Abducted as a Teen: Jessica’s Journey from Trauma

Abducted as a teen from Canada to the United States by a father figure and kept in domestic violence captivity for 15 years, Jessica Faught escaped but the impact of that trauma on herself and her children followed her back to Windsor, Ontario. Jessica shares her journey back to healing and her sacrificial collaboration with the child welfare system to give her daughter a new lease on life. 

Her story highlights the harrowing effect of domestic violence on our children and why every mother should have zero tolerance for domestic violence. 

To learn more about Jessica’s work with Attachment Disorders and raising children with PTSD, follow her on Canadians Raising Children With Attachment Disorders or join her Facebook Community at Families raising children diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Thank you so much for listening!

References in this episode

Mirror Neurons: How We Reflect on Behavior

Red flag

The Bloomfield House

Teajai Travis

Jessica’s Story on brokenandbraced.blogspot.com

Attachment Disorders in Children: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment

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Music Credit:  https://indiefy.me/wanted-carter 

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Thank you so much for listening.

Music Credit: https://indiefy.me/wanted-carter

Transcript

This is Messy Can’t Stop Her, and I am your host, Judith Kambia Obatusa - JKO. 

JKO:       Welcome to today's episode of Messy Can’t Stop Her. Today we have Jessica Faught. Her last name is Faught, and she has fought a lot and triumphed. It's so amazing. Jessica, welcome. Thank you so much. So on Messy Can’t Stop Her, we share the stories of women who have triumphed through difficult times who, despite the challenges around them, did not stop themselves from dreaming. Jessica is an amazing person that life brought my way. I want to give a shout out to Teajai Travis, who made me know Jessica. Sometimes we do not know how far a relationship will take us in life. Because of knowing Teajai Travis, I knew Jessica, and because of knowing Jessica, I did things that I didn't have the courage to do before. We had the first and only Broken and Braced outreach in the community and Jessica played a huge role in the success of that event. Broken and Braced is about women empowerment. It's about speaking up and speaking out against domestic violence. These conversations about domestic violence that Broken and Braced has been part of, is to create awareness. And this is one of Jessica's life's work. She is the Windsor coordinator for Windsorites Against Sexual Violence. She has written articles on the subject areas of post traumatic stress disorders in children and attachment. I met Jessica when she was executive Secretary of the Bloomfield House board of directors and also choir coordinator because Bloomfield House has a community choir and Jessica was the community choir director. And today she's still in the business of singing and grooming people to sing. I could go on and on and on about Jessica because she's a blessing to me and a blessing to the world and to everyone who knows her. Thank you, Jessica, for all that you do in our community and in the lives that you're impacting, not just in Windsor, but in different parts of the world. Thank you for all that you do. 

Jessica: Thank you. That is quite an intro, but I have to see or may I add that everything that I've done is by the Grace of God. It is in Christ I live, it's in Christ I move, and it's in Christ that I have my being. And He is the key to the accomplishments that I have made. So I have to give him the praise, honor and glory. But thank you. It's been an interesting journey. And when you start doing these things, it just starts by just a little nudge and you pray about it, you trust God and beautiful things can happen. And I'm very proud of the work that I've been able to get accomplished. 

JKO:       Thank you, Jessica. So I would like us to go back to where the mess was that we're going to be unearthing today and where that mess was in your life and where you began to look at the situation around you, the chaos and say you know what? There's more to me than this. That mess. When you began to yearn to do more that mess, describe it and let people understand. Because when we talk about the mess in our lives, I don't think people understand. Sometimes you can have mess in a domestic violence situation, and it encompasses everything about you. And you could also, in the same domestic violence situation, have trouble at work and have trouble with your health. So tentacles of chaos, just like a web around the person. Yet, you're able to come out of this mess and do something, add value, and just help us with that story.

Jessica: Okay. So just a quick Disclaimer. What I'm going to talk about will get heavy. It's heavy content. However, I love the title because messy is where you are in the perfect key position to learn something great and achieve something great. So let's go back. I was a young person under the care of a person in authority. I was living with he and his wife, and this person decided that he was going to actually assault me. Shortly after, I was kidnapped to the United States. This was again a person in a position of trust. This person was on scheduled paper to be my father and he abused his authority in a way that almost took my life many, many times. I lived in constant chaos. My world was a war zone. I was told what to wear, who to talk to. I never had access to my own personal identification. I was told who I was and called a continuous name on a daily basis. That name caused me to doubt who I was taught that I was in Sunday school. In Sunday school, you're taught that you're a child of God. But when somebody is using their position to control and manipulate you, and they're very good at it, as time goes on, you begin to believe the negative things that your brain is hearing and what happens anatomically. And I could speak to this because of my new background in neuroscience, is that something happens called mirrored neurons. And mirrored neurons are when your brain has been exposed to something on a continual basis, your brain will begin to mimic that behavior and believe what it is taking in. So this is what was happening to me. You have to understand that when this is happening at the beginning, it's very subtle, and you don't even realize the grooming that's taking place. And I'm going back to prior to the kidnap. Now I can look back, and I remember this type of conversations, and I remember how I was put down and things that I had a talent with. “Oh, you're good at that. But this and this is where I can help you.” And then the control started to take place. So with women, what we have to understand is what we call as red flags. But when we're going through this, we don't see them as red flags, we just see them as subtle little things that are happening. And slowly but surely a part of us is dying inside, emotionally, mentally. So after being kidnapped, I was beaten on a continual basis. My daily week was at least three times out of the week, being curled up in a fetal position, accepting blows to my head, accepting a belt on my body. My children were in the midst of this chaos. My oldest had to take the younger one and hide her from the pain that was happening to her mother. Now, this was my life. This was my routine. When you have a routine like this, something happens to you that is almost irreversible, on the anatomical side. With respect to our brains, your brain is not meant to be abused. Your body is not meant to be abused. And when your brain detects that, physiologically you change. Your brain physically changes after trauma. And what ends up happening is your brain begins to become sick. And what happened with me after years and years of this abuse, I was held captive for 15 years. And when you have this kind of extreme mental, physical, emotional abuse happening to you, it does leave scars. And I was diagnosed with being hypo alert. That means that my brain went through so much overworking. Because when you're abused, your brain is on overload. You are overworking. Your brain has to overwork because it has to compensate to keep up with the constant action that's happening with respect to the abuse. So I was diagnosed after my escape as being hypo alert. And what that means is that in the middle of conversations I was not able to keep track of what I was saying to people. And my brain could only take in portions of what other people were saying to me. Now with that, depression started to set in because I was in this lifestyle. When God brought me out, I wanted to do everything I could do for God. I wanted to be the best person I could be. I wanted to make an impact. I wanted my children to heal. I wanted to heal so I could help others. That was the first thing on my agenda. But what I needed to understand is that healing takes time and you cannot put a timeline on when the brain will heal. So what actually needed to happen? A reduction of extra things to do because the brain needed time to heal. Now there are some things I wish I would have done differently in terms of how much I took on. Part of it was good because the things I took on were healthy things. But even with healthy things, if the brain is doing too much, it will begin to become stressed and you will be not as effective as you could be. So I took on a lot. Right after a year after my escape, I was at the Hiatus house and once I got a house living on my own with my children, I was sitting at Tim Hortons and someone had commented on my looks and given me my very first modeling opportunity. And that started that busy schedule that I'm referring to. Like I said, part of it was good because it was good for my self esteem, but I was very busy. And busy is not what I needed at that time. I needed to heal, however, it was a learning curve, and I did, I started modeling. I think I'm the first African comedian to be a cover girl in Windsor, Ontario. I was traveling to Toronto, walking runways and lots of opportunities. Hair model, nail model, doing all of this in the midst of trying to heal from trauma. And it was a lot it was a lot to take on. So at one point, I began to look at, okay, I'm doing a lot of things, but what do I really need to be doing? And that is when I slowed down a bit from the modeling. I started only participating in local projects. And I found the Bloomfield House. Yeah. Shout out to Teajai Travis. That's my bro. So I found the Bloomfield House and I was taking my children there for art. And art began to be a good therapy for the trauma that they have been through and putting up the chairs and helping clean up at the end of the art sessions that led to talking to the leadership and finding out that there was a need for someone to take on the music program. And that spiraled into me taking on the Bloomfield House music program, Bloomfield House Community Choir for… I think it was eight years and glory to God, because that was just a beautiful experience and an experience that could help my brain to heal and the people who are part of the program, because singing is a wonderful, wonderful way of healing the brain from trauma. The consistency and routine, because it was something that was happening on a weekly basis, and it was consistent, that's also something good for the brain after trauma. So these were two good steps in the right direction. It's interesting how God will lead you to the things that he wants you to be a part of. And you know that He's led you there because you feel like you're being a blessing and you have that true contentment in your heart. And that's what the Bloomfield House was for me. Together, we made a huge impact on the community, and we're very proud so much to where Bloomfield House became a hub for all of Windsor. I'm so thankful for what happened there because I know for a fact that it was life changing for many people. 

JKO:       Yes. So I thank you for that. Yes. And the Bloomfield House became a hub. And I got drawn into the hub. And when you get drawn into that hub, it's family. It's so inclusive. It's so warm, so accommodating. We both shout out to Teajai Travis not to flatter him, but to acknowledge him and his wonderful father for what they created with Bloomfield House. 

Jessica: Yes, absolutely. And what people need to understand is that Bloomfield House is a grassroots project. So it was a pioneer ship of Teajai Travis and Terry Travis. And people gravitate to that genuine sense of love. I mean, that's truly what it was. It is a labor of love. 

JKO:       Jessica talked about her abuse. This story is shared on the Broken and Braced Blogspot. I'm going to put a link to the show notes so you can go and check it out because what Jessica just said in a few minutes is 15 years of her life. When I met Jessica, when I met you, you told me about the brain situation. And look at how when you talk about how God works, I see it in you. Today, Jessica is a student of Harvard University's neuroscience program. When I met Jessica almost seven years ago, she was telling me about her brain injury, brain trauma that she was. And so when we talk, she explains to you. So when you're talking to her and being so open to Jessica, you're just amazing. I could just go off on different tangents here. So it's so interesting to see how our lives circle round. What was a trauma becomes a place where we can heal others. (Jessica: Absolutely.) Speak a little bit more about the impact of trauma brain this trauma, especially when we talk about domestic violence. The trauma of domestic violence isn't just trauma to you, the person being abused. You happen to have children. It makes it so much worse for me. I see the abuse of a father is not as bad as the abuse of a child that a husband is abused with wife is not as terrible as a child's abuse to their mother. But if a child is left in an abusive situation that mom be abused by dad, the children now have the tendency to abuse mom too, while delivering the trauma that was created in their life. And if nothing is done to help that child, that could become an adult who is now abusing, abusing others, so we now have this unending cycle of trauma, of abuse of heartache. Jessica, please, can you just speak to me because I am a Christian woman. When you talk about separating and leaving in abusive situation in the black community and the Christian community many times are not behind you. They want you to stay there and dig in and pray harder and do better and Cook better. Look slimmer, all kinds of things. 

Jessica: Okay, so let me just back up. The one thing that you said here is the effects on children. After I escaped, I thought that if I could just replace the bad memories with good memories by doing things like consistent pay dates, being active at their school. I'm now a home school parent, not a part of the school system. But when I was I joined the parent Council and I thought just being close to the school and having a good relationship with teachers and having these good memories come in and flood their brains, but replace the damage that was done as a result of them seeing the abuse that was happening to me. It doesn't work like that. You cannot just replace bad memories with good memories because what happens is the brain takes snapshot pictures of what has occurred. I want to speak about children that are prior to five years old because in particular the brain does the most development between the ages of zero and three years old. Now, I escaped when my daughter was three years old. So the brain had done a lot of development, but it was of course not complete. What happens is when that child sees their parents, their caregiver, who is in a position where their safety is not at play, it sends a message to the child's brain that because mom is not safe, mom can't keep me safe. And what will happen is that brain gets stuck on that position. It's like a dial, it'll get stuck on that position. And what happens is that brain can form or has the potential to form an attachment disorder. Attachment disorders are so harmful that they can take even a lifetime to overcome. Healthy management can help give the child some successes in their life, but that attachment piece can stick with them for a lifetime. So I want the women that are hearing this podcast to hear me loud and clear. Your child should never see you in a position where your safety is at risk. It cannot happen. There has to be a zero tolerance. One flat is one too many because you don't know if that child's brain is going to get that message to where mum is not safe, therefore mom cannot keep me safe. An attachment disorder is the number one killer of parents. Let me say this to you again, attachment disorder. You know those crazy cases that you hear of in the media where a child has killed the parents. A lot of times it's been an attachment disorder at play, not anything frivolous. We're talking about deep trauma that that child's brain has gone through to produce that type of result. And there are very little resources for attachment disorder, sis, very little. You can put the child on medication, but even the medication cannot stop the violence because what will happen is that child will feel on a consistent basis, “I am not safe. I am not safe. Therefore I must fight for my life.” And what happens with attachment disorder is that child will begin to violently reject caregiving from the parents. You will be in a constant conflict with the child. You will not be able to brush their hair. You will not be able to put clothing on them. You will not be able to walk them to school and walk them home safely because that child, when you're in that position of caregiving, the brain will reject it. So socially, the child will want to accept the nurture and affection. But cognitively, the brain says, no, this person is not safe. This person cannot keep you safe. It is very serious and it goes undiagnosed in many families. (JKO:Wow.) So I just want to pause and allow the community to take that in for a minute. (JKO: My goodness.) So that is trauma. In addition, the specific part of the brain that is affected by is the executive functioning of the brain. That is the part of the brain that is involved in strategic planning. So math skills, science skills. You will find that children that have this disorder will many times have their psycho educational evaluation, the numbers will be very low in terms of how well the working memory is working, the executive functioning. The child will be in a position where they will receive an IEP at school for special education. So women, parents, if you do not want your child to be a child with a learning disability, get out of abusive situations today, do it today. 

JKO:       I just want to ask you a question, Jessica. We're talking about attachment disorder and you really described it properly. I was going to ask what that was, that part about the child rejecting care giving. So we have parent-child conflict constantly. You talked smoothly about children between zero to three. Imagine that a woman waited long enough for the children to become teenagers. Can you give us a little snapshot based on your professional background now and your experience, what that would look like, the chaos in which such a family will find themselves? 

Jessica: Okay, so with intervention, I mean, without extensive therapy, trauma therapy, not going to any social worker. I'm talking about someone who is skilled in trauma therapy. If that intervention does not take place, that teenager, the trajectory for that teenager will be a train wreck, an absolute train wreck, because the child will not be able to successfully socially, sustain friendships, sustain a relationship with their teacher, because all of these things are built on trust. When trust is broken to that extent and no intervention has happened, you're talking about a child having a brain that is full of self doubt. The child doesn't think, “oh, I made a mistake in life.” It's not “I made a mistake.” It's “I'm a bad person because I made a mistake.” So you have a guilt complex that is built in children that have seen extreme violence, that have seen violence in general. And I'm not going to say extreme because I don't want our listeners to think that, okay, it's just a little bit of violence. There is no such thing as a little bit of violence. Any violence is not okay. Zero tolerance. The brain cannot tell the difference between what is a little bit of violence and what's violence. It's just violence. So let's call it like it is. That's how the brain and God has created our brain that way. Our brain has been created to protect us. The whole system is so intricately designed that even when trauma has taken place, healing can happen with the right tools in place. 

JKO:       For a family that has teenagers like the 14 year old upwards, they're the most difficult to get interventions for because they have to say yes to the intervention. And many times those who really need it don't say yes. What can a parent, a woman who didn't know this? Because our culture, that's why I say black and Christian. That combination when it comes to the issue of domestic violence is very hard because for many black people, either we are immigrants by sacred or we're immigrant by this current wave of globalization. You want to succeed so badly and you don't want to leave your country and come and say you came to, for example, Canada, and now your marriage is broken up and people saw her eyes got open because she's not living in a white man's land. But the thing was that it's not her eyes that got opened. The society here does not accept those things. The other society accepts it. There are some cultures that they allow this. If a man is acting up, it's okay. Normal men would be men. Boys will be boys. But here in Canada, there's no boys will be boys and men will be men. There is an expectation. So you come to this culture and you begin to see that, oh, this thing I accepted is not actually right. And then you start hearing things like domestic violence, something you didn't even know before. And so for you to be in that situation, what can you do as a parent who got the courage to leave their marriage but left it so late in the day that the kids are now teenagers and they move happily, I don't want you to live with that here anymore but this attachment disorder, the description just fits some things that I've seen. What can the parent do in that situation, a mom? 

Jessica: The first thing that mom needs to do is to understand that the healing of her child is the most important thing right now. That is the first priority. Her life at that point, her ambitions, the things that she wants to do, they need to be put on hold. And the child needs to take first priority because now you're looking at releasing someone into society who could be a potential harm to society. So, the first thing you're going to have to do is do everything you can to repair the relationship. Because the focus is not on a child when a woman is being abused. The child is there, but the child's needs cannot be adequately met when abuse is going on in the home. So repairing the mother-child relationship is key because that parent has got to build a trust with the child. And if that parent cannot build the trust with the child, then intervention is needed. And when I say intervention, sometimes that parent may have to put a difference between themselves and the child in order to save that parent-child relationship. What I had to do with my child is, unfortunately, we had to get foster care for her and she eventually was put into adoption. Now what happened with that, is you put supports in place and you've tried like my husband and I, we were going to the hospital constantly for seven years to try to repair my daughter's brain. And after seven years of intense trauma treatment, workshops upon workshops, her brain still would not receive caregiving from me. So, at that point it was a matter of looking at, okay, am I going to be selfish and keep trying to work something within my own home or am I going to trust God so much to where even if it meant letting the child go so they can develop without triggers, without flashbacks, then that's what I need to do. And at some times when violence is being displayed in the home by a child on a continual basis, especially if there are siblings involved, if there's young siblings watching the teenager, watching the older one display violence in the home, then you're looking at a situation where even if that young child was not a part of the abuse between the parent and the other parent, you have a situation where even that child who has not seen trauma the way the older child has. If they see the sibling display violence in the home, you can get an attachment disorder that way, secondary attachment disorder. Because now that child is looking to their caregiver to provide a home of safety and nonviolence and the sibling is not receiving that they're seeing violence in the home. So that sibling can also develop an attachment disorder to the parent who is allowing the violence from the older sibling to happen in the home. Now that child can also if the violence is happening for too long, all your good intentions are great. But that is still another child's brain witnessing violence in the home. That child could get a diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder. (JKO: Jeez. So scary.) And when you're dealing with post traumatic stress disorder, then that child has violent tendencies and needs to know how to manage. So you could be looking at two situations occurring because violence is still happening in the home. 

JKO:       Wow, this is so scary. Oh my Lord. So you took a very difficult decision for your child. And there goes the matter of the child welfare system we have in Canada that always gets the bad rap. (Jessica: Yup.) In this case, we see them come in to help in the situation. For example, I just described that I'm an immigrant and everything if I had a situation like that and I was holding on so tightly because of where I'm coming from, people don't get it. “Ah, give your child a second chance.” No way. People don't get it. They try to have a new lease on life (Jessica: That's right.), that doesn't have me who has been abused, involved. Give the child to the government who can find the child in place where they will not have a memory of the trauma that they are suffering because when they see me or their mom, who was the one who went through that abuse, they remember the trauma. But if you take them out of that space to this new house for the government to help to find a foster care, then the child has a new lease on life. Oh, my God. This is so interesting because I really believe that the child welfare system is necessary. It's a necessary thong just like any other service that we have. There are people who actually need that service. (Jessica: Absolutely.) We are holding on so tightly to our children in these situations. You have just described so vividly the impact of domestic violence. We refuse to let go. So, the child welfare system can become a solution to help children in these situations. 

Jessica: Well, I say that what you're doing is you're building up a team. You're building up an Arsenal when you allow the community in this way. And I want to just go back for a second here. So you've got two types of parents. You have the parents who has been through abuse and they have integrity and they want to heal their child. Then you've got the parent who's been through abuse and they are doing behaviors of self destruction, substance abuse. They are coping in those ways. And the children's needs are not being met in that situation. If you are a parent who has integrity and is just merely trying to kill your child, you do not have to be afraid of the Winter Essex County Children's Society. You do not need to be afraid of them because you have nothing to hide. Lay out all your cards on the table. They are not going to penalize you. They are not going to revictimize you and judge you because you have been through pain. They are going to look at this as saying, wow, this is a parent who really wants to get it together. They really want their child to be an asset to society. And you know what? They will pull out all the stops. They will pull out all the resources, and they will become your team, your Arsenal team to help you to restore your child. We had an arsenal. So we had the doctors, we had the psychologist, we had the psychiatrist, we had the Children's Aid Society, these people, and not to mention the other specialists that we had. We had a team of eight, I believe, and we had to meet with them on a consistent basis. And let me tell you something, it's work to repair. It's like a full time job just to do the repair piece so if you can do prevention to prevent all of this, do it today. The sooner you get out, the better and the less damage. 

JKO:       So Jessica mentioned the Windsor Essex Children's Society. In Canada, we have the child welfare system called different names in different provinces. In British Columbia, it's called Ministry of Children and Family Development. In the United States, it's children's services. They have different names for the child welfare system anywhere in the world. So what Jessica is saying and what I'm learning here is when you have experienced abuse and you now have a child with this situation, seek for help. The children's services, they are trained experts. They have all kinds of resources. And if they don't have the resources in the system, they can refer you outside the system. So that's where their expertise comes in. But we normally hear the gory tales of taking people's children. Yeah, we do have those gory experiences, but we have an example where that is not the case. So, balance your information. And if you need help, go everywhere till you get the help. That is just it. Don't be ashamed. Don't be scared. So Jessica, I want to ask you about the woman herself. You said you were diagnosed with hypo alert. When a woman has gone through abuse and she knows I mean, there's something in us that tells us that this has impacted us and whether it tells you or not, where can you go when you leave an abusive situation or you're in an abusive situation to find out if you need some extra support because you were diagnosed, how did you get to being diagnosed? 

Jessica: Okay, so the diagnosis did not come until my home was violent free again after my escape. It was after my daughter was stable to where I could start putting some attention in on myself. I noticed that, for instance, even in the Bloomfield House board meetings, I would lose what some of the members were saying in the board meeting. And I played a very key role and wanted to be as effective as I could. But I knew that my memory is really like something is happening. I would just blackout and I would blackout even in the midst of trying to conduct the choir, I would forget the refrain of a song and forget where the choruses and is a song that we might have practiced for ten weeks. I would get lost sometimes, and I learned creative ways to have to cover it up. But I wanted change and I wanted to be much more effective so that's when I contacted my family doctor and believe it or not, he knew the trauma that I had been through and he took my word for it that this is happening and I need help. I was having flashbacks at night. I could not sleep. This is while, trying to be the choir director of Bloomfield House, the executive Secretary, fashion model, singer going out and doing gigs and yet a part of me was broken and needed repair. And so I loved myself enough to talk to my doctor about it and I was put on a medication and now I can manage much better. I wouldn't be able to do this podcast if I did not get under management with the medication. I still take that medication this day. And that doesn't mean that I'm damaged or I'm not a woman of faith. It just means that I love myself enough to put myself in a position where I can be a better wife, I can be a better mother, I can be a good cognitive parent and make quality decisions for my life and for others. It's very important that we pay attention to the signs that our bodies gives us because your physiology does change when you've been through abuse. 

JKO:       This is so interesting, Jessica, that you got to have tough love first for your child who had to go through this through no choice of their own, then for yourself and for your community. What I call tough love, everything that it signifies is the life that Jessica is describing. She loved her child so much she was willing to give her child up, so the child's future could be better. 

Jessica: Yes. And now today we have a beautiful mother-daughter relationship. God has restored us and we can laugh, we can joke. There was a time where she could not stand to be in a room with me for more than an hour at a time. Now our visits are like four hours long and she's a joy to be around. She is excelling in school. She has exceptional grades. She's a leader in her community, a young leader. She actually served on the board of CAS youth program. So God will open up doors when you let go, when you keep trying to do things within your own power. It’s like Apostle Paul said, “I die to self daily. I die daily.” What he was saying is that his own desires and the way that he wants things to go, he realizes, are not necessarily the way that God's plans for his life were to go. And so he died to himself. And that's what parents have to do. We have to die to our own self and allow God to take over. And the way that you can do that, the way that you know that you're in God's will, is what prayers are being answered. And my prayer has been answered with my daughter. Like I said, we went from having a situation where she was violently rejecting caregiving to where she now gets me Christmas gifts, gives me a hug, says, “Mom, I love you.” I did not hear the words I love you since my daughter would have been two years old and at seven she was diagnosed. So that speaks to the damage. But it also speaks to the hope, the hope that you can have when you let go. And you let God in because his will, He created us for success. He created us to have joy in our life. He did not create women to be abused, to be manipulated and controlled. He created us for freedom. 

JKO:       I'm just so grateful, Jessica. If you're a woman out there and you have had any part of the story resonate with you or it reminds you of someone you know, please tell that person. Or if it's you see your family doctor, talk to them about what you're going through and let them direct you to the right avenue. And regarding your children, don't be ashamed of looking for help. What's the point of being ashamed, only for you to cover the smoke until you can't cover it anymore? Because you cannot cover smoke, it will be released one way or the other. So the children's problem will still go out there. With all your good intentions. When something has been cracked, when something has been broken, if it's not healed, your good intentions will only create more problems. It's just like a concrete slab, maybe a parking lot. When the parking lot is all together, where there is no crack inside, if water puts on it, water just flows off. But if there's a crack, if water falls on it, water goes in there and damages and the crack gets bigger. That's what we're doing when we do not get help for our children because we are ashamed by community, our friends and this and that. If you're a woman out there in an abusive situation and you have children, this is for you: Do not wait any longer. I know you're scared. How am I going to cope? How will I survive? I don't have money. I'm not working. He has all my details. I want to let you know that what is ahead if you don't leave and save your life and the children is worse than what you're afraid of. (Jessica: Yes), because as a mother, you want the best for your child. And when your children are struggling, there is no joy that you can have. So the sooner you need, the better. I just want Jessica to say one more thing. All right? So I just would like to add that when a woman is ready to leave, they need to not give that decision to anyone. They need to ensure that they have identification for herself, identification for her children. And that is it. The stuff? God will replace the stuff. Don't worry about the stuff, okay? You just grab your personal identification. If you can grab a day’s clothing, that's fine. Get out of there. That's all you need to do. Let God do the rest and you will have a beautiful picture again.

JKO:       Thank you so much, Jessica, for your time today. It's been an absolute pleasure and it's been so enjoyable talking to you, not just because of what you shared, but because of your spirit. Your spirit is so good. I know there's something about talking to someone whose spirit is good, you can feel it and I'm sure if you're listening, you might be able to say the same thing. And if you're a woman out there who has a story to share, who is doing it even in the messy, if messy can't stop you and you have a story to share, please DM me and let's have you on this podcast sharing your story and encouraging and inspiring other women because you know what we need us. Thank you so much for listening to Messy Can’t Stop Her. See you again very soon. Bye-bye.