From Survival to Living: Picking Up The Pieces After Trauma

What happens after the storm? In this powerful episode, I share the raw and real process of rebuilding life after an abusive relationship. From navigating the emotional wreckage to rediscovering your identity, this is about moving beyond survival and learning to truly live again.  Shannon shares her deeply personal journey of healing after escaping an abusive relationship. She reflects on the challenges of reclaiming her identity, the importance of support systems, and the ongoing nature of healing. Through her experiences, she emphasizes the significance of small victories and the complexities of navigating life post-abuse, including difficult decisions and the impact of family dynamics. Shannon's story is one of resilience, transformation, and the power of community in the face of trauma. 

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “How do I start over when everything feels broken?”—this episode is for you.

Join me as we talk about healing, resilience, self-love, and the courage it takes to create a future that feels safe and hopeful.

#traumarecovery #healingjourney #lifeafterabuse #survivorstories #mentalhealthmatters #selflove #empowerment #podcastlife #personalgrowth #resilience #thrivingnotsurviving #domesticviolenceawareness #emotionalhealing #newepisode #tunein #podcast #abortion 

Transcript

Welcome to Travel Time Stories with Shannon. I'm Shannon, your host from Texas, and I want to thank you for being here with me today. If you're new here, this is the podcast where I share real stories. The good. The messy and everything in between, real journeys and real healing. Some weeks I'll bring you along on my travel adventures, the shenanigans and lessons I've learned along the way.

And other weeks I'll dive into my personal life story, adoption, trauma, healing, and transformation. Most weeks. I share a little of both because for me, travel and life are deeply connected. Both shape us, both change us, and both leave us with memories that last a lifetime. This week I will continue my story and talk about picking up the pieces after an abusive relationship.

Surviving David didn't mean the story was over. If anything, it was the beginning of an entirely new chapter one where I had to figure out who I was without him, without the fear, and without the constant need to scan every room for danger. When you live in survival mode for so long, the silence afterwards feels strange.

Unsettling even. But in that silence, I started to hear myself again. At first, fear didn't just vanish because I left him. I still jumped at loud noises still caught my breath. When I saw someone who looked like him, still dreamed about the nights when I thought I wouldn't make it out alive. But I learned that fear loses its power when you move away.

Each time I left the house without looking over my shoulder, each time I spoke to someone without second guessing my words, I was reclaiming a piece of myself it was slow, but it was steady. I didn't do it alone. There were people, some friends, some family who stood by me when I was at my lowest. They didn't rush me to get over it.

They didn't tell me what I should feel. They just showed up, listened, and reminded me that I mattered. There's a special kind of healing that happens when someone looks you in the eyes and sees the person you were before the pain. They hold that vision for you until you're ready to see it for yourself.

Even when my faith in people was shaky, my faith in God remained. I didn't suddenly become a perfect church goer or bury myself in scripture, but I prayed sometimes in whispers and sometimes in sobs. I asked for strength, for clarity, for the ability to let go, and piece by piece those prayers were answered.

Not in big sweeping miracles, but in small, quiet mercies. Enough light to make it through the next day. Enough courage to take the next step when abuse strips away your identity. The work of rebuilding isn't about becoming someone new, it's about finding the person you were meant to be all along. I started to write again.

I sang again. I even allowed myself to dream again. The same tools that had carried me through childhood words. Music and faith were there for me once more, like old friends, I had forgotten how much I needed. Some victories were small. Laughing without feeling guilty, sleeping through the night without nightmares, walking into a room and realizing I wasn't looking for exits anymore, but small victories add up.

And one day I realized something incredible. I wasn't just surviving anymore, I was living. The pieces of me that David had tried to shatter were still mine. Maybe they fit together differently now, but the picture they formed was stronger, wiser, and far more beautiful than before. Leaving David was the start of an entirely new stretch of road one that was anything but smooth.

People sometimes imagine that after escaping an abusive relationship, you step into the sunlight and never look back. The truth is far more complicated. You can leave the person, but the patterns, the scars, and the triggers often follow you. And if you don't address them, they have a way of finding new ways to play out in your life.

In the months after David, I noticed how much he still lived in my head. His voice wasn't there, but the damage was. I second guessed my decisions. I questioned my worth. I carried this invisible backpack, filled with the things he had put there. Doubt, fear, and shame. Living at home again after having been on my own with David was so terribly hard.

Any time in life that you go from living on your own to back living under your parents' roof is difficult. They expect you to be like you were before, but life has changed you so you can no longer be the child you were when you left. I was going through things I couldn't and wouldn't verbalize to them.

I had been through years of abuse being kicked out of my parents' home. A pregnancy and a miscarriage, leaving school, living as a wife, cooking, cleaning, et cetera. Currently pregnant for a second time, almost dying and escaping. The only world I had known, which was isolation and fear the first few days and weeks.

The pull to return to. David was so strong and I was trying to fight it with everything I had, but some days I would be so weak that I would drive to his house, park outside, hidden so I could see him and just cry in my car. It's like an addiction. When you stop the thing you're addicted to, you go through withdrawals and it's a hard battle to fight.

But eventually, if you stay away from it, learn to believe in yourself again and have a great support system. You can overcome it. Being pregnant with David's child was something I knew that I couldn't do. I had a long road ahead of me to heal myself, and I was not ready to be a parent, especially a single teenage mom.

I also did not want to be tied to David for the rest of my life. I needed a clean break with no ties. Giving the child up for adoption was not an option because I knew if I carried that baby for nine months and gave birth, there was no way I could give it up. Plus, I knew David would never sign away his rights to the baby and I couldn't have him raise my child.

I made the decision to terminate my pregnancy. It was not an easy decision. And yes, I did think it through and talked about it with several trusted people in my life. I do not regret my decision, and I never have, even after having children. To anyone who thinks having an abortion is easy and doesn't affect the person you are dead wrong.

As someone who has went through it, I can tell you with certainty that it does affect you on all levels, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I had my best friend, Sarah, with me in the room during the process, and it affected her as well. But I am grateful that she was there with me, and I am also grateful that at that time.

Women still had the choice.

I found it too difficult to live with my parents, so I moved in with my friend Rebecca. Rebecca's family was very supportive and her mom didn't have preconceived ideals about me or who I should be. She allowed me the space to figure things out. I enjoyed my time living with them and learned so much from Rebecca's mom.

Sadly, when I left them and moved back to Texas, I lost touch with them. Eventually, new people came into my life. Some were blessings. Others were lessons. Sometimes the people who enter after trauma don't have to be abusive to be damaging. All it takes is someone who knows how to step into the cracks that already exist and widen them.

When I was at my weakest standing on the edge of going back to David, a man named Jerry Lee stepped into my life. I knew him from high school. He had been a few grades ahead of me, and I always thought he was good looking. As you can tell folks, my type is older guys. Jerry Lee saw something in me I had stopped seeing in myself.

He reminded me that I had value and worth. He didn't try to own me or control me. He nurtured me, supported me, and gave me the strength to believe that my life could be different. One night when we were out, David and his cousin James, showed up. I literally froze and started to have a panic attack. Jerry Lee pulled me close and got me to slow my breathing.

Then he walked over to David and James and told him to leave, and that if he ever showed up anywhere near me again, it would be the last thing he ever did. They left shortly after that and didn't come back.

I call him my savior. He was a true angel, and when he passed away, the world lost an amazing person. I am truly blessed to have known him and shared time with him. I thought for a while we might be meant for each other, but he told me his role was never to stay forever, only to help me through the first phase of my healing.

I know now that God sent him to me for a reason and for a short season he knew this too and that's why he told me his role was not to stay. He encouraged me to move back to Houston to reclaim my life and follow my dreams. And I did move back, but instead of walking forward into healing, I found myself pushed back down at every turn by my family, by the world, and by my own exhaustion.

Life after David wasn't a straight climb upward, it was a winding path with detours I didn't see coming. Moving back to Houston was a major challenge that threw me into more turmoil instead of helping, I went from one frying pan into another.

So when I moved back to Houston, it was the summer of 1992. Had I stayed in school, I would have been graduated at that point. So moving back to Houston, the obstacles I faced were reconnecting to my family here in Houston, that I hadn't had contact with. Since I had been with David, because I had been cut off from them.

So I faced that challenge and I, in my mind, thought, moving back to Houston, I would reconnect to all of my old friends that I had grown up with when I lived here before. But what I didn't realize was that it wouldn't happen. Because we were all so different now. We had all gone different paths, and we were all in different places in our lives, who we were back then was not who we were now.

So there was no reconnection with old friends, and that really hurt me a lot and was a hard pill for me to swallow. I tried to reconnect with certain ones, but it just didn't happen,

and reconnecting with the family was another challenge in itself. Again, they had no clue what I had been through. Because none of them had went through anything like what I had been through, so they couldn't understand, and we had been disconnected for so long. I really didn't know how to talk to them or reconnect with them again.

So that presented a whole new challenge.

When I first moved back to Houston, I had a choice to either move in with my sister Jill, or to move in with my sister Dawna. My sister Jill had her own family. She was married and at that point had two children of her own.

My sister Dawna was married but had no children, so I.  thought it would be better for me to move in and live with Dawna. She and I had always had a good relationship, more of a friend relationship versus a sister or mother daughter relationship. My relationship with Jill, I had always been super close to her, but our relationship was more of a mother-daughter relationship versus a sister or a friend.

So I felt like living with Dawna where I was at that point in my life, would be better for me. So I moved in with Dawna. Here's the problem with that. My sister Dawna, I love her. So much and miss her each and every day. But she struggled with drug addiction and I saw this my whole life growing up. I watched what it did to my mother to see her going through this.

My mother would spend days. Weeks, months combing through the obituaries in the newspaper when my sister Dawna was gone off on one of her drug benders and we didn't know where she was. Mom would cry countlessly. She would blame herself for the drug addiction, even though it had nothing to do with her.

She was not to blame at all. My mother did everything she could for Dawna. She paid for rehab, she paid for therapy. She took her to the clinics to get, methadone, which is what they use for drug addicts, who the drug of choice is heroin. And that's what my sister's drug of choice was. When my sister would go missing, my mom would search for her.

My sister Jill and her husband would go out and try to find her. My mom would give her a place to live when she didn't have anywhere else to live. I mean, at one point in my life, our house got shot up by. A drug dealer that my sister owed money to. And thank God we were blessed and lucky that nobody was in the area where the bullets happened.

So no one was hurt and my sister was not even there at the time. She was off on one of her benders. But anyway, I moved in with her, because she had said that she was clean and sober. And I believed her. So I moved in with her and her husband. And it turns out that was not a good situation for me because she was not clean and sober.

That was what she was projecting to everyone else in the family. But that was actually not the reality of the situation and I found that out firsthand living there. One thing I will say the whole time growing up. Knowing that my sister was a drug addict and seeing that firsthand, like when she would come back from one of her benders and would just be skin and bones and just look absolutely horrid, like death.

That was so scary as a child to see. But,

During none of that time did I ever see my sister actually use drugs. Okay. We knew she was obviously, but I never saw her do drugs. She never did that in front of me, so that was one of the blessings that I had never seen that firsthand. However, in living with her, and here I am trying to process through my own traumas and I'm living with her and her husband.

And she was projecting to everyone else in the family that she was clean and sober. She was on her methadone. I would drive her to the clinics, to get her methadone when she needed it. And yeah, it was all a ruse.

And this was the first time that my sister actually took me with her to score drugs. I was so scared and petrified, like I didn't know what to do. We were supposed to be going to the grocery store to go grocery shopping, and instead we drove to this rundown raggedy house and my sister told me to wait in the car that she was going to meet a friend, quote unquote, and she would be back in a minute and to not get out of the car.

And of course I was so scared because we were in a not so great neighborhood, in a suburb of Houston, and I had no clue. I'd never been in that area, but I knew it wasn't good, and I could tell by the house that we were at what it was, and that she wasn't just meeting a friend. And I didn't know what to do and really couldn't do anything.

Like I was with her in her car, what could I do again, pre-cell phone days. And so I sat there petrified and she eventually came out. I could tell that she was messed up when she came out we did finally go to the grocery store, bought the groceries that we needed, and then when we got back to the car in the parking lot,

she told me that she needed to do something and she wanted me to turn my head and look away. She didn't want me to look at her  and I couldn't understand at first why, and then it dawned on me.  She pulled out the needles and the drugs, and as I sat there in the car, I did turn my head away 'cause I didn't wanna see it and I knew what was happening, so I didn't need to see it.

She actually shot up in the car in front of me

and I couldn't believe it. I was totally devastated and not just devastated. I was petrified that, oh my God, I am in the car with my sister with illegal drugs and she has just shot up in front of me and visions of being arrested and going to prison and like. I just flooded my mind and I was scared beyond belief, because anybody who knows me knows one of my worst fears other than being trapped in an, elevator is to go to jail. Like I would literally die if I ever got arrested. I am that person that doesn't do those types of things. I. I just don't, 'cause that's my greatest fear. So, and then I'm like, what do I do? Because right after she's shot up, then she's out

and she's in the driver's seat

and we're in a grocery store parking lot.

And there's drugs laying there on the console of the car.

Once I got out of my head for a minute and snapped back to reality, I'm like, oh my God, I have to, we have to get out of here. I have to get us back to the house. So I literally bagged up the drugs, the needles, everything. And then I had to get out of the, out of my side of the car, go to her side of the car, get her out, and I put her in the backseat.

Laid her down in the backseat and then I got into the driver's seat and drove us home.

And once I got us home, by then she had started coming to, we unloaded the car with the groceries, put everything away, and. I'm still trying to process that this just happened,

and so it was like a couple days later. I had a talk with her and I cried and told her, you know, that I couldn't believe that she had done that in front of me in the car and that it was not okay and that I couldn't deal with that and that if she was gonna continue using, I was gonna have to move out.

She convinced me that, it was just a slip up and it wasn't gonna happen again. I didn't have anything to worry about. You know, promises, promises, promises. God addicts are so good at that, aren't they? I mean, that's all they do is promises and they make you believe it and you love them so much that you want to believe it and you pray that this time is different, but.

Unfortunately, it's usually not, and in my case, that was exactly, it was not. So the last thing that happened while living with her that finally forced me to get out of that situation was,

because she had used money. To buy drugs. She didn't have money to pay the bills and the bills needed to be paid. And I was living there, but at this point I didn't have a job and I didn't have my, social security income coming in anymore, that I was getting from my dad being retired as his dependent, I got a monthly social security check, but I hadn't had that switched over.

And also because I had quit school, I didn't have a way to prove that I was still in school and you only get those benefits if you're still in school. And I wasn't. So I didn't have that income yet, and I hadn't gotten a job yet since I moved here because again, I was still trying to deal with all my trauma and I wasn't mentally prepared for a job yet.

So I had some jewelry. I had a beautiful and absolutely gorgeous sapphire diamond ring that my sister Jill and her husband had custom made for me, a few years back. At that point, and it was my most prized possession. I absolutely loved it. I had that and I also had my senior class ring that my mom had got for me.

Obviously you order those in your junior year and I was still in school at that point and planning to graduate, however, that didn't work out. But my mom had gotten me a beautiful senior class ring. It was very fancy, had diamonds and some other, gemstones in it. So I had those two pieces of jewelry, and so my sister Dawna convinced me that we needed to pawn those rings to get the money to pay the bills, and promised me that, we would get 'em back.

We just had to, get the money, pay the bills, and then the. The next month, which you have so much time to, when you pawn something to pay back the money and retrieve the items and then if you don't by that date, then they get to keep the items and they resell 'em. So, you know, she promised me, no, no worries.

We'd have the money and I'd be able to get my rings back. Well. It was like a few days before that due date, and we still didn't have the money and I was gonna lose my jewelry, so I went to my sister Jill and told her everything. Told her about the jewelry, told her about the drugs and Dawna shooting up in front of me in the car with the drugs.

So my sister Jill took me to the pawn shop and paid the money to get my jewelry back and told me, do not ever under any circumstances, ever pawn this jewelry again. Then we went to Dawna's house and I got my stuff and I moved in with Jill and her family at that point.

that was an experience moving in with Jill and her family, which I absolutely loved Jill, her husband, Kenny and their two boys. I love those boys like they were my own children, even though I wasn't much older than them. But yeah, I love them so much and it really hurts that we lost connection

and that I wasn't there.

When she passed away and I wasn't there to see her kids continue to grow and meet their families and be a part of that.

When I moved in with them, or shortly after I moved in with them, I decided that I needed to get, my degree, because I had dropped outta school. I only had one year left and I wanted to get my diploma. I wanted to graduate so I could move on with my life. And so Jill. Worked tirelessly to help me figure that out.

We went and talked to the school and we had two options according to the school counselor at the time. One was that I could go back to school, sign back up, go back to school, and finish my one year, that I had left and graduate from, C E King High School here. Or I could attend night school and finish my credits that way and still get my diploma.

 So I figured it would be easier for me to attend night school, which was mostly older. It was older people. And, of course there were some my age as well that had dropped out and were going to get their degree or whatever, but I figured it would be less intense at night school than going back to actual high school and the daily day in and day out of high school.

As a new student, as a senior, not knowing anyone, I mean at this point I had no friends. I had no one but my family. It was very sad. A very, very sad time to not have friends, nobody to hang out with, talk to. All I had was family.

But anyway, I figured night school was the way to go. Night school happened to be in Pasadena, Texas, so my sister took me. We got signed up. I went the very first night for night school and decided right then and there, this was not for me. I could not do this.

Yeah, it just, the environment was not good for me and I just knew I couldn't do it. I let them know and withdrew. So we went back to the high school counselor and I got enrolled for high school to start that fall, the fall of 92, to finish my senior year at C E King High School.

Let me just say, going back to high school, after being out and after all of the trauma that I had went through and was still trying to work through that trauma, and then to start high school as a senior. When everyone else had already been together for all those years and you're a brand new outside student, coming in was the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life,

but I did it

While I was living with my sister, Jill. After I got enrolled back in school, she helped me to get my, benefits, back started. And so I had a monthly income, to help me out until I got a job. And, her stepdaughter. Brandy actually ended up moving in with us as well, and Brandy and I shared a room together at Jill's house and Brandy and I both paid rent every month to live with my sister.

We paid rent and we helped with chores. Brandy had a job. She was already out of school. She had a job and she helped me to get a job as well. And so I was going to school and working and living with my sister Jill. And I did have, now my finances were starting to get better. I was starting to have some money, living in Jill's house.

We had rules and regulations that we had to follow. So that was also an adjustment for me, but I adjusted well and didn't have any issues with it at all. But I was still processing and going through my trauma, so I was having spells of anger and depression  then I would have happy times and, just all the things, normal things that happen when you're processing trauma.

I had not been to therapy at this point. But my sister Jill, decided that because of my ups and downs and mood swings as she called them, that I was bipolar. so she took me to the doctor, not a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, not a therapist. She took me to our regular family physician. And when he asked what was going on, she told him all about my mood swings.

She did not give him any history on me, like what I had been through the trauma, anything like that. Just only told him about my mood swings and that she suspected that I had bipolar and he agreed with her. That based on those mood swings that, yep, that meant I had bipolar, and so he put me on medication without a proper diagnosis

and I didn't know at that time that I had a voice and could stand up for myself and say no, and advocate for myself. I had no clue. I thought I was still a child and that whatever she said, as the parent went and I had no say in the issue. So yeah, they put me on lithium and I did, as I was told, I took the medication and just thought, okay, I'm bipolar.

That's what's wrong with me, and was taking this medication.

Let me just tell you,

did it improve my mood swings? Well, yes, because the lithium actually made me a zombie. I was literally a walking zombie when I took the medication. I could not think for myself. I was totally numb. I had no feelings. And yeah, my mood evened out because it never changed because I had no feelings or anything anymore and couldn't think for myself anymore.

I just did whatever anybody told me to do,

and it was absolutely horrible. I hated it. I hated every minute of it.

And then because, they thought I was bipolar and I'm now on this medication that I really didn't need because I'm actually not bipolar. My sister took me to see a therapist because, you need therapy when you're bipolar. Actually I needed therapy for my trauma. But I, regardless how I got there, my sister takes me to therapy and yeah, here I go into therapy.

Never been to therapy in my life. This was my first experience. I walk into the therapist office and it's an older man, older, white. And I sit down with him and so he starts asking me, you know, the normal questions, like, what's going on? Why are you here? What do you wanna get out of therapy? Yada, yada, yada.

And so, yeah, I started telling him what happened to me, my experience with David, what I had been through, and here I am. A vulnerable

17-year-old girl talking to this man about the trauma that I had experienced and opening up to him crying. I mean, I was being totally vulnerable with him and probably because of the lithium. But anyway, I was not reserved at all. Like it just all came out. And when I got done, this man looks at me and tells me a teenage girl.

Well, you asked for that. You wanted it or you wouldn't have stayed.

Folks, let me tell you. I. Like the wind was knocked outta me when this guy said this to me, and I immediately was filled with rage and anger like I had never felt in my life. Like I really wanted to hurt this guy for saying that to me. Needless to say, I got up and left and let my sister know that I was never, ever going back to therapy in my life, ever.

And so I didn't.

I continued on and did what I needed to do and put one foot in front of the other and moved on with my life.

But let me tell you, these weren't just obstacles. They were reminders that the work of healing is ongoing. You don't arrive at healed one day. You keep showing up for yourself even when you feel like you're back at the start, despite the setbacks, there were moments when I realized I was stronger than before.

I noticed it in small ways, how I stood up for myself in conversations, how I walked away from situations that didn't feel right, how I could spot certain patterns before they trapped me again. I graduated high school and my parents got to see me walk across the stage and get my diploma. This made me so proud for the first time in a long while.

I allowed myself to envision a positive future for myself.

 Thanks for joining me today on travel Time stories. Remember to subscribe to our channel so you don't miss out on future episodes. Give us a thumbs up or a like leave a review. It really helps us out and share this episode with someone you feel needs to hear it. If you would like to be a guest on the show, email us at lamkin travel@gmail.com.

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