She Didn't Know Podcast
She Didn’t Know Podcast is a raw, validating, unedited space for women to tell their truth.
Through real stories, honest conversations, and healing-focused reflections, we unpack the shock, grief, anger, shame, self-doubt and sometimes survival that follow the moment everything falls apart. This isn’t about tearing anyone down—it’s about reclaiming your voice, your clarity, and your self-worth.
Email: Shedidntknowpodcast@gmail.com
She Didn't Know Podcast
Cera's Truth
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SDK sister Cera tells her story of escaping a pattern of abusive relationships and finding the pathway to putting herself first. Now she is sharing her story to help other women.
Cera's Contact Info
Tiktok: Hallucie
Thank you for listening: If you want to be a guest or want me to tell your story, questions or comments please email me at Shedidntknowpodcast@gmail.com
She Didn’t Know: The Truth I didn’t See Coming
Ebook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HF1VDQZM
My Tiktok page: Katching up with Ash @katchingupwithash
Shoot-o-do-do-lo!
SPEAKER_04She was the flying. What gonna go? He'll be like the tea. Still carrying home. Historic. Now what you're gonna do is that the bigger one is a little bit more than a little bit.
SPEAKER_06Um, we have a guest today, so let's get into SDK story time.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. It's Ash on the track. SDK sisters, yeah, we back. Pull up a seat. It's story time now. Real talk, real laughs. Let me show you how. SDK sisters story time with Ash. Little life lessons in the flash. From the cold to the chaos, we clash. SDK sisters story time with Ash. Ash.
SPEAKER_06And today we have Sarah. Welcome to the show, Sarah.
SPEAKER_00Hi, thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_06And you can go ahead and tell your story.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Um I've been in multiple, I've been in multiple abusive relationships with different men. And I just want to make that clear from the beginning because I can't just tell you one story about one partner, but I can tell you about a pattern. There was a time I was punched repeatedly in the head and suffered a concussion. Nauseous and dizzy for the next few days, how I had to lie to my mom and say that I was attacked by a girl at a bar. Or about the time I was dragged out of an apartment by my hair simply because I disagreed with something that was said. I could tell you about the time one of my partners broke into my house while I was going to sleep, ripped the blankets off of me just to spit on me, all because I wouldn't answer the phone. I had a hard time sleeping after that night. Recently, it was the time I was accused over and over again of cheating, and a completely false story about me was circulating online for everyone in my town to see. Suddenly, girls I worked with were messaging me, angry with me, because they believed a made-up story they saw online. Oh, and the time I got more than a hundred calls on my phone while I was simply hanging out with my mom, that was before we had the do not disturb option. I couldn't tell you how many times I dreaded looking at my phone. And while all of these stories are different, they all remind me of the same feeling: fear. And that's the part of my story I actually want to talk about. See, I'm the kind of girl that believes people are multifaceted. Everyone has good and bad parts. I choose to look at the good.
SPEAKER_01And it has.
SPEAKER_00A lot of the same issues that I saw from my partners really centered around emotional instability, an inability to respect boundaries, constant need for reassurance and closeness, substance abuse and sex as a way of trying to re-establish closeness after conflict. But my trouble was that my partner's emotional state somehow became my responsibility. Eventually I realized that I was spending an enormous amount of time monitoring my life, my partner's emotions. Before I could bring something up, I had to ask myself whether they were in the right headspace. If they were upset, how was I gonna respond? If I needed space, I couldn't just simply say, I need some time alone. Because sometimes asking for space made the situation worse. And that's when you start living in a state of hypervigilance. You're constantly scanning their mood, their tone, stance. What did that look mean? Are they angry with me? Are they about to start a fight? And that's what I think people don't always understand about abuse. You don't have to be actively getting hit every second for your body to feel like you're in danger. Your brain learns the patterns. It learns that an ordinary moment can suddenly become an argument. It learns that a boundary can trigger a reaction or someone's mood can change without warning. And that's the fear. Not just the fear of being hurt, but the fear of knowing when something is going, when not knowing when something is going to happen. And I'll admit there were times where I responded to my partners with defensiveness and rigidity. And sometimes I would even fight back. But who wouldn't when they feel like they're being attacked? Oh, I try and make them understand why they were wrong. I try and prove to them that this is all just a misunderstanding, but it never really helped. Eventually I realized though I would bring logic and facts into conversation, I still wasn't safe. And as a strong-willed woman, especially when I'm dealing with someone who's physically bigger and stronger than me, it was hard to accept. I don't have to win the fight. I just need to survive the situation. And so one of the biggest things I've learned was to create distance, no matter how hard it hurt. If somebody is escalating and I'm afraid, I really don't need to prove my point. I don't need to make them understand. I don't need to finish the conversation. I just need to get somewhere safe. And I wish that I had understood that earlier. Because when you're inside an abusive relationship, your brain isn't necessarily operating from the calm, logical state. When your heart is beating out of your chest and your hands are shaky, cold, and sweaty, when you feel like you're about to throw up and poop your pants at the same time, it's kind of hard to write out a list of the pros and cons of the relationship. When you're constantly monitoring the environment, your attention gets pulled towards the person who might hurt you. And that can make it incredibly difficult to focus on anything else, especially when it comes to yourself. You get to a point where there's not much room for questions like, what do I want? What makes me happy? What kind of life do I want? And that's when I realized that my life wasn't really feeling like my life anymore. I wanted to do the things that made me feel alive, to be creative, to have relationships with my family, to be able to leave my house without worrying who's gonna show up and hurt me. I wanted to take care of myself again, and I needed to. Because now I had another issue on my plate: the stress. It started to affect me physically. I was exhausted. I was so wired to detect threats that I never got to rest. I started developing infections and getting sick all the time, and none of the antibiotics worked because I was in and out of the doctor's office every month. The sickness started to show in my face. I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, wow, I'm ugly. But I was so afraid to put in effort into myself because it could lead to questions like, who are you getting pretty for? Who are you trying to impress? And it became easier to make myself smaller than to deal with the anxiety of someone thinking that I was doing something wrong simply because I wanted to feel better about myself. I remember one day as I was driving to work down a long, narrow highway, I saw these giant birds circling in the sky. Turkey vultures. Now, turkey vultures aren't exactly beautiful animals. They're associated with death and decay, and they eat things that other animals don't really want. Um, but they're incredibly important. They clean up the things that nobody else wants to see or deal with, and they survive off things that other people might find disgusting or disturbing. And I remember thinking, that's me. I'm a little turkey vulture. But eventually I realized that I had been looking at myself through the eyes of people who had made me feel worthless. It has a purpose, it survives, it contributes, and it has a place in the ecosystem. And so do I. And that became a promise to myself. I will never again let a relationship take me to the point where I believe that I am ugly, useless, or undeserving of my own life. What I didn't know was that I didn't have to wait for someone to hit me before I was allowed to leave. That's probably the biggest thing I want someone listening to understand. You don't have to wait until someone puts their hands on you to decide that you're unsafe. You don't have to wait until it gets worse. If you're constantly afraid, monitoring their emotions just to get through the day. If you're losing pieces of yourself just to keep the peace, that matters. Know that fear is enough information. I don't want my story to be about everything that was done to me. I want it to be about the fact that I noticed the patterns. I paid attention to myself, and I had enough courage to leave and never look back. Because even though being alone is scary, living in fear is much scarier. I'm 30 years old now. I'm over a year sober. I have my life back. I'm valued. I'm brave.
SPEAKER_01I protect myself. And I'm definitely not afraid to pick me.
SPEAKER_06I want to say thank you. I can hear you crying. It sounds like you're crying. Yeah. Um, I want to say thank you for sharing. Um I know that was a lot. I can feel the emotion just talking to you. And I didn't mean to cut you off, I just wanted to give you a just a quick second to just breathe and and I'm here. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's uh different looking at it all now. I definitely wasn't expecting to cry.
SPEAKER_06I understand. The memories and just living through it, I definitely understand.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Um so for a long time, I was terrified that if I walked away, no one would love me the way that I wanted to be loved. I was afraid that if I stopped being understanding, nurturing, forgiving, and available, I would lose the person who was supposed to cherish me. Um, I learned that being loved isn't worth much if I have to abandon myself to keep it. And I don't want to be loved at the expense of my safety, my peace, and my sense of self. And in the end, if no one loved me, I loved myself.
SPEAKER_06Um, I want to say thank you for sharing your story. Um I know that there are maybe women listening and I want to especially stress the part that they don't have to hit you before you can leave. There's emotional abuse, there's signs before. So that is absolutely true.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um I worked in mental health uh for the last year. And once I started seeing the signs and noticing, oh wow, this is not normal. Um, that's when I really started to heal. I started seeing a therapist for at least the last three years of my life.
SPEAKER_01Um, and it's really helped actually see him tomorrow.
SPEAKER_06And so what has healing looked like for you?
SPEAKER_00Um a lot of family time uh being by myself, working out, just paying attention to who I put myself around.
SPEAKER_06That's very important. And um, I also want to say I know it took us a couple of weeks to get our get our schedule together. So thank you for bearing with me and uh thank you for sharing your story and being so vulnerable.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I really appreciate uh you giving me the opportunity to be on uh to share my story.
SPEAKER_06Um if anyone wants to get in contact with you, how can they contact you?
SPEAKER_01Um so my uh TikTok is Halucy, it's H A L L U C I E. I have a few videos on um what I've experienced and um one video that's uh gone somewhat viral uh where my partner uh cheated on me. Um he wasn't too happy about seeing that, but it's okay. But yeah, that's those are my socials. It's H A L L U Z I E and I'll also put it in the description.
SPEAKER_06Is there one last piece of advice that you would want to give someone in um abusive situation?
SPEAKER_00I would say make your decision when you're alone or at least emotionally regulated, maybe not specifically alone, but mainly at a time where you're clear-headed and away from the person that makes you feel uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_06And I want to say thank you once again for coming on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_06And SDK family. Oh, I do want to tell you guys something. So I recently wrote a book and it just became um published on Amazon. So it's called She Didn't Know The Truth I Didn't See Coming. And if you haven't listened to my earlier episodes, it's basically starts off with uh me finding out that my daughter's dad was married when his wife called me. And he named their daughter and our daughter the same after him, so they all have the same first and last name. So it's on Amazon now, and I'll probably put the link in the description. But SDK family, I will see you guys next Wednesday.
SPEAKER_02Yo. It's Ash on the mic, we out, that's the end. If you felt this one, hit share, tell a friend. Thanks for riding with me. Every take, every gem. See you next Wednesday, SDK fam. See you next Wednesday, lock in again. Ash on your airway, talking on my friends. Thank you for telling them. See you next Wednesday, SDK fam.