Episode Transcript
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Hi Guys, this is Rachel.
I'm recover. We've got our special guest
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tammy miles, with us. She's
going to tell us a little bit about
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herself and then we're going to go
into some questions to ask her about her
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recovery journey. Hi. Well,
thanks for having me and happy New Year.
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So, yeah, my name is
tammy miles. I currently live in
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Louisville, Kentucky, and I have
been on my healing journey for a little
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over a year now. My trauma
was thirty six years ago, but it
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took me a lifetime to acknowledge it
and and start my healing process. So
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yeah, that's where we are.
Fair enough. Here's some questions we're going
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to ask you. What things have
you done for recovery of being sexually mused
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as a child? Oh, I
feel like a more accurate question would be
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what have you not done? My
husband and I joked at one point because
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he thought I was reaching a little
too far with some things, but I
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told him I was just going to
throw some things at the wall and see
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what sticks, because something's got to
help at some point. And you know,
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I feel like I'm in a really
good place right now, but when
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my journey first started with with acknowledging
what I went through. It's definitely not
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always been easy and it's not always
been smiles. So, you know,
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I think the first step was just
talking to my doctor, my general practitioner,
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and getting a referral for a good
talk therapist. Talk therapy was my
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first step. While doing that,
I was introduced to the unique foundation which
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hosts the haven retreat. And if
you're not familiar with that, the haven
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retreat is a retreat specifically for women
who are adult survivors of child sexual assault,
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and so I have since attended that
retreat. It was absolutely amazing.
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I have tried Yoga, meditation,
just general overall mindfulness as a whole.
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I have tried Reiki Healing, I
have seen a shamanic practitioner. I have
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tried to tap into spirituality, I've
done a Tarot card reading. I obviously
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the biggest thing that I've done is
just acknowledging it and, you know,
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calling out my abuser. But but
I think that I've tried a lot of
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things. Yeah, fair enough.
What has been the most helpful kind of
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a combination of things. Obviously the
haven retreat was very in depth. It
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was for solid days of, you
know, taking me out of my element
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and away from, you know,
my family and my comfort zone and putting
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me with like minded women who have
been through similar experiences, similar TRAUMAS,
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and surrounding us with very positive therapists. Coming out of that, I kind
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of miss it. It's hard to
have all of that amazingness in four days
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and then you just leave and it's
like okay, now what I feel like
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we've made some great connections and,
you know, we've all bonded, stateed
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in touch. So that's just been
wonderful. That's definitely been helpful, but
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more so than that, I think
just being mindful on a daily basis positive
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affirmations. You know, meditation has
been huge for me. I've heard good
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things about meditation and I've done some
myself. So how did your family respond?
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So that would be mixed reviews.
Some responded better than others. Some
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chose no response at all. I
guess it's too painful or difficult to comprehend.
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My abuser is a family member,
so, you know, having having
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that family divided now between and let
me be clear, I never asked anybody
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to choose sides. It was never
me or him pick one or the other.
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I just simply said my truth,
like this is what I've been through,
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this is what I know that he
did to me and and I mean
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I have to heal from that.
So that's that's where I was. I
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never asked anybody to pick sides.
Some people naturally have just decided to pick
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sides and I that that's fair.
If that's what they choose to do,
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I'm okay with that. I battled
it for a while. I thought,
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you know, maybe it would have
been better if I just kept this to
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myself and then I wouldn't I wouldn't
have lost the people that I lost.
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But you know, maybe if I
lost them, they weren't my people to
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begin with. And so just yeah, really, really mixed feelings from the
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family. I've got family members that
don't speak to me at all anymore and
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I've got other family members who have
just completely loved me harder than they ever
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have before and been there for me
and they check on me and they support
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me. So it's a little fifty
on that. Fair enough, I kind
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of get that. How did your
community respond? Shockingly better than my family.
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I've had more positive outreach from people
around me who are non family members.
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You know, I grew up,
and I mean not a small town,
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but certainly not a large city either, and so a lot of the
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people that I've known, you know
that I graduated high school with. We've
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known each other since kindergarten. I
mean it's just these we were kids who
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started school together and we finished school
together. And because of social media outlets,
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even though, you know, many
of us have moved on to other
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areas, you know, with our
lives and live in other places, we
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can all still stay in touch.
And so by me choosing to share my
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story out loud, it's inspired a
lot of people that I had no idea
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had a similar story. They've reached
out to me and said, you know,
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wow, Tammy, you know because
you shared your story. I just
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want you to know that I also
went through a very similar thing and,
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you know, I have more people
telling me their stories, which it's sad,
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but it's also validating because I know
that I'm not alone. I know
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I'm not the only person that this
has happened to. But that's also where
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it makes it very sad, because
people shouldn't have to experience this and they
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shouldn't have to carry this trauma with
them for all of their lives. But
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I've I've been blown away by the
support that I have from from people who
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I did not even know where my
allies. I didn't realize that they were
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on my side and they've just been
in the background cheering for me this whole
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time. Awesome and that's amazing.
was there any refectimization? I. Victim
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Blaming? That's a hard that's a
hard question for me because I guess I'm
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what I would consider revictimization. I
I don't feel like there has been any,
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but you know, in talking to
my therapist, there's been times that
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she's she has called it out and
said that's that's really victimization right there.
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Not really victim blaming so much is
just victim shaming. I get a lot
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of the HMM, you, we
don't talk about those things, or you
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know, Gosh, Timmy, that
was so long ago, you should just
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let it go, or why can't
you just get over that? You know
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those those are things that no victim
should ever have to hear or be told.
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We have to be able to heal
from this and if we don't acknowledge
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it, then we can't move on
to the next steps. So will we
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will constantly and always be stuck in
a victim mode. And I refuse,
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I just refuse, to live my
life as a victim. I did that
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in secret and in silence for so
long that you know I today I'm a
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survivor. I'm not a victim.
I'm a survivor and my next step is
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to be a thriver, because I
don't want to be a survivor for the
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rest of my life either. You
know, I want to thrive and and
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just and and just feel so good
in life and and and be such a
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positive person and a positive influence.
I don't always want to have to dwell
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on the negativity of what happened to
me when I was a child. Fair
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enough. That's the goal, is
to be a thriver, but I think
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for a lot of us are still
just than the survivor mode. Oh absolutely,
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and I think that we get stuck
there for a long time because we
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don't know how to move past it. It's it's a hard place to be.
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Well, and they've started using the
word survivor instead of victim, because
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that everybody's like, Oh, you're
a victim, like you're you know,
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you're living like a victim, but
we're really not worth survivors. We went
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through battle. Really something made us
a victim. It's some point we were
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victim, but we don't have to
stay in that mentality for the rest of
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our hives by any no, most
definitely not. That's not where we want
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to be. How has this impact
of your career? So my career,
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you know, my job today,
I couldn't be more thankful for they've been
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incredibly supportive in talking about the haven
retreat, you know, being four days.
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They allowed me that time away from
work, no questions asked. They
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know what I'm going through. They're
aware of my journey. When, when
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I broke my silence, I worked
for this company, and so they when
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you spend five days a week with
a certain group of people, you do
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overshare things and so you know more
about your coworkers and sometimes you do the
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people who live in your house,
and I think that definitely became true with
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my coworkers. They know my story
and they know my journey and they've been
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with me for all of it and
I just I couldn't be more thankful and
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grateful and blessed to have them.
Something that I've learned, though, is
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you know, I had I had
a previous career. I was a business
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owner. It was through a multilevel
marketing company, so it was a direct
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sales business. But you know,
I invested in it and I built I
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built a huge, huge team,
probably sixty two, hundred, seventy women
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on my team. The last year
that I was in business my team sold
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over eight hundred and FIFTYZERO dollars worth
of retail sales. And so you know
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that by no means is calling it
a successful business a far stretch. It
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definitely was. And for some reason, and I never could figure out why,
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I self sabotage that business after almost
nine years I just kind of let
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it go. I quit. I
got bored with it, I was tired
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of it. And and again,
through my therapy and through my healing,
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what I've learned is that a lot
of us in that victim or survivor mode,
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we don't feel worthy of success and
we start to self sabotage when things
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are going well. We were kind
of waiting for the other shoe to drop
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the whole time because nothing good can
happen for us, because we don't have
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good, positive lives, because horrible
things happen and so I've learned that.
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What I did not know at the
time I thought I just got bored with
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it and I was done. But
what I have since learned is I definitely
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self sabotage that business. I had
an amazing career, I had a fantastic,
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thriving business and I just completely let
it go and I couldn't explain to
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anybody why I just made it didn't
make sense to me or anybody else.
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And it does now. I get
it and I know that I'm absolutely worthy
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of success and I'm absolutely worthy of
good things and everything in my life is
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not going to turn into the dumpster. You know. Fair enough, I
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think a lot of people follow into
that, you know, self sabotaging kind
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of world. We don't know that
we're doing it, though. It is
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and you just can't. Everybody wants
to know why did you quit? Why
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did you stop doing that? I
just I wasn't having fun anymore and and
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the truth is it I probably you
know, I was still enjoying the business,
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I just didn't feel worthy of it. Now a lot of people struggle
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with selfstobotage, sitting like a lot
of things in their life. How is
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this impacted your dating life when you
were dating. I know you've been married
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for a while. So yeah,
so I'm forty three. I have essentially
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been married since I was nineteen,
just not to the same person. I
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left one marriage and kind of entered
straight into another one without a lot of
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time in between. My husband and
I, Jeff, he is he is
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my rock. We have an absolutely
amazing relationship. We have a great marriage
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and I think that it's because our
foundation is based on communication, where my
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first marriage was not. It was
based on lies and and deceit on my
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part. I won't put anything negative
on him. My first husband was a
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nice man who had a nice job
and he was a nice father, and
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I mean for for all intents and
purposes we probably had a nice life.
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But again, I didn't feel worthy
of that and I allowed that to self
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sabotage as well. I do jokingly
say that I waited until I got married
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to start dating because I I was
young and I didn't know what a good
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marriage looked like and I never had
a good example of what a healthy relationship
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look like. I never saw one. You know, all of the examples
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that were set for me were bad
and I just kind of followed suit with
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it. But then also in my
healing journey, I've learned that a lot
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of survivors, that's what we do. We tend to have very unhealthy relationships
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and that's what my first marriage was
and you know, I'm sorry. I'm
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sorry that. I'm sorry that that's
who I was at that time in my
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life and I'm sorry that I hurt
him. However, I learned. I
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learned about myself, I learned about
relationships and you know where I am today.
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I wouldn't trade a second of that. I wouldn't go back and do
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a single thing different because it's brought
me to where I am today. It's
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put Jeff and I together and there's
nobody else that I want to spend my
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forever with then then my husband.
So we just learned. We learn and
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we grow and we do better.
That's awesome that you have an amazing marriage.
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You've that's a that's a gift.
I'm very, very thankful. I'm
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thankful that he was placed in my
life at the time that he was,
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because I just couldn't imagine where I
would be right now without Jeff. How
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has this impacted your marriage? So, yeah, communication, it's definitely open
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to that up, you know,
going into our relationship, when Jeff and
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I first met, you know,
and when we were newly with its.
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I mean he's always known about my
sexual trauma, even though the world did
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not know. I was not openly
speaking about it. You know, my
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my family did not know. It
was it was a secret, but I
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think that one thing that I've learned
in my life is if you're going to
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have an intimate relationship with somebody,
they have to know these things about you
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because, I mean, there's going
to be triggers. There's going to be
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triggers and big red flags that go
off, and so he's always known and
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he's always been supportive. He never
really understood, though, why, why
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something like that would happen to me, but I would continue to try and
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keep my abuser in my life.
You know why we still had that sibling
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somewhat of a bond. We were
never close, but, you know,
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we were around each other at the
holidays or you know, I was very
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involved in his children's lives. I've
always been a very protective aunt and Jeff
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never understood why why we did things
with them as a family, knowing what
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I went through and I think that, you know, as as victims and
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survivors, we are trying to find
some sense of normalcy. I've heard the
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word trauma bond. I don't think
that I had a trauma bond with my
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abuser. I think that I just
tried to pretend like the trauma didn't exist
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so that we could be normal.
For my mom, do you think you
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were such a protective aunt because of
your abuse? Maybe? I don't know.
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I don't think. I don't think
that my abuser is a sexual Predator
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today, he is definitely no longer
in my life since, since I broke
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my silence, we've ended that that
relationship completely. So I have no contact
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with him and unfortunately, as a
result, I also have no contact with
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some of his children. That's very
hard. That's very hard. He has
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not always made the best choices,
obviously, not only what he did to
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me as a child, but then, you know, as he grew up
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through life, he continued to make
poor choices, abusing. He abused his
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first wife, and so I was
very protective over his son, who,
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you know, was a baby at
that time. I wanted to nurture and
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protect my nephew because his parents were
physically fighting all the time. You know,
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he has another child that he didn't
really have a whole lot to do
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with in her young life. It
was she was she was a product of,
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I guess, kind of a one
night stay ender, you know,
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a teenage party, whatever you want
to call it. He never really dated
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the mother and so he didn't have
a relationship with the mother. Therefore he
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didn't have a relationship with the child
and I always wanted to have a bond
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with her. So I don't I
don't know that it's necessarily related to my
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abuse. It could. Maybe it's
just related to who the person that I
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know that he is. I know
that he's not a good person. Again,
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I don't think that he's a sexual
Predator today. I think that what
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happened to me thirty six years ago
isn't. I'd like to believe that that
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that's not who he grew up to
become, but I do know that he
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never acknowledged it, he never got
help for it and he has grown up
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to have other narcissistic or sociopath behaviors
and so I definitely do tend to want
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to protect people from that. Yes, how has this affected your parenting?
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Um Hmm, I don't know that
this necessarily affected my parenting as much as
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it just did. I had a
very free schedule, so to speak,
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when I when I did own my
own business, I owned and operated.
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I had I had freedom that I
could I didn't have to set an alarm
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in the morning, I could sleep
late, and so, you know,
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a lot of that was during my
son's probably between like the ages of like
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ten and maybe like a senior year
of high school. So later in life,
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not when he was a toddler and
a baby obviously, but when he
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was old enough to kind of take
care of himself. I kind of just
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let him take care of himself.
I would sleep in, he would get
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himself up for school. Looking back
now, I realize that that was probably
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depressive behavior on my part where I
would rather just hibernate in bed than get
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up and deal with anything. But
I also had a different type of a
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schedule at that time. I worked
more in the evening or on the weekends
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and so I stayed in bed,
I slept a lot. My son is
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very independent, but now, of
course, at He's twenty years old,
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he's an amazingly independent adult. So
I think to be such a young adult
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and to be so responsible. You
know, maybe I can pat myself on
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the back a little bit. Everything
wasn't, you know, horrible upbringing,
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but I don't I don't think that
there was enough nurturing that took place when
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he was growing up. He I'm
a standoff kind of person, like I'm
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not really a touchy feeling person and
my son isn't either, and it kind
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of makes me sad because I'm like, is that my fault, like that
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I make him that way? That, I is a learned behavior like it?
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Does he not like touch because I
didn't hug him enough for I don't
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know it. I will tell you
that I just spent an amazing eleven days
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with him through the holiday is that
he came from South Carolina and stayed with
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me here in Kentucky and we had
the absolute best visit and I miss him
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so much already and he's just been
gone for two days, so I already
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can't wait to see him again.
Yeah, that's always nice to get to
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spend holidays with family, right now, especially with covid how did this impact
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our finances? HMM, you know, I don't really think that it has,
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but I definitely spend a lot of
fun that I probably shouldn't. You
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know, retail therapies fun, it
is, but it like you're you're not
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the first person to say, Hey, I use retail therapy for my my
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trauma. Definitely, definitely did that, but again, I didn't know that
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I was doing these behaviors. Are
doing these things as a result of trauma
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most of my life. Everything that
I look back on now it's like,
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Oh, I probably did that because
I'm my trauma, but I didn't know
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that I was doing that because of
my trauma at the time. So it's
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all really weird the way it starts
connecting together as you learn more about trauma
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in the brain and trauma in our
bodies and you know, just kind of
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go through the healing process. So, you know, everything that I've done
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is cost money in some way.
You know, therapy is not for I
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am fortunate that it only cost me
a minimal copey to see a therapist.
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However, I still do have to
pay. Have to have health insurance.
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You know, things that I like
to do for selfcare. I like massages.
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Those aren't free. You know,
the shamanic practitioner or the reiky sessions,
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Yoga classes. Any of those things
that I do for myself cost money.
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So what I'm trying to do right
now is just focus on more home
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based type of things that I can
do for myself here to be mindful without
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having to always go out and spend
money. You know, when I when
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I've said earlier that I was just
throwing a bunch of things at the wall
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to see what would stick, it
got to where my husband would ask how
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much did that cost? You know, because I would tell him something like,
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you know, I went to the
shamanic healer and she journeyed into the
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other realm to found pieces of fine
pieces of my soul, and he just
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kind of looked at me. I
was like how much was that? I'm
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like, can you really put a
price on my happiness? But no,
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I've created a zen den here in
my house, so I have my own
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meditation room. I've got a very
inexpensive waterfall, so I get the sounds
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of the you know, the sounds
of like the stream in the water running.
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I've got salt lamps and there,
because of the healing qualities of Himalayan
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salt lamps, I think that all
of that is wonderful. I've got an
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oil diffuser in there and incense and
just all of the things that can make
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me feel good. And I like
to listen to guided meditation and so I'll
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do that on through like Amazon music
or like a youtube video. So just
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00:25:00.829 --> 00:25:03.069
things that I can pull up and
stream for free and just quietly listen to
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and sit and meditate and it doesn't
have to cost me anything. So I'm
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learning. I'm learning. I do
still spend money, but I'm learning enough.
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How is this impact at your overall
health long term? I have CELIAC
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disease, which is an autoimmune disease
that affects the Gut. I did not
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know that CELIAC disease. Typically,
most people with CELIAC have it because somebody
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else in their family does. Nobody
else in my family that were aware of
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has CELIAC disease. I'm the only
one. I'm the only person with an
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autoimmune disease at all, and so, you know, we did a lot
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of you know why? Why?
Why does Timmy have this? And you
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00:25:45.880 --> 00:25:48.440
know why is Timmy, you know, always sick? Or why does she
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have the worst immune system? And
it turns out again, you know,
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trauma and the brain and trauma and
the body, that all of these things
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are tied together, and so it's
not uncommon for trauma to trigger CELIAC.
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Now, once you have it,
you can't get rid of it. So
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it's not like I can heal my
trauma and then my gut be completely normal
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again. I have to be gluten
free now for the rest of my life.
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There's just no other way around that. But you know, I'm gonna
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have to carry this autoimmune disease now
and there's a strong likelihood that it is
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a direct result of trauma. Yeah, that I I mean, there's a
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huge correlation to autoimmune diseases and trauma. It's especially with the GETA. Yeah,
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I know, I've got asthma and
currently diabetes due to the trauma I
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have experienced. So I feel you
I have die. I have type to
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diabetes, but that's just because I
have a poor diet. There's no one
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else to say about that. It
is just that's just poor diet control for
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me. I don't think that has
anything to do with my trauma. However,
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I do one tho percent, believe
that my autoimmune disease, my CELIAC
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disease, is directly related to trauma. But I think what we eat is
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especially for emotional eaters. Then that
is tried to our trauma. So yeah,
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it's huge. How has this impacted
your social life? So there's definitely
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been times in my life where I've
been less than social people who knew me.
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I call it my former life.
When I was when I was a
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business owner, it was like I
was always I was always in performance mode.
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So, you know, I hosted
parties for women. It was like
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an inhome party plan. Think of
like Tupperware Mary K type of work.
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Right, you know you're hosting parties, and so I was always in performance
341
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mode. I felt like any time
I was in a group environment, I
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like had to be selling all the
time, and so when I was detached
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from those situations, all I wanted
to do was just lay in bed quietly
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and not really have to do anything. I don't want to talk to anybody,
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I want to go anywhere. I
didn't want to. I want to
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put on makeup, like please,
just leave me alone and let me lay
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down because I need to rest.
I need to rest before it's time to
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perform again. So a lot of
people thought that I was an extrovert because
349
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I was very just, energetic and
and always having a good time, but
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man, I was performing. That
was a performance, because when I shut
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it off, I shut it all
off and I was really an introvert.
352
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I don't have much of a social
life outside of probably social media, and
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even that I have scaled back and
removed, unfriended, blocked, just taken
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myself out of so many circles that
I just don't really fit in anymore.
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So you know even that it's not
like I'm a social media influencer by any
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means. I went from having,
you know, maxed out on facebook over
357
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fivezero friends. That's like the limit. So I used to have to tell
358
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people don't send me a friend's request. I can't accept anymore. Just follow
359
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me. You have to follow me
on facebook. I probably have less than
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three hundred facebook friends now, which
is because I've scaled that back. So
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I'm not trying to be a social
media influence Er. I'm I don't care
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if I'm the most popular person I
have. I have a small circle of
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amazing friends and I don't need a
large group of people who don't really care
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what's going on in my life.
You know what I mean. I mean
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I think statistically speaking, you can
only recognize about five hundred people and like
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and have relationships with more than a
hundred people. I mean, that's that's
367
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really that sounds fair. You know, realistically, you know, after your
368
00:30:03.819 --> 00:30:12.529
database is bull I mean, there's
no room left. But no, how
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is this affected your long term mental
health? We're getting there. It's still
370
00:30:22.400 --> 00:30:30.160
it's a beautiful work in progress.
I see two victims out there. What
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00:30:30.279 --> 00:30:37.190
advice would you want to give them? Find Your Voice, let people know.
372
00:30:37.869 --> 00:30:41.910
It's important for you to know that
you're not alone. There's no reason
373
00:30:41.950 --> 00:30:48.829
to keep this a secret. If
you haven't found your voice yet, reach
374
00:30:48.910 --> 00:30:53.299
out to somebody. You don't have
to use a public platform and and announce
375
00:30:53.339 --> 00:30:56.140
it to the world like I did. I mean, I'll shout it from
376
00:30:56.140 --> 00:31:00.059
a mountain top. I don't care
anymore, because that's who I am.
377
00:31:00.140 --> 00:31:03.019
If that's not who you are,
that's okay, but find somebody and tell
378
00:31:03.140 --> 00:31:07.970
somebody, because you can't keep this
you have to you have to acknowledge it,
379
00:31:07.130 --> 00:31:10.410
you have to own it and then
you can heal from it. And
380
00:31:10.529 --> 00:31:15.569
we can't start healing until until you
acknowledge it. So just reach out to
381
00:31:15.690 --> 00:31:19.559
somebody. Reach out to somebody.
There's there's free resources out there, y'all.
382
00:31:19.640 --> 00:31:25.640
The haven retreat through the unique foundation
is one hundred percent free. If
383
00:31:25.680 --> 00:31:30.440
you are a female over the age
of eighteen and you were sexually assaulted prior
384
00:31:30.519 --> 00:31:34.269
to the age of eighteen, this
program is for you and it's a really
385
00:31:34.309 --> 00:31:40.990
good program I went and it's amazing, absolute life change, life changing.
386
00:31:41.029 --> 00:31:49.500
How is this impact in your faith? Sure? Not sure. I've always
387
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struggled with faith. I wasn't raised
in a church, you know. I,
388
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like I said, I I throw
things at the wall to see what
389
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would Dick and you know some of
that was was, you know, talking
390
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to God. I don't know.
I don't know where I stand with that
391
00:32:13.970 --> 00:32:22.119
yet and I think that that's okay. I I'm trying, I'm open to
392
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learning, I'm receptive to learning,
but I for me, I don't know
393
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that my faith is going to fall
into a religious belief right now. My
394
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faith is definitely more just spiritual and
earth grounded, scientific even. Maybe Fair
395
00:32:45.980 --> 00:32:51.460
enough. I think that's it.
Thanks for hat coming on our show,
396
00:32:51.539 --> 00:32:57.660
Tammy, and telling us a little
bit about yourself and sharing your journey of
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00:32:57.740 --> 00:33:04.049
recovery and helping others out as they
learned to find their voice. Thank you,
398
00:33:04.329 --> 00:33:06.170
well, thank you so much for
having me. I think it's a
399
00:33:06.170 --> 00:33:08.289
beautiful thing what you do. Thank
you all right, guys, thanks for
400
00:33:08.410 --> 00:33:14.000
listening. We've got a next episode's
coming out, hopefully Thursday of next week.
401
00:33:14.720 --> 00:33:20.200
So keep listening and follow us on
Facebook, twitter or Linkedin, and
402
00:33:20.400 --> 00:33:24.720
you can always come to our website
at ww w Rachel and RECOVERYCOM. Thanks
403
00:33:24.799 --> 00:33:25.319
for listening.
