Episode 2: Surviving the Weight of Normal - Finding light in the Darkest Chapters

In Episode 2 we dive deep into the complexities of childhood trauma, blurred boundaries, and the heavy mask of normalcy. Growing up in an environment where abuse is hidden behind laughter and smiles can shatter an internal compass, leading down roads of early rebellion, addiction, and searching for escapes in all the wrong places.  

Tune in as we explore the painful fallout of broken family dynamics, the struggle of compulsory therapy, finding unexpected safe havens, and the ultimate realization that human strength eventually runs out. Discover how true and lasting freedom isn't found in numbing the pain or managing trauma alone, but in letting light into the most broken places. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to episode two. Trauma to triumph. This one is called The Weight of Normal. I've heard the jokes in the family and the inappropriate banter. I've seen drunk adults grab on my cousins who are also minors. And I've heard it explained and laughed away as just a joke. That they didn't mean it. When boundaries are blurred from the very beginning like that, our internal compass gets skewed. You don't have the words for what's happening. Even if it's not happening to you. There's just this sickening knot in your stomach that you learn to swallow down. It even becomes normal. The scariest part about growing up in this kind of environment isn't the abuse itself. It's the way that it's wrapped up in laughter and smiles. It makes you question your own reality. It was the summer of fifth grade, I think. Everything was such a blur. I was only 11 years old. My uncle was a long-hauled truck driver. And he had just gotten home. He was the coolest person in the world to us. He would be gone for long stretches of time. And then when he returned, he always brought something exciting. Like free snacks, the good ones, you know, Doritos, Lay's potato chips, little Debbie snacks, free soda, and oftentimes an animal, dogs, cats, pigs, parrots, all kinds of stuff. Whenever he would arrive, he would blast his horn, and all of us kids would come running to meet him. Out back, behind their little single-wide trailer, he had his own man cave where he spent time working on things. I don't remember it at all. I just remember what it looked like on the outside. Sometimes him and his wife and my cousins would come to our house, which was just a few houses down. But they wouldn't, they just weren't really into the party scene that my parents were. They mostly stayed on the sidelines. They would stay for dinner, and then they would leave. And we had our own vegetation that we grew right there. And we had everything. We had roads. It was a lot of work, but we loved it. And my uncle let us do it, you know, taking up a good portion of his backyard. We spent hours working on this thing. My cousin was just really into dinosaurs, and I just really loved playing with him. We were the best of friends, inseparable almost. That summer, my uncle told me and my cousin that we were going to go and explore together. And we thought that this was going to be amazing. This was going to be the greatest time because my cousin and I spent a lot of time out in the woods. And today we were going to go out in the woods with my uncle, and it was going to be great. We were going to show him our fort. We were going to make new plans to have a new fort. It was, it was just going to be great. But as we started walking through the woods, we had an umbrella because it was raining. And my uncle's hands went to places on my body that were inappropriate. It was really uncomfortable, but I didn't really know what to do. I remember thinking, this is just a joke, right? He doesn't really mean this. But he hadn't been drinking. And they weren't really a part of that life. So this was very strange. When we returned, a little while later, it was still raining, so we put on a movie, Shirley Temple. I don't really remember everything because of the sheer weight of the discomfort that I felt. But I know for certain that my cousin and I asked if we could, you know, go play somewhere else, like we normally did. I don't really remember, but I feel like we definitely asked. Because if we had been given the opportunity to go and make plans for our Jurassic Park or what whatever, gone to the fort, then we definitely would have scooted away as fast as we could have. But instead, I just sat there in my uncle's lap, frozen, with tears streaming down my face. I was unable to move. His hands continued to move all over my body. And I couldn't stand up for myself. I couldn't do anything. I was just paralyzed. I remember thinking this is supposed to be normal. All the grappling that I had seen was always with cousins that were a couple years older than me, and the adults around me were drunk. But my uncle wasn't drunk. I don't recall him ever drinking at all. I was trapped. I felt so trapped. There was this internal contradiction of how profoundly wrong this was. Surely this was the longest and cruelest joke that I had ever lived through. Eventually the movie ended, and the sun came out. And my uncle wanted us to help him wash his big truck. So he told me to go home and get my bathing suit on. But I didn't return right away. I went and found my mom and I told her. She was very hesitant. She asked if I was sure that this had happened, and then she kind of dismissed me. Looking back now, she probably really didn't know what to think or what to do. She probably really didn't want to believe that this was true. This is our family. We were very close. They lived just a few houses down. This was such a strong accusation. And as a child, I could barely even really articulate what had just happened to me. I felt like she just told me not to go back. But I remember telling her that if I didn't go back, then he would know. I remember being so afraid and so full of shame. Like somehow I was the one that should be ashamed of myself. I was so scared. I was just 11 years old. I did go back. I don't really know why. I was afraid that he would know that I told on him, I think. But I don't really remember the rest of that day. I don't remember all of the memories. It was all very hard to recall. I do remember going back and telling my mom again and telling her that I wanted to tell my dad. And when I told her I wanted to tell my dad, I felt a shift. Because everything changed. Everything shattered. Literally. The police showed up. They asked me so many questions in so many different ways. I felt like I was the one in trouble. I remember thinking I was the one that was in trouble. All of a sudden, the whole neighborhood knew. I didn't even live in a neighborhood. I lived on a street, but there were random houses all around. We had neighbors. We lived way out in the country, but we had neighbors. And they all knew. They all knew. My best cousin and I were separated by this fallout. Though we would sneak and see each other as often as we could, this division forced an emotional separation that lasted even until now. This broke our relationship. We've never gone back to being besties again. I was forced into therapy, and I hated every second of it. Talking about it, talking about anything in my life, it just felt so gruesome. I was disgusted by my life. I remember sharing long details about things that didn't really matter, things that took my mind off of it, like my love for horses and dogs, and being outside, and my many, many, many adventures wandering through the woods. Before too long, my aunt and my two cousins, they would move in with us. We lived in a three-bedroom, one bath, single wide. There were seven of us crammed under one roof. Somewhere around that time, a man purchased a property right down the road. And they were fencing it in. It was large enough to be a pasture. I remember intently watching them put that fence up until finally my curiosity, it got the best of me. And I went right up to them and asked them what they were doing. Somehow thinking that it was absolutely part of my business that I should know what they were doing. And they very simply told me that they were putting a fence up for horses. I was so excited. I was extremely passionate about horses. Back then, my lack of discipline, it gave life. It gave birth to a very headstrong little girl. I was a brat, but really only in the sweetest ways. I was never told no because I never really wanted things that I shouldn't have. I kept my room really clean and decorated with everything horse related. I was a very easy child at this age. I had been put on a horse at a very early age when we went to Pennsylvania to see my dad's family. One of my older cousins put me on her horse bareback with her, and we rode really fast up the road to the edge of a cliff. And then we just sat there looking out at the cliff down below. I remember it being like purplish blue, and it was all misty. It was very movie-like. And there was something so liberating about this. I fell in love with riding horses in that moment. I just couldn't get enough of them. So I watched those men put up the horse fence for what felt like years, but it was really only a few weeks. And then finally, the horses arrived. And every single day I would go and stand at the gate just to watch. I made friends with the people who cared for the property, though the actual owners of these horses and of this property lived on a different road. I told him that I had been to horse camp. I knew how to ride, how to put the saddle on, how to strap it up and bit the bridle. I was very confident. But he told me no. So I returned every single day and I asked him again. Eventually he broke and he went to my parents' house to ask them for their written permission for me to ride his horses. And that's when my safe haven began. He let me ride and he let me take care of the horses, to brush them, to feed them, and he even let me help him do the hard work. And I loved it. This became my own true escape. Something that I could look forward to. Every day. I looked forward to this. We would get up before dawn, meeting at the barn around 4 a.m. to get the horses ready to go. He would bring his bird dogs. And we would head out to run the dogs all day long. I loved being with this man and his wife. I felt so safe. Eventually, I started going to their house too, helping them take care of the dogs that were at their house, just like I helped take care of the horses. While all of this was happening in the direct fallout of the chaos at home, by the sixth grade, the cracks in my survival had turned into chasms. I started smoking cigarettes, smoking weed, and drinking. I was still forced to do therapy, which I despised. And though I continued riding horses, that escape just wasn't enough anymore. It's very hard for me to nail down a clean timeline of everything because the trauma just didn't stop. It compounded. This part of the story is truly only the beginning for me. I became the worst influence on all of my friends. I talked them into smoking cigarettes, into getting high, into getting drunk, into sneaking out. The property where our trailer sat, we had a landlord, and their house was on the same lot. So they were our immediate neighbors. So the landlady's brother, she he uh he moved in. I think it was like for health reasons. He was much older than my parents. Probably a good 15 to 20 years older. So I think he moved in for health reasons. And he would pay me to babysit while they all drank and partied. But even worse, he would always make sure that I was supplied with whatever alcohol I wanted, however much weed I wanted, cigarettes, whatever I wanted, really. And I could bring my friends. He was happy to have my friends come with me. It sounds like a heavy and suffocating darkness. It felt like a maze with no clear exit. When you look back at years like those, years where survival means knowing the pain, where trusted spaces are shattered, and where every escape, any escape, is too small to hold the weight. It's easy to wonder how anyone ever finds their way out of this kind of darkness. If you're listening to this today and you see echoes of your own story in these shadows, please hear me. You are not defined by the places that you had to hide to survive. You are never too far gone. The world might tell you to manage your trauma, to talk about it, to find coping mechanisms, to medicate, to build stronger walls. But the reality is that human strength will always eventually run out. What changes everything is when the light breaks into the hardest, most broken places of your history. Jesus doesn't wait for you to clean up your past, to shake off the addiction, or to figure out how to heal yourself. He loves you. He steps right into the middle of the smoke, the chaos, and the wreckage. He is the true and lasting escape. Where shame told you that you were dirty, his grace declares you clean. Where the world offered temporary numbing, he offers permanent freedom and an anchor that cannot be shaken. The cycle of the past does not have to dictate your future. Healing is real. Freedom is possible. And the light, the light of his love is stronger than the darkest night that you've ever had to endure. If you have never experienced that kind of grace, if you've been carrying a heavy, silent weight all of this time, all of these years, and you're tired of running, you're tired of hiding, you're tired of trying to fix it on your own. I want to invite you to lay it all. Lay it all down right here. Right now. You don't have to have a fancy prayer or a clean record. You just need to turn your heart toward him and say this Lord, I'm not whole. And I need you. Save me. Because he's standing right there, right in the ash, with open arms, ready to make you a new creation. With his spirit put inside of you. He's ready to welcome you to a new beginning. If you're walking this road with me, please don't carry this alone. Share this with someone that might need to hear. And join me next time on Trauma to Triumph as we keep walking out of the dark and into true freedom.