BTA Built To Bounce Back Ms Anonymous S (Guest Speaker)

  I was born in Alabama, a small Appalachian town where life began with challenges that shaped my resilience and determination. From the ages of 8 to 15, I endured significant hardships, and at 15, I made the courageous decision to leave home and move in with my grandmother — the one person who offered safety without judgment or questions. That experience became the foundation of my strength and perseverance.

I began my career in Human Resources at a young age and have now spent 31 years building a successful career in corporate America. Along the way, I married in 1992 and became a proud mother to my son in 1993. Today, I continue to invest in my personal and professional growth as I work toward earning my third degree, including my master’s, while remaining passionate about leadership, people, and creating positive impact through my work.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Thank you for joining us today at Beyond the Assault. This podcast discusses sexual assault, domestic violence, and trauma, which may be triggering for some listeners. We are survivors sharing personal experiences and are not licensed professionals. Please seek qualified support if needed and take care while listening. Thank you again for joining us today.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

We are back once again. And today we have Miss X. Hello, Miss S.

SPEAKER_03 1:16

Hi, how are you?

SPEAKER_02 1:18

How you doing today?

SPEAKER_03 1:20

I am well.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

How you doing, Miss Denise in the building?

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Hey, hey, hey. I'm doing great. Glad to be with y'all today.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Once again, once again, we have Miss S because this is going to be one of those episodes where you have to listen. Just listen to what's going on and how it's going on and the pattern that it's going on in. In and out. This I just wanted to say something kind of out and kind of wild. But uh Miss S, Miss S, normally what I do is we have you introduce yourself because nobody can do it just like you can do it. Um so just let us know a little brief about you and we can get started.

SPEAKER_03 2:13

So my name is Mrs. Ms. S. Um, I am 58 years old. I was raised in a very small town, um Appalachian, where everyone knew everyone. Um I was a little bit shy when I was coming up. And uh from what being in Christem now, I understand that, you know, when you have a call on your life that the enemy, the first thing that he tries to do is to take your voice. And my voice was taken through sexual abuse when I was starting around eight o'clock, eight, I mean eight o'clock, starting around eight years old. To the age of fifteen. At the age of fifteen, I ran away from home and through counseling, one of the things that I realized early on is that when I left at fifteen, no one asked why. And I never thought about that until I went out of co until I went to counseling that nobody really knew why and nobody really acts the why behind me leaving. Uh fast forward to my future, I was um because I was kind of taught to be quiet and be silent, I just kinda let people do do and say whatever they wanted to do or say to me as I was growing up into my adulthood. Um, didn't have a voice then. If someone hurt me, I was silenced. If someone did me wrong, I was silenced. If a job did me wrong, whatever capacity I was in, people were allowed to treat me the the way that they felt that they needed to treat me because I had no voice and I had no one to stand up for me. And the interesting thing about child abuse is that every day you're living out that situation because I vaguely remember that person coming into my room every single morning, and I would shut my eyes because I knew what was gonna happen in that moment, and that's kind of how I lived my life. I shut my eyes and I just kinda kinda glided through life, um, never saying anything about what anybody had done to me until one day I got my voice back. I prayed and I asked the Lord to let me see me the way that He sees me. And that was like a revival in my personal life, and from that point on I began began to gain some strength, I began to have a voice, I began to see myself as being important, I began to to realize that what had happened to me wasn't my fault, because the perpetrator at that time was a stepfather of mine, and we're couple of cousins and an uncle, so it just wasn't one violation, it was multiple violations. And I when I was growing up, everybody used to call me pretty. And as I think about that, as I was growing up, I was thinking, well, you know what? Maybe it's because I'm pretty that all of these things happen to me. So what I started to try to do was dress very unappealing or do things to make myself not as be appealing. It's just interesting, all the cycles that you go through in life, just kind of revisiting and reliving, as I said earlier, each and every day, that violation. Although you're out of the situation, you're still living the situation each and every day. So I met people who kind of encouraged me, who kind of gave me some strength, and as I think about it now, I had become a hidden figure. And I had some people bring me out of hiding. And so as I began my career, I knew that I I started off in my life wanting to be an attorney because that was my way of helping people. And since I didn't get to do that, I became married, I had a child, and and my schedule did not afford me the time to go to law school. So I figured what's the best way to help someone didn't get in human resource. So that's where I've been for the last thirty years. Um I didn't get my degree right out of high school. I waited to get my first degree when I was forty-five years old. Fast forward to fifty, I decided it was time to get my bachelor's degree. And now, almost sixty, I'm working on my master's degree. So that's the short version.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Wow. Well, you just jumped right in.

SPEAKER_03 7:55

Huh?

SPEAKER_02 7:55

I say you just jumped right in.

SPEAKER_03 7:58

Yeah. I just oh go ahead. No, I was just gonna say it's it's amazing when you have your own personal awakening and you start realizing for so many years I had told myself that I couldn't do things because I wasn't smart enough, I wasn't this enough, and I wasn't that enough. And it was no evidence of that voice manifested in my life. I just believed those things. But once I started what I started to do was to counter everything that the enemy was saying about me. If he said I was too s was wasn't smart, I showed him how smart I was. If you tell me that I couldn't reach a senior level position in c in corporate America, I showed him I that I can do that. And I do think that's one of the symptoms of people that have gone through some similar situations as me. You try to over uh excel in life because you want people to see you and you want people to see you as a good person doing good things. Um I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, you but you can do good things for the wrong reasons. And those were yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

Now, I wanted to go back to um you said uh you were at fifteen. This is this is something happened at fifteen years old. You were becoming um I guess you were getting in this development where where people were uh admiring you at that time, uh you know, good and bad. Um just thinking about the development at that time. Do you feel that um people in general or just the male um embodiment of were they at do you feel like it was an ad admiration thing, or was it more on the lust side, even at fifteen years old?

SPEAKER_03 10:08

Yeah, I did because I was pretty fully developed as a fifteen year old, if you know what I mean. Uh, you know, I had you know physically you could I look like a woman on the outside. Very long hair, body well developed. So it may have been a combination of admiration and love.

SPEAKER_02 10:34

I I can see that how, you know, because males in general, um, you know, they always are looking in general. But the approach on to someone that's fifteen, you know, that's that's very especially if if they're a person that is older. Um, did you were you already taught at that age, um, by your folks, uh, the birds and the bees, or did you have to learn in a different area of life?

SPEAKER_03 11:04

I'll say it this way. I'm almost sixty years old and my mother has never told me about my, you know, my cycle. So that's the way it was when I was growing up in the sixties. Everything was so secretive. You can't talk about these things. So you kind of learn as you go. Uh, you don't really in in my case, I didn't really have a support system. So, you know, learning those types of things on your own can be pretty scary, especially, you know, you're a young woman, you go to the restroom one day and it's you know, things are happening to your body and you don't have an explanation for it. And it's hard when you have to go through those kind of things by yourself.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

I understand that. Was it is this why it was so important for you to excel at your education? Um, because of that reason? Um, 'cause you felt like you didn't have support. Because being in human resources for uh, you know, at the age w where you were at and doing it for thirty one years is um it's a career-based bill. Like, did you already have that that good uh drive to get up and go, or you wanted to look at human resources like I can help people?

SPEAKER_03 12:24

I looked at it like I can help people, but one of the things well I've learned over the course of my life is that if you don't get the healing that you need to get, you'll become a support system, but you'll become a support system for all the wrong people. Because what heal what lack of healing does is it draws it's like a magnet that unhealed, those unhealed places in your life become a magnet, and you draw all the wrong people to your and you become a support system to all the wrong people. And and what I mean is you find yourself being the nurturer, being all those things that you admired or you wish you should have had growing up, you're giving all of that to people. Um, and I I don't know if I don't want to use the word not deserving because everybody deserves to be loved and cared. It was just the wrong people that that I nurtured and took care of. And to this day, I have to really use wisdom and manage caring about people the right way. And doing it for the right reason. I'm not sure if I answered your question.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Yeah, you answered it. Um no, I was because I wanted to see what I was looking for in the in the setting of coming from a career standpoint is the drive behind what you want to do as a career person. Uh because you were saying something about law and you are talking about helping people with resources. And um, you know, in life, uh, we all see, you know, community as a resource for each other to grow. Um in general you know, and so you know, getting the right resources from the right people is a is a good uh stepping stone or standing point to help people grow in a different direction of their careers. Um I was trying to find the the detail between um the development of you know what happened to you at 15 to the strength that you have today to be on platform now uh to talk about you know what you're talking about. So I just wanted to let you know that um you know what I admire what you're doing now, um be able to talk about what you're talking about now, and be able to give us the blueprint of what's going on now. Like, hey, even uh at 15-year-old, you know, as a developing 15-year-old, um, it didn't stop me from trying to do what I want to do in career. Uh and even though you're at that point, you're at that limit of where you are, you're able you're still able to talk about it, and it hasn't stopped you. Um you know, it hasn't stopped you from telling your story. Uh Denise, what do you think about this?

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Yeah, I completely agree. And it's funny to sit here quietly and just listen to you tell your story because there are parts of your story that are so eerily familiar to me. Um, you know, like you, I was at a very young, impressionable age um when I was raped um by a couple of gentlemen in our neighborhood. And um, you know, I told my parents, of course, um, you know, they wanted to know why I was home, why I was hurt, what was going on. Um, so I told them, but you know, it wasn't um anything that was discussed after that moment. Um it was something that was kept quiet, no one else knew. And it wasn't until recently that I started speaking out. And I even went through a period of time in my life where I questioned, like, is this really what happened? Was it my fault? You know, did was there something that I did that caused this to happen? Because that had been put on me as well. You know, had I not been where I was, had I not been doing what I was doing, you know, it wouldn't have occurred. Um, so I kept that on me for a long time and to listen to you and the strength that you had to go through your healing journey completely alone and at this point in your life, still not having really spoken out to family, still not really let them know what happened all those years ago. I mean, that is just an incredible testament to strength, an incredible testament to your faith that you were able to get through that and live a successful life. I understand the um perfectionism because I went to that same place. Um, you know, I couldn't let them see my flaws, I couldn't let them see what was wrong with me. I had to be perfect in everything that I do, and that was why I didn't speak out for a long time. Because I was terrified of, okay, well, who's gonna walk away from me if they know this awful thing about me? Um and I wouldn't speak up. Um but I'm just curious, like in not having that support system as a child, and I experienced the same thing, it took me nearly 40 years to get to the point where I could speak out, I could seek help, I could really start that healing journey and understand what I needed to do, um, and start seeing the things in my life that that changed as a result of what happened, because in my mind it was just normal. It was what every kid was experiencing, but it wasn't. Um so I'm just curious to know how that affected your childhood, how it affected your development, how it affected your way of thinking.

SPEAKER_03 18:23

It affected my childhood from a standpoint of um I did a lot of things for tension, you know, um, because I as you mentioned earlier, and as I mentioned earlier, I never I have never spoken about what had happened to me in my family. And, you know, even at the age of 15, I have a a story that happened that really traumatized me a little bit. I found out in the course of all of those interactions with my family members that I was pregnant. Um I was in a lot of pain. Uh, not knowing anything about my body or anything, I was in a lot, a lot of pain. And my mother took me to the hospital, and I remember that day so clearly because it was a holiday. We were out on two breaks. And when she took me to the hospital, the doctor asked me to go in and give a urine specimen. When I went in to give that urine specimen, there were balls of things that came out of my body that I felt like was a relief. And at that point, nobody even knew that I was pregnant because I think that, you know, I had missed carriage at carriage at that point in time. And what that did to me, because I was a cheerleader and I was doing all of these things, I felt like God was gonna punish me because I was the reason that I didn't carry that baby the whole term. And in my mind, through from that point to an adult, it was like I constantly did things to be seen. Whether it was excelling on a test, whether it was being a perfectionist at work, whether everybody saw that I was living well, every day, regardless of what was going on on the inside, the outside had to look real pretty. And I think that's what I did a good job of, you know, from being small to being an adult. And at some point in my life it just became exhausting. Um, and it grew in a lot of relationships. I haven't had very good relationships in my life because um the impact of what happened to me would never allow me to be close to anyone. And the funny thing about it is I've been married twice and I've never even I can I can tell you to this day, I can say that I've never been in love with somebody. I just wanted a good story. That's what I wanted my whole life to be is a story that I didn't live out in my childhood, but as an adult, everybody could see that story that I had imagined in my mind.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Right. That image of perfection that we create. Yes. I understand that. Um so you know, I find it I find it interesting. Um I was talking with John earlier um about the patterns that happen within families, and it wasn't until I started speaking up about what happened to me that I learned that there were multiple other family members within my family that had experienced the same thing in childhood. And I'm just curious, um, I know you said yours was the result of assault by family. Do you know of any other family members in your family that experienced something from those same people or someone else in the family?

SPEAKER_03 22:08

I tell you what, during the era that I was growing growing up, I tell you, they could have never had like Facebook or Instagram because everybody was so secretive about everything. You couldn't hear pin drop when it came to what happened inside those homes. So the answer to your question is not that I know of.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

That's good. Hopefully it didn't. Um it's definitely not something that I would ever wish on anyone or ever want anyone to experience. Um, but the fact of the matter is it is a reality and it's a shocking number of women, not just women, men, but the number of women that are sexually assaulted before the age of 18 is just astounding to me. And when I went to counseling, I found a Christian trauma counselor who really understood what I was talking about. And when she started rattling off statistics to me, which I'm not even gonna put it out there because I don't want to get it completely wrong, but it just, I mean, it shocked me and it just broke my heart that there's so many people that are experiencing this and not speaking out, not saying anything, and it has allowed it for all these years to continue, and that was what ignited that piece in me to start speaking out, start telling people about what happened, because I think there's so many people who are out there broken and feeling alone. Um, and I want them to know that there's people out here who understand what you've been through, there's people out here who see the real you. Um, and I appreciate your willingness to come on and talk to us because that's you standing up saying, Hey, you're not alone. I see you. I know what happened to you, I know what you've been through, but there's a light on the other side. Um Can you can you tell us a little bit about um I know you were talking about there was that moment when the flip the switch kind of flipped and you know you began your healing journey, but can you kind of tell us what that looked like when you started off?

SPEAKER_03 24:11

It looked like pain. Um I remember the first time talking about my story to a counselor, and I only went at that point in time, maybe when I was about twenty five, twenty-six, um, because I think what triggers the conversation is pain. You're in pain, but pain triggers the conversation even more. And at that time, I believe I was going through a divorce and I went through two sessions and I was like, I I can't really do this because once again in my mind, somebody sees me weak, and that's not the way that I'm supposed to be seen. I'm supposed to be seen as strong, and nobody will ever see me weak again is the story that I was telling myself in my mind. Um but as life progressed and there were other things that happened, um I found a counselor who created a safe place for me. Because I think that the one thing, especially for women that have gone through molestation, is to find somebody safe. Somebody safe to tell your story to and they're not gonna repeat it, or somebody that's gonna listen to you and say, I see you, I hear you, and it wasn't your fault. And this counselor took me to a level of healing that I never had gone before, and the one thing that she taught me more than anything, well, the first thing that she taught me, before you can go through anything, you have to learn that self-love. Because self-love, you because you don't have it, right? You don't have that self-love. And I began to learn what self-love was all about loving myself, um, ex the ex raising the expectation on how people should treat me. Um, those all became a part of the healing journey. Learning not to lie about myself. If someone hurt me, I would be like, Oh, that's okay, and I would move right along. But I learned to say, that's not okay. And this is what how I feel. So that healing journey taught me how to start talking about my feeling and not looking as as feelings as being weak, but looking at it as being a strength when you can talk about it and you can make people accountable in your life. And once I learned that self-love, it was it was on from there. Because that was like the secret sauce for me.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

Yeah, and I love hearing you say um realizing that the the weakness was really strength, because I think that was a a big thing for me too. Um, and I actually wrote a book um a few years back called Finding Beauty and Brokenness. Um and for me it was realizing that vulnerability is very different from weakness. You know, it took me a long time to learn that being vulnerable and showing people the real me is not me being weak. That's actually my strength. Letting people in to see who I am despite what I've been through is my strength. Um, so that was a big that was a big eye-opening moment for me, and it was great to hear you say that and almost validate like what I've been thinking um since that experience that I had, because I did see sharing things that weren't perfect in my life as weakness, but in reality it was what brought me to where I am and into the purpose that God had for me. Um, and I see you walking that same path and hear you saying the same things, and it's just a beautiful thing to be able to share that with somebody and have someone truly understand what you're saying.

SPEAKER_03 28:23

Yeah, and one of the things that I've found that uh along I just want to mention this because I feel compelled to talk about it, is isolation. Because of what has happened to you, it's almost like you want to isolate yourself from the world because that's the safe place for me. I may not be safe with anybody, but I'm safe with myself. And so isolation was a big part of my story. I would travel with girlfriends of mine, friends of mine, and everybody would be so happy and so joyous. And and that's the other thing. I I felt like I didn't give myself permission to be happy. It's like, okay, I'm just gonna go through life in subpar happiness, if that's a word. But I was never truly happy. I I would isolate myself on these trips until I found I begin to circle myself. And it's almost like healing, you have to take yourself on a prayer journey too, because there's some things that you need in your life that you don't really need you it that you don't think you need in your life, and one of those is a person that will let you fail, a person that will let you be authentically who you are, whether it's good or bad, and they still love you. So finding type of friends in my life was it helped a whole lot in my healing journey and it kind of brought me out of isolation.

SPEAKER_02 30:08

There you go. There you go. Like what what yeah, what would it take? What would it take? How how what would it take to to show them how to love you and what to listen for? Um being in all because you I know it takes patience and I know it takes uh an open-minded person uh to do so. Um so what what would it take to to talk to someone like yourself that's been through this uh situation?

SPEAKER_03 30:39

I'm gonna be very honest with you. People, including myself that have gone through these type of situations, are the most loving people because you tend to give out what you want. And love is what I want, and I overexerted myself in love. But what I would tell a man would be to just create a safe place for me. Um it's almost like you know, I guess I'm gonna say during that healing journey, um I was very immature in those relationships. And only because I think when you go through a traumatic situation, what I've learned in counseling is that you stay stuck in time. So although I was a grown woman, those men were in love with the child because my mind hadn't developed to the place of progression. So like the woman I am today, um it would be love. Love covers a multitude of fears. Love I mean just love a person. Love a person like me and let it be a genuine type of love. And you can only get your direction on how to love me, not even for me, because sometimes we climb I don't even know. But God can show you how to love because He's definitely given me friends like that in my life, where God has taught them how to love me, even if there were days I didn't want to be bothered with them for no reason, or I I was mean to them for no reason, or angry for no reason. They loved me through all of that, and that's what I mean when I say it's tough to love someone like me, and I don't want to act as so alien or anything like that by making that statement because it's not it's not the same as loving somebody that hasn't gone through a traumatic situation like that. Um but love is is the answer, and it's the answer to a way more problems than this, but definitely in my situation, that genuine um God type of love being directed by God and allowing him to show you how to love me. That's the long answer short, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 33:12

No, that's that's real. That's real because guys I can say this. Uh guys out there, we you know we encounter, you know, people that have been through things and in general and sometimes when you don't realize that you don't understand the assault part or you don't understand the domestic part or whatever uh someone's been through, you don't see the signs because you're just living. And when you do, you want to know how to nurture it, especially if you are a guy that cares. So you know, I think that's the perfect answer, uh, to that question because as as a guy, you know, coming from the per from the male perspective, because I know we have both types of listeners. We have women listening, we have male, we have young people, we have older people, or seniors, I'm saying seven people. So we have all those types of people listening in and we just want to be able to be able to show that blueprint of, you know, hey, if you encounter someone that's been through a situation like this, just know how to love and show their agape uh love in that sense and and if we don't know what it is, then you know, just learn how to, you know, and uh and read into it.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

And I hate that we're running short on time. I would love to have you back to talk to you again. I feel like there's so much more for us to unfold and open up um and put out to people. Um if you are willing, we would love to have you back on again and continue this conversation.

SPEAKER_03 34:54

Absolutely. I absolutely would love it.

SPEAKER_00 34:57

Yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_03 34:59

Because this is also a part of the healing journey, right? Talking about it.

SPEAKER_04 35:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 35:04

And a lot of freedom for me comes from seeing people set free. You know, I get to talk, you know, I've in the past I've spoken to a lot of women in churches and I think that's an area that we, you know, if if you want to, we can tap into at another time because you think that a lot of this is happening in these women around the world, but there are women stacked in the church that have not even tapped into the healing. They can't they conceal a secret to them, uh, you know, to people. Um, it's still a secret that's being kept, especially uh by those women in churches who believe that you know, that they need to conceal this kind of stuff and that, you know, all they need to do is forgive the person and move on and not address the the healing that they need themselves.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

Yes, absolutely agree.

SPEAKER_02 36:07

Well, I know this at the end of our episode, we're definitely gonna have resources uh at the end of any video, and we'll can continue to do so uh with our programming. Um, is there I know you have something that's in the works. Do you wanna talk about it?

SPEAKER_03 36:28

Yeah. I um I'm writing in the process of writing a book. And you know, the title of the book is if I could if I could just say something. And uh if I could just had a few minutes to talk about the first sentence in my book. The words were my mother said that out of five children, I cried the most. Maybe my tears were prophetic of my life to come. And that's how I started the book.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

I like it. I like it. Very, very, very good. I love it, I love it, I love it. Well, Denise, you got anything to say?

SPEAKER_00 37:14

Yeah, I just um I enjoyed the conversation with you today. Like I said, I'm gonna be happy to talk to you further um and open up more into your journey um and how you got to this place of healing, even though that journey is continuous. Um I see it as the infinity symbol. It kind of never ends, it just keeps going. Um, but in the meantime, um if anyone listening wants to reach out to us, please do so. Um, you can find us on our YouTube page at um beyond the assault podcast. You can also um email us at beyond the assault at gmail.com. And we are out. We are out until next time. Thank you again for tuning in with us today. Always remember, never get it.