank and how dirty it is and how terrible it is and how awful that you're taking care of, or the people around you, and how they're not noticing that you're in this scenario and how hard it is to pull yourself out. You have to slowly acclimate yourself. Yes. You do, yeah. You do baby steps.

SPEAKER_00 41:41

You become overwhelmed, right? You become overwhelmed with the good, the the clean, the the the healthy, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:47

And unless your heart's ready, I'm not worthy for those things either. That's that's a hard place. Now, that was the hard place for me.

SPEAKER_00 41:53

That doesn't mean that's a hard place for everybody else, but but it is when it comes to worth though, when it a lot of us, I think more more of us than than we know are dealing with worth issues. I think it a lot of it comes back down to to how we see ourselves, how we feel about ourselves, how we what we feel like we actually deserve and our value. And when you're in that place, you we give ourselves what we really believe we deserve and what we really believe that we're worth. And that's why we live in these toxic situations.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

That's that that's also the hard part because you know I'm I am thankful that I had y'all because had I not had you, had I not had that voice of reason to be a catalyst for me, to be someone on the outside that was telling me when I was doing things wrong or when I was not in a good scenario, I don't I there's no way that I would have been in any of the same, like any of the place that I am now. I was so ready to just be done with every like the first year that I had met y'all, I I wanted to end it all. I didn't even want to be alive anymore, which is, you know, hard to think. Now, thinking about just a little like 17, 18-year-old that just didn't want to live and didn't want life. How would you not want life? But you know what? That's such a reality for so many people who don't have that support system, who are in environments where they don't have anyone who cares about their tank. Yeah. And those are those resources are available for to you for people who want to reach out for it, but but that willingness is where it comes back. It's like I want those things, and there's people that would give it in a heartbeat. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

You're not alone, knowing you're not alone. There is someone out there who cares, who sees you, who can hear you, and finding that is not as difficult as you think it is. I know that it feels like it. It felt like it for you, even oh my god, even when you had somebody there, it still felt hard. It still felt hard.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

Um But leaning into people who are who feel like I don't Want to say side characters to the story, if you will, but from if you don't believe in God, I I do. I am I am very believing in the fact that He has always been a guardian angel for me and the people that He has sent and trickled in through my life to to to just be there for me. Um, whenever I was living over in in Kennesaw, do you remember that old my old neighbor later? She texted me every year after that, and let me tell you, like she was the sweetest, most kind person. And sometimes you need those random people that you meet in your life to to be a grounding.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

Well, and that was such a nice thing. I think God really did send you somebody special there because that goes right back into your story. You had been with us for a while, you had been doing really well um since 2018, and you finally you had gotten a job, you were working, you were doing so well. We got you had your car, it was such a wonderful thing. You had already been in another relationship in and out that was a healthy relationship. Another one. And another one. Um, but you also had learned to that relationship that there were things that you weren't ready for, and you moved on from that, and it was all in a very healthy way.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

That was that was that was something that I had put myself in a situation where I was in control in that relationship. And I don't want to say in the whole relationship, but with yourself. Yes, with myself. I was in control. I was able to start having conversations that I would have normally never had. Um and also to set boundaries, that was something I really learned after that year was setting boundaries for myself. Do I still struggle? Absolutely. Um but it became more accessible in myself to be able to do those things. And I did, and I set those boundaries and that relationship ended. But it was it was not like the others. It was something where I had made a clear, a clear line in the sand of something that I wanted and something that wasn't being met or something that I didn't like. And I I didn't have to sneak into to fiddle my way into, you know, and as anything say he went the way of the buffalo. What is that? The bow way. I've never heard that before.

SPEAKER_00 46:11

He went bye-bye. He just went by. Yes, he did. And then you did. You moved out on your own, you got your own place, you were doing really well. Um, and then and then things took a little bit of a turn for you. They did. They did.

SPEAKER_01 46:26

Oh man, I'm trying to think. Okay, so here we go. We're we're caught up. You know, I'm I'm really starting a lot of that healing process. I had to go through a lot of my trials, a lot of my tribulations, uh, everything that I needed to go through to be able to be in a place where I was starting to become willing. And I remember me being out of that house. That's when I made that call to y'all, and we decided that we were we were gonna go through with the adoption. I was at that place, you guys were standing in the garage. I think I have screenshots of our of our call or whatever. Yes. Um I had sent a really, a really long message to my biological mother that pretty much just went through everything, everything I had gone through. I felt like I hadn't been vindicated or I felt like I needed to trying to pretty much her trying to reach out again and having those conversations, like, where did it all go wrong? And I'm like, you know what? This is where it went wrong. And not in a blaming teenager, like, uh, uh, I hate you. Yeah. It was you hurt me. You hurt me, your decisions hurt me. These are the things that I went through, and these are the things that you allowed. Especially with her relationship, you know, with my stepdad at the time. And like these are the things that you pretty much put me through. And instead of an apology, instead of a realization, instead of something that would something that you should say when someone is opening up to you about a lot of those things. That's not what I got in the case. It was reconciliation. Nothing. It was after everything, it was a do what you do need to do to heal. And just the same thing with my biological dad. It was letting go of the reins, and I was like, you know what, that's what I needed. I needed in my heart, I needed to have something that was a catalyst for that. Everything needs a catalyst in your life, all your decisions, uh, the points in your life, like there is going to be something that is going to move you forward, and that was it. That was the last tie I think that I really had to who I was before. And when that did, I I sent you guys the message and I was like, I did it. And even though there wasn't really a lot of times where I had had those conversations with her, where I had still had a relationship, I think that being the last just the last it?

SPEAKER_00 48:42

Yeah. I mean, you're you had been abandoned since you were very, very young by your biological parents. And you came to us that way. I did. You, even though you may have been living in your aunt's home and your dad was there, there was there was none of that. You were completely alone, you were completely abandoned, you were not just teaching myself how to live. Yeah, you were not being taken care of physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, in any form. Um you had wanted, you had wanted us to adopt you for a while, and we wanted that. But we took some time because we wanted to make sure like you you had a family. Well, I was an adult at that point too. You were an adult, and we wanted to make sure that if there was space for healing, if there was space for that forgiveness and reconciliation with them, that we left that room there. And we wanted you to find that on your own. We wanted you to come to that place for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 49:43

You had to I had to cross those bridges and I had to decide what was happening with it. It could not be a decision that we made.

SPEAKER_00 49:50

Because that's what it would have been. I think that's a good thing. Because when you want to do it, like adoption is it's a it's a serious thing, right? You were you were cutting ties with that family. There, you uh is for all intents and purposes, they don't exist illegally anymore, right? So that was a big decision, and that was one that you had to come to, really come to and understand on your own.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

That was not something that y'all could have been like because that wouldn't have been good for anybody had we gone through the adoption at any earlier point, had we done any of the other things, and had I not been truly ready to let go of those things, I would have done exactly what I would have done any other time, where I would have ran back and looked for something else, and I wouldn't have felt like there could have been a point where I could have looked at you and I could have said it was your fault and that you broke that relationship when in all reality it wasn't. And that's that's a hard play. You know, there's people that will look on it from the outside and be like, I can't believe she did this and I abandon everybody, and I'm still to this day, I'm still getting random messages. I think even just uh two months ago, random people that are finding ways back in to guilt and to guilt, yeah. And like, how dare you? I'm sorry, how dare I heal? How dare I find better for myself? And it's that's a really hard place to be. Not saying everyone will ever go through a situation where, you know, you're getting rid of family and how that looks, and that's not as extreme. Because there are some people who do have really good family and good connections.

SPEAKER_00 51:19

It's just it's hard, but there are a lot of people who do experience the same things as you do, and it's okay. You know, I want to I'm always telling you and anybody else out there that it is okay to walk away. Yes, it is okay to walk away, and it's not your fault. It's not your guilt, it's not your burden to carry. Um and it's hard when people keep trying to constantly put that on you, right? Um to remind you of of trying to remind and put it on you that somehow this is your fault that I didn't do what I was supposed to do. And and it's not true, especially when you were a child um and all you did was just live.

SPEAKER_01 52:06

I lived, I took care. I you know, something we had talked about here recently with me being back is things that I used to do a lot for my biological family and how much I cooked and took care of things and kind of had this way more adult wifely role than I should have had at the age that I was at living with, you know, and I lost a lot of those things. I didn't want to clean, I didn't want to take care of myself. I didn't know how to take care of myself, by the way. Like I never took care of anything on my body either. Like the core essentials of who I should have been as a person, as a human being, as someone normal, I wasn't able to do. And now coming into a place where I've really worked and I've really taken the time to heal, that has given me the confidence to take care of myself and to also want to go back and do the things that I used to do, like to cook. I I love it. But that's what I used to love to do before people took advantage of those things. And that's the same for for people who have art who are into music or into anything that could have been taken away creatively.

SPEAKER_00 53:11

Well, and you were that way. You are a phenomenal artist.

SPEAKER_02 53:14

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 53:14

You know, you're an extremely creative human being, but I mean, art that is your that is what you do. It is it is your job, it is your is your world. And we watched that slowly be just deteriorated even in your own mind that you weren't even worth what you were doing. The things that you were capable of, you couldn't see your worth in yourself in that way. And so you're never gonna make it as an artist, you'll never make money. Right, you didn't. And even after you had moved out and you had found your your you're finding yourself again, you kind of slip back into the old ways of living, right? And it goes to show you too, right? Because you had moved out of the support system, you were on your own. We weren't we're in contact almost every day, but we're not in that same space, right? The support looks a little different, the accountability looked a lot different. Yes, yes, it did. And you having to have it for yourself, right? And and um and then you found yourself in another relationship.

SPEAKER_01 54:10

Yes. Uh with the friend of who I was living with in in Florida, you know, the same people who got me out of that bad situation and I Yeah, way back when.

SPEAKER_00 54:19

So you went back to an It went back to another situation.

SPEAKER_01 54:22

I will say, I wouldn't even say fully gone back because that was a thing, like I think I had talked to them on and off, and I had really I had trauma bonded really hard to that group and it ended up circ, you know, cycling back. I had already I think I had already dated him a small period of time. It was long distance when I was with y'all before I went. Yeah. And with myself, and that's what that's where I ended up going back again. Um let me tell you, most of my stuff, most of my trauma, that's relationships. Like that is that is a hundred percent my vice. Um thank god I'm not in that situation now, but I had kept falling back to the same things. I kept falling back to what was familiar because that is that is what grief does to you. That is what growth you keep wanting to go back to the same ponds and the same areas and you building those habits and building those the the accountability. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:21

And I remember, I remember when I first learned of y'all were talking again and thinking, why are we why are we going back? Why are we involved with the same people? Um, and because you had changed so much, you were like, oh, everything's different. They've changed, it's gonna be different this time. And in excuse me, knowing knowing that it wasn't, um, and having to watch you and having to let you do it. And and it was not, wasn't there's a lot that you had to let me do. I do. It wasn't it wasn't fun. Um, and we were worried, right? But we knew that this was something that you you had to do.

SPEAKER_01 55:59

You had to do something something that you just said, um Oh my god, I'm drawing a blank. It's okay. Um, but you had uh okay, where I was, I had changed. I had grown and not realizing that they hadn't was hard for me because I had put myself in a in in in a bad situation. And I I I say bad situation, I've said that a lot, but in this time it was different because I had grown, but I hadn't fully grasped that they hadn't. And I think that's also the same for a lot of other people where like for people who go to rehab or go and do a lot of work for themselves, and then they come back to, you know, their house or the family that they're living with or wherever it is that they were living before, and putting yourself back into situations where growth isn't apparent, where nothing else has changed, it's that is the quickest, easiest, like just most raw way to bring you back down to where you were.

SPEAKER_00 56:58

Well, it's so it's perfect for it's the perfect way for relapse, right? Yes, and not just we're not just talking relapse and addictions, relapsing in our old patterns, our old behaviors, our old mindsets, ways of thinking. Um, you know, I talk a lot about recovery, and it's not just recovery from addictions, it's recovering from life, from our traumas, from the things that we have experienced in life. And yes, um, you know, it's you put yourself back into situations with certain things and people and places and where where growth has not happened, were you, it is the easiest way for you to relapse right back into those same old things. And that's what happened. That's difficult.

SPEAKER_01 57:35

That's difficult for people who have made ties in years, and if that's a relationship, if that's your family, like that's again, that just comes into the willingness. That comes into what are you willing to to have to cut to be able to live again. And that looks different for so many different people, but when you start really making the growth, and I I say really making the growth because all of it's growth. Every every bit of everything that I have gone through has been growth. But for me, those steps, really seeing from the outside what those situations were, that took me a long time to get rid of it. It did, it did, and even though I had recognized it, I still wasn't in that place where I was ready to make it. But you were not, I hadn't made that decision where I was ready to cut those ties because I surely they they'll see how good I'm doing, yeah, and they're gonna be in my space.

SPEAKER_00 58:25

And well, you can change. You can change them, you can help them. Um I can change him. Don't worry. You can, and you didn't. And and it it and it escalated. It escalated. I went from this is when you had such a perfect life for yourself. And I'm not perfect, perfect, but for you, you were so happy. Like you had created this life.

SPEAKER_01 58:49

Yes, between all of the the times that we had had conversations, between all the healing, between all of the everything that I had gone through, I had finally, I was like, I'm ready. And I think genuinely I was ready. I think in my heart, I had really made that that choice that I wanted better for myself. But I yeah, my the places that I was putting myself weren't in that. So I had moved from my own space, I had moved in with uh your dad, you know, or papa for a little bit to kind of transition. I had I had moved from my job at the vet clinic where I was living with y'all, and I had gotten an online job uh for NDA reasons. I can't speak, but I, you know, I did ticket work for a really big company, and it was great. I was making great money. I we were about to move back into office, so we had to move closer to where the office was going to be. Right. This is after COVID. Yes, yes, and this is where I fell into what was comfortable because the same person who I had wanted nothing to do with because of how bad they had hurt me, you know, the the friend of the people who got me out, and it was like I'm better, and I f I was like, oh, I'm so in love. I realize why I fell in love with you in the first place, and those connections come back, that familiarity. Familiarity. Yes. And I let him into my world again right at the peak of everything that I had done. I had my own car that I was paying for and that I had gotten. Um we had just moved and I did all of the work to get myself, um, him, which was unbeknownst to to y'all when we were moving, and then two of my coworkers, because you know, it was gonna be easier. If we were all gonna be moving into office, we might as well just get an apartment together. Um and we did, and we got an apartment together. So I had all of all the stuff was under my name. We had uh I had my apartment, I had my car, I had a really stable job, I had furniture I had saved up, which for me is a lot. Like that was that was big for me. It was big for you. Um And these are things you had provided for yourself. Yes, you had uh between my growth and between y'all and the encouragement or whatever, there was a lot of people that were like, oh, you chose them for the money or whatever. Let me tell you, that is that is not why, okay. I am rich in in healing, I'm rich in life and love. But you know, I as many times as I had moved and I had just decided it's just stuff and I had given everything away and I was so used to living out of suitcases now having desks and shelves and a bed. Let me tell you, that was important for me. I had really made it and I had gone out and I got new kitchen stuff, and I had, I was so proud of this space. I was so proud you were. You really were. And you know what? That that's how I know in my heart that I was really ready for better things, but he wasn't. And I brought him into my space, and I worked so hard to keep us afloat. And from other circumstances, from him not working and me just allowing somebody else to ruin what I had built, I ended up getting I I didn't want to pay my car because I wanted us to have a roof. So my car ended up getting towed. We got the eviction notices because I had I was trying to rely on other people, and that I could only rely on myself, unfortunately, because of the situation. I didn't really know the people that I was living with. Um, my car got repo'd. We got eviction notices, and I mean, you lose your car, you're about to lose your house and everything. I was depressed. My tickets went down, my job went down, and then next thing you know, I got fired. I got fired, I think, a couple days after I lost my car. Yeah, it was a rough, it was rough. It was really rough, and I was like, oh God, here we go again. I'm I'm putting myself into something, and I'm like, I don't think I'm ever gonna get out of it. That's really where I saw that mountain where I started seeing how much when that fall for me, that was that was close. That was really close to what it was, and I think that's what started that catalyst for me because I'm like, I I saw how much I was able to do, and not how much I had, because again, it is still stuff, you can get stuff, but how much you started to see what you were capable of that I was starting to see what I was capable of and just to watch it all be ripped away. That was God's way of saying you need there's something else here, it's sucking everything from you. And that's what we needed, and you know what that image.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:22

There was still that thing in you. There was still that thing that needed to be held in you that you you could not see yet, right? Yes, and you still had something to learn. I did.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:33

And you know what? As terrible of a situation it was, he was still he was still my boyfriend at the time. He was still we were in it together because we had we had already been through. Yes. And I left my desk, I left all the furniture. We got a top loader for the car, I packed up everything that I could again, and God was I familiar with taking whatever I thought I could and just leaving whatever else because and I was back in it again, and we moved from Georgia from that spot or whatever, since I had lost everything. We had his little shitty car that was excuse the language, sorry. Um but we had had this little car that like was not legal, should not have made it down as far as it did.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:16

It was a miracle because we had we had moved, we had moved to Florida by this point, and this was in uh 2024.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:25

No, was it very beginning? It must have been the beginning. It was it was right around February when I lost my job. And we got that top loader. I I looked for like roommates.com, like anything that I could to just find something there that was stable, and we were like, we need to be closer. I wanted to be closer to y'all, but also we just needed to move, and that was not the place where we were gonna find it. And thankfully, um we we met a girl named Amber, and she was going to open up her home to us. And even though we hadn't met her, we just kind of had to take that risk. Yeah. We had to take that leap, and we did, and we packed everything in the car. Um, I I left I left all my artwork in that in that apartment too, like all of my old original paintings that I had had, all of my supplies, like you name it, so many things got left at that apartment and got left at that house. But it really was a place where you kind of just lost it all.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:22

That that's why I said that is the start of the catalyst. I really lost everything that I had built.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:28

You lost it all. I remember once y'all got to Florida coming and helping y'all unpack at the girl's house and realizing. Oh, yeah. I remember you were there to help me unpack it. We were there, and there was nothing left. And it was kind of funny because the things that you still had was still a bunch of the like old, torn, kind of the trash that was left over. And I'm like, well, where is this? Where is that? And you're just like, it's it's gone. And it's kind of funny. How when you start walking out of a situation like that, the things that you did grab, the things that you did take, were the things that had no real value. Yep. And the things that had value got left behind. And I think that's a that's that's a that says a lot. It says a lot.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:14

It does. That says a lot about where I was at, even though I was ready and I saw what I was capable of, but I still that was Oh how quickly in a snap that you just revert right back. You go right back to the trauma. I was scared. I was everything was so crumbling apart around me, and that's where your core, that's where the things that you really, really deep down need to work through. Like that's when that stuff comes out is when you're in those situations.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

Yeah. And it took a while. It did. And I think really by the end of that year. That, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:48

So uh the end of the years, that that's that's really where it settled for me because I had already started making those things and the same troubles that we were having in the other house, and him not working, and me supporting, and the lies, and just really getting to know who he was deep down, where I had started to build that growth and where he hadn't.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:09

It became undeniable. Yes. He eventually got to a place where you you could no longer deny. It continued happening. You couldn't justify it anymore.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:18

And from one house to another, and we were about to lose that. We couldn't keep up with such a short, such a small rent payment. Uh and it wasn't a matter of how much I worked, it wasn't a matter of what we both did. It was also where the place I was at. I wasn't in a place where I was ready to support myself again because I had just lost it all. And I was like, what's the point? What's the point about me putting in all this effort if there's if you're in the world?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:41

No, because you get back into that place where you don't care anymore, right? You don't the self-worth starts to deteriorate again, and you get back into that that place and you were depressed. I was.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:51

I was depressed. Um and having that conversation with you again where it turned from everything's great to it's not, it's not changing, it's not getting better. And I'm like, I I can't. And they opened up their home to me, uh, to both of us. I think that this is also the last time, by the way, that was really like, I can't believe I'm moving in with them again. And I'm gonna be honest, I didn't want to, not because I didn't want to move in with y'all, but in my mind, I really was at that place where I was ready to just but still it was that one thing that I was hanging on to, and that was him, and I kind of needed that. And we we both moved in with you, and we had a place where we were gonna be able to get up on our feet again. And I learned really quickly through that, it wasn't me. It was, don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming everything on on him, but uh a lot of the things that we had gone through, that was that extra weight that I didn't need. And he he lied to y'all, you know, we were supposed to be doing better for ourselves. And when I realized that I was ready to be doing better, and when I was doing better and he wasn't, and he was falling, and he was falling hard because that wasn't where he wanted to be. No, it wasn't. Like y'all provided everything that you normally do, and you're like, We're gonna help you, we're gonna get better, uh, let me take you to work, let me do all of these other things since you don't have anything for yourself. And you did that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:18

It at that time you had really dug in, right? You you had I think after everything had lost you had lost everything, and then you were in this phase. I think you knew. I I I could see it on you, but it's still not wanting to come to the admittance of, oh wow, right? I'm really, I really messed up this time, right? I was I was stuck. You were stuck, and you wanted him to be what I wanted to do. What you did wanted him to be, and he just wasn't. And we knew at that time, even even in spite of what we knew against our wishes, we did not want to bring him in, but we knew that if we did not accept him. Yes, that's if we knew that if we did not accept your decisions in this, that we could have lost you forever. And so we did. And and when he came and y'all, we did everything that we could possibly do, and he made his bed. You know, he did. There were lies, and he he found himself in another space.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:21

And it was at that time. That's that was the catal that was me. I think it wasn't so much as much as he could have done to me, it didn't make anything else, but when he lied to you, when he disrespected you, and when I felt that, that was like, I can't believe you. How dare you? And I think about how much I had gone through and how much you guys had you had opened up yourselves, even past how much it was.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:45

It really was, it really was the catalyst for you. You were kind of you can do whatever you want to me, but how dare you do that to my parents? That's right. That's exactly what it was.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:53

And I remember dad being on the call because he was gone. He went to go to go see Andrew to to go, I think, hang out with him when it all happened. And I think I was screaming, and you hadn't I don't know if I was screaming, let's be honest.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:05

I'm not, but I was well, I've never seen you really angry before, and that was the first time and it was hard, it was a tough time, but you made you made the decisions to choose yourself. You know, you you had really set a full boundary at that point with him, and you chose you. There was yeah, there was an ultimatum there, and they all said it's in the world.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:28

I needed it, I needed that ultimatum where it was like he's no longer welcome here. And it's either you're going with him and that's your decision, or you're staying here and you're cutting those ties. And let me tell you, as in love as I thought I was, and as whatever, like I I needed those things to happen because that gave me the courage and that gave me the ability to be like, no, I no, what I'm not giving you guys up. And I want to say it was a no-brainer for me, but it wasn't. I cried and sobbed and fought so hard that night with him leaving because it was it was quick. When I say it was quick, it was quick, and all the rug had been taken out underneath me again. And I thought the last thing of what I had from all of my trauma, from me losing everything and us going through all of this stuff, like it had just been taken away. And I'm like, that's the last thing I had, but you know what? That was the last thing that was holding me down. And I was I really needed that, and that's hard. And don't get me wrong, I don't wish anything bad on him. I hope he grows, and I hope he he also gets to a place where he can absolutely wanted that for him then. I know you did, and that's the thing is that that's how y'all's heart is. You are so open to help those, even if they can't see it themselves, those are the things that you always want for people. Even if they don't want it, you still want it. Even if they haven't met them, I know you guys still want those things for people.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:55

It's hard because you know, I understand that people are the way they are because they're hurt and that they need help, they need healing, and and they all have we all have our walks. And if I can be that support for somebody so they can find that, that's what my hope is to be. But it is coming to that place where it's very hard to understand not everybody wants that. No, and that's that's hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:22

I think that that I had finally realized what you guys had been feeling. That's where that also came into perspective for me because as much as I want someone else to be better, and as much as I realize that they can be better, and then when you see that they're not making the effort or they're not in that space, that's really hard. And I think that was the first time that I had really seen that from my perspective, even though I had been with people who I definitely could have seen could have been better, whatever, I didn't really I didn't really understand that right until that point. And that that was the catalyst for me. I was like thinking about how I had lost everything, and I really kind of lost myself again. But let me tell you that when they say like the the rainbow is the most brightest, like after the rain, or it's you know, bright it's brightest of dawn and all that other stuff, it's those metaphors are said for a reason. You go through some of the hardest things that you go through, and you think that there's nothing else that could break you, and or you lost what you think is most important to you. And sometimes the growth that comes after that is the most beautiful, most freeing, most wonderful thing that you can ever experience. And that's exactly what it was is I really it took me a little bit. I want to say it took me a bit. Like we went out to dinner that night where it was just you and me, and I'm I'm I'm crying. We're sitting at a at a little like dive bar or something like that for chicken tenders, and and you're like, it's okay. And you let me be me, and I had no problem just letting it all out. But the growth that came after that was a lot quicker than what I thought it would have been.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:03

It's because you let go. Yes, you let go of it, right? You're not still trying to hang on to those things that have really that last little bit, it's that last little bit that we hang on to that we're so afraid to let go of that if we let go of it, we're gonna lose everything. And the truth is, is that not until we let go of it will we actually gain everything. Yes. Um, and and it's what happened, and you did you, you, you, your growth, your healing took off exponentially. Um I really literally within the next year, you were you had jobs, you moved across the country.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:41

Here we go, by the way. So I had met somebody again, but this time was different. And this time was I didn't want to find anybody. This person found me. And when you know, when they're like, when you stop looking, that's usually when stuff finds you. I didn't want to believe that. I'm like, oh, I want love, I want marriage. I didn't, let's be honest. I I didn't want those things. You had a sour taste in your mouth. I did, dude. I didn't want it, and I told him that too when I met him. And you know what? We were talking about opportunities. It was getting close to a point where I needed to move out. And I I was ready. I wanted to be out on my own. I was I was in that place where that's I'm like, okay, I'm I'm ready. I I want those things for myself again. And you got so scared. You had every right to be scared. I remember us having that conversation, and it was hard. It was a hard conversation that we had like right outside my bedroom door by the bathroom. I remember. And I I know how mad you were. And that was one time I don't think I was afraid of you being mad, and I was like, I get it. And I'm like, I really feel like this is where God's pulling me. And I I I had made in my heart that if I moved out there, it was for college, and it was. I I knew that there was gonna be opportunities because that's where he was going to college. And the fact that he wanted better for me, and he was like, I'll find a place where you can go to college too, and all this other stuff, and he believed in me. And I think that also was something different that I didn't have from any of my other relationships. This was somebody who wanted better for themselves, supporting you, encouraging you, yes, God, and he is. And as much as I didn't want it, I said, I'm going there, not because of him, I'm going there. I had had a different place that wasn't with him. Right. You had your own space. Yes, my own space.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:27

Halfway across the country to New Mexico. Yes. I'm like, there's nobody there. What are you doing? You know, what happens? I'm not I can't terrify. I can't just run down the road and help, you know. It's it was scary for us.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:38

Even though you told me that stuff, even though I had already been through those situations, I was like, I really feel like this is it. I was like, I really feel like this is where I need to be. And I don't think I had ever really said those things where I'm like, okay. No, because I never included God into that. No. And we knew when you left where we're like, this is different. I needed to I needed to go get my ID changed and stuff like that, because you know, we had had the adoption, but I hadn't really done any of the work to get my own.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:09

No, and you had to fly, and so we were fired.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:12

Yeah, so and well, no, it wasn't so much the flying, because I could have gone with just my regular, but it was for college. I wanted it for college. That's right, that's right. And we were gonna set it all up and do it differently, and we went to the DMV to go get it changed. And I'm not gonna say it for obvious reasons. Well, actually, no, it doesn't matter because it was in San Juan, you know, San Juan College, it's right there in like near Farmington. And we were going to the DMV, and some random girl that happened to be sitting next to us while we're in Florida was like, I just got back from Farmington, New Mexico, and I was like, I just looked clearly where you were moving to, and we just kind of took that as a big sign. Like, I looked at you and I was like, out of all the places in the world, out of all the places in the world that they could have been coming from, and in my mind, it was crazy. It was I was like, okay, I hear you. I I see you. I'm like, is this it? And then also in my mind, I was like, am I making those same decisions again though? Am I running around the same mountain? Is this a is this like foreshadowing for like their running from it? Do I need to run from it?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:12

And I think even in that though, right, is a little bit of the proof that you were questions. Because you were asking yourself those questions. You were, you were curious about what you were doing. You were asking yourself, you were reflecting on your motives. You were reflecting on not just your choices, but on your motives for why you were making the choices you were. And that's a huge sign um of growth and healing, right? Is when we are able to get ourselves to that place where we can be honest with ourselves. Yes. Right. And it it and it made you're right, though. It made a huge difference for you and us. I was calling that time in the trusting of of what was coming was was good.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:53

I was I was cautious that time. I there was nothing about like I was like, I will never ever go through any of the things that I went through again. Now, unironically, we did, but that was not from that was not from anything from him.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:05

Well, life life.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:06

Yes, life, life. It does. And but that life didn't feel the same as the other life. Like us going through the trials and tribulations that we have since then, since we've been married. Um so that was two years ago. Oh my god. Yeah, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:20

Two years ago. Two years ago, and fast forward, you and him, Hunter. Yes. All right. Y'all got married this year.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:30

We did. So I had moved out, we started going to college, I got everything out. I I went and got my GED while I was there. I I had actually made work. He had actually, you know, had me in a in a position where he did encourage me. I had my own place. And you know what? I decided that that place wasn't great, but it wasn't me moving with him to to escape anything else. It was us moving in because we really wanted those things. And I was with somebody who did want better and who showed and who proved.

unknown 1:20:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:59

Who also helped keep me accountable. I needed someone, I needed someone like that in my life. I needed someone who was willing to be like, what are you doing? That's not what we're doing. And I I love my husband to death, and that's what he does. And you know what's crazy? As much as I wanted to get married, and as much as I thought I wanted those things when people presented it to me in previous relationships, I was like, no, I don't want it. I I could never see myself like actually sitting down and with him, there was kind of there was no second thought. I I had this little like y'all can't see it. I've got this little promise ring I got like two weeks, two weeks after I had moved there, and you were like, oh no. Oh no, oh no. Um but yeah, and you guys still haven't even gotten to meet him.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:46

We haven't, we haven't physically physically met him, but we have spent a lot of time um because y'all are far away, right? And so in life is our life and y'all's life is not uh granted us to be together, and he would be here now, except Hunter is in boot camp. Yes, and I miss him terribly. So we will be we will be meeting him shortly in the next month here when he graduates. Yeah, right about a month now. Yep. But it it's been it's been wonderful getting to know him via you know Snapchat is that's how we all communicate in this family. So many group chats with all of our families um and video calls um and lots of hard conversations with him and you guys. But you know, Hunter's a wonderful human being. Many of our other family already has gotten their opportunity to be with him. Not not nobody has met him, at least. But we're excited, and our heart is is is filled with joy for you and him both. And watching and being a part of your healing and your journey um has been one of the the greatest joys of my life. And I'm so happy um that you have made it to this space and that we have walked this path together and that you have allowed us to do so.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:58

Allowed. I I didn't fully welcome it until I was ready for it. And when I did, I I talk so highly about you guys, and not just because, you know, you're my parents or that you've done all this, you know, other stuff, but like you really have put in the effort and more than any other people have really ever put into my life where you wanted the best for me, and you wanted the best for me because that's what I deserved. And that's it's not because you wanted it for me, but that's because that's what I needed. And the amount of time, the amount of I I say this a lot, the amount of conversations, but just the amount of effort that you guys put in, and I'm so thankful that you did because it got me to a place where I'm at now. And that wasn't, and you started doing that before you adopted me. You started doing that before you really got to know me. And we weren't gonna leave you behind. You weren't, and you didn't, and you know what? I'm so thankful. I'm I'm so deeply grateful for you guys. Like that was you guys were also my catalyst. You have made my life so rich and so full, and I'm so glad that I have the support system now that should anything ever happen, like I don't have to worry about coming to you for any of those things. But also I've gotten to see you guys heal too.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:16

I I've gotten to it's a lot you've walked that journey with us too, right? I mean, it's been a lot. The past the past 10, 11 years, it's been a lot for all of us, right? You've watched me walk through my own journey, you've watched me do a lot of healing, and you're dad, um, you've watched us grow. You've watched me create this podcast and grow this for us. It's I I couldn't, I mean, when we met you at this was not even a thought in a million years, and here you are never in place. And yeah, and now I'm sitting here and I'm we're having this conversation together, and it's a beautiful, wonderful thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:49

Yeah, and I I get to share my experiences for people who are I said earlier where you think that you've been through too much or you're far beyond saving, and let me know the raw, like it is you can go through everything you can go through, and until you're ready to stop going around that mountain, and until you're ready to make that decision, like it the time is whenever you are ready. That is when it is, and even before then, like make those decisions. It is it's possible. It doesn't matter what you go through, it is very possible. Everything is possible through your effort and through your hard work.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:25

It is, it is possible. It is possible to find freedom. No matter where you are, no matter how far gone you think things have been, no matter where you find yourselves in the depths of yourself, whether you find yourself no longer wanting to live to be a part of this world, whether you feel like nobody will ever love you, that there's not people who will care about you, there is. And if there's and if you can't find anybody, I'm here. We're here for you here at the Free Advantage. And that is the point. That is the point of this podcast. It's the point of starting to have people on to share their stories. I encourage you to to reach out, to message me, send emails, send your stories in. I would love to hear from anybody who would love to share their story here. Um, and if you need help and you need coaching, I have a lot of resources for you available to do so. Anna, I thank you so much for being my very first guest on my videos for my podcast. I can't believe we're getting through it and doing it. We did it. We did it though. I do, I appreciate it. It's been such a joy having you. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:32

I hope that me telling my story, that me opening up and me getting to talk about the raw, really bad decisions that I made. I hope that gives you the same confidence that you can open up. If you're not sure who you can open up to, I know you don't know her, but let me tell you that I didn't know her either, and that it is the best, most wonderful decision you can make, even if there's someone that's close to you that can be that for you. That you have the ability, even if you're not ready and you're like, Oh, I'm not sure if I'm if I if I want to take that step out, sharing your story.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:09

Sometimes sometimes God will send you a stranger.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:14

So it is I love that.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:17

Thank you. Thank you all for listening. I can't wait until next week. Well, we'll um I'm gonna start unpacking some of the conversations that we've had today. Um, if you have any questions, please send them in. I'd love to answer them if you have any. And remember, freedom is the advantage you already own. Until next time. I want to thank you so much for spending this time with me today here on the Free Advantage. If today's conversation resonated with you, I invite you to share it with someone who might need to hear this message. And I invite you to take the next step with us. I want to hear from you. You can submit your questions, reflections, or your own story using the links in. The show notes or by visiting my website theriskypath.com. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave us a review. Your voice matters, and it helps us to grow and get our message out to more people just like you. Let's continue our journey to freedom together. And remember, freedom is the advantage you already own. Until next time.