The Crack in Her Reality

Today’s guest shares her experience of leaving a relationship involving domestic and family violence, the gap between knowing she needed to go and being able to, what held her there, and what the jump actually felt like.

This episode is an honest account of the guest’s experience. If her story lands close to home for you, please know that support is available:

1800RESPECT · 1800 737 732 · 24/7 support for people experiencing family violence and abuse. https://1800respect.org.au/

Lifeline · 13 11 14 · 24/7 crisis support. https://www.lifeline.org.au/

Beyond Blue · 1300 22 4636 · 24/7 mental health support. https://www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support

13 YARN · 13 92 76 · 24/7 crisis support for First Nations peoples. https://www.13yarn.org.au 

Full Stop Australia · 1800 385 578 · 24/7 support for sexual, domestic and family violence. https://fullstop.org.au/

QLife · 1800 184 527 · 3pm–midnight daily · LGBTQ+ peer support and referral. https://qlife.org.au/

If you're listening from outside Australia, please reach out to a crisis or family violence service in your country. The International Association for Suicide Prevention maintains a directory of crisis centres worldwide at https://findahelpline.com/i/iasp, and the Stop Abuse Campaign has an international domestic and family violence resource directory at stopabusecampaign.org. Your life and your safety matter wherever you are.

Today's guest shares her personal experience of navigating legal and family systems. Nothing in this episode is legal advice. If you're in a similar situation, Legal Aid in your state can help.

She Jumped Anyway is a podcast, not a counselling service. While the host has taken every effort to ensure that the episode is trauma informed, Belinda is not a trained therapist.

She Jumped Anyway is a podcast for all women in all the ways women exist - however you came to yourself. If you've ever stood at the edge of a life that no longer fits, this is for you. New episodes weekly. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and wherever you listen.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Before we begin, I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands in which this podcast is created and shared. I pay my respects to elders past and present, and I recognize the enduring strength, wisdom, and resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. May we come together today and listen with curiosity, courage, and with deep respect as we share stories with one another.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

That old anchor couldn't hold the story that my silence told.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Before we get into today's conversation, I just want to give you a moment to decide if now is the right time for you to listen. This episode includes an honest conversation about being in a relationship that caused harm and what it took internally to finally leave. Today's guest talks about reaching a point where she desperately needed out and was focused on exiting. Not just the relationship, but the life that she lived within it. I'll include all of the links in the show notes. So just keep in mind if this episode doesn't feel right for right now, it'll still be here when and if you decide it is. So let's start with one of those jumps. And whatever jump you want it to be.

SPEAKER_04 4:24

So there are a few. And you know, some have been easier than others. I suppose if we're gonna start with an easy one, it would be starting a photography business. Okay. So why it was a jump is because I had no career. I just wanted to be a mother. So it was quite a shift from that personality that I thought I always would be the stay-at-home mom and you know, just a family woman, to finding an urge within me for more. Yeah. And I always had a love of photography, so I got a business plan together and I asked my then husband at the time, and he wasn't very keen on it, which would have possibly in the past have just shut down me continuing on that path. Instead, I took myself to the bank and spoke with the bank manager and got a loan and started a business and did that for many years, which kind of took me into a few other worlds that were very exciting and fun. And yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

What was it that led you to making that decision to go to the bank and ask for loan and push forward? What was the driver?

SPEAKER_04 6:11

I just loved photography. It was really exciting. I was studying at TAFE, and I'm quite a nerd. Like I just love technology, and the cameras had just come in, and I had bought a used one, a Nikon D1, and it was very, very used by a professional photographer, but it was my first because it was cheap. It was just like testing the waters, going from love of photography to do I want to do this professionally. And my first photos were stunning, like stunning. My girlfriend had a moon flower. And as soon as the sun starts going down, these beautiful white flowers open up. And I love nature, I love flowers. And I just started taking these photos. It happens within a minute that this opens up. And of course, I was shooting up, and it was a beautiful, clear night. Oh my gosh. It was like a God moment. It was like God said, I'm showing you what you're capable of. And I just went, I'm gonna do this. So that's when I yeah, okay. It was really, yeah, it was really beautiful. My sister still has them in her home. She's got the refrain, she just absolutely loves them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Oh, that's magical. Yeah, it was. Yeah. So okay, you've made this decision, you've started your photography business, you've obviously got a very creative streak, and like you mentioned, you're into tech, and so you're across all of these different things. What was that? I guess when you were starting the business and you were following that venture, what was that feeling like for you?

SPEAKER_04 8:06

So there were some really great moments. So I was doing wedding photography and I just loved that whole vibe. But there was parts of it that I didn't love. So there was a wedding where I was really ill. I had Vertigo and I tried to get someone to go instead of me, and nobody could go. So I did have an assistant photographer booked for that day. So I just had to say to him, I have to bail, can you just come in? And I think I realized pretty quickly that felt really heavy on me that someone's most special day of their life is high on the photographer being there and being able to capture it. Like I had actually had my photographer that I booked had double booked us and sent his assistant instead. I was pretty disappointed in that. So that started to dawn on me. But also, I'm not very sales-minded, I'm not pushy, I'm not great with that stuff. So at the time, albums were a big thing and memento was just coming in. So you could do digital albums, but there was also the um the printed out ones you have to color correct, and I just wasn't good at upselling either. So there's some things and the hours of editing by myself, I was like, this is a lonely job. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:28

And people thinking, but actually the hours that go into all the other things that they don't see.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I mean, you know that photography is a little in my background too, so I can absolutely relate with yes, the many, many hours, and yeah, it's a beautiful, beautiful business uh occupation, but yeah, can be very isolating and underappreciated, I think, for the effort that goes into it. I agree.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Okay, so I guess if you're feeling comfortable, do you want to tell me a little bit more about your other jump?

SPEAKER_04 10:10

Yeah. So probably the hardest jump I've made in my life was in 2020. And it came after being in a four-year relationship. And I was at the point where I was feeling completely crazy, completely lost, hopeless, scared, trapped, lonely if I didn't say that already. But I knew I had to do something.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

So you'd been in a four-year relationship and it was 2020. So is this during COVID?

SPEAKER_04 11:02

Yeah. So May 4th was the day. I find that ironic. I love sci-fi, so May the 4th be with you. Yeah. It wasn't the first time I'd tried to jump. I tried to jump very differently. I tried to jump jump softer. I tried to jump by leaving ultimatums, supporting, rescuing. Uh I tried many, many other ways to do what I needed to do. But May the 4th, 2020, there was an energy shift that I couldn't ignore. And I acted and it was scary.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Okay, so the energy shift. Let's just go back a couple of steps before the energy shift. Was there something that you had in the back of your mind? Because obviously the May the 4th, 2020 is when you've made the decision to jump. Was there anything before making that decision that had been maybe giving you a signal that you needed to jump?

SPEAKER_04 12:23

I can tell you the single most obvious signal was when my partner attacked my eldest son.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

What was it about that was the clincher for you in terms of knowing?

SPEAKER_04 12:46

I can handle a lot. I can hide what's happening to me, and I can deal with it. But you touch my children, and I find a strength that I didn't know I had. So that's the change, is that the mama bear came out, and I it wasn't just me hiding a secret anymore, it was affecting my children.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Yeah, yeah. And so if you don't mind, I'm gonna take you back a step even before then. Because I guess it's you know, that situation's happened, and then you know, you you can't hide it, right? It's out there. There's somebody else now that's got the evidence that this is happening. Uh so I guess prior to that incident, where were you in yourself? How are you feeling? Like I know you just mentioned that you're really strong and you can handle a lot of things. Where were you in terms of your thinking and how you were feeling before that actual incident?

SPEAKER_04 14:02

Yeah, and I just want to mention that the fact that I can say I'm strong and I handle a lot of things is actually a new thing for me. Back then I wouldn't have felt that way. So it's only just recently I've started saying to my friends and my loved ones, I'm I'm really strong. I'm really capable and I'm really smart. And that's never I've never been able to do that. So that's all in hindsight. At the time, back then I wouldn't have felt that way. So who I was at the time was a shell of myself. I had I had started to believe what I was being told about myself. I had nobody to fact check that or reality check that because I was hiding from everyone.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:09

So I've always been someone who looks at other people's opinions of me to you know give me who I am. And so that I'm very people pleaser. I I I come into the room and I see who I need to be. And so when I had somebody telling me that I was a bad person, that I was evil, that I was even physically beating them up, but I couldn't remember any of it. And they were diagnosing me without any professional to do so. I believed it, and I'm someone who does look at I'm the common denominator. Okay, well, if they're saying this, what else in my life points to that? So at the time I had my family had abandoned me, there was a workplace dispute going on that was highly affecting me as well. Then I'm talking about way back in 2018, I had a breakdown at work and my manager said go home. And I begged him not to send me home because work was my safe place. And he said, Well, then I need you to call EAP. So I took his advice and I called EAP. And by the grace of God, I just want to shout out to EAP. I actually really appreciate them. This one day I called and I got a counselor, and I started saying what was going on and how I was feeling, how I didn't understand, how I'd asked my partner to record me physically abusing him so that I could see it for myself and he continuously never had it. And so I just said I don't understand. And he said, Who who do you do you think you're a bad person? And I I said, No, I try to be the best kind of person that there is, and and you know, what do your friends and family think of you? And and I would say, I'd say generally I'm worldwide, you know, I'm a manager and things like that. He started really taking me on a journey of reality checking, you know, and uh yeah, it was like I was waking up. So in 2018, a mirror got held up to me, other than the big mirror that I had been living with, you know. And so I started to doubt. So it was kind of a little crack in my reality, it was starting to happen. It was the best gift I ever had because I was so trusting of the loudest voice in my life of who I was, because I think I didn't know who I was myself.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Yeah, so you've mentioned that's 2018, so that's two years before. And the incident with your son, was that in 2020 or was that?

SPEAKER_04 18:01

That was November 2019.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Okay. Yeah, so it's those little steps and all of these things coming to be in order to, I guess, uh position you to be able to make that final decision to jump. So thinking about when you had the first crack in the mirror, you've had somebody who's starting to challenge your thinking, and then you've got the nearly two years. I guess I'm looking at it from the perspective of so 2018 is the start of that realization and that journey, and then the incident with your son in late 2019. Thinking about that in-between space, and you mentioned that the crack happened there. I'm interested in understanding what that must have been like for you in terms of did something change in the dynamic of your relationship and maybe even in the way that you behaved towards him.

SPEAKER_04 19:15

Not yet.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 19:17

There was a lot of fear, and I think it stems back to my childhood, a lot of this of fearing losing people, but also believing that I'm the reason people behave the way they do to me. So I had a lot of hope still that things could change.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:41

I was being very proactive about things. So I was I was praying, I was, you know, sending out prayer requests to people. I was really I kept on saying miracles can happen, miracles can happen. And yeah, so I still had a lot of hope. But the other thing, I knew very well that the people around me were very judgmental about having children out of wedlock. And there was this underlying thing when we got together of it was us against the world, and we could handle anything. And we were gonna break, we were gonna break the generational trauma of divorces. Now we weren't married, but we'd both come from broken homes and we wanted different for our child. So there was this underlying, oh no, I have to try harder because you know, we've said that we're not gonna be statistics. So I had all these things of like, this isn't working because I'm not trying hard enough. Or, you know, oh like we can't break up because you know, what will everyone think? You know, I worked for a church. Yeah. There's kind of in their DNA to have kind of rules and regulations about how you behave and what order things go in. And I even believe that myself growing up is that you get married and you have a child. We didn't do that, so I'm already feeling shame. So if I I've now spent this much time with this person, I need to make this work.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Yeah. What I'm hearing is there's the there's shame on a couple of levels there. It's a societal thing and potentially even a religious thing that is almost acting as a barrier, uh, preventing you from being able to reflect on the situation for what it is and yeah, look at it from the perspective of others and how they'll perceive it, and then what that means for you. Yeah, and I guess too, I'm picking up on. You know, you mentioned before that you were withdrawing a bit in terms of you weren't necessarily, I'm guessing from what you were saying earlier, that you weren't necessarily sharing what was actually happening for you up until the point where the incident happened with your son.

SPEAKER_04 22:20

Only with people who were third parties who didn't know us. So like EAP. Okay, yeah. Yeah. I didn't want anyone to not like him. I'd already had the experience of telling my family we were having a child very early and them going, bye-bye. So I can't have anybody not liking him and leaving me for that. So I can't tell anyone what's happening. Because I've already lost enough. And one of the one of the blessings I only reflected on later. So once COVID happened and we weren't traveling as much. I had to start traveling again for work. And I was like, why do I not like this? And I realized the reason I had to go away for work one week a month. And it was my favorite time of the month to get away from the home, to get away from him, to get away from that. But after COVID finished, I had to start again and we weren't together. I was like, why do I hate traveling? It was because the freedom I felt for one week a month. And that could very well be why I held on for so long, because I had that reprieve. It wasn't constant.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:36

And the other thing when you're in one of these relationships is there's cycles. There's cycles of abuse, and there's cycles of the hoovering and the love bombing, and that I'm gonna everything's gonna be okay, we're gonna do this. And so it just keeps you on this okay, I can I can take this for a little bit longer, everything's gonna be okay, and you just keep going and hoping.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Yeah. I mean, I guess I'm really mindful not to attribute any of any of this situation to you. It is such a it's such a difficult cycle and the impact that it can have on people that are in that situation is it's a hard one. It's a hard one. I I appreciate. I'm equally just so mindful that, you know, you've already started to sort of mention that you had all of these ideas of who you were. And I I guess I use the word impose, that's my word. I as an outsider, that's how it looks to me. These thoughts about you have been imposed on you. And I guess that's you know, I'm wondering how much of that situation is uh influencing or impacting or acting as a barrier, preventing people from moving, because so long as you can stay in that space and that thinking and yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:19

It's interesting because I now don't uh uh hold any feelings that it was my fault, and it's taken some real unpacking and some real education and therapy. But this person knew what they were doing because at the end of the relationship, this person, because of their unfortunate uh addiction that had come on, that was really propelling everything into a dangerous zone, they were letting their guard down and letting me in on their tactics. And so once I stepped outside of the relationship and remembered what they had said to me about, you know, we need to hug more, we need to have sexual relations more. And then what when he explained to me about the chemicals involved in bonding us together, I just thought, oh, he just wants us to have more intimacy in our lives because we've been so but actually the fact that he knew all that, he was always really good at researching things. Once I stepped outside the relationship, it didn't look loving anymore, it looked diabolical. Um, yeah, and so many other pieces of the puzzle that once I was finally out, looked to be on purpose, by purpose to keep me trapped. And even, you know, telling me that he'd take our child and he'd take the home and all these things that I hadn't uh I wasn't aware of because I had an amicable divorce the first time and was still friendly. And actually, I was friends with every X-ray that I had. So finding out there were people like this in the world was a big shock to me. I I remember something you said in one of yours that you're that your family said that you were always positive or something. My family called me Pollyanna. They're like, the world isn't like that for you, Shah. You're like Pollyanna, you see everything, everyone is good, and everything is good, and you've you've always like a silver lining to everything, and you know, you go to I'm going through a bad situation, but I'm already thanking God of what good's gonna come on the other end and what lesson I'm gonna learn. So now I'm in this situation where I'm confused because the world is good, and who am I now? And it is a really scary place to be to lose who you are, even when yeah, like my world was in service. My love language is acts of service. My job that brings me so much joy is being of service, and all of a sudden I'm being told what a terrible person I am, how evil he would use that word that I'm evil. And as a woman, I don't know how many other women experience this, but I would get a surge of hormones before my menstruation would start. I would get a surge of don't give a bip. And I would speak my mind. It would be one day, one day where I just felt empowered to, with all the build-up during the month of everything that I had to hold on to and just grit my teeth through, that one day before my bleed, I would finally get some confidence and surge of it's gotta be hormones. But he would use that against me because that's not my normal self, and then say I was worse than what I thought I was, and that's when he'd say, You physically attacked me. And I'd be like, I don't remember that. What are you talking about? I said, please film it because if I'm doing this, I need to get help. That's the kind of person I am. Some if something's broken in my life, I will fix it. But it was so confusing, it really yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Yeah. Okay. And I I guess, yeah, you've really helped me to understand just how that thinking was or his thinking was so entrenched for you in terms of even when he's accusing you of things that you don't remember. You're even you're obviously being open enough and open to the idea of him even recording it so that you can you can make it better, you can look at ways to fix it for for him and for you and everyone involved. And yeah, so it's I I can get a real sense of that depth. I'm wondering then, 2020, May the 4th, the lead up to that day, what was what were you thinking? What was going through your mind in terms of like I'd really started my mind was exiting.

SPEAKER_04 30:57

My mind was exiting the relationship. I didn't want to be here anymore. I was kind of hoping that he'd want to leave, you know. Yeah. Um, because that would make it easier on me. But I was also I was also still there, you know, like that morning he had to go to work and he'd come into the bedroom and said, Don't even have a shower, get downstairs now and look after our child. So I got downstairs and there was a load of washing that had to go online, and I went out. I knew it would annoy him. But there was some kind of fire in my belly that was like, I I want you to hate this relationship, I want you to go. It did annoy him, and I remember sitting on the deck, like on the ground, and him standing over me, going, I said uh and it was scary, and I was starting to get really, really scared. But then he left. And he was going in early, and I had said to him, Can you call me for half an hour before you start your shift so we could call we were gonna call an addiction hotline and talk to them about what we could do about his new addiction? Because he tried to beat it on his own by going off for two weeks to a place where he could have the place himself. Friend or family member had a place and it hadn't worked. And I really wanted to speak to some of it, it was quite against speaking to someone, but I said, just call me, and then and then he started saying, Well, we'll well, when we're speaking to them, let's speak to them about you drinking alcohol. It was really like this is I'm trying to get you help. Like you've tried it on your own, it hasn't worked, it's affecting your family. So he called me and I pushed the agenda of calling together because I didn't believe he would tell them the truth if he called on his own and I wanted to be on the phone. Like if he got really angry and said, That's it, I'm coming home. And everything in the lead up, remembering all the times that I had fled with the children and back, but ended up coming, it all culminated in this morning, where because of the way the police system is set up now, is that if you've had an incident, they get you linked in. I had a relationship with the DV liaison officer at my local police station and I need way home, but I knew I had about an hour. I called her and I said, This happened, and she flagged the severity of it that day. And she didn't force me, she didn't push me. They're very they, you know, they know sometimes it takes more than seven times to leave. And she'd been through she'd been through it with me where I went back a couple of times and yeah, she just talked me through what would happen. She asked me if I had a safe place, and I packed the kids in the car. I left the pets, which were really was really hard, but he's actually quite sentimental to pets, so I wasn't worried about him hurting them. And I fled. I fled somewhere where he wouldn't expect me to go. I was scared, I was anxious, but I knew it was the last time.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:26

And I made sure it was because I blocked his number, so he couldn't he couldn't get through to me and you know beg me like he had all the other times. Everything would be better. I really this time I made sure that I couldn't be convinced again. And this time, I know it's May now, and the incident with my son happened in November. My son had moved out, and so there wasn't a safety issue there. My other son was in boarding school, and he doted on our daughter. Like, just I didn't have a fear about that, but the the drug addiction and the just what not knowing who or what it could get, how bad it could get. Do you know what I mean? Because I had never had drugs myself, I'd never been involved with anyone with that. The volatility in the house had gotten to a level where I really felt like I'd tried everything and got to a point where my rescuing wasn't working. And I realized you can't you can't fix anyone if they don't want to be fixed. And the refusal to call that line with me in that morning and the angriness over the phone, there'd also been a few incidents leading up to that that I really felt my safety. I had no safety with him anymore.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Yeah, yeah. Okay, and I'm definitely getting that sense that that particular morning, the all of the the culmination of everything, but that was obviously the tipping point that just pushed you over the edge, and you just knew no, there's no going back. And so now your thoughts are your own, uh, rather than being influenced by him. And uh yeah, so okay. And you obviously still had your job, and so you had that financial safety net. Tell me a little bit about how I guess that time straight after leaving, maybe you know, in the weeks and the months after, what was it that actually stopped you from going back? What were I mean, I know that you've sort of mentioned that you had that change in the way that you were thinking and that you you blocked him on your phone. What else helped you to stay away and and I guess remain on the other side of that jump?

SPEAKER_04 37:06

I reached out to my family maybe 2019 and we were back in contact. But then as time went on and the resentment grew towards him and the fear grew towards him, I realized I needed confidence. And I think I feared less telling them because they already hated him. So telling friends would be different. Like my family already don't like him. What's it gonna hurt? So it's I started getting more brave, and I started telling them, and it wasn't easy because they're not trauma informed at all. The victim blaming was so harsh. But I was trauma-informed, and so yeah, I was able to see they're not trying to be cruel. This is normal human reaction to something they don't understand. Didn't make it any less hard, but knowing that their questions were quite normal. If you don't know what you don't know, yeah, yeah. So I think having accountability from them to not go back.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:35

Yeah, that really helped.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

And I'm I'm going back again, just thinking about you know, November 2019 up until May, you know, you've had EAP help to sort of crack that mirror and start to reflect back some of those truths. So you're now starting to look at things differently. And then in between the incident with your son and and then the time that you left, is there anything that would have helped? Is there anything during that time that would have helped you? I guess even I'm looking at it from the perspective of whether or not something could have helped or supported you to be able to make a decision to leave earlier.

SPEAKER_04 39:28

Yeah, on reflection, I didn't know my legal rights. So I'd fled with one of my children. He had one of my children, and one of my other children was somewhere else. He'd given me one of the cats, which was very kind of definitive to me and felt like a don't come back. And on my way to my mother's place, I called my friend who used to be a police prosecutor, and I'd asked her what I should do. And she gave me the advice that whoever's in the house with the child will remain in the house with the child until the court proceedings. And I was horrified. So now I had to find a way to get back into the house with my child so that I wouldn't then be locked out of my life.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:17

So I called the police and told them that he'd kicked us out, which he had, and that he'd given me a cat. Now I don't know what in that they saw as such an urgency, but they came to my home and I met them out the front. And anyway, we ended up getting back into the home. But not knowing my rights, like not knowing the law, not knowing where to go. There's legal aid, but you've got to call a hotline, tell your story, then else has to call you back. It's Monday to Friday. Like, I don't know. Sometimes these things don't work within nine to five business hours. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 40:56

Like, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:57

And everybody's really hesitant to give you legal advice because they're not lawyers, but then you're very much left with what to do then, because yeah, security is a you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, it's right there. It's gonna stop a lot of people from leaving, not having somewhere to live, or you know, not having a job, those kind of security things. So for me, the confusion around what happens if I leave the house and the child's still in it, and that's my home. Like I'm yeah, so that one stands out strongly to me because I did return that day and I did try yeah to fix things for longer.

unknown 41:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:52

Okay, so you are six years on from that time, and I just want to ask where are you with all of that and how you're feeling about making that jump and where you are now.

SPEAKER_04 42:11

I am so so proud of myself for doing that jump. Yeah, I could still be there and I know that that's a real reality because of all my beliefs and all of the things that held me there. But I'm remarried now to the most amazing man, and I speak my mind, and I have safety, and I do still have to co-parent with him, which is a constant reopening of trauma. And I can do hard things, and I look back at the time between the jump and now and the systems abuse and all the things that I just think as a society we can do better. But personally, right now I'm in a really good place and I'm growing, I'm still learning, I'm still finding out who I am, and that's gonna end up being a blip in my history that I'm I'm proud of. Yeah, I'm proud of who I've become because of it. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

I'm I'm very proud of you, and I'm very grateful to share in your story today because it is a remarkable one, and you can do hard things, and you have done hard things. So thank you, thank you for sharing.

SPEAKER_04 43:51

I have had it on my heart, so thank you so much for inviting me to do it. It feels really cathartic and amazing, and I hope it helps someone.

SPEAKER_01 44:03

Awesome, thank you. Thank you. I want to thank today's guests for sharing their story and for trusting this space with something that is so real. What she described today, that space between knowing something and being able to move. I think a lot of people will recognize something of themselves in that. And even if the circumstances look nothing alike. If today's conversation brought up something for you, you don't have to sit in that alone. Please reach out to 1-800 respect or lifeline or 1-3 yarn for our First Nations peoples. All of these support services are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And you don't need to be in crisis to call. Sometimes you just need to say it out loud to someone. I'm going to put all of the links to all of these services in the show notes. Please take care of yourself today. I'm B. And this is She Jumped anyway.