Whispering Through the Pain Until It Screamed Back

How long can you stay silent before your pain demands to be heard?

In this powerful episode of The Blinded Truth, we dive deep into the reality of suffering in silence, carrying trauma, masking emotional wounds, and ignoring the internal battles that eventually become impossible to hide. Pain doesn't disappear when it's ignored—it grows louder. What begins as a whisper can become a scream that impacts every aspect of your life, relationships, recovery, mental health, and self-worth.

Join us as we unpack the hidden struggles many people face behind closed doors, including addiction, grief, trauma, depression, anxiety, loss, recovery, and healing. Through raw conversation and lived experience, we explore what happens when unresolved pain finally demands our attention and how finding your voice can become the first step toward freedom.

Whether you're in recovery, supporting someone who is, navigating trauma, grieving a loss, or simply searching for hope, this episode will remind you that you are not alone.

🔥 If this episode resonates with you, COMMENT below:
What pain did you stay silent about for too long?

Your story could help someone else feel less alone.

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Bonded Truth Podcast where real stories meet real healing. I'm your host, Destiny Vance. Today's episode is titled Whispering Through the Pain Until It's Screamed Back. A lot of us don't face our pain. We manage it, hide it, or try to outgrow it without ever addressing it. We whisper through it, hoping it stays quiet, but pain doesn't stay silent forever. Eventually, it demand it demands to be heard. Today, we're getting real about what happens when you ignore what hurts and what it looks like when that pain forces you to finally listen. This episode is powered by Destiny Is by Choice Support Services because your truth matters. I have a very special guest by the name of I'm gonna say Lee. You can say Lee. I'ma say Lee. Um because that's what I've been knowing you as for my whole life. All your life. And when she says that, it's because she's known me literally for all my life. Pretty much. Yeah. So I love this because I've been knowing you my whole life. Right. But you never know what somebody is going through until they tell their story. Exactly. And we got to kind of like exchange stories. It was at um when the group, the church group came. And the E-group at uh elevation. Yeah. Yeah. And you heard my story, was like, I did not know you were going through all of that. I had no idea. And then I heard your story, and I was just kind of like, I didn't know you had gone through all of that because when we met, I was a kid. So it really goes to show like kids sometimes don't know. But for our listeners today, share a little bit about your story, and then we're gonna go into the comedy. Okay, I I really don't know where to begin because it's so much. My story called it begins when I was younger. Um we can continue to believe as children or our our childhood, we're almost as towards as adults if we don't get paid on it. Right? So to me, though, there's a lot of uh uh drugs, alcohol, um mental abuse, and they don't even know what's mental abuse. Okay. What what they tend to do is like do as I say, not as I do. Um what goes on in this house stays in this house. So it's like there's just certain things I think in my life that I had to kind of recycle or deconstruct in my head as I became older because it just didn't make sense to me as a child. So I can go into maybe my teenage years, um, running away from home, drinking Robert Tussin, um, you know, just trying to numb a feeling of uh or escape from something that I was uh actually um conditioned to believe, you know, um sexually abused. Um and I can remember in those days, it was like, you know, instead of them what they're watching you as you're acting out, none of them took the time and say, What you're gonna do why are you doing that? They called you dirty, they called you nasty because the church was there, you know. It was always, you know, you gotta, Jesus, you gotta go to hell. And yeah, if you keep doing hell and damnation was taught. So we were so scared to even make mistakes, you know. But as I got older, I started realizing there's gotta be something more to this. It wasn't me. But I didn't know how to reach out to it. Yeah, yeah. I don't think the church realizes how how much trauma they cause. I remember having conversations about my actions, and I remember somebody actually saying, like, do you want to be like this trash can? And I was like, And it was just so like, what are you talking about? Like instead of saying, like, what makes you curious about sex or whatever, or like being called fast because, you know, wanting to be with an older guy, and it was like, but I'm a willing party of it. Like, I didn't understand it, you know, or like being like the talk of the church because I'm pregnant. And I'm like, okay, but there was other people in the church that they became from that early age, and it was like, oh, you know, this is beautiful. And I'm like, I guess because I was the the rebel, you know. I was like, Girl, honey, I was like she too. Yeah, I still have classmates when they see me, they're like, girl, we live by cares and through you. They turn around, what leads you this time? You know, I'm either taking a janitor's car in the ninth grade, drive and leaving this car somewhere, catch another ride. You know, it was always something. I was always doing something because I just didn't fit in the mold that they created us to fit in. And now at 60, it's like I was never meant to fit in those modes. And so um getting pregnant at 18, getting married, being in an abusive relationship, and realizing that I was looking for love and understanding, but I didn't realize that my my then ex-husband didn't like his own mama. Yeah, so how was he gonna love me? Yeah, you know, but I didn't hindsight it always 2020. Because like when you talk about condition, I don't think it's just family conditioning, church and society conditioning, of course. Of course, I can remember being 18, 19, like at one point, me and my examination, we were homeless and then we met again together. So now all y'all just gonna quit house. Well, what a lot of people didn't understand about me at that age, I didn't really want to be married. I I had no plan of being married, like it was just not because marriage wasn't something that was modeled in my family, you know. Exactly. And so being like asked in a most ridiculous way, like, I think we should go ahead and do this. It was like, okay, and I can remember my cousin Brandon on my wedding day saying, We can just leave up the church right now. Nobody knows what we're doing, and I sat there at the back kind of like, I don't look good. Like, because in my everybody and my cousin Angie, I mean dressed, she did my makeup, we she did my hat. Like, I was like, I felt like I was in the shotgun wedding. I felt like I looked like I was 12 years old, they didn't drink this white dress on that, and we were at the church, and it was like, you know, you had all the great aunts all in downstairs baking, cooking, and doing something. And it's like, this is not what I know. I didn't, I didn't I didn't want this. I wasn't a kid that you gave a Barbie doll and a stove to and said you do this because it's what you're supposed to do with the girl. I was a combo. I climbed trees, I live in the street. Yes, I know so. But the thing about it is you still try to honor the thing that your family fought with. Um the noble thing. It's the noble thing, but the whole time, religious religion played a big part in my destruction because I could not live up to what they wanted me to live up to. Yeah, so I've rebelled on every on every level of rebellion. I rebelled. Um, between you know, getting married at a young age, being he was very abusive, but I realized he was just as broken as I was, if not more, you know, and I didn't know how to just walk away because what else was there to do? What else am I supposed to do? It's an abomination of the church and the family, girl, girl, just stay there. Yeah. I'm and pray about it. Just pray about it. So pray about it because I'm gonna kill them. But the thing about it, they didn't even understand what prayer means. So, how you gonna teach me what prayer means? Because to me, now prayer is a communication between me and God, not me, you and God. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? So um going through that and understanding that at that first relationship, when I finally walked away from my finally, but girl, I didn't just walk away and just go into somebody somebody's uh office and say, I need help, I need counseling. I went from one relations to another, relationship to another. Didn't even get the divorce. I was just out there thinking this is how you do it, because nobody teaches you. You don't come with no instruction, yeah. You just do what you feel, and those feelings are jacked up. My emotions were all over the place. I didn't know how to control them. They controlled me on everything I felt. If they if I felt like I wanted to do that, then I just did it. I dealt with the consequences later. Yeah, you know, so you know, I've been doing hair pretty much all my life. I've been doing hair since 19. Oh, gee, with a new twist. You know what I'm saying? Still in the game, you know. And even I can remember just doing hair and how that's all I've ever done was do hair and go to hair shows, and um, that was a battle because he didn't want me to do that. You know, I wanted something more for my life because after I had my first daughter, I thought to myself, postpartum, I didn't know what to help to do. I didn't know what to do. My mom came down, my cousin came down, everybody was trying to help me, but I just wanted to disappear. Yes, I just wanted to disappear because nobody taught me. So they don't teach you those things, they just expect for you just to understand it and go through it. Yeah. And I couldn't, it it's I I wrote a paper about postpartum, and I was saying like how when women, it's a thing that society says women are supposed to do, make babies, get married, but they don't teach you like the mental battles you go through and having a baby and then being pregnant and like afterwards, like also going through that, it was like I I my my first pregnancy, my full-time first pregnancy was so I'm surprised that trying to get his guy because I was under so much stress from trying to get him here because having miscarriages before and going through the crap I was going through, I lost my brother. It was like, and then so that May, I my aunt's husband died within six months of them getting married, and I was like, what is happening? And then at June, I lost my brother. We lost an uncle, another uncle. And it was like, what in the world? Shut. Now imagine I'm in the hospital from the time I get pregnant to the time I have him because I had so much nausea and just sickness. And then after having him, I just felt like I feel like I'm losing my freaking mind. Like I was crying, I was emotional. It was just like, you know, trying to bond, feel like you want, like you are bonding with them, like you're doing everything right and then everybody, talking in your ear, like you're not. I think people understand like what your body goes through. And going through it at I think back to like when people be like, so when you, you know, were 14 and got pregnant, where would you? If I went through what I went through with my son at the age of 14, I think I would have lost my mind. Because it would just be like, I don't think you understand. No, because and I think the reason why they don't understand is because nobody explains to them. So how they can explain that to me. All of it is generational. Yeah. Everything is generational, and so the expectations of us knowing what goes next is put on us, and then we try to figure it out because we we learn how to keep it all inside instead of talking about. Um, I can remember, you know, because also too, when I've been in prison, I remember this one officer telling me one time, he was like, You're honest to a fault. Didn't understand what that meant, but I now realize that I do talk, I talk a lot. I just don't know how to put it in context for it to make sense. Um but learning a lot of these things, even when I the reason why I went to prison, it blew my mind because my family was like, we spent our lives in our in our in my I spent my life in my family's um life of don't say nothing, don't do anything. So when I look back over everything, not only you didn't tell me about how to have how to run a marriage or how to have a baby or finances or things like that or how to conduct a job or go to college to make something of myself other than what's presented to me right now, I felt like a complete failure. And I realized that all the things that I've ever gone through in life, um it made me out to be the woman I am right now. Yeah I had some of it I had to go to. Do I wish I could have done something different? Of course I do. Everybody does. But I still look at it and say, I don't think I would be who I am right now. Yeah. You know, going through the things that I went through and and the postpartum depression, because even after I had my oldest daughter, I got pregnant again. My husband was so he was such a narcissistic person. And he said, I don't want to have no more kids. Like I got pregnant by myself. We didn't do it by breathing. Oh that my favorite line was how this how did like I yeah. So I'm thinking, okay, sorry. What do you mean? Um okay, and I said, Okay, so he he told me you gave me an ultimate you have an abortion or we not know. I'm like, what? I'm married to you. What do you mean? And I did it. I went by myself because he wouldn't want to do it. That's how that's I did it. It happened again. So I go down, decided to ask one of my friends if she go with me. She was living. Why are you coming in by yourself? And I got to the point like I can't keep doing that. So my last pregnancy, I thought I don't want to do this again. I mean, I'm not talking about these are like years apart. I'm talking about within months, maybe a year or two, not even that. And he was like, just I mean, just constantly staying in my head about what I should do when I should do when he's never gonna have no money because I didn't have the proper upbringing. I didn't know how to handle that. You won't keep having these kids, why ain't having them by myself? So I didn't I didn't have that proper upbringing to understand none of that. I felt like I was handed out to the wolves. And so the last one when he told me that um he my biggest fear is rejection then. I don't care about it now, but then was rejection. And uh he fussed at me one night, just kept fussing, kept fussing, screaming, yell at me, and I was like, I gotta do something. So I tried to get myself hanger and I tried to get myself. I didn't care about my life, I wanted the child's life. I just wanted some mental anger. So when I tried to do that, I got scared. And then you know, now if you would do something like that, they'd be like, okay, she's in room two with the rubber all around it. That's the room she in right now, you know. But then why do you do that? Yeah, so but now I was like, Well, well, do you want to talk to somebody? That to me, now when I look back, that should have been a cry out to help. Somebody should have been at those doors, like, what did you do yourself? Why did you do this to yourself? You could have killed you, the child, blah, blah, blah. It wasn't like that. It's almost like it skipped all over that. And next thing I know, I'm I'm I'm looking at them. I said, So you can't do it. Yeah. So you can't get through the it was like, no, ma'am, you're too far gone. I don't think I can think of my mind. I gotta go tell me. Mm-hmm. And I think that too, like, we put on this strong persona that a lot of times people be like, oh, she's fine, you know, because I look okay. Like I I look like I I'm fine. So when I'm telling you, like, no, you know, I'm okay, you're not really reading the symptoms. Where now, if I look at somebody and I say, You okay? I watch how they respond, yeah, I'm fine. Yeah. And then I was like, I got a disp, I got discernment, is out of this freaking world now because now I know. But even going through that, um, nobody really knew a lot about that, you know, because I'm when I when I remember leaving the hospital, I dreaded going to his job to tell him it didn't happen. I dreaded it. So I lived my life on constant edge all the time. And so, you know, um I ended up having my beautiful girl. I still had her, thank God. Um but when I look back over everything, I I realized that my life has been topsy turvy. And how I made it through sometimes, I don't even remember. I don't remember. And then here comes cry. Hello, somebody got to be more careful. My best friend, my lover, my confidant. That's how I felt. You couldn't tell me nothing. I was alive again. Ain't never been alive, so how would I know when I was being alive again then? Right? But it's something nobody could take away from that's how sick my mind was. It's something nobody could take away from me. I'm a deep visit till the wheels fall off. It told me it sold me a beautiful lie. Always. It sold me a beautiful lie. And what's so crazy, while you're on it, you mean you lie so much to your family, to yourself, to your children. People can they can clearly see something right this picture. Yeah. But I'm gonna repaint it for you. They're gonna look at it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, they're like, girl, uh look. Like I can just remember going through that and because I didn't know what else to do. And this is my kids were little, and now when I look back on pictures and getting them small, I remember what I was going through to their up and what they look like. They look like do they remember like do they understand what you were going through in that moment? Because I think that's I think that's hard. Like, like now that my kids are getting older, like they have some recollection of like things that happened. I'd be like, oh my gosh, I did not know you knew that. And and I'd be like, ooh, my girls right now are 30, getting ready to turn 38 and 41. So my girls know a lot about me because I have a big mouth and I'm gonna stay, and you know, because I did a lot of damage. Choosing drugs over my kids, choosing a man over my children. I did some damage because I didn't know I was in survival mode. And I almost destroyed them just trying to live. Yeah. You know, and so now my oldest daughter sometimes just does a gut punch, but I understand where it's coming from now. I don't defend it like I used to. Yeah. Like, wait a minute, wait a minute. I now understand even at her good age, she still has to learn to kill herself. Yeah. Because I'm gonna be there for you to support you, but I'm not gonna parent you out of guilt. Yeah. Same thing with my youngest daughter, she's 38. You run, she's older than both of us. Okay? That youngest one is both of us are amazing girls, but that youngest one is to step back and she will observe everything and tell you nothing. Had you wonder what was she thinking, you know what I'm saying? But she remembers things. I wrote my book and neither one of them had read it, and I have to respect that because they said, Mama, we know what you went through. Yeah. We we know exactly what you went through, and we don't want to read, but my very first letter was to them. Oh wow. I I my mom used to write letters um back in the day to us, you know, just about like just apologize and I really didn't understand it until I actually had kids of my own. And I used I had asked her one time, I said that why did you used to do that? She's like, Because even if y'all didn't understand it, it will come back to you later on and like where you can go back and be like, Okay, she did apologize for that. And and not only that, too, she did it for her. Yeah, she she had to do it for her because the thing about it, just like when I make videos on my own social media, when I make my little um videos about, you know, um just encouraging. Um, my sister's like, but why are you making so many? Because you don't look at it all the time, so it looks like it's a lot. I don't know. I move when God says move, right? So when I do it, it's for me. Yes, it's for understanding. It it reminds me that where I it reminds me where I am right now, and there's no going back. Those options that used to be on the table, the drugs, the sex, the lies, the whatever, they're no longer an option. So I have to make up my own option to keep me moving forward. Because if not, it's easy to fall back. I don't care. You can be clean for a thousand years. Yeah. One is too many, a thousand will never be enough. Yeah. And I don't care if it's drugs, food, relationships, a cat, a dog, or a mouse. It don't matter. Because whatever you fixate yourself on something to make yourself feel good that ain't good for you. Yeah, one is too many, a thousand. Will never be enough. So you have to get to a place in your life where you say, I matter. Yeah, everything about me matters. You know, like, you know, going through that relationship and jumping from the fire from the front hand into a fire, then I got into a relationship with a firefighter. That's the one I was the prison behind. He had me doing some things, exposing myself, and I turned it in. Where the whole Rona told me a whole new butthold, girl. Like, like, girl, you heard about what she did. She did all this with her children, but none of them were man and woman enough to come say, leave it. Yeah. Because I have enough discernment to understand who's being nosy, but who really cares. Yeah. You know, I don't owe anybody anything anymore. I realize that now. Yeah. I've had people come in my chair one minute, look at me, and say, I'm gonna tell me I'm the best hairdresser in the world. Somebody go whisper in their ear, and next thing I won't see them at all. And they come to find out. So I've had to battle through some things that have left me deeply scarred that nobody sees. But I have to trust the God in me that keeps me going forward. Because if not, I'll still under I'll still rely on my own understanding. And sometimes my understanding is like I don't understand. No. So I have to keep moving. And if I don't keep moving in what I know now, I just might as well go on them to tell them to put me six feet under. Yeah. But I ain't ready for all that. I ain't ready for that. Yeah. So you know, you know, I'm not blocking people. I'm not telling people I want them to watch me win. Yeah. I want them to watch me because I hold no grudges for anybody. But I do say this. As you're going through life, trustably, somebody's watching. Oh, yeah. Somebody needs your help. And and a lot of times they just don't want to say it because they gotta come to help from you. And you is the and it's probably something they really are holding a grudge with them, you know, about you, something about you. Because they're probably trying to go, well, how's she getting into that? How is she? And then it's a choice. Yeah. You know, it's a choice. Nobody's danger carrot over top of my head. Yeah. It is a freaking choice. I either choose to live, walk, and live, or I choose to lay down and die. I choose to walk and live. That's why I moved forward. Because I believe you're always traveling, you're always on the road, but that's me. Yeah. I ain't asked you for no gas money. And I didn't ask you to be in my bed, yes. So we got like on a story, and I want to mention your um, I want you to talk about your book, but I have a couple questions for Top Tick. So when you hear whispering through the pain, what does that mean to you personally? Um, whispering through the pain for me means um just saying it anyway. No matter how hard it hurts. Yeah. I can go back and I can talk about the reason why I turned the situation in, the reason that I I ended up in prison. It was painful, but I had to say something. If not, those kids are grown now, they got kids now. That's how long ago it's been. But even in the pain, I still had to say something. Even if nobody heard me, yeah, even if nobody believed me, I still had to say something. Yeah. And I still had to pay a price. I feel like you broke the the conditioning and the the generational curses of keeping it silent, meaning you spoke up and said something, because you don't know what that could have carried on for them of you staying silent and not saying something and telling them like you don't say something, you don't say nothing. That can hold a lot of weight for people. And I feel like you it took a lot of strength to be that person to say, I gotta say something. I got to. I got to, you know, and I'm so used to dealing with with abuse on, you know, what both of those. Yes. You know, even when I got into that relationship where he was saying, you know, where he was actually trying to use reverse psychology on me. I can look at back on it now, it's like, no, nobody'll believe me. You know, if you just keep doing this, then we both can enjoy life. There's no enjoyment in here. I don't want him, I want you. Yeah. So I had to pick and choose. And if I didn't, it was a thing of rejection. That meant he wouldn't speak to me for two weeks. Put you in the corner. Put baby in the corner. Put you in the corner. They put me in the U fold. Put me in the corner. People don't understand that part. They were like, well, girl, you was grown. You should have known better. Really? Yeah. Really. When all you know is begging to clean it for somebody to love you, you don't know what it feels to get up and just walk out because you're not being fed at the table. You don't really break that psychological mode. Yeah. It's like cracking. And I remember cracking, and my friend was on the phone and was like, I don't know if I need to call the police or come see you because I'm really scared of what's going to happen. Because when you've been psychologically conditioned, where I'm putting you in the corner, or I'm going to put you on the shelf and then I'm going to take you down when it's time to show you all. And then I'm going to put you back up. And it's like when you've been psychologically conditioned to don't pass for collect $200. And it becomes automatic. You automatically put yourself up on the shelf and wait. Because you'll be like, okay, they're going to come back and then back. Okay, I'm a programming. I'm hoping that it'll be different this time. Instead of knowing that it's a cycle and it's not going to change. No. You know, so yeah, it it does something to you where then once you break it and you start speaking and doing for yourself, and you start saying, I'm not, if that's what we're going to do, that's then I'm going to love. Then you start showing into a place of your thoughts start running wild. And you're like, shouldn't I do that? Should I have not done that? Should I have spoken for myself? Should I do that? You start, then it's like another shift of like, what is happening? Because now you're like, you're feeling like you're mentally unstable. And then there's not enough people around you who have enough sense to guide you in that direction because you feel like you're doing it by yourself. Yeah. And in the black community or black families, you don't talk to other people. You don't do those things. So some things you have to figure out for yourself. When I started going to counseling, it was like, well, what are you doing that for? Yeah. Because my witches. But for some reason, I need it because I can't keep talking to you. Yeah. I can't keep talking to you. So you spoke a little bit about suppressing the pain. So for you, when you suppress that pain for too long, what does that look like? Suppressing pain? Um, that looks like using. That looks like trying to figure out who's safe to buy crack from. Not safe. Who is safe safe? Girl, you know, when I came, they were like, oh no, you smiling too much. You just say hello and ask about my family. You sure you want to put you know? It's like, who is safe? You know, that's real tough. That's what suppressing the pain means. Something just they right with this picture. I promise you, I'm not. Ah, you know, so it just got to a place where it's like suppressing pain meant doing things that you normally would not do, but you do it anyway. You don't want nobody to know what there's pain meaning. So you do things outside of your character. Yeah. Suppress it. What was that moment of change for you? Like what was that moment of I ain't doing this? I can't keep this cycle because everybody has that moment. I had a lot of those moments just to find out. Okay, say for instance, you know, uh when I first started going to rehab back in the 90s, you know, drug rehab, because you know, okay, she's on crack out for rehab. All right, I'll go, I'll go, I'll go. You know, I can't keep doing this no more. But the whole time, I was, you know, they say there's a difference between recovery and being sober. I was just sober. I just kept doing it. Recovery, I didn't have the pieces to stop me from going back into that. So what I would do would I praise the fact that I just didn't use, but yet I wasn't going to meetings, I wasn't talking to people, I didn't have a sponsor, I didn't have any of those things. So that whole thing for me was a uh a thing of understanding like, wait a minute, they gotta go hand in hand. Just like if you if you're feeling like you know, you gotta take antipressants, well, canceling and antipressants go together, they go hand in hand. It's when those things started come together is when I start understanding I ain't gotta do this. Because I thought if I'm left out here just to say, just don't do it, just don't do it. Y'all in trouble. Like the doctor drug. We all failed him. Look, I'm just saying, y'all in trouble. I'm left out here on my own demise because I stayed on step one for the longest time. I stayed on step one for the I am powerless. My my psychology teacher, he he encourages anyone going into the human services field to start working the steps. And he said, even if you don't have a drug addiction, you have some sort of addiction because come on. He said, I he's he's a true believer that that's where the self-discovery happens. And he said, when you're working in the human services world, you gotta be able to relate what that person is feeling like once that's it's easier to tell somebody, well, just stay up, stay away from it, don't do it. Well, that's why they say people and places and things need to change. Right. I understand that clearly now. It's like it's Vegas right now for me. I understand clearly why I gotta stay away from that stuff. Now, while I was going through it, I can understand it because the pain wasn't making sense. So I need the numbers, I didn't want it to make sense if that makes sense. Yeah, you know, and so me going back and forth through the rehabs and and um my last battle was 2013 with crap. Okay, married to uh building here and wrong up. I was married to him, and I'll never forget what was on the line now was I can get uh viol, I can violate, I can get things taken away from me. I mean, I can be 17 years still hovering on top of my head. Sometimes when you're in so much pain, those things don't matter. And people try to figure out uh, because I remember going to uh go to probation off. They thought I was the probation officer. No, dude. I'm trying to get by just like you. You know, I can remember going in there sitting and I'm watching, looking at everybody's light bugs, my light bugs flicker before it completely came on. What is it? What is it? One thing that we hate to do, especially when we're addicts, we hate to take orders. We hate for people to put out things in front of us and tell us how that we should do things. Because in our little warp mind, we think we already know, but that's the psychology part. That's the psychological part. But what came to me was 2013, 2014 when I was using because I was using because I could not deal with why I went to prison first. I went back. I had been clean for 17, 18 years. I went back because I couldn't deal with why I went out and why they lay late for the rest of my life. I couldn't deal with nobody knew that part, anybody knew that solid part of me. And the guy that I was with was feeding to me because I was that trophy. That's what I need. Catch me if you can. As soon as you tell him, catch me if you can. We made promises to each other. Catch me if you can. And I I talk like that because it's real. Yeah, that's that that's that crap that in my mind I thought that as long as I didn't think of that, I was good over here the whole time I was dying. It's so both of us are beautiful. You can sell as much as you want, you can use as much as you want. You're being okay. The whole time we're not. So when it came to me with that last bout, and I had to go down, be in a cup, because I had maxed out to brown. That means they can call you anytime you come in. Ain't no picking up no phone talking about what color code are you now. You gotta turn my brain to be none for me. I just burnt holes through the cups, you know? Because they are tired of you, you know. When I look back up, I laugh at it because I was so trying to hide that pain so bad and so hard. I just bump all the moves. But that last thought was when I went down there. He told me because you don't own, you ain't paid for none of them cups, and I ain't paid in the cup. Oh my God, he looked at me, he said, This boy, what is going on with you? I was trying to hang on to every shred of the identity in the drug world, not in human world, in the drug world of like, I'm gonna keep using no matter what you do to me. All right. A couple days later, girl, they came to the shop, like let's go. I'm like, what? And that's when the guy said, You're honest to our phone. I didn't understand what that meant. That's when my journey began. That's when the light bulbs came on, but by then I couldn't go nowhere and do nothing. I obeyed what they told me to do. That was my last album that I had to touch. So you kind of hit on it a little bit. But I wanted to ask you, what role does accountability play in fact in your role does accountability like? I'm the problem accountability for everything. Because I feel like that's something that we don't take into account. No, we don't. What we do, no, I I did I didn't take none of it as far as my grandkids, my kids, my husband, none of that. And I can tell y'all all day long my husband's a drug dealer, but he still ain't making drugs. Yeah. That was my choice at the end of the day. That was Lee's wicked way of thinking. Because when I first met him, and I mean he was cool and all, I just got about being sober and being and recovering, but I was just talking about it. So what happened was it's always around going away, being less so I remember meeting him and my daughter at her work in bed and her work like and instead of me running and said, I can't do this, that little piece in the back of my mind said, Oh, I'm gonna ride this for points. But that was the broken part of me that wanted to hide out because I was still shameful of what I did because I went to prison. So, in my own opinion, now it makes sense. Most people say, girl, no, what you should have done, well, you can tell that all day long. People like to tell you what you shoulda, coulda, would have done until they end the situation. Until you're in the situation. And I I saw my way out. As soon as I seen it, I was gonna somehow convince him that we just gonna live as a big happy family in the drug world. Y'all thrive, we can raise thrive. No, we can rain die. And I laugh about it because this stuff is so true. When I look back, and then when it was when it was pointed out to me, was told to me, especially when I was in rehab in the jail. I wanted to cut everybody up in there. No, I didn't. And then I would lay down, they would tell us we had to write in journals. Girl, I want my journals. I was like, I had a plan and it didn't I get to execute it. And it's funny the lies you come out of. That's the accountability part when I can actually literally say, and I remember going to him and apologizing to him for even thinking those things when you know he tried to be this big fucked up guy, like, oh you know, I should have known. Man, let me have mine. Yeah, let me have mine. I need to own my stuff. I really do, because when I own myself, it's free. Yeah. When I own every bit of it, because I'm not pointing my finger at him. He's got his own things, he's got to deal with it. And I've got mine. And I can't deal with mine as long as I'm looking at him. Yeah, it's like looking in the mirror. You gotta be able to look at your own self. Yep. What did your pain reveal about you that you didn't want to do? That I was vulnerable. That I was wrongful. And I didn't want to be vulnerable. Because being vulnerable to me takes me back to being a little girl and I didn't have a say. I'm gonna let you know you gotta come back to part two because you have a lot to discuss. It's a lot. And I love these segments, I get because it's kind of like you can't just box it into one segment. Okay. So for the people out there that's wondering about her book, tell me about your book. Show it loud and proud. Ain't that cute? Yes. I'm whispering as loud as I can. Um, the memoir, the story they don't wanna, they didn't want to hear. Um, that's me. That's me last year, and that's me when I was six years old. Um, when I was abused. And um this book pretty much is my sister said, Well, is it a snitch book? No, it ain't no snitch book. What are you talking about? And if it is, you better hope you're in the clear. No, this book is actually about me and how I've survived the things that most people look at and say, you know, like my brother, he read it. He loved it, he says, Man, I got more this 76-page book than I did out of the 300-page book. He said, Because it was real and it was wrong. It was not overly laced with religion, it was not overly laced with, it's because there's no cuts it in it, but it's real talk. Yeah, like I'm doing sitting here doing this now. That's what it is, it's real talk. The first uh page is about me sending a letter to my daughters or writing a letter to my daughters, to myself, and then to Yahweh, to God. But he was there the whole time. Yeah, even though I don't miss him through the book, I do what's in there, you know. But yeah, yeah. So what do you have? I know you wrote a book. Who are you today? And what would you tell your six-year-old son? I got you, girl. I got you. You want some ice cream, some flowers, or we're taking a ride. Gotcha on the Jeep with the wind with the uh windows back. Gotcha, girl. I got you. That's what I tell her today. You ain't got to worry about nothing, you ain't got to wait for nothing, and you ain't gonna ask no permission from nobody. Yeah, that's what she is, that's who she is right now. Um my name is um, I've gotten rid of all my other extra names, but LeAdre Elizabeth, oh I'm that wrong woman today that don't have a problem saying no, this is a full sentence. Yeah. Hello? It's a full sentence. And if you feel to go get hurt, then you need to check and process yourself because it ain't got nothing to do with me for real. I hit up with this. I think maybe you need to go to counsel and probably what's driving that. Yeah, boundaries. I don't know what boundaries are. I'm gonna let look, I know I begin to know where you in. Right. Well, you already know that you are coming back for a part two, and I definitely look forward to it. Me too. We might have to have a uh a woman circle. I got one in North Carolina, it's called the Selah circle. You know this name of my salon. Sayla came up with that when I was in prison. So it means pause and reflect, to look back, to reflect over some things. It's okay to look back, just don't stay there. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Just don't stay there. And so, yeah, that's what I do. And I and I'm I love having women in because a lot of us really just don't know. Yeah, we don't know. We're gonna have to have a women's circle. Um some people to get some women together, and we talk about whispering through the pain. So you've just listened to the blinded truth podcast, Whispering Through the Pain until it screamed back, powered by Destiny is by choice support services. If this episode episode spoke to you, take a moment and reflect and ask yourself something. What have you been avoiding? What have you been trying to sell? Because pain doesn't disappear when you ignore it, it gets louder. But here's the truth what screams can also be healed. Your pain isn't here to destroy you, it's here to superbuild you. So don't run from it. Face it, learn from it, grow through it. There is strength in your honesty and power in your healing. And as always, remember your destiny is by choice, not by chance. Keep walking in your truth. And Lee, thank you again for taking the time to come and speak with me. You will be back for a part two. You already know it.