Latest / Surviving-ISH Podcast / Ashley Garris: Inner Child, Unbroken- A Journey of Reclamation and Healing

Transcript

Ashley Garris: Inner Child, Unbroken- A Journey of Reclamation and Healing · Surviving-ISH Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: In every dark tunnel there's a glimmer of hope.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: In every painful moment, there's a strength to heal.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: My name's Ashley.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: I am from originally New Orleans, Louisiana.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: I've been here my whole life, 36 years old, stay-at-home mom.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: I've been with my husband for 18 years.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: We've been married, going on 12.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: I have an 11 year old and an eight year old two girls.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: They're my whole life.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Ashley, for you to be doing what you're doing and speaking out the way that you are.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: It takes people like us that is taking something so horrific and turning it into something beautiful.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: If anybody ever asked me how to describe Ashley and I made this comment on one of your posts the other day, but it's truly what I would say is if eyes and expressions could talk it is.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I see the passion, I see the hurt, but I also see the recovery and the strength and your eyes and your expression, even when you're just sitting in your car and you're listening to a song, just looking at the phone.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I'm like this girl and do it, but she's overcoming.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Trying Well, you're doing an amazing job.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: For anyone who hasn't come across your TikToks, tell us about how you got started on this journey toward your recovery.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: So, just to give a little little background, my husband is one of 14 and they are very non-denominational, mega church christian, go to church five days a week.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: They were all homeschooled everything Whereas I grew up in a very devout, strict Catholic household.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: And for those that don't know, new Orleans in general, we are a Catholic city.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: We have parishes, not counties.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: It's very archdiocesan based and run.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: In fact, my husband was probably the first real non-Catholic I had ever come across, because I went to Catholic school my entire life.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: I even went to Catholic college, which that wasn't on purpose.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: They just had the best nursing school in the state of Louisiana, the best nursing program.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Excuse me, but for a little bit of background, it's been a strained relationship that I've always had with them.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: They don't, we don't get along and they've never accepted me ever.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: I quickly became the scapegoat of the family, which he was already the black sheep, but it just got really bad and in September of 2021, his mom unexpectedly died of COVID after 21 day battle and within a few weeks to a month after that, we discovered that one of my nieces was being trafficked by multiple members of the family and that the churches were in on it.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Everybody was on it.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: My husband and I were two of the last ones to have found out.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: They all live in Texas.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: We are in Louisiana.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: This all came about over a course of some months and we were fighting the justice system tooth and nail which is a joke, by the way the way CPS, dcfs, the mayor's office, the sheriff's office.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: I had vigilantes, my previous TikTok account, I had 37,000 followers and my in-laws got me banned for exposing them.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: And in the midst of me, exposing all of them is when the flashbacks and the night terrors really amped up and all of my child sexual assault started like coming forward.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: And it was all from my father, my biological father, who was still alive.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: And by Christmas time last year is when I finally admitted to my husband.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: He got me a trauma therapist.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Once I started divulging information to her, she was like yes, you were definitely, because that's just something that you don't just come out the box saying.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: And I had suppressed the memories, so much so that I truly believed that I had made them up in my head.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: I even convinced myself this is so embarrassing.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: I hate even like uttering this because as a grown-up, this is so mortifying, but I was convinced that I like, was demonically possessed and I was like some kind of sick head that like had these memories right and I had asked a few people in the CSA community on TikTok and and that's what led me to really realizing.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: And then once you open up that can of worms there there's no stuffing it back in everything comes forward and there's, it was oozing out of every pore.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: I say it was like it didn't matter how hard I was trying to run from the trauma.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: It was catching up with me and it was ultimately killing me.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: That's what really started the nosedive of my healing journey.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: By February I knew that I needed to go away to residential inpatient treatment because I was severely suicidal.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: I didn't know how I could live.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: I could not eat, I couldn't hold down anything.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: I had lost a crazy amount of weight that I really didn't have to lose.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: It was really bad.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Probably the darkest time of my life, for sure it was really bad.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Probably the darkest time of my life, for sure.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: My husband found me an inpatient residential treatment center.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: I ended up going there for 55 days, came home, did a nine-week IOP program.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: And I've just been going.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: What did I say?
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Balls to the wall, since there's so much to unpack with that.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: To unpack with that and I want to say first is when you mentioned how you were embarrassed to say that you had almost convinced, or even convinced yourself, that there was a possession.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Don't ever be embarrassed of that, because here's the thing.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: And here's the thing Absolutely.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: But here's the thing you probably were.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Now it might not be this scary movie possession, but there were demons inside of you eating away.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: There was truth inside of you eating away.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: There was angel in this ear, devil in this ear, and you had nowhere to turn.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: There was no safe place.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: I personally do not think that you should be embarrassed and I don't think that you should take that as in you were doing a disservice to yourself.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: That was you and your body, trying to fight the truth and what's right and wrong and what you shouldn't say.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Not a therapist, but my opinion, what I do love is.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: You said you had opened up to your husband when all these things started unraveling for you and immediately he was like therapy, let's find you some money.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: I'm so freaking glad that you have that, because, especially when it comes to men, their advice is to suck it up buttercup, because that's what they're told to do, because that's what men do, and for him to be so aware with mental health is a breath of fresh air is a breath of fresh air.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: You were saying this is what a year ago.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: There were so many reasons for you to put this on the back burner.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: I have two kids.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: I can't go away to a treatment.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: I this isn't real.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: I was possessed.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: There were so many ways for you to try to ignore it and find it and you didn't.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if everybody accepted mental health and lack of mental health, as you and your husband did, especially when there's religion involved, everyone can be on the path that you're on right now of recovery.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: And he'll tell you.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: He said it was above my pay grade.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: I couldn't fix this.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: There was no.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: He has a man and, as a father and as a provider, I always want to play savior and I want to swoop in and fix it and make it better.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: And there was no.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: There's nothing that he could have done, said, other than get me help.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: That could have made it and I was going to say Acknowledging and helping get you that help is him that role is.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: I've said this on other episodes and I stand by it If your lungs were hurting, you would see a lung doctor.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: If your brain is hurting, why are we not seeing a therapist?
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: There's just such a stigma and it's weird because, even though I came from very abusive parents, they were very big on therapy.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: My dad had me in a therapist at 12 when my mom was dying.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: Now it screwed me in a lot of ways because nobody believed me when I would try to tell them what the hell he was doing to me.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: But, considering where my husband came from, there was none of that.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: I can tell you that there's only a select handful out of over 30 something adults that are getting any kind of professional help to any capacity or have gotten any kind of professional help to any capacity, and he, like he, had to go get help for himself.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: He's a veteran and he realized while I was away okay, I need to go get help for me too.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: And we're all still actively working on our mental health, including our children.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: We put our children in therapy because their entire lives completely turned upside down and my kids were very emotionally intelligent and they're very aware, and so there was no hiding it from them as far as what the hell was going on with me and they had to live without their mom someone who's been a stay at home mom and been their primary like we don't have a village.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Like I've been their primary caretaker their whole lives.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: I've never been away from them other than hospitalizations.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: So I told them before I left that however long I'm there will be a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of our lives.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: And my husband said, ashley, it's the same thing as if you had cancer.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: I would throw you wherever and throw whatever treatments we could do at you.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: We're saving your life.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: It's the same thing.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: And I had to sit with that sentiment and I felt a lot of guilt.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Oh God, I felt guilt for weeks.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: That was one of the worst things to get over was the guilt that I felt when I was there.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: But what got me over that was not just staff but all of my cohorts that were like, okay, do you understand that if my mom would have ever gone away and gotten help, I wouldn't be here right now?
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Like you're giving your kids like the greatest gift.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: And I can tell you like on the other, looking back now, on the other side of it, everybody was freaking right by saying that, like me, getting help and healing has only trickled down into our family and has helped heal all of us.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: We're doing the best that we can and I'm trying to raise kids that are very freaking, hyper, aware of what the hell is going on around them, and my husband and I are doing our damnedest to break every freaking cycle that we can.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: And that was definitely put off onto us and we were both so severely religiously abused and in different ways, but in similar ways at the same time.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: It was always used as a means of control and shame and guilt and getting us to step in line a certain way and be a certain way.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: And we are definitely not that way and our families have definitely hated us for it.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: But I also know just like we had to come together to break these cycles.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: I learned also when I was over there at APN that I watched a lot of people go through divorces or have partners that didn't give a shit at all and it it healed me seeing that healed a lot of things in our marriage almost organically, without even trying.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: That was exactly what was running through my mind, because we hear stories of my baby's father is abusive, and what that is teaching their little boy or little girl is to either take it when they get abused or dish it out.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: And what you and your husband are doing is breaking that generational abuse.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: What you all are doing is normalizing that.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: We got to take care of ourselves, and this is something I've got to do, because I want to always be 100% there for you, and in order for me to be 100% there for you is for me to take care of myself.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: So that is, in my opinion, is the greatest gift.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: My parents had me believing I had to fear them and I would never amount up to how great they were and they were the end all, be all, no all.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: And I tell my girls all the time I am a human being just like you.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: I just got a few years on you.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: That's all I got.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: I will be the first ones to tell y'all that I have no freaking earthly idea and especially I don't have like parents to go off of or like some roadmap to go off of, or like some roadmap to go off of or some kind of like, any kind of semblance of normalcy in any capacity.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: There's none of that like on either side for my husband and I.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: So we're winging it.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: We're winging it and I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: And I tell my kids all the time and I let them watch things that they probably shouldn't watch, and I let them curse and I let up.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: You know what, by the time I was my daughter's age, my dad was already done, used me up.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: So I think I'm winning in the aspect of because people will be like oh, do they know what happened to you?
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they fucking know what happened to me, because that's reality and I'm not going to sugarcoat shit, I'm not a Krispy Kreme donut.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: And if they're going to learn from anybody, they're going to learn through me first.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: And I I tell them all the time, like I said, I'm not somebody to emulate.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Y'all I really don't.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: But at the end of the day I can tell you right now, like my kids come to me, they already I know probably too much, I know everything about everybody.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: And their grandma, my kids, freaking, tell me everything.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: And I'm glad my husband and I always like just pounded into them that no matter if we are 90 and you are 50, like we will always be your safe space, you will always have a home with us, no matter where you're at in your life, no matter what the hell's going on.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: And I think even just like pouring unconditional love into them, because just like pouring unconditional love into them, because love in my home was so conditional, like I tell them all the time like there's nothing on this earth that you can do that would ever make me not have anything to do with you again.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: And I also have the full knowledge that, with some exceptions, it is my full responsibility and my duty and my job to have the relationship with my girls that I will have until I leave this earth.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: I don't buy that whole bullshit of we owe our parents something.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: They didn't ask to be here.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: I selfishly had them and, quite frankly, I had no business having these kids in my freaking twenties, thinking that I was doing something.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: And I say that because I felt guilty after a while, after having them, cause I was like who am I that I had these babies and I brought them into pedo Island like Epstein Island 2.0.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Like I went through like a phase where I felt a lot of guilt, cause I was like who the hell am I?
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Like you're this traumatized, effed up person, Ashley?
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Like how dare you bring these innocent little souls and they're girls, which that doesn't mean shit.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: People are like oh, that don't mean anything.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: I don't want my kids to become a statistic.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: And so that's what I mean when I say I feel like I selfishly had them because, honestly, if it were like probably 30, I wouldn't have felt that way.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: My thought on that is you are raising your children differently than a lot of people do, which is going to be hard of changing the new world that's coming.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: My husband and I talk about that a lot because we definitely we know that we're raising our kids very different, even down to tablet stuff and that's.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: I'm not even going to get into that, but we worry about that too.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: I shouldn't say I worry, I just know that I'm raising kids that are going to be set apart, because me and him are set apart, and what I mean by that is, and not in some biblical oh, we're set apart like Jesus, no, like you said, new world, how things are going to have to be, and even just even down it's.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: I know this sounds so trivial and maybe so dumb to some, but like my father is like probably the biggest racist and bigot that I've ever come across, and for a long time I couldn't even admit that like out loud because I was so embarrassed by it.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: But then I realized I have nothing to be embarrassed about because I'm not that way, I don't have all this hate in my heart and so even just seeing how different our girls are in approaching things like that, like they don't even understand or know that world like I did, they're not even just so much like my inner child is healed just even watching my husband raise them because he's actually like a really good dad and I'm not just saying that because he's my partner, like he's really really good and he's really good with having girls, especially that I just see that, yeah, not everybody's being raised that way and I do.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: I worry for their future.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: All I can do is just pray that I'm raising them the best that I can, but I really am trying to make them aware without being traumatized, without projecting my bullshit of one of them.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it's hard, it's not easy.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: No, definitely not.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: You're definitely doing the work.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: This next question I want to preface with there are boundaries and this place is safe, and so you're not going to offend nobody.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: But would you feel comfortable in sharing what your childhood was like and the kind of trauma that you went through with your father?
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: Okay, Abuse in every capacity, with the exception of probably gross neglect, Whereas my husband grew up very poor and they were without basic needs and food and things like that.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: I definitely did not grow up like that Middle class America, whatever my parents.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: My dad really was a bum.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: He never really worked, but my mom was a surgical OBGYN nurse.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: She was diagnosed with breast cancer, with METS, when I was two.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: She died when I was 12.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: She enabled everything that he did.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: She took part in the abuse, everything that he did.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: She took part in the abuse, but physical, sexual, financial, emotional, mental, psychological, religious.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Did I say medical, financial?
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Every capacity of abuse that a person could be abused.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: I was abused.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: It was so normalized that I didn't even realize that I was being abused.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: I've shared this a few times and I've shared this on my TikTok.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Like when I was four, my genitals were just so swollen and inflamed and infected and I remember having ulcers on them and so I went to my mom like a normal little girl would and I was like showing her and she screamed at me who are?
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: you having sex with.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: I was fucking four, yeah, yeah, and I just that's something.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: That like.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: That was probably the first time in my life that I ever had like the freeze response.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: But yeah, sexual abuse.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: I remember being in diapers and him sexually abusing me and the reason why I remember that is because the way their bedroom was set up they had a King size bed a California King and I would be in the middle and I remember my mom being to the right and her being bald because of the cancer and then him being to the left and the wall directly across from the bed had my pampers lining up.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: I remember having my diaper open and him doing things to me.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: The last time I remember him sexually touching me was when I was like nine or 10.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: Thursday nights were the worst because ER, the show would come on and that's when I was allowed to stay up late.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: So that's when a lot of the abuse would happen that I remember.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: I was cursed out, verbally assaulted every single day of my life, called every meaningless, like I was a worthless piece of shit.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: I was called the C word.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: If I ever try to fight back or if I ever cried or complained or said y'all are abusive or I hate it.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Or if I try to run away, my dad threatened to bring me to Enville.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: If you know what I'm saying, yeah, he would threaten to drop me off at the projects of New Orleans and he would tell me you can see how bad it really is.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, you think you have it bad.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: You could be in public school because I went to Catholic school my whole life.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: They were the front and center of the face of the Catholic church that I grew up in.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: The Catholic church and school that I grew up in, my mom was an only child and my grandfather, who died in 84, I was born in 87.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: He was the first deacon in that church and it was built in the 70s and so my family was like freaking royalty.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: My dad was like president of the co-op for eight years.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: My mom ran cancer support groups.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: My dad won the Archdiocesan Award, which was like a really huge, that's a huge deal.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Only one person gets it and the freaking Arch.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: The Archbishop chooses the person and you have to be nominated and all this bullshit.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: They ran Life Teen, which was like for teenagers with the Catholic church.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: They were in junior youth encounter, so very involved.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: My dad did all the cause.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: He was like he's a son.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: He was a sign maker and a painter.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: This was like before computers took over, but he painted all the signs and made all the signs for the school and the church.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: So just very overly involved and it was all an act.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for sharing that.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: And what immediately went through my mind is when you mentioned that, four years old, when you were showing your mom your private part, it was like what's happening?
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: And the response was who are you having sex with?
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: You probably didn't even know what was happening to you was any kind of sex, so that word was probably the first time you've heard that word.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: I knew it no I knew it was.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: I knew sex was like this bad, dirty thing okay, and I knew it was like a sin because of the whole catholic thing.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: I remember being very they really had it.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: I remember like my cousin got his girlfriend pregnant out of wedlock.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: They were like 19.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: And I was hysterical, like I cried myself to sleep sick, like made myself vomit, cause I was convinced they were all going to go to hell because he got his girlfriend pregnant at 19.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: So that's like the level I was at of what they were, like the level I was at of what they were.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: They used all of that to their advantage.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: So my mom was molested by an uncle for nine years.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: My mom was the only child my grandmother knew of this.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Now my maternal grandmother lived in the same house that I grew up in my whole life.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: After my grandfather died in 84, she didn't apparently want to live in that house anymore, so my parents and my two older sisters moved in and then I was born in 87 and it was like world war iii.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Every damn day they fought explosive violence and it wasn't until I went to all points north and they went over the criteria of domestic violence.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: I didn't realize I grew up in a home of domestic violence.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: I know that sounds dumb, I didn't.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: When I've always heard of DV, I always thought of it as a guy beating on his wife or something like that.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: I grew up in that.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: The only thing that we didn't have was illicit drugs, hardcore drugs, which my mom was drugging up.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: My mom was giving me meds.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: My mom was drugging up.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: My mom was giving me meds.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: My mom was feeding me all kinds of meds to keep me sedated.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Quiet vacations, the Dramamine, like I remember in third grade going on a cruise for Christmas and I was drugged out of him doing stuff to me in the room.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: And because of that too, because of all the Dramamine and the Benadryl, I think that it also made me feel like I was having like fever dreams where you almost don't even know if it was real.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Did I completely just fabricate that?
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I didn't even realize that the thing that my mom was fighting with my grandmother about was what I was enduring every single day of my life.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Do your mom know what was happening?
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Did she approve of what was happening, like it was just part of the norm?
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Did I ever have a conversation where I was like, hey, and, by the way, your husband's raping me?
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: No, that never happened.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: Do I know that she abso-fucking-lutely knew I would put one of my children, I would put both my children's lives on it?
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: If that woman didn't know, then there's something, especially as a nurse, a gynecological surgical nurse.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, come on.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: She was feeding me the antibiotics because I lived with chronic UTIs and yeast infections.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: And so to me, just with what little bit I know I can put together, and again, not a doctor or therapist or anything like that.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: But when you mentioned your mother had also been sexually abused, it is exactly what you and I are trying to prevent all of our littles.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: It's that generational abuse, and this is not justification by any means, but I think this is probably an example of what generational abuse is right oh god, I'm gonna go through it.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: Freaking poster child for it out.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: It's a freaking loopery.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a thousand percent she knew how to go through it, she knew how to suppress it, she knew how to ignore it.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: And then she, and then that trained her to ignore what was happening to her children.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and again that's our justification no, and let me tell I'll say this my situation in my life, with my entire childhood, my upbringing, all of it, was very different than my sisters and I do not have a relationship because of our parents.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: When you are born into a narcissistic family system and you are used against one another and weaponized against one another and brainwashed against one another, you're not going to have a relationship and it's unfortunate.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: And I used to blame them and hate them because my father had me convinced that it was all their fault.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: But I realize now like they had to get the hell out and they got out when they could and I don't blame them for anything.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: And if they were to ever come across this, see this I want them to know that I have nothing but love for them.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: I miss them.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: It grieves my spirit.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: I don't want to trigger them, I don't want to cause any harm.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: I have a nephew and five nieces that I don't know, that are like grown, like that kills me, but at the same time I don't have these like chummy, good, warm, fuzzy memories with my sisters.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: I just don't.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: Our childhood was very traumatic and like when I was in kindergarten, the oldest one was already in college.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: They got married like right after my mom died.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: And when that happened, he, when my after my mom got sick and died.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: She died my seventh grade year, I was 12.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: That by the time I was a freshman.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: I was having full blown non-epileptic seizures, migraines, and it was all the trauma Like when I tell you the trauma will physically manifest.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: It physically manifests.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: And I lived in children's hospital and that man would play it up.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: The nurses would come in and the staff would come in and he'd be boohooing and acting like the doting father and then the second they left that room he would be cursing me out lower than a dog.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: But then at the same time he used all that illness for attention because it made him look like, oh, this caretaker who just had to take care of his wife and like my grandmother died four years after my mom she died in 04.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: So like he basically took like help take care of her too, which really it was me doing most of the work for her, he just he had this whole act and I learned a long time ago that it was a hell of a lot easier to play his game for survival than to ever try to go against it.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: And me and him had a very volatile relationship.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: But like my husband could walk in this room right now and he could tell you that he has never seen my dad scream at me, call me out of my name, act a certain way.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: My dad knows how to play it up to where he would get reactive abuse.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: I would explode, I would look like a raging psychopath, and so much so that my husband thought that I was like the domestic abuser, like straight up.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: It took him at least 15 years to finally realize, oh shit, like my father-in-law is a pile of crap because my dad, even in front of my own children, knew how to play up different situations.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: Guy is a mass manipulator.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Like I got.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Gotta give it to him.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: Like he's really done.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: He made 78 yesterday.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: He is he.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: He has everybody fooled and, god bless, he really did a hell of a job.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: So now for me, the only justins I'm ever gonna get is completely imploding his entire empire that he built up.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: But I don't know if you know anything about like gypsy rose blanchard and the whole d blanchard and I know we could go, I could go like on, but I'll tell you the podcast, but I'm interested but this is something that really freaked me out about that was I saw recently the photos of her house and there was the cabinet with all the meds.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you saw that picture.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the closet.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: It was like yeah, that's what my parents, that's what my parents' bathroom closet looked like I've never seen, and I am a true crime fanatic when I tell you I have never.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: When I saw that it made me sick for three days.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: I was not right for three days.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: I was just like holy shit, yeah, I'm never.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: That's what my mother would pack a suitcase full of medications, things to sew us up with and I just thought that was normal, because she was a nurse and now was like an adult and she clearly got away with a lot of shit.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: Because it was the 90s, bro, that was not normal.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: There was a lot that just was not normal.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I'll ever have all that figured out, but when I tell you, that woman knew exactly what the hell she was doing.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: She knew, and my parents were very Bonnie and Clyde.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: It's not that my mom was some battered woman.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: First of all, she made all the damn money, she had all the power and a lot of people would say that like she owned my dad and she wore the pants in the relationship and I really don't know.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: They were like Bonnie and Clyde and it was them against the world, and the world included me and my sisters and anybody else.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: Now, graham, my dad, was eight years older than her.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: She was a victim, like we've discussed.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: I think that he probably manipulated her.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: He was this older guy and I think he probably swooped in.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: I don't know what he would have really had to offer her.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: Besides being older, he did have a house then.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: That was pretty much it.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: My mom was also like she was sick with cancer and she was going to the French Quarter with her friends for Mardi Gras and like dancing on bars at Oz and shit like in her neck brace.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: The woman knew how to have a good time.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: She picked and chose how she wanted to live her life and I think when I was in therapy I tried to understand.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Like when I was at APN I was like I need to understand this woman and they really helped me unpack my mother.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: My mom was a narcissist and that's the nicest thing I can say.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: I know that she gave my sisters a lot more hell than I ever witnessed because she was just so sick with me and, honestly, neither one of them me Like.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: I was told from the beginning of time how devastated she was when she found out she was pregnant, how upset she was.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: I was not wanting.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: And what's so funny in the irony and all of this is my mother would go pick at abortion clinics on the weekend and go hack all young females that were walking in and out of those clinics, because she was an OBGYN nurse and she watched women lose their babies every single day.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Your husband's raping me make it make sense.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sick, really effing sick, really sick, yeah so let me ask you and correct me if I'm wrong.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: I think you said you were 10 or 12 when the last assault with your father.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: What caused it to stop from happening?
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: I.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: I think I was too big.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: I think he likes him young.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: You aged out.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he did not like me getting bigger.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Like my sister's boyfriend came over I was probably in fourth grade and I was wearing like biking shorts and a sports bra and I had walked out and I went and hugged him.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: I didn't think anything of it.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: He was like a brother to me.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: I'm nine.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: When I tell you, my dad beat the crap out of me like I got thrown from one end to the other room to the next and I was called a whore and a slut and everything else in between, and I was trying to seduce my sister's boyfriend.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: I didn't even understand why.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: What I didn't even I knew like a slut and a whore was like a bad thing.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: But like when I tell you, I didn't even.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: It took me 35 years for me to even realize that I was not an inherently bad person.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: I had to have like therapists and professionals look at me and they're like Ashley.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: No, they made you believe that Cause I genuinely was convinced that I was a horrible person that deserved everything that happened, like everything that happened to me.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: I asked for it.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: Because that's what he would always tell me you wanted this, you asked for it.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: What do you say?
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: He would always say you wanted this, you asked for it, you deserved it.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: That's what he would say.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Now, since I've unleashed it all, it's hard for me to go back and see exactly where I repressed it, if that makes sense.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: But I will tell you this In 05, when Hurricane Katrina happened, I had just graduated high school.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: That May.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: It happened in August.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: I had to come back temporarily and night I had terror flashbacks and night terrors of the assaults and at that time I had met my now husband and I started going to non-denominational Christian church for the first time.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: So, like I said, I was convinced that I was demon possessed and that I was being spiritually attacked.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: And these flashbacks were me being a sick head and thinking that I had some kind of relationship with my father.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: What speaks volumes to me is the fact that it was it made more sense for you to believe and think that you had a demonic possession Like that made more sense, that was probably more comforting than what the actual truth was Like.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: I've not ever had anyone say that, and what I think would be the most terrifying is I watched true crime, I watched the horror movies.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: I've seen all the possession movies, seen all the possession things.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Those are the ones that scare me the most and to think that someone especially when it's a child or a young adult or someone working and starting a family herself, where being demonically possessed is more of a comfort than the truth.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: I just don't want me to laugh.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: But you know what?
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: I'm not mad at you for laughing.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: It's not funny, I really shouldn't laugh, I shouldn't.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: It's my dark humor, it's just.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: But no, I'm glad that you did, because one thing that I say in this show is we have to laugh.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because damn it.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: I'm tired of fucking crying.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: It's so maniacal, like when you say it out loud, but if you didn't grow up in a world of religious spiritual abuse, you haven't.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: You don't get it.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: It's just.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: It just doesn't, it doesn't compute.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: But yeah, because at the same time, like I had my husband's, like parents, and all these people telling me that I'm evil and I'm going to hell, and because I had all these health issues and that means that I'm clearly evil, and what does that really kind of sin do you have in your life?
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: Because I had so many health issues when I started dating him, it was like they were on me like flies on shit.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: I was like they just were tearing me to shreds and so, yeah, there was a lot of different influences going around that had me convinced that I was demonically possessed.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: I shouldn't laugh.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: It's really not funny and I will.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: This and this is going on with a whole other tangent that people aren't going to want to go down.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: But my house was haunted my whole life.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: I experienced the paranormal my entire life as well.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: When I tell you, we had some crazy shit going on down there, it was like a house of horrors.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: So there was a lot of different layers to all of it to make me think like that, I don't anymore.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, was it demons?
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to an extent, but I think that he worked so hard on painting a narrative of how things were and especially with my mom being so sick and like the last two years of her life, they traveled like I wasn't even living at home, I was living with a family friend because they were traveling for her, her care that when I tell you there's just so much of my life that I've had to compartmentalize and it's part of the disassociative identity disorder and all that crap, I've had to compartmentalize it just in order to survive it.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one thing that I am very proud about with my platform is we don't judge.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: No one's judging you for laughing, because here's the thing I don't know that if a few years ago I don't know that you would have laughed at that.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: I think that part of and I could be wrong, but I think a part of that laughing is the fact that you now know the truth to where all the other things are so ridiculous, because you know the truth now, and the truth is something that you will not laugh at.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: But the shadows you were hiding behind to stay away from the truth you are now in control of, so you can laugh at that.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: So I find that as a strength and not something that you should shy away from.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: You had mentioned that yesterday, from the day of this recording, was his birthday.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: So where is your all's relationship?
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: There is none.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: The last time I spoke to him was Christmas Eve of 2022.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: That was the first time I had talked to him since the previous June.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: We had gotten into it really bad.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: And he called me on Christmas Eve like nothing happened, there was no time, like we talked every single day.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: He goes hey babe, I was just wondering when I could bring the girls their presents.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: I said I'm sorry, what?
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: And so I think what scared him was I did not have any inflection in my voice when I tell you, I was monotone, like literally did not curse at him and I told him.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: I said you know what I think?
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: And I just went back all the way from my childhood and I said I think that my sisters took the hell off because I think you touched them and I think that I just I hit certain things and I knew what I was saying was freaking him the fuck out.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: And he goes what are you trying to say?
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: I said you know exactly what the fuck I'm trying to say huffing and puffing.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: You know what.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: You're fucking crazy, you're fucking insane, you're fucking psychotic.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Which was always his go-to, that was like his always favorite thing to go to.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: Why don't you go put that on your little ticky-tocky.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: I was like I'm dad you can go get fucked and have a nice life.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: And he hung up the phone and that was the last time we actually spoke, with the exception of me sending him some of my tiktoks every now and then via text when I really just want to piss him off.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: I haven't done that in a minute.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: I physically hadn't seen him.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: And then I saw him a few weeks ago when I went back to my hometown and he knew it was me.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: He was practically stretching his damn neck out the window like a damn giraffe looking back at me.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: I don't know what he thought he was doing with that, but he's been in hiding.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: I'm scared.
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, he's in hiding, and I was really tore up.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: I was tore up for a few days that I didn't do anything and then I was like what would I would have done.
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, there's no relationship.
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: I did press charges.
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: I did formally press charges.
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: I've haven't heard anything.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: I don't think I'm going to hear anything.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: That was more for me than anything else.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: But yeah, there is no relationship.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: I have no relationship with my paternal family.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: When I exposed him to them, they all said that they believed me, but to please not let it get out, because he had one sister still living and they didn't want her to know because it would kill her where you're getting public with things, you're doing podcasts, you're making your tiktoks like it's, and I personally know you know myself that it can be weighing on you to to re-say these things, ask these questions on a daily basis, but you're doing the work, and so what I want to do to turn it around to something happy before we log off, because I want to see that gorgeous freaking smile that you have, gosh like you're just so amazing.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: But you are doing the damn work, girl, and a minute ago you mentioned Tiki Taki and I would love to take a moment to talk about that.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Tell us about your platform and what you're doing with that.
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: It's so funny.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: I feel like I don't even have a platform.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: I swore up and down I would never get a TikTok and a friend talked me into it back in 2020.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: And I swore I would never make a post and then I actually started posting like mediumship stuff, and then it turned into me exposing my in-laws and, like I said, my old account had 37,000 followers, only have 3,000 now, but I I use my TikTok as, like my public vlog, like it's where I go to process.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: I have found my community on there with the other CSA survivors.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: That's the one thing.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: As screwed up as the app is, that's one thing I love about it.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: I hate going on my personal socials.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: I only have them because I feel like I have to have them.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: I hate going on there.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: It's like the cesspool of where I grew up and all the people and their bullshit trying to keep up with the Joneses and I just don't care for it.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: But when TikTok with your algorithm, I find you find your people and I have made friends on there that I talk to every single day of my life.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: I've never met them in the flesh, but I hope to one day because I literally I talk to them every single day.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: So anybody that wants to start following me if you do, please feel the need I my DMs are always open.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: I have someone new write to me almost every single day about their story.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: And you're not alone.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: We're not alone.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: There are so many of us and I have a lot of different traumas that cover a lot of different things.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: So I feel like I do have a very good understanding of people and what they go through and what they mean and how they feel.
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: So I think what's and I've said this before what kills me is like the older women that come, especially older women that I've known personally in my life, just whether they taught my children or they were a grandparent of one of my children's classmates or something them reaching out to me and saying you are my voice.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: I've never.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: You're the first person I've ever shared my rape with.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: That I'm going to cry.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: That's huge.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: That heals me.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: It is men and women Sorry, it's the men and women that came before me that helped me even realize that I was abused myself.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: So I feel like it is my duty to be that light God revealed to me back in 2020, me as a lighthouse, and I actually have it tatted on me and I firmly believe that I want to be a light for others.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: And I'm look, I'm dark.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: I have dark humor.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: I am not rainbows and sunshine.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: I see people for who they are and I see them where they're at and I take it or leave it.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to, I'm not afraid to hurt your feelings.
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: I'm not.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: My husband says that I'm like a civil war surgeon.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: He's like you'll hack off necrotic limbs in order to save the person's life.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: And it's true, I might be aggressive and assertive and I might be loud and intense, but I do wear my heart on my sleeve and it comes from a good place.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: So if I can be that beacon of light for anyone, that's what I'm here for.
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: And I believe that knowledge is power and I believe that educating people is important.
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: And I think people think that pedophilia and incest is like something in like the Appalachian mountains and Arkansas, and yeah, that's that, I'm sure it happens there, and but this is almost like some medieval time shit, like it happens way more.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, I know way more people that are victims of child sexual assault, that are victims of pedophilia, incest, than not.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: It's usually the people in your close, in your family.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: So I'm like literally trying to sit here and think about the people.
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: I'm like, wait, how many do I know that aren't even victims of their own relatives?
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: So there's so many of us and the ones that we don't know about, like we have statistics.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: I think statistics are shit.
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: I think they're bullshit.
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: I don't think that they're real it's only reported cases.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: so it's, and if they're this high on reported cases, Can you imagine?
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: Thank you for giving me a safe place Well thank you.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: And being on my show and trusting me and my platform and sharing some heavy moments, and I just admire the hell out of you.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: Like, if you all have not seen Ashley's TikTok, I stand by the fact that you are one person.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: You don't have to say anything, the look.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: When you just look in the camera, I'm like whoa, I see it and I feel it.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: But I also see the light and the healing, like it's such, whether your video is 30 seconds long or three minutes long, it's such a roller coaster and I'm so glad to be on the ride with you.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: You're just brilliant.
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: Thank you, I feel the same.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: I love you so much.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: Thank you for giving me a space, a safe space as well, and for giving me a place to share my story, my voice, my truth tell us where we can find you and follow you and watch you I'm ashley harris garris.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: Yes, I went from an h to a g.
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: I know that's funny.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: There's a funny story of how my husband got my phone number because of the last name.
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: I thought he was messing with me.
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: When he asked for my phone number, I said I don't even know your last name.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: And he said Garris.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: And I never met a Garris.
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: So I thought he was messing with me and I was like show me your ID.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: And he showed it to me and I was like and then became this thing of oh, I can't wait to change that H to a G.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: I am Ashley H Garris.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: I run everything Same with Facebook and Instagram.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: But yeah, look for me on there.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: Dms are always open.
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: I want to extend my deepest gratitude to our incredible guests for sharing their transformative journey with us today.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: Join us next week as we dive into the healing process and share more incredible stories of triumph and resilience.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: Goodbye.