Episode 142: Shining Light on the Sexually Related Trauma That Many Experience in Rural Communities

Introduction

Hi everyone, I’m so glad that you decided to join me today because I have a special guest on. Her name is Amy Ebat from SRT Services in Spokane and I want to take just a second to explain to you why I decided to have her and her organization on today. Many of you know that I have a history in domestic violence and that I am a huge supporter of anybody who is helping women or that are in hard situations.
And so really focusing on my love for rural communities and how much I support you guys in your homeschooling and homesteading endeavors. I also wanted to take a minute to make sure that everybody has a voice and feels safe. So recently I met this program and Amy and her crew at a ag event and I just felt like it was a perfect combination to bring her on and have a talk to just bring some light to some things that happen behind closed doors.
So welcome, Amy. Thank you. Happy to be here.

Amy’s Background and Connection to SRT

Yeah, absolutely. So tell everyone a little bit about yourself like it can be about your program and about you. Well, okay, I’ll do the nuts and bolts real quick.
Okay. I’m married, I have four kids ranging from five to 15. I got introduced with SRT services, which stands for sexually related trauma services, when I actually went through a group myself.
And that was now probably like seven, close to seven years ago. But I knew after I went through one that this was where I was supposed to be, either volunteering or whatever that looked like, whatever capacity that was. So I became a volunteer and then a year or so later, I got offered a position at the nonprofit.
And so we’re local here in Spokane, but we’re also nationwide, which was actually really neat to work through because I don’t know COVID kind of sent us in a weird spin that way. It’s really made it so that SRT is available everywhere, which has been really cool. Being part of that process has been wonderful.
But yeah, I really value you taking the time to talk about this because it is a hard topic. And not everybody’s willing to tackle it or talk about it. And I think those of us that are there that we need to do our job and do our due diligence to share, I think our stories and how we’ve healed from the trauma because it’s, I think it’s pretty important that people see that you can heal through something so traumatic.
But yeah, so that’s me. That’s awesome. So I mean, not awesome, but awesome what you guys are doing.

Why Sharing Stories Matters

And you know, I think it’s really important to continue to share our stories, because that is, there’s always a new generation. There’s always someone new. There’s always somebody who went from a healthy relationship to an unhealthy one.
And like frogs in water may have not noticed. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Or frogs in boiling water, which if you guys don’t know what that means, it’s if you put a frog in boiling water, they jump right out. Meaning if you start in an abusive situation, you’re going to get right back out of it. But if you start in cold water, and it gradually gets warmer, you don’t realize you’re boiling until it’s done.
Yeah. And hearing other people’s stories can maybe bring light to situations that aren’t as safe as you thought they were. Yeah.
Yeah. Absolutely. I think it’s one of the really cool things.

What SRT Is and the Traumas They Address

So as we dive more into what SRT is, though, one of the things I do want to let you know, everyone who works at SRT has a story of one of the traumas that we provide groups for. So I think it, it actually adds to, I don’t want to say the credibility, but in a way, because like, we’ve all walked through very hard things. And we’ve all processed and been healing and continue to do the process because it’s Yeah, healing is not overnight.
And I think that’s actually really cool. Because when we do, like, I’m able to talk to you about my story pretty honestly, and real without having the triggers and having all the different symptoms because I’ve been processing through it. And I think that’s one of the beauties of sharing your story.
I’m not saying that just telling it over and over and over again is going to create all the healing but definitely it also helps you reorganize it in your brain. Right, right. And like to work through some of the things out loud, too.
Yeah. Especially there’s also people who have to have their abusers in their lives. Even after they say I’m done and I want to heal and I want to be safe.
And so when you have to hear that voice all the time, you need to be able to have your own voice somewhere else. Absolutely. It is imperative that you have your own voice really, and somewhere else and even in your circle, but I don’t know if I can tell you a little bit more about SRT? You absolutely can.
Yeah, let’s sorry, we kind of just like we’re like, all going sideways and deep. I just want to talk about exactly what sexually related trauma is and your program. Yeah, so well, what SRT is exists for all I said that fumbled over that is really to create awareness regarding sexually related trauma.
So we narrow in on sexual abuse and assault, past abortion and miscarriage and stillbirth. So those are the three traumas we cover. And in that we provide free support groups for men and women that have been through sexual abuse and assault and past abortion, and then support group for miscarriage and stillbirth.
And all of those are free, and they’re eight weeks long. And what we do is we go through a healing action a week, like we talk about how we heal in community, what that looks like, where’s your community kind of zeroing in on some of those things. We talked about our poor coping skills around the trauma and what coping skills we kind of learned or became habit after that and recognize those.
We’ve replaced the lies with the truth, just doing some rewiring there. And this is really peer led. It’s run by two facilitators and only eight, eight people in the group. So you have six participants and then two facilitators.
And the facilitators aren’t there to teach anything. They’re not licensed counselors or therapists or anything. They’re just there to facilitate.

Facilitated, Peer-Led Groups

Oh, sorry, that was weird. I had a little fluttery thing. So facilitate a conversation and help process differences.
Do you see that? Yeah, I do. It’s a little fuzzy, but it looked a little something like flying. It landed.
It’s just fuzzy. Yeah, so we do those groups. And then we also go and attend, we’ll go to churches and we’ll share about what we do at churches and also help staff kind of learn how to have conversations with people and navigate trauma and and look for signs of trauma and what to do when they come to you, things like that.
We like to help educate the community as much as possible. So if a business wants us to come in and help them start having that conversation of going through healing and trauma and what it looks like. Yeah, we do that, too.
So and then we also have our podcast where Rachel and I share our stories and just the things that we’ve done to help our healing and what has worked and what has not. And I love that. I mean, I think there’s so many times that I wish I could have had somebody too. Sometimes you’re not even you’re not ready to talk about it, but you need to almost have those like quiet conversations.
Yeah, I know for me, it was I would have loved to have something I could listen to or somebody to tell me, hey, it’s okay to stay in bed all day. Because it’s what you just processed this last week or yesterday or whatever, or currently, it can feel like it’s going to take you out and it’s okay to rest through it. Like I would have loved for somebody to tell me it’s okay to ignore the laundry right now.
I will get it done eventually. Right. And I think that’s one of the heart of grace and grenades.
The podcast was just to bring some community and some support in that way to let you know that, you know, you’re not different. And there’s Yeah, and also bring some tips and things that can help. I definitely know for me, it was I felt like I wanted to control everything.
So yeah, the laundry, if I was in control of the laundry, I was in control of my life. If I was, you know, in control of food, if I you know, and I went super hyper vigilant into all those things, and then would crash and have guilt over the rest I needed. Right, right.
And that’s still a constant process. Now my husband’s like, you were gonna work until you die. And I’m like, yeah, possibly.
See, and that’s one of the things like knowing that other people are also struggling with it, maybe, maybe they’ve done something that can help that I can try, or maybe they’ve tried and failed. And then I don’t feel so bad. Because that’s part of our story, too, right? That we try all these things, and we don’t always succeed.
And then we get, it feels like thrown back into our, I like to say old self. And then we have to work back again, like what’s gonna work, what’s gonna help. And that’s, it’s totally a giraffe on skates.
That’s how I would describe working through the past and your trauma and your heart is just like, nobody knows how to do it really eloquently. We’re all a bunch of drafts on skates. So it’s gonna look different and funny for everybody.
And I think if we can just let people know that there’s a little less pressure, there’s a little less shame regarding all of it, really. Yeah, I 100% agree.

In-Person vs. Online Options

So are your groups only in person? Or do you have online options for those? Yeah, so we have both in person here in Spokane, and then online anywhere in the world, really.
That’s great. Yeah, we have facilitators all around the nation, dispersed. And so they will just team up with another facilitator and do it through zoom.
And I know a lot of people worry about it through zoom, but I can’t tell you how many people still try it. And then after the eight weeks, they’re like, I was scared of zoom, but I am so glad I did this. Well, a lot of times when you’re talking about sexually related trauma, that can be really hard to verbalize sitting next to somebody else, being in a room with other people.
Because it’s a very personal body thing. Yeah. And I think it’s because I’ve had people, you know, go through the group in their garage or in their car in a safe environment, they feel like it’s safe to them or in their sweats and their jammies, right? Like you they have one girl in her jammies every time.
And every time I’m like, man, I wish I was in my jammies. So cozy. Well, I mean, I’ll be honest, I have had pneumonia for the last two weeks.
So I’m kind of in my jammies right now. Because I was like, I’m not putting on pants until I have to fly tomorrow. Yeah, well, I don’t even put on real pants to fly.
So that’s an achievement there. Yeah. The only reason I am is we’re landing early enough that I’m meeting up with the people like, right.
And I feel like it seems like more work to have to find a place to put on real pants. So I am doing like the stretchy skinny jeans though. So okay, yeah.
Okay. So you know, maybe those are real pants. Happy medium.
Yeah. So I really like how you guys are bringing awareness to SRT. Because it’s not just what everybody imagines.
Everybody just thinks that it’s either like, I mean, I guess I’ll just say it like rape or molestation. Like I don’t talk about a lot of this stuff on my podcast. But they’re not bad words either.
You know? Right? Well, yeah. I don’t know about you. I know for me, it was even my view around abortion was different before I started here. It’s a lot of women who are just making the decision to have, you know, my body, my choice, that kind of person.
It’s really not . I had a conversation with a lady one time and I said, I don’t think it’s a decision. I think it’s the hardest choice they ever made. Oh, I can’t tell you how many women go through my group.
And I lead seven on which is a sexual abuse victims anonymous. I have several women that have gone through and that is just part of their story. And they truly, truly and even I if I had been in that situation would have probably made the same choice because it was such a dangerous environment or what if it’s with your brother, right? Like what your brother was, your abuser or your dad.
And I know that people always have a but you could write, but you could have. That’s just when you start getting into these stories, you start seeing somebody who was so broken, and so lost, and really truly was doing what they could to survive. Yeah.

Seeing the Person Behind the Story

And, you know, I know a lot of my listeners are, you know, very conservative family centered. And I, yeah, I absolutely like everybody who’s listening. I absolutely salute that and support that.
But you also have to look at the person who’s going through it because it isn’t. It isn’t just one story. Right? No, and they’re all very different.
I mean, and it’s hard because sometimes going through trauma can make us very hard and very even speak loudly about our beliefs around what I had to do, right? What I had to do is what I had to do. And it’s, it gets more shame based and more where I mean, I can’t tell you how many videos and reels that I’ll see about women who are ripping down the pro life signs. And they’re like, Why are you doing that? They’re getting in their face.
And it’s like, well, hold on. This woman is probably actually experiencing a lot more than you realize. I think you can be pro life and pro person too.
Absolutely. And I think that’s, I didn’t mean to come on. And no, no, I think it’s a really important conversation.
It’s the same thing with sexual abuse. I mean, I went through a group. And my thought was, I’m rare, you know, right? Like, what I went through was this, these were my thoughts that were disgusting and gross, and I’m rare, and it doesn’t happen to everyone.
And it permanently damaged me forever. And just going into one of my groups was enough to go, Oh my god, there are so many more people that are struggling and gone through very similar things and like, that are struggling to have self worth and learn and learn how to be self disciplined because of different things. And on the other side, women and men who struggle with control issues and, you know, emotional immaturity.
And a lot of that comes from our stories and not realizing that we’re not alone, right? I can’t tell you how most of my life, I felt like I was alone and working here, I’ve realized that common, it’s more common than we realize, when we talk, when we talk about it, it’s, we like to use the statistic, 50% of American adults have experienced one or more of these traumas. That’s not including kids. That’s not including the people that don’t, don’t tell honestly, right? Like, how many men probably have the stories that they’re not going to be honest with, because that’s pretty devastating to a man.
I mean, there’s probably a lot of men who don’t feel like they have like, there’s the embarrassment of a sexually related trauma when they’re like in an abuse situation. But then there’s also if they have a spouse that has an abortion that they weren’t on board with that can be very traumatizing for them to Oh, yeah, have to work through that. That’s all of it.
It all comes with so much and I know as I married, and my trauma had already happened. And so having to go into a marriage, gosh, I thought I was just a broken mess that just could not get my act together. I did.
I went like the pendulum the other way where I was just a mess. It was chaotic. And I mean, talk about ADHD, I still really struggle with it.
Bless his heart, he puts up with a lot, but I could not get the world around me controlled. So I went into just self medicating my world. And in my later years, I found I gave my life to Christ, not later, I mean, later teen years.
And then really quickly got married, but never still never worked through the trauma of what happened prior to that. And it brought a lot of dysfunction in my marriage. Oh, I’m sure because I deal with it myself in my marriage on a regular basis that there’s things that both of us realized we didn’t work through.
Right? And that we weren’t modeled on healthy marriages in our youth because of the culture that we were raised in. Right? Oh, yeah, the culture of don’t tell anybody. Yeah, we don’t tell anybody in a family, the men, like, or I guess I don’t even say the men in the 80s, like cheating was like the thing to do.
You know, like, it was like a thing on TV and in music and all that type of stuff. And like, we look back on it now. And of course, neither of us in our marriage have had any issues like that.
But we look back on what we saw in our parents as marriages and what happened in our early relationships and stuff. And we’re like, we don’t know how to be in a healthy marriage. So let’s just get really comfortable that if with the fact that if it doesn’t feel healthy in the moment, we need to say like, timeout.
That’s so cool. And like, you know, I’m not saying we’ve never gotten to a point where we were yelling at each other or, you know, anything because I mean, come on, like, like I said, we, I mentioned before, like, we don’t have a perfect marriage, which is why we’re really good at helping other people work on their marriages. Yeah, yeah.
But we take that moment and we say this doesn’t feel good. I don’t know what doesn’t feel good about it. But let’s take a minute, let’s separate, come back, not like separate, but separate physically.
Yeah. And then come back and talk about what didn’t feel right to us at that moment. That’s so wise.
I love that. That’s, that’s emotional maturity going, okay, wait, something’s off. I don’t know if it’s you.
I don’t know if it’s me. I don’t know what to do let’s take a moment and process in our own space. That’s really, really cool.
If we could get the world to do that. Right. And we even sometimes depending on the disagreement or how much our kids were involved in it, or whatever, we’ll come back with our older teens and say, like, hey, we want to talk to you about what just happened between us.
Like, you might have seen us have this disagreement, or we had this disagreement, and we want to make sure that you understand something about it. Right, right. Kind of bringing them in so they don’t have this.
What is it? Well, I mean, if they don’t know, they’re going to make it pass a judgment or worry that isn’t okay. And yeah, I mean, we had a, our teenage daughter had a friend up and we were processing a bunch of meat, we were making sausage and stuff. The girl’s friend always comes up when we do meat processing days.
And we’re all in the kitchen, and we’re running meat grinders and doing our thing. And I don’t even remember what happened now at this point. But I said something to my husband, he misunderstood me, he super snapped at me in front of the girls, it threw me off, I started crying, because I was embarrassed and frustrated at the moment.
And he looked at me and just turned and left the room. And I was like, I know why he left the room. But this 15 year old girl who was visiting our home and really is connected to my husband because she doesn’t have a dad doesn’t know what that meant.
So I sat there and chatted with the girls for a little bit and said, like, do you know why Ron left just now? And I explained to them and I said, we have our moments. But at the end of the day, he’s the guy who goes and buys my tampons. Because he does, he is so connected, and comfortable in our relationship in that way . That’s what I always kind of bring full circle for the girls is that he doesn’t ever make me feel uncomfortable or bad about anything in our life.
So at the end of the day, he’s the guy who buys my tampons, you know. And then I went into the bedroom and he and I chatted it out. And he came out and he was like, Hey, girls, I just want to like, you know, tell you, I’m sorry for raising my voice in front of you.
And then we just went about our day and everything was fine. And you know, yeah, but it was like, I really liked what he saw. And he even said in it, like, I know our daughter knows our relationship, but I don’t want her friend to feel like that is an appropriate way to have a man talk to her.
That’s good. So wise. It’s it’s, I’m lucky in that way.
But you know, at the same time, I still want to sell him for a week. So you know, he took a lot of training. That’s awesome.
We went through our hard times, for sure. Yeah. He was diagnosed with end stage liver disease seven years ago and told he had a year to live.
Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And that’s how our story has begun as we started our natural food journey and stuff.
And six years into it, he was given a clean bill of health, fully healed liver, like we don’t know what you did. I did not know that story. That’s amazing.
Thanks. But that’s actually what we’re going to speak about this week. We call it a talk we do called Good Food and Stubborn Wives.
Hey, I love that. Right. So there was definitely a whole range of emotions that we went through over those six years trying to, you know, heal him, him, you know, that is what they call it? premeditated is not the word, but like, pre grief.
Like you’re grieving losing him before he’s even gone. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
And like, we’re going through all of this stuff. And then all of a sudden, we’re on the other end. And we’re like, okay, you’re healed.
Now what? Yeah. We didn’t know we were gonna have anything after. Yeah.
So we definitely had to like to sift through our brains on that. But one of the reasons I was really excited to have you on is that myself and probably 75% of my listeners are rural families. And we’re homeschool homestead families, which means we’re home with our children a lot.
We’re not, whether that’s homeschooling them or working on the farm, we’re not like our kids aren’t going to public schools. We’re a lot of times not participating in group sports and stuff where we are not only rule isolated, we took that next step in our life really real isolated. And I think that that makes it where sexually related trauma, whether it is by an abuser or something like miscarriage, doesn’t get talked about in the same way.
Yeah. And it isn’t as obvious to outside people. And it isn’t even, you know, in these big Christian homeschool families, and somebody has a miscarriage.
And I’ve heard it so many times where they’re like, you know, like, we support you and your baby in heaven. But then they just kind of like, it’s just part of all of it. And it’s like, yes, it is a part of life.
It happens to everyone. But when you’re alone with your seven children, and people are like, well, at least you have seven others, and you’re sitting there grieving that one that you wanted, you know, and I just think there’s so much that’s not said. So I just want to ask, what are some options for these rural families? Or what are maybe some things people should look for in supporting their friends and family? Well, I think when we were creating, first, yeah, you, everything you just mentioned, makes it even more isolating, right, being in the rural areas.

Isolation in Rural Communities

And I think isolation is one of the biggest deteriorators to healing, actually. And it’s what we want to do, right? We want to run away, we want to hide, we don’t want to share it all with everybody. And for me, it was I don’t want to be the problem, or I don’t want to be the whatever.
Everybody knows what you’re doing in a small town, but then they don’t know what you’re doing. Right. I mean, I kind of regret coming back.
But it’s like, I know, when I had my domestic violence situation, we lived in a very small town where my family was sixth generation. I had nowhere to go. I had nowhere to hide.
Yeah. Even though it was a, you know, tiny rural town where there were a million places to hide, somebody would know where I was, somebody would leak that information. And even if I wanted to go, like stay at the women’s shelter, it was a tiny, old, nasty apartment complex in the worst part of town.
And we were a prominent family. Yeah, I do. You know, yeah.
You leave. I don’t. That’s hard.
I did. I did. I left town.
I was in a small town where everyone knows everyone. And but you can’t leave sometimes right in the moment. Yeah, you have to have money, you have to have a plan.
And sometimes that’s not always possible. It’s especially if it is like in my case, it was an abuser situation. Like him we were married and he was the main income.
What did I do? Yeah, yeah. And in rural areas, that’s just so much harder because we just don’t have all the resources like here in Spokane. We have multiple women’s shelters and different shelters that you could have gone to.
But we’re all that’s hard. And like you’re saying, everybody knows everything, or at least they think they know. That’s really hard.
I don’t really know. I think for that situation, like every situation is going to be a little different, right? And has its own hurdles, to say the least. And that is one definitely for you is being in that rural town and not being able to escape.
I don’t really know how I would have personally been able to work through that. I know for when we talk about miscarriages, my just to pivot here a bit. I think miscarriage is something that we talk about.
I have never experienced a miscarriage, but I know quite a few women that have. And it just feels like it’s a shameful topic. And it shouldn’t be.
And it absolutely shouldn’t be. And I think one of the things about why the reason we created was missing was because we wanted to take away the shame and we wanted to create a space where women felt the love and felt the encouragement. If you can be encouraged or something, and also experienced it with other women that have gone through it, right, that isn’t going, Oh, at least you have seven babies.
No, they’re like, we want to punch that person that said that to you, because not appropriate, surprisingly enough, y’all, that’s not appropriate. It’s very hurtful. You know, I haven’t had a miscarriage myself.
But when my husband and I had a very rough last pregnancy, where medically, we couldn’t have any, we opted to not have any more children. So my husband had a vasectomy, and I was devastated over that, like, cried, and people were like, well, you have all the No, that doesn’t, we weren’t ready to be done. That choice was taken from us.
Right. I have a good friend that had twins, and one of them passed, and one of them lived, right. And then everybody’s like, you still have one.
And like, that’s never okay to say. And I think that’s one of the things too, that we love to do and talk about is, there are some do’s and don’ts with certain things. And when it comes to miscarriage, I think the best thing to do for people is to recognize that it is an, it’s a trauma.
It’s an extreme trauma. And it is devastating to people. I mean, it’s a physical and a mental loss.
Like, I don’t think they think of it that way. Like some people only see it as like, is your body healed? And some people only think of it as like, is your brain healed? But I think I didn’t realize the dates, right? Like after you, you had a due date that you didn’t make, then that due date is really hard. And then the birthday every year that that baby would have been born on.
That’s, I mean, it’s just, you’re constantly reminded of this. It’s not like some, you know, something that you heal from and move on. This is always going to be something that comes up and reminds you of a loss that was pretty significant, very significant.
And even having other children, and that child makes their first birth date, and then you feel the guilt. Yeah. Or going to friends, baby showers, right after you’ve lost them.
These are really hard things to do. And really hard things. I think it would have been really hard to just go back to church after having a miscarriage and, and feeling like it was my fault.
I’m not, I’ve also never been through it. But I could imagine that you feel like it’s partly your fault, right? Because it’s our bodies. It’s where it’s being created.
I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t be intertwined some way into feeling like something wrong, should I have not tried to get pregnant, you know, like, or some women in the case of our group, some women have had abortions, and they feel like maybe that’s why I’m not able to have kids now. And it’s like, just go talking through some of that stuff. It’s significant.
And for women that are rural, and don’t feel like they have support, I think that’s one of the beautiful things about SRT is we can be in your living room with you, or we can be in your she shed in the back, whatever, wherever safe for you, we can come to you in a sense. And your community can be right there with women who have gone through very similar situations. Our past programs director has had quite a few miscarriages, and she helped write the curriculum.
And I mean, she’s amazing. Her name’s Elizabeth. You didn’t get to meet her at the show, but she just, she gets it.
And I think the way that we train the facilitators, you got to remember, they all have a story in it. So for Ms. Anon, you have to have a Ms. Anon or stillbirth story. And for Savanon, you have to have a Savanon story and Avanon same thing, an abortion story to lead it.
So you’re stepping into a world where you are not alone. And actually, you’re the minority in this room. And so I don’t know, I think that if we can start taking the shame away, something so horrific, that’s not our fault.
And start talking more about it. In a healthy way, that’s not, I think those comments of at least you have babies in heaven, those are just so insensitive, right? Because those are, unfortunately, that’s not the way we’re thinking about it. Or at least you have seven here on earth.
It’s like, yes, but I was so excited for this one. Just like all the rest of them, any of them would have been a heart loss and break. And so I think for me, when I come across a woman that’s had a miscarriage or stillbirth, I mean, compassion is the first thing that I just, if they allow hugs, hug her and say, yeah, you were never meant to go through that.
I always ask their baby’s name. Yeah. Oh, that’s beautiful.
At the end of our miscarriage, we have a celebration ceremony that we do. And they get to, if they hadn’t named their baby, name their baby or put their baby’s name on a little stone. And with big prints, it’s beautiful.
But I feel like it gives, it makes their baby real to someone other than them. Yeah. Well, yeah.
Acknowledging life is pretty significant. And eventually we want to actually make a misanon for men as well. We just, we’re not there yet.

Men’s Healing and Processing

I think that would be amazing. My husband hasn’t experienced it, but with our youngest and the health issues we had, he was a wreck. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. And he’s still like, I mean, last night we were laying in bed with the littles and talking about, we were telling our five-year-old about some of the things like his birth story, you know, and so he wanted to see pictures. He has really limited language.
So sometimes we have to reiterate lots of things for him. And so we were telling him little pieces of the story and my husband’s like, you had daddy scared from the beginning. And I remember because they thought that maybe he might have Down syndrome, but I had blood clots in my lungs.
And so I was on blood thinners. So we couldn’t get good genetic testing till I was 24 weeks pregnant. Okay.
Yeah. So like us, not that it would have been a problem if he had Down syndrome, but they said, you know, we have to be concerned about heart issues and all this stuff. And it’s like, we couldn’t get an answer for weeks where we were just scared the whole time.
Yeah. Yeah. So like, and I know how much that affected him.
So for guys to have a place to talk about that. Yes. Yes.
And it’s so fascinating. We just had a men’s group of Savinon graduates. And I just am amazed after talking to the facilitators, just how, how this process of just processing together is so freeing for men.
And I think that’s partially because one of the things, I mean, we all do this as humans, we isolate, but I don’t know about you, but my husband doesn’t have a ton of friends. It’s not like him to find friends. And a lot of his friends are like guys from the fire department and stuff like, yeah.
Well, and he has his work friend and like couple, couple friends, but not like me. I have my work friends. I have all my kids, sports friends.
I have my, my really, really close cinnamon roll people. He doesn’t. And so I think with men, I think it’s pretty common to just basically pull your bootstraps up and carry on and continue forward.
And while probably struggling with the shame of what happened or the shame of what you’ve been through and feeling like a fake, right? I’m not a man for sex, sexual abuse. That’s pretty common. Feeling like I’m not a man.
You have no idea what happened to me. So a lot of the identity stuff comes up and it’s just so amazing to hear other men. I’m obviously not in the room, but as they were talking about it, other men encouraged other men and how healing it was.
It’s like, wow, creating a community. It’s pretty important. And that’s one of the things that we do here at SRT is we help create a community to heal in and continue to heal in.
And that’s kind of cool. Right now we’re in the process of putting together our continued healing groups. They’re called, they’re going to be called our regroups.
And so after the eight week program, you can go into a regroup where you can attend weekly, kind of similar to AA, how you can, you can go or not go. Like once you graduate from your program, then you can come as needed. Yeah.
Yeah. And that’s going to be launching, I think here in the fall, which just continues that community is huge. Having a space to talk through similar issues, right.
That we all struggle with, that we all feel like we’re alone. Right. Something that it took me a long time to understand is that sexually related trauma isn’t always, like I said, rape or molestation.
No, definitely not. Sorry. Then, you know, we talked about things like miscarriage and the abortion, but there’s another piece there that when you are in an emotionally or physically abusive situation, it’s hard to put it into words the right way.
But even relations with your spouse can be considered sexually related trauma if there’s emotional and physical abuse happening with that. Oh, absolutely. And I think a lot of people don’t understand that and the shame that people carry with that.
Right. I think it’s been one that’s one of the actual realizations that I’ve had since I’ve worked here is the marital sexual abuse and what that looks like and how we like to say that sexual abuse is a pendulum like it goes from voyeurism. So like someone just flashing you to all the way to rape molestation.
Right. Those are horrific, but it involves a lot of different things in between. And it’s like that for married people as well.
I have one story where a woman wasn’t allowed to eat unless she slept with her husband or and different things like that. That is sexual abuse, too. Maybe they’re not forcing you in a mentally for way, but emotionally, mentally.
Absolutely. That’s sexual abuse, especially if it has to do sexually. And usually it does.
Yeah. Sometimes the manipulative apologies come with it. Right.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. That. You know, when you go to seek help, whether that’s from a counselor or from law enforcement or a women’s shelter or whatever, when you say he hits me or he calls me ugly or he withholds money or whatever, they’re like, oh, let’s handle it, you know.
But to say like I was forced to have relations with my spouse. That doesn’t compute for everybody. Right.
Because that’s in a marriage. And for exactly some reason. OK, if your husband forces anything because it’s in a marriage.
Yeah, I would agree. I’ve heard very similar things. And I disagree with that approach because I know now that I’m in what I do, that sexual abuse happens in a marriage and it is abuse and it’s just as severe and and traumatic as physical and emotional and mental.
And usually all of those are involved. Right. And it messes with your head throughout, because when you have the person who’s supposed to be your safest person is your most dangerous.
When you go into future relationships or anything, you’re always questioning who is the safest person. Right. My husband and I discuss this a lot.
He has PTSD from Iraq. I have it from domestic violence. And what he doesn’t always understand is he’s like, I don’t know, I only have issues when I have dreams or something.
And I’m like, that’s because your enemies are on the other side of the world. You’re going to be my enemy could be you. Right.
Right. Yeah, that’s true. I never thought of it that way, I think.
And until we can really narrow in on the things that are triggering us, it’s going to trigger us. And I know it’s hard because your story is, like you said, supposed to be that safe person in your life. And now your husband is that safe person in your life.
But like your mind still has to catch up, your brain still has to do the rewiring to go. No, we’re safe. He is safe.
Okay, we’re not there anymore. And that’s a process that takes time. Yeah, I mean, even on yesterday, the money’s a little tight.
It’s, you know, normal marital stuff. And we own three businesses. Like it’s always an up and down process or one business is paying for the other business.
And, you know, and he needed to go to town and run some errands. And none of our deposits were coming until the next day. And he’s like, why need gas to get to town? We live 45 minutes from town.
I was like, I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t have any money to give you to go get gas. And it was really frustrating to him.
And so the kids were all like, Oh, I have $5. And you know, our seven year old was like, I have $19 and quarters, you know, like, so everybody’s like gathering their change. And I was like, Oh, I forgot I have $30 and quarters in the bedroom, you know, so we’re like, gathering up enough money for a tank of gas.
And we told all the kids like, we’ll pay you back tomorrow, you know? Sorry. And I think that that’s normal I mean, I think every family has had that moment, you know, like digging through couch cushions to buy milk or something. Yeah.
Oh, we definitely, like just two weeks ago, transferred a little of our son’s money over to ours to get gas. Yeah, exactly. Like when we get paid, we’ll transfer it back.
Like my daughter has her own bank account. And she’s always like, Mom, you can if you need something, you can pull it out of my bank account. I’m like, yeah, it’s already empty.
Yeah. But yeah, she’s 16 and works for me. So you know, but yeah, so my husband’s a little frustrated.
And as he started to walk out the door, I said, Thank you for being flexible today, hon. And he was like, I know, I’m sorry, I’m not mad at you. I’m mad that our businesses aren’t being sustainable.
And I said, I think that’s really fair. But who runs our businesses? Me. And he was like, Oh, so that does feel like I’m mad at you.
I was like, yeah, it does. And he’s like, Okay, well, I gotta run my errands. We’ll talk about it when I get home.
But thank you for saying something. And I even in that moment, him, he was trying to smooth it over. And that still felt like, put my guard up, like flag everything, because he’s mad at me.
Because the businesses are a reflection of me. And so it’s like that constant rewiring of thoughts. And there’s times that that would have been a three day long fight between us.
Versus now. It was only three hours, you know? So exciting. It is like rewiring your brain all the time.

Resources and Practical Help for Rural Listeners

So we’re getting closer to the end of our time. So I just like kind of a wrap up, you know, you were saying like, you don’t know how to help someone.
Like it’s in a rural situation. I just want to put it out there. There are usually shelters in every community.
Even in our tiny little town of Bonners Ferry, we have a place called the Hope House that my family donates to all the time. We donate meat and crayons for kids and everything else. But we don’t even in our county, we do not have a women’s shelter.
So there were two women living in their cars just last month, and the Hope House was caring for them. So if there are women in your community, or if there’s a program like this in your community, find a way to help out. Or if you’re somebody who needs to reach out to that, your county health department or somebody probably has a contact for you.
So do that, reach out. Even if you just need counsel through it, there’s also people there that will help you get restraining orders, help you get moved out, help you file whatever paperwork you need to file. So know that that is an option for everybody and that there’s people like Amy and I out there that are, you know, Amy does counseling, but I’m there to help you find whatever you need.
If there’s, you know, I help programs where I can. But when I say people like Amy and I, we have short stories to share and we are ready to help. So Amy, do you want to tell everybody where they can find you guys? Yeah, it’s pretty simple.
You can just go to SRTServices.org and you can read all about us. And then there’s up at the top, there’s a program or resources. Something like that.
There’s a tab that drops down and it will say Savanon, Misanon, Avanon, or I think it’s sexual abuse recovery, miscarriage is still worth recovery, something like that. Click on one of the ones that you’re looking for. And then at the bottom of that page is an intake form that you just fill out and send it in.
And then our intake gal will get back to you or gentlemen, depending. They’re amazing. And they basically sit and help you find a time that you can join a group or put you on a list.
If you can’t find a time right now, put you on a list to circle back with you and get you in a group. They never just drop you. So even just getting on a list, if you’re like, I think this might be something I want to do.
I want to know more about it. Our intake gal is amazing. I feel like she’s an angel on earth, but just the things that she hears and still powers through, she’s just awesome.
It’s wonderful that once you reach out, you have somebody that’s in your corner immediately. Immediately. And then as soon as we know if you’re going to get into a group and when, she connects you with your facilitators.
So you go from her to them. So you’re never just wondering what’s happening. I mean, I can’t say we’re perfect, so balls get dropped.
But yeah, I think the process of getting in is pretty amazing too. By the time they get into a group, a lot of the times they’re like, that lady was amazing. And they know her by name and they’re like, should I call her? Well, no, you’re with me now.
So it’s really cool. And then even our gentleman does it too, he’s pretty amazing as well. So just, I think if I can ease the fear of at least getting on a list, at least starting the process, start there.
And I will say our groups are a really good entry into processing your story. That’s one of the things that we do, it’s also great, like if you’ve been in counseling and you know you have this story, but haven’t really talked about it in counseling, you can start with us, bring it back to counseling kind of thing. Or we’ve also had a lot of counselors send their people to us just for another space and environment to process.
And so it’s, I mean, anywhere you are in your healing process at the start, at the acknowledging that you even have a story part, that’s, we’re here for you. But yeah.

Final Question: “Keep Growing”

Well, I really appreciate you coming on today.
And it’s actually, I have the same question I ask everybody on the show, but it’s actually how our two booths got connected that both of our stickers said something very similar. And my catchphrase is keep growing or I’m growing. And I believe your guys did something similar.
So real men grow. I think that was okay. Sure.

So would you just like to tell everyone what keep growing means to you? Yeah, for me, I think as a human being, I’m messy. And I’ve got a lot that I bring to the table from my past. And I think for me, to keep growing means I need to continue to process that to know exactly who I am.
So I can grow into who I was created to be and do the things God created me to be and in things he created me to do. And for me right now, one of those things is to have a voice in this arena. And it didn’t come by staying home and not reaching out.
It came by getting it myself to a group like this. And so I think for me, keep growing just means continue to push forward, continue one step at a time. It’s not obviously it’s that quote, right? Not perfection.
It’s the progress or the steps that we take to move forward. So I think for me, it’s just a part of my life. Keep growing, keep working on myself, keep helping my kids grow.
If I can help, if I can figure out who I am, and what made me do what I do, and I can help my kids do the same. And I think to keep growing is just for me to always work on myself so that I can help others work on themselves. I love that.
Thank you so much for coming on today, Amy. And I’m going to link everything in the show notes. And I was just thinking about it.
I’ll try to find a National Hotline for Abuse and put that in the show notes as well. Yeah, we have that on our website. Oh, perfect.
Resources like that on our website for abuse and sexual abuse and different, different, like 911. Not 911. But yeah.
There we go. All right. Well, thank you so much.
And I wish the best of luck to you. Thank you.