Worthy & Redeemed

Childhood

Vanessa grew up in a broken home.  Her parents separated when she was little.  She lived with her birth mom and had visitation with her dad.  Around the age of 2 or 3 years old, her mother began raping her.  Eventually her mother secretly began prostituting herself out of their own home.  She would meet men, take out loans and use sex as payment all in secret.

At age 5 or 6 was the first time her mother sold Vanessa.  Her mother owed multiple loans to this man.  One day when he came to the apartment, the usual payment wasn’t going to be enough.  Her mother sat down at the table with the man to discuss the deal of selling Vanessa.

“It was a flat conversation about how he wanted me, for how long and how much of the loan would be paid off.”

Vanessa was trained how to act.  Never speak unless spoken to, she was told how she was supposed to feel, her feelings and opinions were never valid, she couldn’t look anyone in the eye.  Her mother also preyed on churches.  She would show interest in working with children’s groups, but if there were too many hurdles such as background checks, two adults in a room at all times, etc. they’d switch churches.  She’d often call churches her personal playground.

Her mother did this for about 2 years until they moved and she became a massage therapist out of her home.  That was just a cover for prostitution.  One day a customer came in and made a joke about a 2 for 1 deal.  They began negotiating to sell Vanessa again.

This night was an important moment in Vanessa life.  It was the moment she reached out to God and accepted Christ.  She knew there wasn’t any other way.

“That’s what helped me survive for so many years.”

She prayed that God would help her survive and that if each time she was raped, He could save another girl from the same fate.  Now when she speaks, she’s met women and they’ve shared stories when they have been in a dangerous situation but something intervened.  When they say the date this happened, the timeline matches up to her own.

At around 11 years of age, Vanessa’s dad won custody and she left her mother’s house. She had visitation with her mother until about 12 and after that is when the trafficking officially ended.

After the Trafficking

Vanessa didn’t go to counseling immediately after, she never even told anyone.  Her mother would always tell her that no one would believe her, that they would think she was a slut or a whore, that she was worthless and damaged.

She struggled with depression and severe self-esteem issues.

“I don’t even know how to describe it.  I didn’t even know it was depression.  I just noticed that all the other teenagers and kids, even adults as I got older, seemed to laugh and I couldn’t laugh.  I thought, am I missing something? What is so funny? What am I missing?’”

As the emotional pain became too much to deal with, she began to self harm, finding it easier to deal with physical pain than mental.  At 16 years old, she became an alcoholic because “I was just trying to numb the pain that I was feeling.  I tried to numb voices in my head of the men and women who bought me, replaying different phrases they said”.  She’d also hear the voice of her mother telling her what to do, controlling her, and shaming her.

“I walked around constantly feeling like I was going to have a heart attack at any second.”

Her father and step-mother didn’t know what had happened when she was younger and through her teen years, they believed she was just being rebellious.  She wasn’t rebellious but any time someone attempted to control her, telling her how she should look or feel, she would have panic attacks.  She’d scream, cry, yell and sometimes run away.  They thought something was wrong with her so when she was about 17 years old, she began seeing a counselor.

As they spent more time with each other, the counselor saw all the signs and told her she had PTSD.  They went through Vanessa’s background together because the counselor wondered if there was sexual abuse in her past.  This was the first person to tell Vanessa what a trigger was and how to process them.  She suggested having a notebook and writing in it constantly whatever she was feeling at the time.

At 17, she met a guy who was abusive, but she needed someone to understand her and love her.  She didn’t feel loved or accepted by her dad and stepmom.

“Everything I didn’t feel about myself, I wanted someone else to feel that about me”

She ended up moving in with him.  He was a drug dealer and without even realizing it she entered that world as well.  She was forced to be a part of it, she didn’t have anywhere else to go, her family disowned her, she had no friends, she wanted to be loved.  She worked a job as well, but he took all of her paychecks and he beat her if he became angry.

At 19 years old, she became pregnant and he left.  Vanessa had visited doctors before and they said due to the abuse she suffered as a child, there was irreparable damage, she would never be able to get pregnant.  She describes her daughter as a miracle, but at the time, she was scared.

“I never had a mom to show me what a mother should be like.”

After the birth of her daughter she began to think about the kind of mom she wished she had and tried to make friends with moms, pulling from their experience.  She wanted to be the best mother she could, the kind of mother her daughter deserved.  Her daughter allowed her to see that she wasn’t a horrible person, she wasn’t a horrible mom and with that,  that was a healing moment for her.

“I had a monster for a mom and here I was, raising this amazing daughter to be an amazing woman.  My daughter was confident and outspoken and strong.  Realizing that I wasn’t my birth mom and I wasn’t everything she told me to be, that started to help me realize I was normal, I wasn’t incomplete.  I was strong and beautiful.  As I started to dream for her future, I started to dream for my own future.”

Her abusive partner would reappear every now and again for money.  She eventually became pregnant with her second child, a son.

They left her partner’s house and became homeless, living out of their car until they met a woman at their church.  Once she found out they were homeless, she took them in.  “I became her daughter and they became her grandkids.  She became not only the mom I never had but the mom I needed.”

Her new mom made sure she always knew how much she was valued and how important she was.  She constantly ingrained that in Vanessa’s head.  She wanted her to know that she could do anything she dreamed of.

“If I survived everything I survived, who could stop me from doing everything I wanted in the future and in my life.”

Shortly after this transition, she began dating the man who is now her husband.  He was the first man who respected her, not only as a woman, but treated her like a queen.  He didn’t do this by buying her objects, but by respecting her and telling her how strong she was.  He never once forced her to do anything she didn’t want to, he always asked permission even to kiss her.  She finally had the ability to choose what happened to her and her body.

When she decided to tell him her story, he sat very quietly and listened.  She’d never seen anyone react the way he did.  After she finished, he became angry, not at her but angry at the people who hurt her and told her that she didn’t deserve that, how dare they treat a woman like that.  Never once had she seen a man get like that, protective and angry at the abusers.

He stood by her through all of her struggles with her triggers and PTSD.  He even helped her  deal with her ex partner before he finally left her alone for good.  Her daughter struggled with anxiety  and nightmares due to her ex partner and her husband supported her as well.  He’d sit outside of their home in his truck so that her daughter would feel safe, so she knew no one could ever come to hurt her because he was there to protect her.  He supported her children when she tried to get an order of protection against her ex partner.  The police told her that she didn’t have enough evidence and that her partner couldn’t rape her because they were in a relationship.  She struggled with DCFS, trying to explain that her 2 children didn’t call their birth father dad since they had never known him as dad, they call him by his first name and called her husband dad.  With each step she took to rid herself of the past, no matter how hard, her husband was right there with her.

Vanessa joined a support group where they read Wounded Heart by Dr. Dan Allender.  The group was filled with women with some sort of sexual abuse in their past.  Each week they’d discuss a new chapter and she started to realize that she was normal.  So often she felt insane but these women in this group were experiencing the same things she was.

“I was normal and what I was going through, I wasn’t the only one having these reactions.”

After her group sessions, she began writing her story down.  Sometimes she’d be able to write multiple pages, other times only a few sentences.  Some moments were harder than others.  She’d go back over her original writing and add more details and each time, found it easier and easier to process.

Eventually she started speaking with Women at Risk, sharing her story and gaining her voice back, the voice that she had lost for the last 20 years.  Sharing her story wasn’t about whether or not people believed her, “it wasn’t what they thought about me, it was about me saying this happened to me”.  Women would come up to her after to share their own stories.  She wanted them to know that PTSD doesn’t have to wreck your life, it can get better and you aren’t the only one experiencing this.

Triggers

In the beginning, there were triggers that were odd, small little things but her reactions to them were extreme. One of the triggers she shared was that she was terrified of oranges, the smell taste and sight.  She’d have massive panic attacks, screaming and crying, winding up in a ball on the floor.  Once she learned how to process those triggers, she was able to work through it and find their source.  The smell and taste of oranges triggered her because the first man who ever bought her smelled like oranges.  It took her many years, but she overcame that trigger. She laughs as she share that now she can peel oranges for her kids when before, she couldn’t have them in the house.

Other triggers she has is when someone comes up and touches her on the shoulder without letting her know first.  Her immediate reaction is to turn around and defend herself.  It’s hard meeting people with the same names as her birth mother or abusive ex-boyfriend.  She couldn’t eat sun chips because her mother used to eat them all the time and that prevented her from going to places like Subway restaurants because they carry them.

“It really controlled my life.  I couldn’t go to malls because there were so many people that made me feel unsafe”

She felt uncomfortable in gyms because she felt like men were gawking at her, she felt vulnerable and weak.  Growing up, she went through different phases, one being where she acted excessively tough because she never wanted to be considered weak again.  She would end relationships because she wanted to protect herself and end it before they hurt her.

Family

No one has ever pressed charges against her mother and since she was so young, she never had the evidence.  She eventually told her father when she was about 24 years old, but he struggled believing her and doesn’t want to discuss it with her. She believes he struggles from secondary PTSD, shame of not recognizing the signs or not doing anything when signs were recognized, feeling helpless to protect his own daughter.  She also believes it shakes his faith in God because he doesn’t understand why God didn’t protect her but Vanessa knows that God did protect her or she wouldn’t have been able to survive without Him.

Talking to her Kids

When asked about how she discusses these topics with her kids she says that parents worry about keeping their innocence but by trying to keep their innocence they tend to keep them naive.  Once she looked up the words innocence and naive.  Innocence is never having fully experienced something and naivety is lack of knowledge.  She doesn’t want there to be a lack of knowledge with her children over how to say no, how to stay safe, how to get out of dangerous situations, etc.

She is always honest with her children.  If they ask a question she will answer it and if she feels they are too young, she’ll tell them “I think you’re a little young to talk about that, but can you tell me why you have that questions?”  She wants to let them know that they can explain why they want to know and that she is open to discuss it.  If they have something they want to talk about, she will always make time to do so.

She talks to her children and if they understand it and grasp what she’s talking about she believes they’re ready to hear it.  Her daughter is very mature and started talking about sex when she was 7.  Now at 9, she knows more than most adults do about sex, trafficking and prostitution.

She laughs when she shares stories about her daughter who will correct adults when they call women prostitutes.  She tell them they are not prostitutes, they are prostituted women.  When they moved to the church they are currently at, her daughter and 2 sons went to the youth group.  When they came back to her afterward, her daughter very loudly explained that they had the doors locked from the outside but you could get out from the inside, they had one adult but a teen leader and the rest of the logistics.  She wanted everyone to know that if something happened she would have no problem telling her Mom and that she will keep a lookout for anything strange!

Recently she had a discussion with her daughter about oral sex.  She was honest and told her it made her uncomfortable to talk about it but she needs to know about this.  Vanessa knows that Rainbow Parties start at this age through high school and knows from talking to youth in her area that kids have been invited to them.  She wanted her daughter to know what they were, know that she should never feel pressured into doing anything and know that mom and dad are always a safe place.

Her second child is 7 years old but doesn’t comprehend things the same way as her other two children.  Her 5 year old son knows more than her 7 year old because he grasps the concepts better and asks questions.  Her 5 year old asked her not too long ago how women pee and why boys and girls have different parts.  So she told him because he showed he was ready to hear it by opening the door to the conversation.

One piece of advice she gives is to never become shocked by anything they ask or tell her.  When parents get shocked, their kids feel embarrassed or think that the parents cannot handle what they are saying, so they might not ask next time.  If she thinks she will get mad, not at her children but at a situation, she will ask them to give her a minute and then they talk.

She uses everyday situations to teach her kids about confidence and strength.  Her daughter saw dance shoes at a garage sale.  She gave her daughter money and told her to go over and buy the shoes.  When her daughter presented the money to the owner, the owner snapped at her “These shoes are only for dancers, are you a dancer?”.  Her daughter looked down and quietly fumbled through her words as she said yes.  Vanessa was watching from nearby, but wanted to see how her daughter would handle it.  Her daughter’s head stayed down so Vanessa gently intervened saying her daughter does dance and asked her questions to engage her in the conversation.  After they left, Vanessa drove a few blocks and pulled over to chat with her daughter.  She reminded her of her strength and reminded her that if someone appears to be intimidating, those are the moments you speak a little louder and keep your head up!  The next time her daughter was in a position like that, that’s exactly what she did.

Words

Dance was something that helped her through her PTSD.  It was a physical outlet for the emotions she felt.  I remember seeing Vanessa speaking to NBC news on behalf of Women at Risk and she danced in the segment.  It was so graceful and elegant, a moment that showed so much beauty and strength even though she had faced incredible struggles.  She asked me to guide her to a pose and I suggested something to do with dance.

Vanessa chose the words worthy because that was something she always struggled with. Since she was a child, her worth and value were never reinforced, she was taught she was worthless.  Now as an adult and a mother, she knows her worth, value and strength.  She chose the word redeemed because her life started with immense struggle but she looks at it now, at all of her success in learning to process triggers, raising 3 amazing kids, her husband, her goals and dreams, and sees everything she gained.  She knew that was not the end for her and continues to pursue her passions.  Vanessa is currently working on becoming a Pastor and continues to share her story.