The After Thoughts of the After Thoughts

Welcome to Michaela Mae's Audiobook Experience for The Barn off of Colfax Lane: an unfiltered memoir about sexual assault and the mixed feelings that come with it. 

In this book Michaela tells her story of the childhood sexual abuse she experienced when she was 12-years-old while taking horse back riding lessons from a horse trainer in Oregon.

BOOK SUMMARY:

I was 12 years old the first time my horse trainer grabbed my left boob and asked me if I had ever had sex. I'm not sure what caught me off guard the most: his question or the fact a 79-year-old man had his hand firmly cusped around my boob while asking me, a 12-year-old, if I had ever had sex. I've blocked out a lot of that season from my mind, but that first day sticks out clearer than the rest. Is it because of the shock? Is it because I hadn't fully remembered my pro-dissociation skills yet?

I have no f*cking clue, but I do remember the green-striped tank top and the dark navy blue jeans I had on that day. I remember watching his lips ooze as the words, "Have you ever had sex?" spilled out of them. I remember the blank stare in his eyes, the black specks of chew stuck in his teeth, and the way his cheeks met his chin like a pillow shoved under fitted sheets.

My eyes left my left boob, flung around the barn, and up to his face. The light coming in from the barn door behind him lit his back, but darkened his face so his face looked as dark as the blank stare in his eyes. My brain raced for answers that made sense. Hell, it searched for a question that made sense too. "No, of course not. Wait, why is this happening? How do I answer? Do I answer? Am I dreaming?" I couldn't speak, so I looked up at him blankly then he turned and walked away.

LINKS + CONTACT:

Get on the Waitlist for my next book: https://thewesternhippie.myflodesk.com/mc5b9wv2ps

Grab a hard copy of The Barn Off of Colfax Lane here: https://amzn.to/3PvBiKN

For inquiries or to connect with Michaela directly, email michaela@michaelamae.com

© 2024 MP Media. All rights reserved.

Narrated by Author Michaela Mae.

Keywords: survivor memoir, childhood sexual abuse memoir, childhood sexual abuse, trauma memoir, healing memoir, horse trainer abuse, equestrian community, read by the author, audiobook, Oregon, Michaela Mae

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The afterthoughts of the afterthoughts. Well, we did it. We recorded uh my first audiobook together. So thank you so much for being here with me. That was a trip. I say very intentionally. Um that was a trip. And thank you for going on that trip with me. Um I really, really wanted this book, as I I said in some of the other afterthoughts, but I really wanted this book to be very conversational, very casual. I wanted to make the mistakes and hear like have you hear me repeat a line. I wanted it to feel that way. And I'm also just really proud of myself for allowing it to feel that way and to be that, you know, not flawless, but perfect. And I've had to do a lot of mindset work to get here, so I'm I am really proud of myself for that. And it the way that it turned out, even to this day, surprises me because as I I just said, and as you would have just listened to in the epilogue that's written in the book, and also why I I wanted to to put this the afterthoughts of the afterthoughts here, is to just finish up some thoughts of what you and I have been talking about, is it it turned out so much better than I could have imagined because originally, as I said, this was supposed to be section one of my what I thought was going to be my larger memoir. And like I said, I had got done writing this section of the book, and I had wrote that line about the barn, like I can't bring myself to look into me to look in the mirror to get one lack last look at the barn off of Colfax Lane. And when I read that and felt that that feeling of the end, and I wrote that line and I was like, no, that's the title, but that's not the title of the whole book, but that is the title of this book. And what ended up working out again, even more beautifully than I could imagine, is there was a couple of things. One, as I had mentioned in a previous afterthoughts section, is this what's now the second book, but was gonna be basically section two of the first book of what I was originally thinking, was picking up with the detective interviewing me. And I wasn't willing to cut the interview with the detective, like I wasn't willing to cut some of the dialogue, and it was very repetitive of what happened in the barn off of Colfax Lane. Like again, I was interviewing the detective, I was telling him what happened, and so a lot of the things obviously get repeated. And so it basically, if it was all in one book, it would have basically just felt like you you were reading the same story twice, which didn't really make a lot of sense. And again, I just wasn't willing to cut it. And so I thought that this could actually be really beautiful, this could be a really good way for me to honor both stories of 12-year-old Michaela, and so just to give you a little um uh backstory, I suppose, on the timeline. So my birthday is in September, so I left Todd's place in August, would have turned 13 in September, and then the detective came to interview me on September 30th. So I was 13 when I had the first interview with the detective. And so the way I look at it is I wasn't willing to cut 12-year-old Michaela's story, so 13-year-old Michaela could tell her full story, and I wasn't willing to, you know, do it the reverse way either. I wanted both of those parts of myself to be able to tell the full story because what I mentioned in the chapter of Clouds in the Sky, there are certain things that happened that summer that I did not tell in the barn off of Colfax Lane because that part of me just wasn't remembering those. They were getting very blurry. They were, and when 13-year-old me sat down with the detective, like she was able to get all of those out because when I was talking to the detective, I didn't have to tell it in cohesion. I just had to tell it as I remember it. So there's actually a lot more details about the assaults themselves in the beginning of the next book. However, because I was telling the detective, like I said in one of the other afterthoughts, of the detective's not interested, it's not relevant to the case of like how I felt, what I was really going through, the dissociation, and so none of that is in the start of the next book. It's all in the barn off of Colfax Lane. But one thing that I wasn't expecting that I needed more than I thought I needed was obviously I'm using pseudonames in the book because the the saying in in publishing or writing or whatever is use pseudonymes so that you don't get sued so you don't have to worry about defamation. Like when you use pseudo pseudonames, you just don't have to worry about that. Because I I was really, I really wanted to use Todd's real name because I knew that he got away with things for so long. I wanted to put his name in the book because I wanted to let um the other people that he assaulted know that he didn't get away with it at the end. That well, one, I put it in a book, and I I was laughing reading the last bit of chapter 10 when I said I'm not gonna breathe a word of any of this because obviously 12-year-old Michaela didn't think she was gonna breathe a word of any of this to anyone ever again. And it I had to chuckle a little bit inside when I read that line because I'm like, well, here we are reading an audiobook and out of a book that we published about said story, and obviously she didn't know we were gonna go to court and all of those things, but that was my intention. I was gonna take other than obviously my cousin Shane knew, and then my friend Alice knew, like, other than that, I was taking that thing to the grave. And well, huh, joke's on us. Here we are. And the other thing that you know, publishing this book as a standalone book like allowed me to do is it was a way to position the book. And again, I had no intentions of writing the line, the barn off of like looking in the mirror at the barn off Colfax line. I had no intentions of writing that. It spilled out of my fingers. And positioning the book in this way, because Todd was at that barn for decades, it in his name, like if you know his real name, like it's not his real name, but it's very close. It is very close. And so it allowed me to position the book in a way that if you knew him, you knew who I was talking about without me having to worry to get sued. It allowed me to position this book in a way to still let his other victims know, like, hey, he didn't end up getting away with this. Like, obviously, the book's out in the world, but then the the second book will lead into the court case. And so it allowed me to get what I wanted with letting his other victims know what happened, getting my story out there, honoring my story, not having to cut any of the story from both of those perspectives. It allowed me to get everything I wanted without worried about getting sued. And so that was something that was really important to me and was just what I would call a happy accident that I just didn't expect to happen. But I'm really happy and proud of the way that it worked out and how it worked out. And it does feel again, I was really beating myself up because it's it's about a 20,000-word book in total. And then if you read the book, I'm not reading this for the audiobook. I I did leave a sneak peek of what will be my second book in there. And so with the with the sneak peek, it I think it ends up being about 22,000 words. But I was really beating myself up over the length of it, and then yet, like as I'm I'm reading it through, again, back to that perspective change of it may not be flawless, but it is perfect. And I feel really good about just letting 12-year-old Michaela have this standalone story and have this just be its own thing. And then also it ended up being an added bonus that I got to position it in the way that if someone's from the town that it happened in, um, the barn was obviously off Colfax Lane. Like if you're in Central Oregon in that town, you know where Colfax Lane is, you know the person that trained out of there for years, and so it it allowed me to have that. And then the thing that I didn't get into that I do believe I get into the second book, my dad actually bought the property from Todd, and so my dad still owns the property. And so the other cool thing is if you have a copy of the book, the barn that you see me walking into on the cover is it is the barn, it is not a random barn, it is that barn. And so the picture of my dog and I on the front walking into the barn is is the barn, and so that ended up being a cool, like because it in in the moment it was like, oh my gosh, my dad owns this place, can we sell it? Can we burn it to the ground? And then when I made it its own standalone book, it was a really cool moment that I gotta go back to that barn and use that as the cover. So there were so many things that just ended up working out in a way that was more beautiful than I ever could have imagined. And um, yeah, I I am it's taken me a long time to get here. As I said, I'm recording this audiobook two years after I've published the book, and I have it's taken me a long time because I I tend to be very hard on myself, but it's taken me a long time to say this out loud of I am very proud of me and I'm I'm very proud of this book. And um again, some of the things like I told you about is still hard for me to talk about. It's I still feel crazy on some things, I still struggle with some things. And you know, I used to put my my sense of pride, I guess, in my ability to be okay and my ability to be perfect or flawless. And what I've really had to work on is like, Noah, you need to be proud of yourself and your ability to be truthful and to be honest and to do the things that matter to you. And this book and this audiobook are very important to me and it matters to me. And the fact that I get to release this audiobook out into the world uh as of right now, where I'm planning on releasing it the day the book came out, just two years later, and I'm very proud of that. So very proud we got it done, very proud that I I let myself, you know, do this in the way that I needed to do it, you know, it in in multiple ways, and both uh releasing the first book, how I needed it to be released, and positioning it in the way that I needed to position it, but also recording this book in the way that I wanted to, and I wanted it, like I said, I wanted this to feel intimate. I wanted to feel like you and I were just sitting down. I didn't want it to feel I wanted you to hear the turning of the pages. I wanted to hear you like because I wanted it to feel like I was just telling you my story as two friends sitting across a coffee table or in a group setting, like how my teacher read it, and we're just sitting there together. So thank you for doing this with me. I'm so thankful we got to do this together. Thank you for being here with me, for listening to my story, and for taking a journey with me through the barn off of Colfax Lane.