Latest / Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano / Surviving Human Trafficking

Transcript

Surviving Human Trafficking · Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano

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Hey, guys and dolls. Before we jump into this episode, a note
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about our content today. This is created for adult audiences only. We advise
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listener discretion as this conversation focuses on sexual, physical, and emotional abuse.
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Might be a lot to take in, so if you need a breather,
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take a break and come back later. This is Your Pain Game podcast where
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we talk about the game of living in and with chronic pain and trauma,
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getting to the heart of how to heal. I am your host, Lindsay
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Soprano. On the show, I plan on discussing with doctors, chronic pain
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patients, holistic practitioners, loved ones, and anybody that is interested in having
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their voice heard in the chronic pain and trauma world that we live in.
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Letting go of people in our lives that we once loved, we're still loved
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for that matter, who have traumatized us, who have treated us like shit,
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who have hurt us time and time again, is not easy. And
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almost two years ago I finally started getting on the bandwagon of practicing of letting
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go of people that needed to go, and they needed to go so long
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ago. Not just people, but also things and places and experiences that I've
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held on to for so very long, and I feel that it is a
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contributing factor for sure, those people and these things in these places and events
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that have happened in traumatic things that have happened to me, that have kind
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of sat in my bod for so long, and I do believe that it
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is a contributing factor to my illness, to chronic disease, so on and
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so forth, especially in us women, because we take on everything all the
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time. So now I'm on this rampage and it's like watch out, baby.
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Once I figured out that it's okay to let go of these people that
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have hurt me or taken advantage of me, or are just simply ungrateful takers
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and narcissistic assholes. Now my dumpster is like full of these people, like
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calling the trash guy like, hey, we need another one, and it
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needs to be a bit bigger this time, because I'm done. I am
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so done with it. And when you go through trauma recovery, and that
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can be through your whole life because things happen and then another thing might happen,
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and another thing might happen, and then we get trauma bonding going on.
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That can be difficult for us to process and get through and let go.
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My guest today is a freaking rock star when it comes to forgiveness,
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strength and living an unapologetic life. And I use that unapologetic life very specifically,
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and you'll know why as we get talking to her. But if there's
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anyone here out of the two of us that should have massive amounts of full
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dumpsters, it's her. So today we are going to talk about survival from
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a life filled with trauma, so much trauma and most specifically human and we
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have not talked about this topic on this show, and we waited for someone
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like her to come aboard because she's the perfect person to talk to you about
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this unfortunately, So let's talk about it. Let's talk about how overcoming her
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traumas was no small miracle and that we are lucky to have her around to
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share her stories with us today. So, without further ado, I'd like
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to introduce you to my hot as fuck red beautiful lady, Amanda Blackwood.
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Hello, my darling, Lindsay, this is a great way to stir I'm
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as red as my shirt. Nah. She's a little pinkish hued in her
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cheeks right now and that's not from the Elliptical, No, it is not.
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It's from Valveda, which we have found out is her new favorite treat.
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This episode sponsored by Valveda. Matt Macaroni and cheese, Amanda is and
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toothpaste. Yeah exactly. Amanda is an accomplished artist and author, public speaker,
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podcast host, trauma recovery mentor, and a survivor of human trafficking.
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She has spoken on multitude of stages, international summits, radio programs, and
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has published like a billion books. She has three almost four podcasts, which
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I don't understand how the hell she does that, because this is like a
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full time job doing mine, and she focuses on one of her podcasts,
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she focuses on interviewing other authors of trauma, which is really cool, Sody,
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We're gonna get right into it. I'm rolling out the red carpet for
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you, babe. And when we spoke on our meet and greet, She's
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like, cute. I just can't even stand it. We lovingly coined the
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phrase trauma vomiting, and I kind of want to hop into that because I
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think that's going to lead us into a really interesting conversation here about your life
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let's take it from there. So trauma vomiting is basically what you get when
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somebody has experienced a bunch of trauma and they need to just get it out
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of their system, and they will throw it and spew it in whatever direction
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they can, and a lot of times this is traumatizing to other people.
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You have to be careful when you're telling your story. For one, I
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have to make sure that the people you're telling it to are save people to
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talk to sure, because otherwise people can take this and turn around against you.
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They can manipulate you with it, and they can use it as a
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weakness of yours to be able to manipulate you in other ways. Too interesting,
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I have like somebody in my mind that just popped up that needs to
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go in a dumpster, or they need to find somebody who's going to be
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a healthier outlet to talk to if they have this overwhelming need that they need
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to get all this out of their body. I definitely had that, which
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is why I started writing. So I gave my traumas a physical body separate
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from myself so that I could set it down and walk away from it.
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I learned how to paint. I had a therapist, I learned how to
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cook. All of these different creative outlets help you to deal with all the
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trauma that you're dealing with. You have to have creative and healthy outlets,
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not just whoever's gonna listen. Yeah, and I definitely understand that I have
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vomited traumatically on men of people, okay, and other people have done the
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same to me, And yes, some of it is triggering. So I
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have a girlfriend in particular that I'm thinking about, not that I need to
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throw her in a dumster, but somebody else and she and it's like every
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single time we talk, it is just the constant, over and over and
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over, and I kind of get like almost a little bit resentful and angry
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about it. And I'm like, is that a me problem? Or is
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that a her problem? Or is that a conversation that I need to have?
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So what do we do when we have people like that in our life
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that start doing that? That can we can help protect ourselves from not getting
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harmed from that kind of behavior. Well, the first step is to establish
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what it is that we believe our healthy boundaries should be. So healthy boundaries
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are something that a lot of people if they've grown up in an abusive situation
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or household. They don't even understand what this concept is. This is completely
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formed because you weren't allowed to have boundaries as a kid. Now, how
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are you supposed to establish what your boundaries are now that you're an adult.
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So you have to establish where your boundaries are, and you have to find
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a healthy way to communicate those boundaries to somebody who you feel like is having
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a difficult time respecting you. Sure, so when you talk to your friend
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and you need to put this into words, that's not going to necessarily break
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their heart into a million pieces and piss them off and hurt them right in
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ways that you can't repair. Put everything through three basic filters. Is it
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kind? Is it true? Is it necessary? If it's not true,
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you don't need to be said. If it's not necessary, it doesn't need
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to be said. But if it's not kind, make it as kind as
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it can be, because the other two take precedence. Yeah, and it's
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hard to be kind sometimes, I mean it's for me. I think kindness
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is easier than hatred and anger and mean and stuff like that. Like,
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it's so much easier to just being nice, you know, but it gets
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to the point where I'm kind of like, I I've got my own stuff
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that I'm dealing with right now, and I cannot take on anything else because
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it also is a pain trigger stressful environment. Something that somebody says that makes
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my body just mediately it takes my pain from maybe a four and it pumps
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it up to a six or seven. And it's amazing how quickly that happens.
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And I have to be careful to not vomit pain conversations on people too,
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And so that's something that when you had mentioned that, I was like,
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oh God, and I catch myself and I go, oh, gosh,
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Okay, this is probably not the right time or the place or the
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person to be doing that. And so I'm catching myself doing it. And
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it's been since our conversation. A cute little lady you I know already learned
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so many things from you. It's such a short span of time. So
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even though that we giggle and we're laughing about this stuff, it's not funny,
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guys, you know it's not. And but we have to be a
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little bit lighthearted. That's why this show is the way that it is is
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because we talk about deep and dark and dirty and twisty things. But we
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have to add a little bit of the human component of the way that we
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get through it. And I know for myself, I'm depraved. That's a
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lot of what I do. It's a lot of humor that comes out of
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me when I probably should be crying and screaming and I'm just making fun of
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something. But that's my coping mechanism, right, and I'm trying to work
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on that myself. Is this we're here to talk about human trafficking. Unfortunately,
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I'd like to you to give us a little bit of a rundown of
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what it actually is and deep bunk what we all may or may not feel
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or think or have read or have watched on a movie or what have you,
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about what it actually is, and maybe put some stats behind that what
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we're actually faced with. Because when I look up California, We're the number
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one state of trafficking and I'm in California, and I'm like, oh great.
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So the first part of it, as I always tell people, you
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want to get a solid definition of what human trafficking is. You don't want
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to look this up on Google. You don't want to look at it on
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Wikipedia. These are fallible resources and they can change depending on who it is
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is messing around with those things. Any given day of the week, you
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want to go somewhere, there's going to be a beautable and reliable and steady
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source. I prefer to go to the Department of Homeland Security. Interesting,
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so they kind of have precedence over all of the definitions of human trafficking through
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all of the states, and this is going to be very universal. Their
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definition of human trafficking is the use of force, fraud, or coercion to
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obtain commercial sex acts or labor from another person. So if you notice right
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off the bat, there are several key things that are missing. You hear
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the word trafficking, you instantly think of being trafficked as in being in traffic
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on the road sores Right, There's no mention of transportation in the definition.
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Hmm. So human smuggling and human trafficking off an overlap, but one does
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not equal the other, and these are completely separate issues that need to be
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addressed. So when you hear numbers like the numbers that are coming out of
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California, how much of this is an overlap, how much of this isn't
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actually related at all, and people who are getting these stats don't have this
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basic definition of human trafficking. So another thing that's missing here is age in
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the use of force, fraudick corrosion to obtain commercial sex acts or labor from
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another person. You don't hear anything about any kind of age. Woman.
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We have this assumption here that it only happens to kids. And if you
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remember, there was a political hashtag that came out several years ago, hashtag
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Saved the Children. Children makeup one quarter of all victims of human trafficking worldwide.
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Hmmm wow. Yeah, because the first thing you think of is like
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a kid in the in the trunk of your car coming over the border from
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Mexico to California or something like that. I mean, that's that is exactly
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where Hollywood and the media have placed that image into our brain. Right,
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And you've already hit three of the top myths and you probably don't even realize
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it. Number one the transportation, Number two the age, and number three
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three there's this aspect of kidnapping. Mm hmm, yeah, absolutely, the
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kid in the trunk of the car, the kid being picked up by a
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greasy weirdo in a windowless van, that's what we picture. Yeah, that's
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one to two percent of all cases worldwide. Wow. Most people that are
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trafficked are trafficked by people they already know and trust, because they're going to
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be a whole lot easier to manipulate if you know them first. Most of
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the time this is a significant other, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, but
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it's often also parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, and sisters
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trafficking their sown siblings. This is unfortunately very common. This is the most
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common form of trafficking, is familial trafficking. Wow, that's insane. That
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is absolutely insane. But if you notice there's one more thing from that that
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definition that's missing, the mention of gender. That's what I was gonna ask,
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thank you. Yeah. So, in recent years there's been a lot
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of studies going on and while we typically think of it only happening to girls
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or women, there are new estimates coming out that estimate somewhere between forty eight
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and fifty percent are boys or men. WHOA holy crap, So it's like
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a fifty to fifty split here. That's insane. Ye, wow, I'm
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really clearly, I'm I'm aghast. Well, finally, the guys get what
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we get. You know, I'm sorry, that was terrible. I'm striking
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that from the record. Wow though, I mean, I just I can't.
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Welcome to the Pain Game podcast sponsored by Belvida, Macroni and Cheese.
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Okay, so what about God, I'm you just totally took the words right
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out of my mouth from that. I just like got punched in the stomach
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with that. Why Because those are the people that are going to be most
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vulnerable. Hmm interesting. Wow, people think that boys and men aren't vulnerable
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to this kind of thing sorts as it is with my case. Most people
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who end up in trafficking are people who have experienced child abuse at some point
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in their lives and they're left feeling vulnerable. They're left feeling like they can't
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get this love or acceptance or appreciation from anybody, so they're looking for it
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wherever they can find it, and they end up looking for it in what
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feels and looks familiar. If you grew up in an abusive household, the
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chances are you're going to end up in an abusive relationship. So often,
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especially with things being what they are now, they're going to end up being
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trafficked because part of that the force fraud or coersion to obtain commercial sex,
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ex or labor. Commercial sex does not mean prostitution. Prostitution does not mean
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humanuh does not mean human trafficking. There's a massive overlap there too. Ninety
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five percent of people in prostitution are victims of trafficking. Ninety five percent Jesses.
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And there's another really shocking number. With the way things are going right
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now, you know, we have free and unbridled access to pornography. Yeah,
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eighty five percent of all modern pornography is created using victims of human trafficking.
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Just like me. I didn't become famous because I was on Will and
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Grace or Alias or a model for Harley Davidson or any of the super cool
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things that I did. I became famous overnight because my trafficker put photos and
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videos of me being trafficked up on pornography websites. Nobody ever has would be
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able to say that Lindsay is speechless in their entire life, and I am,
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and it's the podcast, so I got to keep talking. I'm just
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I'm floored by that. I mean, we talked about this briefly in our
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meet and greet. Obviously, but these numbers are insane. So let's talk
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about your story and what happened to you. And I know that unfortunately,
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it's not just this quick and dirty little story here about this one time back
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at camp, you know. Yeah, so let's go. Let's go there.
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Thank you for doing this. Absolutely so when we get to the trafficking
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part is where my world really turns upside down. But there's a lot of
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stuff that led up to that. First. Yeah, I mentioned early child
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abuse and that kind of stuff. My mother was mentally and emotionally abusive,
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my father was physically abusive, and my brother was the first person to ever
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molest me. I was four and he was seven. So knowing what I
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do now, I can look back on it and fully understand that something had
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happened to him. I don't know who did it. I don't know why
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it happened. I don't know when it happened. I know nothing about it.
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I do know that he exhibited a bunch of other signs and symptoms of
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trauma as well, and he many years later said that he didn't remember anything
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of our childhood before he turned nineteen years old. So these are all signs
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of trauma and knowing that now helps me with the forgiveness part of things.
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It didn't help me with my brain and emotional development as a four year old,
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so I felt like there was really nobody there for me, you know.
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I started acting out and had issues in school, and my mother kept
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on telling me that if all my teachers didn't like me, that there had
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to be a common denominator, and that if one thing kept on happening to
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me over and over again, I had to be the one at fault.
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Well, up until that point, the only person that had ever done anything
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to me inappropriate like that had been my brother. But when I was twelve,
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I was molested by an uncle by marriage. At thirteen and it was
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by a stranger in a swimming pool in a public pool with lots of people
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around us. At fifteen, it was a total stranger in a video store
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rental parking lot in broad daylight, and nobody did anything. At sixteen it
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was a kid that I worked at a fast food restaurant with. And at
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seventeen was the first time I was ever raped, and it was by a
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kid that I thought was my best friend and I'd known for years. So
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with this repetitive pattern, coming up over and over again. I felt like
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these people were taking away slices of my soul, little pieces of me,
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and nobody could see it. They couldn't feel it, they didn't know it
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was happening. Everything was right there in the open, but nobody would open
18:48
their eyes to look. When I was eighteen, I had already been running
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away from home for several years. I'd spent my seventeenth birthday in a foster
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home with some wonderful people, and at eighteen, I was dating a man
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who was more than twice my age. I was very vulnerable. I dropped
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out of high school. I couldn't support myself. He gave me shelter and
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he told me he loved me, and then he loaned me out to his
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best friend for a birthday party. Loaned you out. The way it was
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presented to me, it was going to be an all expenses paid trip to
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Las Vegas. And I'd been through Vegas before, and I'd ridden the roller
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coaster at the top of New York, New York, and I was all
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excited because I couldn't wait to go back. I wanted to ride the roller
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coaster and play the video games. I was still just a kid. I
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was eighteen, but I was just a kid still. Sure, sure,
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yeah, yeah. We got there and the front desk people were paid off
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to not ask questions. What they were told that I was allowed to order
19:56
room service only once a day, and that when they brought it up they
20:00
had to drop it off at the door and leave so that nobody would have
20:04
access to me to be able to ask those questions. If I left the
20:07
room, I wouldn't been able to get back in because I didn't have a
20:10
room key. I didn't have my driver's license because I didn't have a driver's
20:14
license at the time. I didn't have my ID card with me because he
20:17
kept it so that he could get me on and off the plane. He
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posed as my father for this trip, and for fifty two hours I was
20:26
locked up in this hotel room. He would come up and he would do
20:29
what he was going to do to me, and then he would maybe snack
20:33
a little bit on whatever room service I'd ordered, and either take a nap
20:36
or go back downstairs and go gambling again. For fifty two hours, I
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had to put up with this, and if I'd left that room, I
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would have had no way to get back to where I had been living.
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I wouldn't have been able to collect what few things that I did own at
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the time. I would have been homeless on the streets of Las Vegas.
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I had no family to really be able to stand up for me, or
20:56
to say come home, we want you, we love you, We're going
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to take care of you. I was every bit as vulnerable and helpless and
21:03
alone as I was at four years old, and I told myself, I've
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been through worse, I'll get through this too. So we got back to
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where I was living at the time, which was in Arizona, and I
21:19
packed my stuff and I got out as quickly as I could. But what
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I didn't realize was that the man who had been my boyfriend had ties to
21:29
the drug cartel and organized crime on the East Coast, and he hunted me
21:33
for years years years. My god, poor thing. I don't even know
21:41
how you do it. I don't even know how you do it. I
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didn't see an alternative. Yeah, yeah, you go through this kind of
21:51
stuff and people say, how did you survive? How do you not?
21:56
Yeah? Good point. Yeah, you got to take one day at a
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time, one step at a time. It's like the old adage of how
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do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? Every single day was
22:07
a challenge, but every single day I made it to the end to start
22:11
all over again the next day, Like, oh my god, you poor
22:15
baby. Okay, so you're eighteen, You've done your fifty two hours of
22:19
hell in Vegas, which is pretty much standard issue in Vegas. Anyway,
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she just couldn't pay me to go back to Vegas, and so now you're
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being hunted. So then what's happening? What happened? Did he find you?
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He did for a very brief period of time. I was living out
22:38
in the middle of nowhere in Arkansas, and he came with the guy that
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had taken made to Vegas, and they were knocking on my door. Oh
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my friend, Oh my god, what did you do? I did what
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I could. I left again. I had already gotten married at that point,
22:53
and I got married hoping that a name change would make it more difficult
22:57
to find me. Sure it didn't work. Yeah, but I'd injured myself
23:02
on a horse farm. I was working out there at this horse farm,
23:04
and I absolutely loved that job. Oh my gosh, it was such a
23:08
passion for me, especially therapy for people that have Yeah, that's exactly why
23:15
I didn't get to ride any of them. It didn't even matter. They
23:18
were straight Egyptian Arabians and the most gorgeous horses ever seen in my life.
23:22
And I got to go out and brush them and comb them and give them
23:26
treats and feed them, and oh they were wonderful. They were so cool.
23:30
And there were several that I really had to work with to earn their
23:33
trust hm and that was massively helpful for me. Interesting, So when I
23:41
injured myself and this guy showed up on my front porch and I didn't know
23:45
what I was going to do with my life. And the man that i'd
23:47
married was also more than twice my age and turned out to be quite abusive.
23:49
Again, these patterns. Yeah, I told this to my boss while
23:55
I was getting the MRI done on my knee, and my boss said,
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I've got a guesthouse here will get you. Just stay there. You're not
24:03
going home. Stay there for now. Good. We need to get surgery
24:07
done on your knee. Once we get the surgery done, I've got another
24:11
horse farm in this other state, and I want you to work there.
24:15
You'll have a steady income. You will have a place of your own and
24:19
you can really get on your feet. This man was a savior. He
24:23
was a Vietnam War veteran and a former prisoner of war. He knew what
24:30
it was to survive rough stuff. Yeah, yeah, no kidding. So
24:36
the surgery that needed to happen, I was going to go down to Florida,
24:38
which is where the other horse farm was. And I got all the
24:44
way down there, and a lot of stuff happened on this journey. And
24:48
I got all the way down to the Daytona Beach bus station and I called
24:52
it my grandmother because the plan that I had already been said in place was
24:56
she had agreed I would come and stay with her until I could get my
24:59
surger and get myself back on my feet and I'd be doing better and I
25:02
could go off and live my life. And I got all the way there.
25:06
It was about ten thirty at night, standing at the Daytona Beach bus
25:08
station, and I called my grandmother and said, hey, I'm here,
25:11
I'm ready for you guys to come and pick me up. And she didn't
25:15
answer the phone. It was her husband, my dead stepfather, Okay,
25:21
he answered, and when I told him that I'm here. I'm ready to
25:23
be picked up. He said, we're not coming to get you. You're
25:26
on your own. Good luck, and hung up the phone. What I
25:30
didn't know was that my parents had called and said, she's running from her
25:33
problems again. If you take her in, we'll never speak to you again.
25:37
I don't like your family. Me neither. Let's be honest. I
25:44
do not care for these people at all, you know, And I said,
25:48
that makes two of us, but honestly, it makes a whole bunch
25:51
of us. Yeah. No, everyone that's listening right now is really pissed
25:56
off. God, you poor baby. I'm just like, if you're having
26:00
a bad day to day, let's kind of reboot. Okay, it could
26:04
be worse, just saying, oh my lord, okay, so keep going.
26:10
I'm just I'm on the edge of my seat. So here. I
26:14
was at the Daytona Beach bus station, bawling my eyes out to your streaming.
26:18
I'm just sobbing, hugging my knees. I have no idea what I'm
26:22
going to do. I've got five dollars to my name, I've got nothing.
26:27
I've got nowhere to go. I don't know this city and this young
26:33
couple got off a bus from New York and walked over to where I was
26:37
and they saw me crying, and they were so sweet. He was in
26:41
his mid twenties. She looked like she was about eighteen. And they asked
26:44
me what was wrong, and I told them, and they said, We've
26:47
got a place where you can stay until you can get on your feet.
26:52
He was in his mid twenties and she was fifteen. Yeah. I knew
26:56
this was what was going to be coming out of your mouth, Okaye,
27:00
going it's great. What they meant when they said we got a place so
27:03
you can stay until you get on your feet, was we go to stay
27:07
place where you can stay until we find the highest bidder. Yeah. They
27:11
sold me like a bag of potato chips to a guy named Esteban was locked
27:17
up for twenty three and a half hours in a small room with no food,
27:19
no water, no bathroom facilities. And as you are well aware,
27:25
I am a huge fan of Richard Dina Anderson and the TV show mcgaiger from
27:30
the eighties and nineties. Because I grew up watching that show. I thought
27:33
you were going to say mac and cheese, now, well get that too.
27:36
I also grew up on mac and cheese. My mother was a terrible
27:37
cook. I learned how to cook out of self defense. That's funny.
27:45
Yeah, I have to take that back. She was a terrible cook with
27:48
everything except for biscuits. Oh my gosh. She has the best biscuits on
27:52
the planet. And I will probably never get that recipe because I don't plan
27:56
on talking to her again, and if we do, we're gonna plais and
28:00
them and put them on her porch. But you know, I've moved on
28:06
from all of that anger that I used to have for her. If I
28:08
ever did do something like that, well, I mean, they wouldn't be
28:11
poisoned, but they would probably be better than hers, and I would be
28:15
just me trying to show off. Take that, show that up your biscuit,
28:19
bitch. She hated, absolutely hated being called mother or so you know,
28:30
that's exactly what the note would say, absolutely dear mother. Oh my
28:37
god. Okay, see, you're sold to the highest bidder like a package
28:41
of potato chips, And do you mind me asking how much you were sold
28:45
for? I believe it was somewhere around the sum of ninety dollars, oh
28:52
my god, and I was worth a little bit more because of the red
28:56
hair. Oh my god, people are so fucked up. Yeah, so
29:04
there's this there's this whole myth around red hair about red haired women especially are
29:14
high spirited and they're bull headed and determined. Well, I mean, that's
29:18
all true, but they're willing to pay more because they wanted the opportunity to
29:25
break that spirit. And because there's such a small percentage of red heads worldwide
29:30
that we're seen as exotic. Humans are not exotic. Animals can be exotic.
29:36
Humans are just different. We're not exotic. So I mcguivert my way
29:40
out, and I actually did write a book about just this incident. It's
29:45
called Detailed Pieces of a Shattered Dream. And at the time when I wrote
29:47
the book, I thought that it was my only experience of having existed in
29:51
the world of trafficking, because I saw that as a form of kidnapping,
29:55
and I thought that one to two percent, that prevailing myth is what trafficking
30:00
looked like. So it turned out later on I found out in twenty eighteen
30:04
that I had actually been to trafficked three different times in my life, but
30:11
the average number of somebody being trafficked to seven, So these numbers are shocking.
30:15
Imagine coming to the realization of somebody saying all of these numbers up on
30:19
a stage in front of you. When you think that you're going there to
30:23
help kidnapped children and you learn that you are the kidnapped child that you're there
30:29
to help. Oh wow. So I left Florida, and the first Florida
30:36
I've never been back, by the way, don't nobody needs to be in
30:40
Florida now, Dad and I have been all over the world. I was
30:45
a flight attendant for Pete's sake. So I left there, and the farthest
30:48
I could get without actually having a passport at that time was California, I
30:52
mean, without freezing my butt off up in Washington or organ I wasn't willing
30:56
to go that far. So I went to LA and that's where I was
30:57
on the TV shows and I the modeling, I did all this really cool
31:00
stuff. That was about the time that internet dating became a big thing and
31:04
everybody's trying it out, and I'm still looking for my footing and looking for
31:08
personal validation, and I'm still putting my self worth in the hands of others
31:12
with being on TV and modeling and feeling like, that's the acceptance that I'm
31:18
wanting and needing and craving because I've never had it. Meanwhile, I jump
31:22
on one of these internet dating websites and I find this man that I find
31:27
absolutely gorgeous. I thought he was striking, so handsome, he's tall,
31:36
he's good looking, his gorgeous accent. But he lives really far away.
31:41
So we knew right off the bat, you know, we're probably not going
31:44
to be meeting in person. But this was when Skype was more prevalent than
31:48
Zoom. We got on Skype calls all the time, so with an eight
31:51
hour time difference, he would be having breakfast while I'd be having dinner,
31:56
and we would have a meal together before he would go to work and before
31:57
I would go to sleep. And this was regular occurrence. We got to
32:00
know each other really well. You know, there were known that these filters
32:05
or anything on Skype beckt and eiders, so I actually saw him, yeah,
32:12
exact guy, And over a period of seven years we got to know
32:15
each other really well. I told him almost everything about my life. I
32:17
didn't tell him about Arizona slash Vegas because I really wasn't willing to talk about
32:22
that. Until about five years ago. But he knew all the other stuff.
32:27
He knew about my family. He knew that I was pretty much alone
32:30
in the world, and he watched me get into relationships and then exit the
32:34
relationships. He saw me develop from being a nobody who was constantly seeking this
32:42
validation to getting a job as a mall cop, to five months later busting
32:45
open the major embezzlement ring and sending some people to prison, to taking over
32:52
the director of public safety and security for six properties in La County. I
32:57
worked hard, no kids, the wow woman, and here I was in
33:04
this job where I had established myself. I got an eleven thousand dollars a
33:07
year rais. I got raises for all of my employees. I was managing
33:12
things in ways that nobody had seen fit to figure out previously. I revolutionized
33:17
the scheduling system for that company. I walked into a room and people stood
33:22
up and respected me. I established myself. I had my own apartment with
33:28
no roommates, no boyfriends. I got a cat, I had my own
33:31
car. I had everything. And I'd known this man for seven years,
33:37
and he was so proud of me. He came over to visit me,
33:39
and I went over there to go and visit him over to Scotland, and
33:44
finally, after all these years, he asked me to get a fiance visa.
33:46
He wanted me to marry him and he asked me to move to Scotland
33:51
to go and be with him. So I got my fiancee visa. It
33:54
took me seven years to get there, and it took him seven days to
33:58
start trafficking me. Holy shit, I was thirty one years old. The
34:05
oldest person in recent years to be pulled out of traffic just here in the
34:07
state of Colorado was in her seventies. Oh my lord. The youngest was
34:14
three months old. It's just freaking crazy. This is just movie after movie
34:20
after bad movie after bad movie after bad movie, and then being like,
34:23
I mean, have you did you get Like were people like, why didn't
34:28
you learn from the first time? Or why didn't you learn from the second
34:30
time? Why did you get any of that shit? Because that's what I
34:34
feel. People would start saying like, we don't even believe you anymore,
34:37
give me a break, which I think is horrible, don't get me wrong,
34:40
but as a human being that you know, these are what people think,
34:45
like, oh, she's just doing it for attention or she's I don't
34:47
even understand how any of this could be real, Like this is insane.
34:52
Well, not only have people asked me those questions, but I have been
34:54
asked those questions by podcast hosts. Oh gosh, I take it with grace
35:02
and dignity, right, gim me I break. I would never second guess
35:07
one word that would come out of your mouth, because I've read your stuff
35:10
too, so you know, it is really nice to feel heard, because
35:15
it wasn't for so long. Of course, I also wasn't stepping into my
35:19
own story. I wasn't owning it. I was scared of it. That's
35:22
like, yeah, no kidding, how could you? Why would you want
35:24
to put on those shoes again and go back and walk all of those steps
35:28
and those crazy, sad, scary places that you were from such a young
35:31
man, even going back to four years old. I mean, that's in.
35:36
I mean, your poor little your poor little body, and your poor
35:38
little life. I mean, just you're amazing, amazing, but you already
35:44
know that. I struggle with it, though, and that's a traumal response,
35:47
and I have to accept that and recognize it for what it is.
35:52
I don't think I'm amazing. I think I have been given the gift of
36:00
being able to share this story, and so I'm not gonna stop. Because
36:04
if this means that one more person can figure out what they went through has
36:07
a name, so they can get the help that they need, then so
36:08
be it. So my story doesn't belong to me. My story belongs to
36:13
all the people who've been permanently silenced. So what do we do? What
36:16
can we do to help fight against this? We want to find reputable organizations
36:24
who know what they're doing, the ones that will actually do the hard work.
36:28
So as an example, there's an organization called Compass thirty one. They're
36:31
based down in Colorado Springs. They have a seal of transparency on their website
36:36
and you can look up their financial records to figure out where every single penny
36:39
of this organization is going and the work that they're doing. That's cool.
36:44
Yeah, Meanwhile, you've got other organizations that are saying they need thirty two
36:46
thousand dollars to run a mission to be able to pull five children out of
36:50
trafficking. They're focusing on children, They're focusing on children in other countries,
36:54
and then they're taking the stories of these victims and sharing them to be able
36:59
to elicit more money from donations, while none of that money is going to
37:05
the victims whose stories they essentially stole. This is a flow of exploitation.
37:09
Yeah, so we have to narrow it down to figure out who actually needs
37:15
the help. You know, And if you find these organizations and you feel
37:17
like you're not sure what they're going to do with your money, you're not
37:21
sure what you want to be able to do to help, don't ask them
37:22
how much money they need. Ask them what physical items they need. Do
37:25
they need toothbrushes? Do they need coats, blankets, socks, shoes,
37:30
pillows, backpacks, whatever, teddy bears? Yeah, if they need the
37:37
physical things, they're probably the ones that are actually going to spend the money
37:40
appropriately. And if you're still not comfortable giving them the money, then buy
37:45
the darn coats. No kidding, Yeah, I do that actually with There's
37:49
some people in my world that financially a little bit unstable, and we would
37:53
originally would just like give them money or whatever, and then we're like,
37:55
you know what, We're not going to do that. We're gonna like we
37:58
will pay your guests bill, or we will help you know we will do
38:00
these things instead because we know where that that gift is going at least instead
38:06
of like, oh, you just showed up in a new pair of sneakers.
38:08
That's interesting. So okay, so that's really good. That's really good
38:13
advice in regards to that, because it's true and that goes with anything,
38:15
I mean, any any charity that we want to get involved in and we
38:20
donate our money and we don't necessarily always look at what's really going on with
38:25
our donation, and so that's something for us to learn and to understand and
38:29
to pay more attention to as a whole, but specifically in this Yes,
38:31
this is great. So now I guess my question then comes into start moving
38:37
into your healing and you're forgiving and letting go of this anger, and how
38:42
you even do that because you've been it's what wait, hold on second,
38:45
So the gentleman in Scotland, what ended up happening with him? Oh my
38:51
gosh. Now that's a wild roller coaster too. So it was seven days
38:54
after I got there that he started trafficking me. And basically it became like
39:00
a revolving door in the front of the house so people would come over.
39:01
He wasn't taking me anywhere to traffic me. I was staying in the home.
39:07
People would come in, they would exchange money if it was actually money,
39:14
or they would take care of that in advance if it was electronic.
39:17
He was advertising me on a dating website, and there's certain terminology that was
39:23
used where people knew what to expect. And this is what the situation is.
39:29
If I didn't do as I was being told to do, I would
39:31
have at first food deprived of me. Later on it was sleep deprivation at
39:37
one point that lasted up to eight and a half days. Oh, I
39:42
believe it. It's a little foggy after about four or five days, no
39:45
kidding, and eventually waterboarding just for sport to see what would happen. So
39:53
I call it sport torture because things need to have names. If you need
39:58
to figure out how to move beyond something, you have to give it a
40:02
name. It has to have its own form of existence so you can walk
40:06
away and leave it behind. So I was a victim of trafficking and sport
40:10
torture simultaneously. After that first week of the abuse, I decided that,
40:19
you know, it's time to get out. I am done I can't handle
40:22
this. If this was once or twice, I think I would have been
40:25
okay with dealing with it because of everything that I'd already been through. And
40:28
that's a pretty messed up mindset too. Yeah, no kidding. But I
40:31
kept on telling myself the same thing that I told myself way way back in
40:37
the beginning, I've been through worse. I'll get through this too. The
40:38
truth was that I hadn't been through anything worse. I'd never been through anything
40:42
like this in my life. It was like all of those experience mushed up
40:45
into one band of rubber balls that was going to explode. And this was
40:50
every single day. So for a while in my early twenties, I had
40:54
been a waitress at a restaurant and I remembered the old story of making sure
41:00
that the coffee cup is always full, and I did that with his whiskey
41:06
cup, and I get him very, very very drunk while the abuse was
41:10
occurring. I kept making sure that I filled up his whiskey cup. At
41:15
the end of the night, he was so drunk that I told him,
41:17
you know, if you give me back my passport and my driver's license and
41:21
my debit card, I can go down to the bank tomorrow and go pull
41:23
off my money out of the bank, and then I can give it to
41:25
you so that we can put it in your account and we can spend it,
41:29
because otherwise it's just going to sit there forever and rot and we'll never
41:30
do anything with it. He bought it, and he gave me wow It
41:36
documents that night while he was still drunk, and I hid them. And
41:40
the next morning, rather than going down to the bank, I jumped on
41:44
a computer and I looked for the first flight out that I could afford.
41:47
The first day out was like twelve thousand dollars. There's no way I could
41:51
afford an emergency flight like that. I had like a little over two thousand
41:54
dollars in my account. The next day was too expensive, the next day
41:59
was too expensive. The first flight out that I could afford I would have
42:01
to wait five days for. So I bought the ticket. I had like
42:07
eleven dollars and some change left over in my account after that, and I
42:13
got this ticket, and I said, I'll get through this. I've been
42:16
through worse, I'll get through this too. And in that five days the
42:22
abuse got so bad. Then I ended up with a kidney infection that nearly
42:25
killed me, and I was in the hospital when that flight took off.
42:29
Oh it was a non refundable flight. So in the next way that I
42:35
tried to get out my God was by taking my own life. Yeah,
42:40
I was done. My entire life had been nothing but pain. I didn't
42:45
see any way out of this situation. I saw no way of being able
42:49
to survive. I was done. But I also knew that I didn't want
42:53
to die. Yeah, right, of kind of the rub with killing yourself.
43:00
So it was a weird at least that's what the word on the street
43:02
is. So it was a really weird position to be in, of course,
43:06
no kidding. So I had done the research. I'd done a lot
43:12
of research over the years, not just in psychology, but on the best
43:15
ways of being able to endure life. Ironically, and the best way that
43:20
I could find that would be accessible to me right then was what I decided
43:23
on. So I left the house that day and I walked to the local
43:28
church. It was built in the sixteen hundreds, and I sat on the
43:31
steps and I prayed that somebody would see me, not just look at me
43:35
and not you know, not my circus's me, but actually see me as
43:42
a human being. And people walked by and they did exactly what I expected.
43:46
They didn't want to look at me. And then I sat down in
43:51
the graveyard for a while, leaning up against a headstone that had the year
43:54
seventeen seventy six. Was the only thing on the headstone I could still read,
43:58
and for anybody out of the US, that's the year that we claimed
44:01
independence from England. And here I am an American in Scotland, part of
44:06
the UK, and I take it as a sign, all right, this
44:08
is where I need to be. And I sat there for an hour and
44:12
still nobody saw me, and eventually I got up and made my way to
44:16
the train station. My plan was to sit at the platform and have my
44:22
one last cigarette. Back then, I was a smoker. I'm not now,
44:24
thankfully. My worst vice is the velvet lat garni and cheese. But
44:32
while I was sitting there smoking my cigarette, a man walked out onto the
44:36
platform and he saw me smoking and he asked me for a light and I
44:40
handed him my lighter and I told him you can keep this, I won't
44:46
need it anymore. And I wanted him to ask me why and he didn't,
44:53
and I knew I couldn't make this total stranger care. I hadn't been
44:59
able to make any body care. I was thirty one years old. I'd
45:01
never made anybody really care. And I knew that that was it. That
45:07
was probably the last conversation I would ever have on this earth. I knew
45:14
exactly what time the train was expected, and when I was done with my
45:16
cigarette, I was going to get up and walk along the tracks until I
45:20
got to a place where the train would still be traveling at full speed,
45:24
and I would step in front of the train. This is how you decided
45:30
this was going to be it, this was going to be it. Well,
45:32
that's ballsy, I'll tell you that, especially for a woman. No,
45:36
And I'm not even being joky about that, because you know, when
45:38
we think about that kind of stuff women, you're like, well, we
45:40
don't want to look ugly, we don't want to be splattered, and you
45:45
know, like it'd be like we're pills. You know, you know you
45:47
would. I would never have thought that you would say, you know what,
45:50
I just decided I'm going to go jump in front of a train.
45:52
I justn't want to be recognizable. Oh, I didn't want anybody to know
45:59
what had ever happened to me. I just wanted to disappear because no matter
46:01
what I had ever been through, I didn't want to put my parents through
46:06
that kind of pain taste the ways, because no matter how much I'd hurt,
46:13
I still loved them. They were still my parents. Yeah. And
46:17
him, I wouldn't give him the dignity of knowing that I ended my life
46:22
because of him. Yeah. So there was a lot of emotion tied up
46:27
in that. It was a very thought out decision. Okay, well you're
46:32
not splattered all over a train, so so I think that didn't work out.
46:43
Oh my god, I didn't know that part. Holy moly. Okay,
46:46
So while I was sitting there at the platform thinking about this, and
46:50
I got it all planned out in my head, and I know that I
46:52
have to get up in approximately two minutes to be able to head down to
46:54
the tracks, to be able to get there in time, a little boy
46:59
walked out on the platform and the man that asked me for a light,
47:01
he took his hand. That was his dad, And this little boy looked
47:07
at me. You know, when you're having a bad day and you got
47:09
a kid looking at you. You will do what you can to cheer your
47:13
safe self up and smiles so that the kid doesn't look upset, because they
47:16
emulate our emotions. I did that. It didn't work. That kid looked
47:23
right through me. I begged all day long for somebody to see me,
47:30
and the only person who could was an innocent four year old child. And
47:37
I knew in that moment I could not do to that child what had been
47:40
done to me at that same age. I could not take away his innocence.
47:45
I could not destroy him for the rest of his life. And it
47:51
took me about twenty seconds to realize that I was running back to my prison.
47:55
I was not running toward the train, and I was grateful, and
48:00
I was happy to the point of rejoicing and jumping and shouting, because I
48:06
knew that if I was going to be kept alive in that moment, after
48:12
everything that I had planned, that there had to be a reason I was
48:15
resigned to die, and now I was determined to live. And I ran
48:22
all the way back, and the whole way back, I kept on thinking
48:27
to myself, there's another way, There's going to be another way. I
48:30
will figure this out. I'm going to get out of here. I'm going
48:34
to survive and I'm going to be great. My life is going to mean
48:37
something to somebody, even if it's just me. And in that short one
48:44
mile walk or run as it were, or skip from the train station,
48:51
I decided that I had studied enough psychology in my life, just on my
48:57
own privately, that I knew about Stockholm, which is what we call trauma
49:00
bonding now, and I was going to get back, convince him that I
49:04
had trauma bonding and make him believe that I would do anything for him.
49:07
And over a period of about a month, I kept on leaving these little
49:13
breadcrumbs, and when early June rolled around, I told him, you know,
49:17
I've been here since January and I've stayed beyond what we told the authorities
49:27
we would use as our wedding date and we didn't get married. So if
49:32
I overstay my welcome, I can get kicked out of the UK and never
49:36
allowed back according to the UK customer and law, and you could lose your
49:42
job as a police officer, and we wouldn't want that would be oh my
49:47
god. But if you send me back, I can return in six months,
49:57
just in time for Christmas. It'd be our first together, wouldn't it
50:00
be wonderful? Within two hours, I had a round trip flight that would
50:05
have landed me back in Scotland in time for Christmas. Wow. Wow,
50:13
where did you fly to? I went straight back to California, Sister.
50:17
Yeah. I ended up roommates with somebody that had been one of my employees
50:22
when I was in the field of security. I had known her brother before
50:25
I knew her. We hit it off when we'd become friends, and the
50:30
whole time I was in Scotland, she knew something was up, but she
50:32
couldn't under She didn't really understand what it was. She didn't have all the
50:37
information. Yeah, yeah, no, whoopsie, Yeah, Holy moly.
50:45
Okay. So we get back and I'm living there with her. She's working
50:49
graveyard shift. So when she goes to work at night, I sleep in
50:52
the bed, and when I get up in the morning, she's coming home
50:55
from her graveyard shift. She sleeps in the bed and I go to work.
51:00
Okay, And it worked out really well for a while until she until
51:06
she got a word of what it was that had happened to me. Because
51:10
this man kept on taking all these photos and videos he had taken of me
51:14
while I was being trafficked and sending them to employers every time I got a
51:17
job. So I lost jobs, and he would send them to friends.
51:21
If we found out I made friends with anybody, I would lose friends.
51:24
He was alienating me from everybody. He came looking for me. He had
51:29
my address off by one number. I saw him banging on the neighbor's door.
51:32
It was a terrifying time for me and this. I'll call her a
51:37
girl, she's not even a woman. I can't call her a woman.
51:40
I'm sorry to Heay, don't apologize you absolutely. This is what I said
51:45
about unapologetic life. By the way, in the very beginning of this episode,
51:50
she was not mature enough to be considered a woman. I hope that's
51:52
changed for her now. She didn't understand how anything like this could happen without
51:57
my permission. Sure, so she started telling people I had been a high
52:01
priced call girl. She was my best and only friend until that point.
52:09
Well, the next several years were spent with me doing whatever I could,
52:15
trying to get away from bad people and trying to alienate anyone into everyone.
52:22
I was lashing out. I was doing whatever I could. I was before
52:27
all of this, I was absolutely terrified of flying. I didn't like flying.
52:30
I went to Scotland on a plane. You know, don't do that
52:35
to me. But it was to the point there where I didn't care if
52:39
I lived or died. My life was in so much pain and I was
52:43
so alone, and I was so isolated from everybody and everything that I went
52:47
to an interview and got hired to be a flight attendant. I easily could
52:52
have been a hermit for the rest of my life. And I tore myself
52:55
out of that comfort zone and said, I am not going to do that,
52:59
because I've got a bucket and I'm going to knock these things off of
53:02
this bucket list before I go. And I still wasn't sure how long I
53:07
was going to live, but I knew that when I went, it was
53:09
going to be at my own hand, and I had a set number of
53:14
years. I was allowing myself to get this stuff done, and I went
53:19
and did it all. It's my girl. Well, and I think it's
53:23
interesting that you chose that you chose planes and being a hostess with the mostess
53:30
because you would be able to get places quickly and get flights for you know,
53:37
like it seems strategic in without me. Did you even know that that's
53:40
kind of what you were doing, like you were thinking about your bucket list.
53:43
But the first thing that popped in my head was, well, yeah,
53:45
because she can flee, I can get out. Yeah wow. And
53:50
I'm never halm that way. I'm gone four or five days a week.
53:53
He'll never find me this way, That's right. Yeah, And I didn't
53:58
even think about that at the time, but it did kind of hit me
54:00
later on. I was definitely on the run. I was in martial arts
54:05
classes. I was taking jiu jitsu two days a week. I was taking
54:07
wing chan on Sundays. I was doing everything I could to try and bolster
54:10
myself and build my self confidence and my strength and my ability to defend myself,
54:16
silently defending myself because I wouldn't tell anybody what had happened. Eventually,
54:23
I was so alienated from anybody in anything that I left that job after two
54:29
years, three months, twenty eight days, not that I was counting not
54:31
I loved it, but it was time to move on, and I moved
54:36
out here to Colorado. In twenty sixteen, I went to an anti trafficking
54:39
conference in twenty eighteen, that's when I discovered what I went through was exactly
54:44
what it is. And in twenty nineteen is when he made me famous on
54:47
the pornography website. I had seen some people speaking at this conference though,
54:54
and they were running an anti trafficking organization, and I reached out to them
54:59
as said, hey, you know, I'm desperate. I don't know what
55:02
to do. I don't know how to live with us. I don't know
55:05
if I want to live with this. I don't know what to do.
55:07
Yeah, and they paired me up right away with a group that partners with
55:13
law firms who work with survivors of trafficking pro bono, and this law firm
55:19
in New York I had a like, big name law firm that was going
55:22
out and going after these pornography websites with cease and desist orders and having all
55:27
this stuff pulled down. Every time one went down, two more went up
55:30
somewhere else. It's insane. Yeah, I was fighting an uphill battle.
55:36
No, it's hitting'll making money off of me to this day, Uh,
55:40
yes, definitely. But at the time he was also including all of my
55:45
social media and any personal information that he could find on me. With these
55:51
videos and photos. I was asked for my autograph in a grocery store one
55:55
day, and it wasn't for the cool stuff. If I'd done no,
56:00
of course, not right grossed me like he was proud. This is why
56:07
he wanted my autograph. And I do not understand that. It is like
56:13
impossible for my brain to even wrap myself around what you've been saying this hour.
56:20
This is a lot, This is a lot to take in here.
56:25
Okay, So did you? Did you give him his autograph? Sorry?
56:34
I had to. When I did, You'll have a lasting impact on this
56:39
man for the rest of his life. Oh my god, do tell first.
56:43
I burst into tears, sure, and within about two seconds stopped and
56:49
I stared him straight in the face and said, I need you to understand
56:52
something. I'm stuck on this planet for however long I live, and what
57:00
you've just done has the tendency to shorten that. Oh so good, so
57:09
good. None of that, none of what you've seen of me, wo,
57:15
how was ever by choice? And as long as you are watching it,
57:21
as long as you are sharing it, as long as you were telling
57:24
people about it, you were doing more damage than you can possibly ever imagine.
57:31
Oh my god. And I don't know where that came from. But
57:35
I walked away with him holding his phone in his hands and his jaw just
57:39
hanging open. Yeah, I walked away. I left my groceries and everything,
57:44
just walked out and I walked out into the parking lot and completely just
57:49
downpour. I sobbed, I screamed, I cried. People thought I was
57:52
completely insane. And I reached out to that anti trafficking organization and they paired
57:58
me up with a counselor, a therapist. I traumatized her so bad she
58:01
left the industry forever. Who do you have a drinking problem by any chance?
58:07
Because I was in Scotland. I did in Scotland, and I can
58:14
count how many times I've been drunk after Scotland on a single finger. Yeah,
58:19
exactly. Good for you. Yeah wow, Okay, So you so
58:24
your counselor is there to help you gets out of there because she can't handle
58:30
it. She can't handle the truth. She can't handle the truth. You
58:34
can handle the truth. Yeah, Well, you've got to be a type
58:38
of you gotta be a type of woman that can hear this kind of stuff
58:42
too, and and be I mean, I'm a complete cribaby. I've been
58:45
crying for half of this episode. But I'm sad that she did that to
58:50
you. But she was also putting up a boundary for herself and the way
58:53
that she needed to protect herself from this, which is kind of circling back
58:57
to what we started with at the beginning of our episode. Wow, do
59:00
you know what happened to her? Is she doing anything or is she working
59:05
at Is she working for Velveta for craft foods? I think she is an
59:09
elementary school counselor. Now she's no longer in therapy for trauma survivors, but
59:17
she still wanted to follow that passion. That's good, yeah, and have
59:22
her eyes peeled for kids that might be demonstrating some behavior that might be similar
59:25
nature. I hope she learned something. Yeah, sure, absolutely, We're
59:30
all learning a bunch of stuff today. Holy moly. I'm just like you
59:36
talk about everyone has a story. You have like five thousand of them in
59:39
one hour, just like and I know we're you know how I opened up
59:45
and I started talking about depravity and us laughing and doing it. And it's
59:49
not because it's not because we think this is funny. I just I have
59:53
not gone through anything even close to what you've gone through. But I have
59:57
certainly gone through a lot of crap and my life and I have to face
1:00:01
some of that stuff that I had to start talking about and dealing with and
1:00:07
focus and looking at myself in the mirror of some things that happened to me
1:00:09
by doing this show, and it was the only way I was going to
1:00:13
start talking about it. And so it's been two and a half years since
1:00:15
I started actually telling the truth about things that happened to me when I was
1:00:20
a little girl, when I was a teenager, was in high school,
1:00:22
when I was married, all these things, and it's empowering. It's also
1:00:25
very very fucking scary, and it's very sad, but it also makes me
1:00:31
laugh because I made it and I got through some really really horrible things and
1:00:39
I have to it's the only way I can do it. I cry a
1:00:43
lot, too, but I laugh a lot, you know. And I'm
1:00:45
grateful for the people that have come into my life, not unlike yourself,
1:00:50
that have helped create this space that we can talk openly and honestly. And
1:00:54
maybe we touched one person today, I think we touched a lot of people
1:00:59
quite for so when you're talking about yes, we are crossing all of our
1:01:02
fingers and toes here for that one. So and I know we're getting close
1:01:07
on time here, so I want to before we leave. I want to
1:01:10
talk about really quick about how you can help others and how you actually did
1:01:15
heal from traumas such as this, and how you've been able to do that
1:01:21
and celebrate these wins in your life because you're pretty And I said it earlier
1:01:24
and I'm going to say it again. Damn it, You're pretty freaking amazing
1:01:29
and I think that as an inspiration to so many people, both men and
1:01:34
women in this world. I'm just my hat's off to you for how you
1:01:39
how you hold yourself and how you've done all of this to try to help
1:01:43
others as well. I mean, you're just You're incredible. So talk to
1:01:45
us about that. Thank you has everything to do with the modeling thing.
1:01:50
I have good posture and she's so beautiful to look at his wend Oh you
1:01:55
sweet, thank you. It's true. So the healing the second therapist really
1:02:00
was a huge help. Okay. Yeah, And one of the things I
1:02:04
tell people is that a therapist isn't there to wave a magic wand the work
1:02:07
is yours to do. The therapist is just there's the tour guide. If
1:02:12
you don't like your therapist, ninety percent of people lie to their therapist.
1:02:16
If you don't like your therapist, if you can't trust your therapist, if
1:02:20
you can't talk to your therapist, find when you can, Amen, Amen,
1:02:23
spending money on this? Yeah it Wisely, you wouldn't spend your money
1:02:28
on a TV that you wouldn't watch. Yeah, it straight. That sounds
1:02:34
absolutely ridiculous, but yeah, it's true. It took me forever to find
1:02:37
mine. And he is incredible. He's my little owl, and he listens
1:02:40
to the show I Love You and it's it's He is just amazing because I
1:02:45
can tell him whatever the hell I want to and and I trust him with
1:02:49
every ounce of information that I would ever say. And if you can't,
1:02:52
what the hell is the point, right? I mean, you're just tearing
1:02:55
up. You're tearing up two hundred dollars whatever you're paying, flush it right
1:03:00
down the toilet, and well it because it ain't mine. So yeah,
1:03:05
that was definitely a huge help. That was the right help at the right
1:03:07
time. I got through it. At the end of our session. So
1:03:12
about a year and a half later. It was December of twenty twenty is
1:03:15
when I wrote my entire autobiography all three hundred and fifty pages in a document
1:03:21
so it's not exactly short, while working two full time jobs to make ends
1:03:25
meet because my roommate had lost his job. When I got done writing the
1:03:29
book, she asked me, what are you going to do next? I
1:03:31
said, I have no idea. She said, I want you to try
1:03:34
painting. I said, anytime I tried to paint, it looks like a
1:03:36
multi colored snowman laying on his side. I'm a failure in the art world
1:03:39
when it comes to paints. She said, I don't care. I want
1:03:44
you to try. And since then, I've now sold my art internationally.
1:03:49
I've had my own solo art exhibit, all with paintings. I've sold them
1:03:53
to anti trafficking organizations that have made prints to be able to sell the print
1:03:58
so they can afford therapy for others. Oh me, I've sold it to.
1:04:01
I sold one large piece to a home for human trafficking survivors in Chicago
1:04:06
and was written about in the Chicago Tribune. My autobiography was published on my
1:04:11
ten year on anniversary from Freedom from Trafficking, which was on June nineteenth of
1:04:16
twenty twenty one, and in July of twenty twenty one is when I met
1:04:20
the man that's now my husband. Somebody's putting up with you. I love
1:04:27
it. Congratulations, he's doing so much. He's the one that supports me
1:04:32
and encourages me and tells me you're on a mission. You've got a message
1:04:36
for the world, and you need to do that. And I know,
1:04:41
I know that without having a large dual income, we're not going to have
1:04:48
the big fancy house. We can live without it. There's people without homes,
1:04:53
and we don't get the fancy, extravagant steak dinners out all the time.
1:04:57
But you're an excellent cook. So I get up on stages and I
1:05:03
talk about him, and I talk about how he's this kind, patient,
1:05:06
resilient, amazing, humble, generous gentle man who has just learned to love
1:05:15
me for the first time in my life. Somebody loves me, not what
1:05:21
I look like, not my personality, not you know the way my nose
1:05:26
wrinkles me, the inside me. Yeah, And he read my full autobiography
1:05:32
before we ever got engaged, and he said that as soon as he laid
1:05:35
it down, he knew that if I could go through everything that I'd been
1:05:39
through and still look for love, that he needed a lot more of that
1:05:44
in his life. And the beautiful irony is that I met him on the
1:05:47
same dating website that I was being trafficked on. Oh my god, you
1:05:54
like I said, you're baldy, you have back on that website. Holy
1:06:00
crab. Oh my gosh, Hey, I more powder to you. Go
1:06:05
for it, man, I mean, that's insane. Wow, awesome,
1:06:09
what a great story. Talk about full freakin' circle. That's awesome. I
1:06:15
love him, I do. I just love him kind of like you too,
1:06:21
Kyle. We love you, Kyle, We love k Thank you for
1:06:26
taking the people like your husband and my Sweedie as well. You know,
1:06:30
they take on these people like us that have gone through some pretty wacka do
1:06:33
things and some pretty horrible things, and it comes up and it comes out,
1:06:39
and sometimes something will trigger me and I don't even remember what, like
1:06:43
what the hell just happened? Like it's almost like I'll have like almost like
1:06:45
a blackouty kind of a moment. And he's able to recognize when those are
1:06:49
happening and it's a scary spot for him, but now we kind of know
1:06:54
how how to do it, you know, and how to basically hold on
1:06:58
and make sure that I feel safe because safety, obviously and fear are huge
1:07:02
issues when you have been traumatized, and so feeling safe is incredibly important and
1:07:08
I know I have it, and I'm so happy that you do too.
1:07:11
It's pretty rad. It's pretty rad. You're special people in our lives.
1:07:15
These are and we use the word very special in this household in all kinds
1:07:18
of different ways. You're being really special right now, honey, real special.
1:07:26
We do the same I knew I liked you. What is going on?
1:07:31
Or we use a lot of I do a lot of rain Man with
1:07:33
him too. I'm like, you are super Rainman today. What's going on?
1:07:39
Of the two of us, I'm way more rain Man? All these
1:07:42
statistics and stuff in this head? Sure, sure, well that's definitely him.
1:07:45
I mean he rattles off stuff. You're like, how the hell do
1:07:47
you know that? Like, but you don't know where the cheese goes and
1:07:50
the refrigerator? What the hell is wrong here? My house is the same
1:07:54
way. They know where to grab it, they know where to get it.
1:07:58
They just don't know where to put it back. That's it. That's
1:08:00
half of the problem though. Hello, yep, and my husband works in
1:08:04
aerospace. He's no dummy. Oh my god, he's literally a rocket scientist.
1:08:15
That is hysterical. We've got to end with something like this because we
1:08:19
both love to laugh, even in the midst of the shadows, you know,
1:08:23
and the stuff that's happened to us in our lives. This is a
1:08:25
good representation of what it is like to survive through some pretty crazy shit in
1:08:30
life and still end up being beautiful and amazing and successful and being a powerhouse
1:08:36
in this world. And you're after it, and you're going after it and
1:08:40
you're going to continue to go after it to help others. And I'm grateful
1:08:45
and blessed that you chose to be on this show with me, So thank
1:08:46
you. And now I'm gonna cry again. Jesus, I am a mass
1:08:50
here. I would hug you so hard if I could. Oh my god,
1:08:55
I know, I know we have to meet. I'm just not going
1:08:57
to go to Colorado. You have to come to California, know, if
1:09:00
I'm willing to go back. That's true, that's true. We're kind of
1:09:02
we're kind of spooky out here. And the halfway point would be Vegas and
1:09:08
you've already said no to that. I'm not Vegas either, No, I'd
1:09:12
rather like I go anywhere by Vacon. Oh my god. Well, and
1:09:17
I'm going to Scotland this summer, and so now I'm like, oh,
1:09:20
I don't know should I go to Scotland? Now I still want to go
1:09:25
back. Oh wasn't the country or the people right It trafficked me. It
1:09:29
was one individual who Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I'll go.
1:09:33
Yeah, I've never been. Oh, well, hey, maybe you can
1:09:39
meet me out there. We're going actually I think we're going in October.
1:09:44
Yeah, because we don't want to go during the summer summer. Too busy,
1:09:46
too busy. But anyways, I digress, because we don't really need
1:09:49
to be talking about my summer travels right now on this show. Well,
1:09:55
thank you so much for being as brave as you have been and how you
1:10:00
are right now and how you will continue to be. You are an inspiration
1:10:02
to me for sure, and absolutely everybody's ear holes that have listened to you.
1:10:08
Please don't complain about like your hair not working today or whatever the hell
1:10:11
we get all pissed off about and whatever we get bent about. Remember stories
1:10:15
like this, you know, take yourself into a place where you're like,
1:10:18
whoa hold on, I am losing my shit over something that does not matter.
1:10:27
Oh my gosh, thank you so much. Is there anything that you'd
1:10:29
like to leave us before we hit the dusty trail here? Because I want
1:10:30
to talk to you forever and we can. I want to tell people that
1:10:36
if you're in a position where you're in a place of violence, abuse,
1:10:43
trafficking, whatever it might be, not knowing what resources are available to you
1:10:46
is the same as not having those resources. We live in the age of
1:10:50
the internet. If you need help finding those resources, reach out to me.
1:10:56
I will do everything I can to help you. And whenever you hear
1:10:59
that phrase what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, just know it's a lie,
1:11:02
total lie. Hate it. A man who came up with that phrase,
1:11:05
Frederick Mitchi, died in an insane asylum. We can let it go.
1:11:12
The truth is not that the past is what made you stronger. It
1:11:15
is not the abuse. It is not the abusers, It is not the
1:11:17
traumas. It is you. You dug deep and got through it. Give
1:11:25
the credit where it's due, Patch yourself on the back and recognize how amazing
1:11:29
you are. It's absolutely perfect. You couldn't you couldn't have nailed that any
1:11:33
better than what you just did. Okay, so how do we find you?
1:11:36
Because she gave me thirteen thousand links, because she's written so many books
1:11:44
and she's got three and almost four podcasts. Like I mentioned at the beginning,
1:11:48
where's the best place for us to find you right now? If we
1:11:51
need you, go to Growth from Darkness. You'll find all my social media
1:11:55
links. You'll find a contact form, you'll find a set up a meeting
1:11:58
form to me. There's even a little chat box down there where it sends
1:12:02
me an email and I can reach out to you and we can talk.
1:12:05
Thank you for doing that. For anybody that's listening to the show, if
1:12:10
you need any help, please reach out to either of us as well.
1:12:13
I will connect you with her. If you forget something, or you're scared
1:12:15
or what have you, please please reach out. That's why we're here,
1:12:17
so why we show up. We're showing up for you, and we're showing
1:12:20
up for ourselves as well. Thanks again for your time with us today.
1:12:24
I really really appreciate it and I love you and thank you so much for
1:12:28
surviving and not jumping in front of the fucking train. That little boys an
1:12:33
adult by now, he has no idea he saved someone's life. Well,
1:12:38
if you're listening, we love you. You are exclusively invited to share this
1:12:43
growth from darkness VIP pain journey together. Let's get to the heart of how
1:12:47
to heal with you by my side. Do you know somebody that is living
1:12:53
in and with chronic pain or has had any similar experiences to what you've heard
1:12:57
today, Please reach out to me, reach out to Amanda. We are
1:13:00
here to help you. We would love to connect you and provide a safe
1:13:03
place for you to unleash and share and cry and laugh. Whatever you need,
1:13:09
We're here for you. Please follow The Pain Game Podcast wherever you digest
1:13:13
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1:13:16
dot com and follow us on all the socials. Thanks for listening, my
1:13:19
little VIPs. Catch you on the other side.