Sonia - The Only Way is Love

Sonia found herself as a mother of three children in a relationship of domestic violence. She could see the patterns of abuse so clearly in those around her, but struggled to know what to do for herself. Escaping the abuse took a long time, and some help from an unexpected ally. Now Sonia is convicted that anger, hate and hurt only eat you up. She is now an outspoken advocate around issues of family and domestic violence. For Sonia, the only way is God’s love. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:03

Oh, g'day there. Welcome to The Spirit, where we share stories of faith from the heart of the country. There's a cup of weak instant coffee and a slice of sponge cake here with your name on it. Pull up a chair, settle in, and join us for a chat. I'm Darcy and I'm here on the lands of the Ludgy Ludgy, who I acknowledge and offer my respect. I'm in a little place called Red Cliffs, and I'm speaking to Sonia. G'day, Sonia. G'day, Darcy. Sonia, thank you so much for meeting with me today. It's really great to speak with you. You're welcome. So, Sonia, did you start your life here in Red Cliffs or did you grow up somewhere else?

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Um, the first ten years of my life were in Melbourne, in a small place called Bandura. I moved up here when I was 10 and lived in Muldura till 22 years ago. And I moved to Redcliffs and have been there ever since.

SPEAKER_03 1:11

Yeah, nice. So what was it like in Melbourne before you came up this way? What was life like in those early years?

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Um I guess a pretty normal childhood, you know, had had a pool where all the neighbourhood kids used to come around. Um, my mum was the youngest of ten, so we had a lot of cousins, a lot of family, big family.

SPEAKER_05 1:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Um, so yeah, I guess life was pretty normal up until then.

SPEAKER_03 1:33

Yeah, yeah. But that sounds like there were heaps of cousins and things around as well. Yeah, 65 of us. Wow, that's a good number.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

There were big pots on the stoves when we were meeting together. Yeah. Um, so was church part of your life in those early years? My grandmother was a devout Catholic all through her life, and she never wavered. Yeah. Not once. Like, extremely strong woman. Yeah, so and so what was her name? Um, oh, I called her Uppel because she's Dutch. She was born in Holland. My mum was born in Holland. Yeah, cool. So, and then when her husband passed away, yeah, she brought all ten kids over here and she just worked her whole life and ran on faith in God. Wow. So yeah, it was she's pretty amazing, you know. You don't realise it until you get a bit older and you have a few kids running around that are doing your head in, and then you think, what did you do with 10 kids in those days, you know? Especially bring them over on a boat, like you know, that's pretty powerful. And anywhere she was, everyone had to go to church. Now I used to wonder why my cousins, you know, we used to have a little bit of tension at times, but I remember that my grandmother wouldn't make me go to church, and I never thought that was strange. I thought, ha ha, you've all got to get dressed, you know, in your fancy clothes, your Sunday best, and go to church, and I don't have to. Yeah, so they all went to church, and I probably sat home and watched cartoons. So why didn't you have to go? Um, when I was a teenager, I was pretty full-on kid. Yeah. And things changed when we moved up here. Mum got into a second relationship, and um, while she was working, my stepfather was quite abusive. Right. And I I was staying with her and she said, Would you come to church with me today? And I said, Do I have to? And she's like, No, but I would really love for you to come to church. And I went to church with her, and it was a really quiet little church in I Rymple. And I really felt peace, and I felt her peace. I come home with her and I asked her why she'd never made me, and she's like, Because you're too stubborn, you would never have gone.

SPEAKER_05 3:46

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

She's like, I knew you wouldn't go. And I said, So why, you know, why invite me now? And she's like, because I know you. She's like, I know where you're going, I know where your heart will take you, and you're gonna need God. And it was really strange because she was a hundred percent right. Yeah, like she it was like she fed me spiritually along the way to set a foundation for when I was ready, yeah, and knew I was gonna need that. So yeah, I was really blessed for that.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

That's pretty cool. So if you had to kind of remember uh Upal's faith, is there something that kind of stands out to you as the thing that you you know have really taken from her or you kind of really remember as yeah, standing out?

SPEAKER_02 4:35

I think that peace, I couldn't believe that she had such unwavering faith. No matter what happened, no matter what come, she knew she was gonna be okay. The sense of peace that she was able to emanate to myself and that I got from church was pretty phenomenal. Yeah. Um, later on, when I was at high school and things were happening, um I was at a Catholic school, and at those times I was going through trauma at home that I didn't tell my mum about, and all I had was a convent next to the college, and it was a tiny, beautiful convent with nuns in there, and I don't think I was supposed to go in there as a student, and I just used to go in there during my lunch breaks and you know, recess breaks, and yeah, just find peace, like just throw it all to God because I just didn't feel like I could tell anybody else what was happening, and that was yeah, the only place I actually felt comfort, you know.

SPEAKER_03 5:41

So you mentioned Sonia that um at home you were experiencing abuse. Um, what can you say about that experience? What what was that like for you?

SPEAKER_02 5:52

Um there was sexual approaches at one stage, um, which I pretty much protected myself from, but my stepfather would um come in to wake me up for school and kick me and stuff and kick me in the guts. I used to look a lot I still probably do, a lot like my dad, and he didn't like that. So he really put me down. And at one stage, I never told mum any of this because my mum was a refuge worker and she was saving the world. What kind of refuge? A women's refuge. Yeah, with domestic violence. So I guess I knew that if mum knew she probably would have done something about it, and but I guess he got me to a point where I didn't think I was worth worrying about or that I was, yeah, that I should tell anybody. Um and I was so proud of what my mum was doing, you know, like she was such a warrior for women in need. Like she would go into situations that the police wouldn't, you know, she'd go, well then I'll grab the dog and my bra my baseball bat, and I'm not coming out until I've got this woman in the van.

SPEAKER_05 7:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:05

And she would do it, you know. Um, so yeah, it was it was pretty bad. It got to the point where um he would start to pick on my sister and my younger brother, right? And I was extremely protective of them. I felt ruined a bit myself already. And I didn't want that to happen to them. So if he started on them, yeah, I would jump in and I would cop extra. But I was prepared for that, and I don't regret one moment of that, I'd do the same again, you know. Um it got to the point where one day though, somebody had left. This is ridiculous, but somebody had left the lid on the peanut butter jar crooked, it wasn't screwed on the right way, and he asked, started on the other kids about it, and I said, you know, I jumped in and was like, what's the problem? He's like, Who did this? And I'm like, I did, and next minute he threw me in the wall and he smashed my jaw. So that was the end of that. That was just before my 16th birthday, so that's when I told mum. And all credit to mum, as soon as she found out, like, I mean, as a parent now, I feel extremely sorry for her. Yeah. That she didn't know and that we hid it from her because of course she was gonna action it. I just didn't think I was worth the action, you know. I'd been belittled so much that if you get told something enough and you believe it, it takes a long time to get that kind of stuff out of your head, you know, and to start saying, Well, I still struggle with self-worth, but you know, like to see yourself as a worthy person. So yeah, we acted on that straight away, and she she got us out of there, and yeah, so you know, yeah, tough experiences, but I mean it didn't get much better after that.

SPEAKER_03 8:58

How do you reflect on like that? Yeah, your mum just couldn't see what was going on.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Do you I I remember her face, yeah, and I remember when I told her other things, and I'm pretty sure that nearly broke my mum for a while. Like it really, I've never seen my mum sort of go downhill mentally, and it's not that she went downhill, she kind of tucked in and she processed and she, you know, did the best she could to help us heal or to get us help that we might need. But yeah, I feel for her as a parent now to find out those things, she was so sorry, yeah, she didn't know how to like face us for a little bit, like she didn't know how to deal with it because she was so pained by it. Totally, and you know, sorry just isn't enough through those things, you know.

SPEAKER_03 9:50

So and it would have just struck so deep, like you said, because she's out there saving the world and doing all these amazing things, but then she's she's not seen what's happening in her own house. Well, we hid it.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

We hit it really well, yeah, you know, and because I was a teenager, I guess, and at that time, you know, it was it's common for teenagers, even yeah, to tuck away in their rooms and whatnot, listen to music or whatever, and maybe self-soothed at that time through music, yeah. But also prayer. There are many times as a teenager I used to get to the point where I would break and pray. Yeah, and yeah, yet my faith was up and down.

SPEAKER_03 10:32

Yeah. So you weren't necessarily like going to church or anything like that. No, no, but there was still this sense that God was somewhere in the picture.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

Yeah, yeah, and I couldn't I couldn't be at a church where people were different on Sunday. To go to church and say you believe in God and then treat people horribly through the week is just not my thing. And I think that drove me away, you know, that did drive me away.

unknown 11:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:07

So at 16, did you say you left home?

SPEAKER_02 11:11

Well, we moved, we moved, yeah. Yeah. I went to Melbourne, did a diploma when I was 17 and came back. And then I guess I probably still hadn't, I probably still carried a lot of stuff. Yeah. And so I guess I mixed with crowds that weren't probably the ideal crowds to be around. And I became one of the boys because I felt a little too hard to be around girls. Ironically, it's really weird. But I felt like girls were softer and I'd just been through too much, and it felt like boys had a better understanding, or I could run with boys better than girls. Yeah. But in the end, that led to drug use, yeah, alcohol abuse, yeah, you know, smoking marijuana, yeah, and took me down a completely horrifying path.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

But I had my first two children, and that got he started to get violent, and I still had mum in the refuge at that time, and I guess I was a bit stronger and went, nope, I'm not doing this, because it happened in front of my children. Um, and then I guess I was on my own for a while and lonely and not feeling great. Um, and again met more of the wrong crowd and ended up with a man who my third daughter was born to. Yeah, that there was excessive domestic violence, drug-induced and psychotic, like this man was extremely dangerous. Yeah. He actually still is, but he's not here. Um and he used to beat the living daylights out of me, and I guess I hid it for a long time because I was the daughter of a woman that saved people in domestic violence. How did I end up like this? Yeah. How did I end up in this situation? You know, and it's not until later on that you go, I've been manipulated and moulded and not realized at the time until I was already there. So I was pretty horrified, you know. I thought if I tried to share that story to start with, that people would, you know, berate me and say, What are you doing? Yeah. This was you've seen this your whole life, you know. Fear of judgment. Yeah. And I used to work in the refuge with mum sometimes. I used to go on jobs with her, you know, like I was lucky and privileged because I was trusted by mum to like look after the kids that were she was picking up and stuff like that. So I knew all these things, you know. I remember crying to her saying, Why do these women keep coming back? And she did studies on it saying, look, it takes at least seven times for a woman to leave a really bad relationship. In my case, anytime I tried to stand up for myself or think about leaving, there were guns and stuff involved. So I sometimes would be in my home with my two my first two children and my third baby, and late at night I would have a scope put on me because he would have climbed a tree or he's climbed the roof across the road. Like, so it took a long time to get away from this man. He was extremely dangerous. He actually took my life three times, and I had so much trauma because he was beating me and then would choke me until I stopped breathing. And everyone's like, it's a miracle, you're alive, it's a miracle. And I'm like, you know what, it is a miracle, I'm alive. But at the end of the day, my children got left with my lifeless body, and they had to call the ambulance. And you think that you're doing this on your own, and they're going through all these experiences, you know, like so, yeah, it was pretty traumatic. But yeah, I think I remember feeling so broken, thinking feeling so traumatized that I honestly didn't see a way out of it. And when I thought about taking my life, I couldn't do it, and I was mad. I was mad even with God. It's like, why don't you let me go? Like, let me out of this trauma, you know. Like, I need peace or I need death to have peace. And I remember being on the floor and I was literally on my hands and knees, and I was like, God, if I have to live through this, if I have to keep, you know, getting up every day and my heart's gonna keep beating, then please, please give me something from this. Please let me turn this. I need to turn this into not just my favor, but for my children and for other people in this situation. Like if it has to be this extreme, you need to guide me and take me to those places so that I can help others and heal. And oh, if you ask yourself, shall we, Steve? I ended up in situations with other women that that people would not recognize these situations unless you'd been in it. Yeah, there's some some things with extreme violence you don't want anyone to understand because you never want them to go through it. Yeah, but there are just small things that you recognise, or some things people will say that you go, There's something really wrong here. And there are times that I know I helped other women that yeah, I got to help people, and I seriously think that's a blessing. Yeah. Like, you know, if I had to do that and go through all that trauma, something good had to come out of it. Yeah. You know, so yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:12

I imagine some people would hear that story though, Sonia, and think, like, why didn't God stop it happening, you know?

SPEAKER_02 17:19

Like I think for me, um maybe there were times, well there were times God and I argued. Yeah. I never won, by the way. But we argued. The only feeling I really had about that was you have free will, you know, and I guess being accountable just because I'd gotten into situations with drugs or alcohol or anything else didn't mean that I deserved that. But I had to be responsible for myself and I had to recognise that I had made bad choices, not intentionally, but that also I had let things continue or let myself get to a state where I was just surviving, not living, and I had to change that. I could change that, I had the power to change that, and if I really wanted it, then God helps those who help themselves. That's all I used to have that goes. I think my grandmother must have said that many times or something because it's ingrained, you know. Like I know we can all pray, but we all got to do our bit too, yeah, you know, and I guess that's the grace of free will, you know. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:30

So when you think about yourself in that relationship, what advice do you wish you could give yourself? Uh be softer on yourself. Wow, interesting.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

I had no mercy for myself. I have only this year probably started to forgive myself. They say we're forgiven with God and Jesus, but I it's taken a long time for me to forgive myself. Yeah, and even though I knew that I would never intentionally go into those relationships, I still nobody could ever have judged me as hard as I judge myself, and and that judgment, it was kind of keeping you there as well because you just couldn't give yourself enough grace to move forward.

SPEAKER_03 19:17

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I didn't think I deserved it. Yeah. When you think about um that time too, do you wish that the people around you had have asked you something different or seen something that they weren't seeing? Because it sounds like if you were going in and out of hospital and things, were you just not really ready to accept help, or you just wonder how it was that you still ended up so isolated, you know?

SPEAKER_02 19:43

So I went into trouble sticking up for everyone. Anything that anyone had a problem with, I would try and fix it. Yeah. So when I did start to feel not strong and like I needed help, everybody that I went to actually said, What do you mean? You're the strongest person we know. Right. You know, like, and it was almost like they couldn't handle the thought of me not being able to stand up, you know, not being this tower of strength, you know. Yeah, I I felt really broken. And I used to say, even the strongest of metals bends, like, you know, like I'm telling you, I need some support here, I need some help. But uh people ran.

SPEAKER_03 20:35

And when you finally decided that you were going to leave this relationship, what was that like?

SPEAKER_02 20:41

I mean, did it have to kind of take a time to it took a long time because everybody was scared of him.

SPEAKER_03 20:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

Um, it took a lady in her 70s that was the mother of a very bad associate of mine, that when I rang him and said, I'm telling you I need to get out, like he's going to take my life again. He was like, I can't help you but go to mum's. Now this lady was like the Sam Rosia version of Ma Baker, and she had a caravan with uh enclosed yard around it next to her on her property near her house, and she immediately said to me, Get out here, get out here now. And when I went out there, he came out and she knew he would come out, and she was armed up, and she stood on a driveway with a shotgun and said to him, This is loaded, I know what you're doing, and I'm telling you right now, you take one more step on my property and I will take your life. And she got she scared him off. She and he she knew she meant it, yet ironically, all These big top guys drug associates and you know, big men that would say they would do all these horrifying things to people that mess with them would run from him, but he saw something in her that backed him off. And then then we would call I had to call the police probably every day for nearly three weeks to tell them where he was hiding. He's in this person's roof, he's at this person's house until he would leave town. So, and I'm actually have a lifelong intervention order against him. Yeah, and the judge, once it had gone to court, said he'd never seen a case, like so bad, he personally hadn't seen a case, and he had never issued a lifelong intervention order, and that was his first one. So, you know, all those things put in place help, so yeah, but this man did come back a couple years ago, or actually, probably about four or five years ago, and I'll admit a little bit of fear. I was like, here we go again. He said he was coming for my life, and so I uh got my oldest daughter to take her sister and my grandkids and everything out of my home for the night, asked her to keep them safe, and I stayed at home and I didn't arm up, I didn't carry a bat, I didn't pick up my old Aboriginal Bundy there or anything like that. I actually unlocked all the doors and windows. I'd lived that life so long. I was like, I will refuse to allow you to do this to me. If you come in, whatever happens, happens. And ironically, he didn't come in. And he rang me the next day and said, Can you meet me at the park here in Recliffs? He was here. And I was like, What for? I said again, try and take my life in public this time. He said, No, I just want to catch up because I don't know what to do. And I got there and something had I really felt like God actually was like, go. I didn't really want to go.

SPEAKER_03 23:58

I was gonna say, yeah, how did you decide to go?

SPEAKER_02 24:00

Because that's yeah, I don't know. I just I really didn't want to go.

SPEAKER_03 24:04

Not what you know would be so much trauma and the fear and the everything.

SPEAKER_02 24:10

Yeah, and I just don't think I could do it anymore. And I just I really now I think about it now, yeah, I'm like, why did I go? But I seriously felt it. I've seriously felt go. And I got there and something changed. As soon as I stepped out of my car, I felt like I no longer had lost my own power. I felt strong and I felt capable, and I saw him as still a man that was living in just the same cycle and miserable and never gonna find satisfaction in his life, you know. I just completely saw him in a different way. And ironically, my daughter gave birth later that afternoon, and I invited him to come and meet the baby, yeah, yeah, wow, and he couldn't believe it. And for my daughter to see him walking into the room, like I walked in, I was like, I have Gav with me, is that okay? Can he see the baby? And she's like, Really? And I'm like, Yeah, and she's like, why? Why, mum? Yeah, I'm like, I don't know, I feel sorry for him. Yeah, I said, he's a lost soul, and I just feel this deep sorrow all of a sudden. She was like, Okay, so yeah, he came into the hospital, and yeah, it was so weird. I even let him drive me back out to Red Cliffs. I didn't take him to my home. I asked him to drop me off at the top corner, but yeah, it just it was completely different. I can't, it's amazing. There's only yeah, there's only the power of God in that because like the way I saw him, I saw him with completely different eyes. Like, once that fear had gone, I feel like God was like, This will change, I will give this to you.

SPEAKER_03 26:01

Like, and yeah. Taking him to see the baby is such a powerful um image, too, of you showing him like this is what my life is about. Yeah, this is this is beautiful and this is precious, and these are the things that I've grown.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

Yeah, and you know, that's but I didn't see that until later, yeah, because I was still like, why? And then why did you take him to you know, yeah, your daughter that saw all this trauma and that hidden cupboards and ran out windows to get help? Why did you take him to her new birth? Yeah, you know, like so yeah, but it just felt really right, and she was okay with it, ironically. Yes, yeah, you know, but yeah, yeah, I just didn't see all of that, I just did, yeah. And then later on, I was like, why? Yeah, why did you do that? But it felt good, yeah. It felt good for me, yeah, you know, it yeah, and I actually said to him, I will never forget the things that you've done to me. Like, but I will no longer carry it anymore either. And I hope that you change, I hope you see what's happened in your life before your last moments, so that you have a chance to enjoy life and to change, you know, and it just was really it was a really blessed like 48 hours. It was crazy, yeah. It was insane, but it was, yeah, it was good, it was healing.

SPEAKER_03 27:33

Do you know how you got to that place where you were willing like ready to not like let as you said, not forget, but uh at the same time not be bound by it and you know, kind of let go of its control of you. I guess that's just a really long process between you know leaving him and then getting to that place.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

Um, yeah, I think Gav had been gone 16 years before I actually fronted him. But I still lived with a lot of trauma and I think I just got tired of it. I got tired of trauma. I got tired of being angry, you know, like but that I did have fear, like like I said, I wouldn't have my kids or my grandchildren in the house at the time, and I stayed on my own, but I felt covered. I felt covered by God, like I felt protected, and maybe at the end of the day, if it had all gone wrong, I might have looked like a complete idiot, you know, but the way it worked out just felt like yeah, it had to be God driven. Yeah, like because I didn't know that that's how I was gonna feel, yeah. I didn't think that that's what I was gonna do. I never would have believed that I was even going to meet him, let alone take him to meet my new granddaughter. Yeah, like so yeah, it was pretty insane, yeah. But I think I think that's part of the foundation that my grandmother laid like have faith, trust, and if you follow and you do what you're driven to do, and it's not what you want to do, and it's not what you're comfortable with, it will work out, you know. And I think there's been a lot of times in my life that I've found that, yeah. So, you know, I went and did counselling, I went and got help, I spoke to a psychologist for nearly a year, you know, learnt about PDSD. This year I've done so many modalities to learn how to self-soothe and calm my nervous system and you know, learn how to try and yeah, reach out to people more, and I have been driven to things that can deal with domestic violence where I can speak out and I can help people, and that's been totally amazing. Yeah, you know, we even did it, went to a conference in August, and yeah, I spoke out, and I had so many people come up and say things, and I was like, I'm hitting nerves. Like, you know, they're believing the unbelievable, yeah, because that is a big thing with domestic violence. Some things seem so extreme, right? It's hard to believe. Yeah, and there's always that, oh no, he wouldn't do that. Some most of the time, it's the people you'd never guess were violent that are violent. Yeah, and in some people's cases there were pastors that were violent, and so of course these women weren't gonna be believed. Yeah. So for to have so many people, you know, like relate to it in some way and go, oh, you know, maybe we should be believing this, you know, maybe this is a real thing, or you know, let's change our mindset. Yeah, I find so much, so much power in that. Like, yeah, it was great. That's really good. It's really good. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:01

It's a good, healthy way to do it and not carry it. Well, that's another question I had was what kind of encouragement would you give to people, say, in churches who want to be um, you know, advocates in this space of family and domestic violence, or they want to make sure that they're gonna be able to be helpful and supportive, you know, what kind of changes do you want to see in the church so that that can happen more?

SPEAKER_02 31:27

Um, I think well, the Anglican Church has put out its ten commitments in relation to domestic violence. So I think it's education, I think it's being open to that. There's a communities that care program as well. Um and I think it's have an open heart and an open mind and a love for people and open that door, open the conversation, don't be afraid to stand up for somebody. When a woman's in domestic violence, she's disempowered, she needs somebody else, you know, even if she fears the the reaction or the repercussions from her partner, because it sends a message to her saying, I see you, yeah, this is not right, and it sends a message to him, and I mean this is vice versa, too. If it's a woman abusing a man, do you know what I mean? Like, because that does happen, then you send a message to that person to say this is not acceptable. Yeah. Because this old school thing of you know, it's it's in their home, it's their business, is just not appropriate.

SPEAKER_05 32:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:33

Unfortunately, when it that happened to me, everybody afterwards was like, Yeah, we knew this was happening. Right. You know, like and it's like, why did you not? And I think maybe that's part of where you go downhill in your self-worth, too, because you're like, why did you not keep yourself safe, but call out for me, call the police, yeah. Do something to help, yeah, you know, yeah. And if you see someone in that situation and you see them on their own, just go and ask them if they want a coffee. Yeah, you know, just let them know you're there. Yeah, just say, look, if you ever need help, come over, we can lock the door, I'll call the police with you. You know, just stretch yourself a little, but don't fear, yeah, especially as Christians, yeah, because God knows that, and I believe He has us have it has us covered with that. Yeah, you know, I think, yeah, that pure intention and that love. Yeah, because only love wins. Yeah. I've run with anger, hate, and hurt, and it never won, you know, and it eats you up.

SPEAKER_05 33:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:33

So I just refuse to go there anymore. Like it has to be love. Has to be love for even the people that you cannot get along with and the people that you might not want to associate with or know, but at the end of the day, if we're all God's people and we're all created in his image, we're all here for a reason, you know, and someone in a bad situation doesn't want to be in that situation, you know. A woman in domestic violence didn't want to be in domestic violence, an alcoholic didn't want to grow up to be an alcoholic, same as with drug addiction. So I think open minds, open hearts, and be prepared to believe the unbelievable and be okay to not understand somebody's thought process or their safety process because a woman knows when it's safe for her to leave and when it's not, so you have to trust in that too, you know.

SPEAKER_03 34:30

Thank you so much, Sonia. I really appreciated you sharing and such horrible, challenging things in there, but also um, yeah, I mean, your faith and the ways that you've uh been able to not only survive but heal and and come to this place of strength is amazing. So thank you for sharing.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

That's okay, time to thrive, not survive.

SPEAKER_03 34:56

The Spirit is brought to you by the Anglican Diocese of Bendigo. To hear more stories like this, please subscribe to this podcast. You can help us share these stories by leaving a review. And you can find photos, videos, and more storytelling from the heart of the country at thespiritstories.com.au or on Facebook and Instagram at thespirit.stories.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

If you're in an abusive situation or know someone who is, call 1 800 Respect. Please know you're not alone, and help is available.