Girl Hidden

So let's dive right in because you have such an inspiring story that I want to give you as much time as possible for you to share. So could you let us know a little bit about who you are and maybe give us a synopsis of it?

I started writing my book 25 years ago. I Grew up with a narcissistic mother and a sexually abusive stepfather. I am the oldest of eight children, and I have been kidnapped twice. I was in hiding for two years and experienced an inordinate amount of trauma. And then when I ran away from home at 19, I promptly jumped out of the frying pan directly into the fire and joined an inner city commune in Chicago where I met and married a much, much older man.

I was already groomed by my stepfather to be in the position of taking on the needs of an older man. And so he took me in, groomed me even more, and I didn't leave there until I was well into my thirties. So in my thirties, I started deconstructing Christianity. I started understanding some of the trauma and abuses that I had experienced.

And I started going to therapy, Good Call.

Totally recommend.

I've been living in the Seattle area for up to 15 years, and I have a wonderful husband. I have four babies from him, not mine, he has four kids. And then together we have four grandchildren. And they are the absolute light of my life.

The original reason for me writing this book is that I needed to understand what happened to me and sort of get the timeline right. Because I had a narcissistic mother, she was really good at reinventing a version of history in my mind, she'd like to rewrite my story for me to make herself the hero and it wasn't until I was well into my 30s and started therapy that I started unpacking that and having grandchildren, having little people around really triggers some memories.

And all of a sudden you're like, oh no, that happened! And you have to unpack that at the same time that you're gently parenting small people. It was a huge challenge. So to talk more about the book, I wrote it from The third-person perspective instead of a first-person perspective for two reasons.

One, I prefer reading books that are in the third person rather than in the first person. Also, it helped me sort of separate myself from the actual trauma that happened and to be able to look at it from an adult perspective. So even though, you know seven-year-old Jesse is still experiencing and traumatized by the abuse that I experienced.

Grownup Jesse has the opportunity to parent herself, to remind her that she is safe now, to remind her that she is cared for. And that's been just an incredible part of my healing journey.

When you are confronted head-on with the events of your childhood, when you are in the role of mama or grandma, it's a lot. So was the first time I was kidnapped.

Just to back up a little bit, I was born in Rota, Spain. My mother was in the Navy, a big Navy family. And she wanted an excuse to get out of the Navy. She'd been in the Navy for about a year.

I decided that she wanted an excuse to get out of the Navy and became pregnant. I would have been her seventh abortion. So between 13 and 19, she had six pregnancies that she terminated. I would have been the seventh. I mean, I say that to say my mother has been through some trauma on her own.

When she found out she was pregnant, she decided, Oh, hey, this is a great opportunity for me to get out of the Navy, contacted a lawyer, and started working with adoptive parents. They were in love with the idea of having a baby. They had decorated their nursery three weeks before I was born. She was informed by her sergeant or whatever, some branch that if she did not keep the baby she would have to come back to the military after she healed from delivery.

Three weeks before I was born, she told the adoptive parents, “no, I'm sorry, I'm keeping the baby.’ So she had me, and then spent 90 days. I have the letters, my grandmother saved everything, and so I have letters from her talking to her mother about how I was a selfish B word who just thought that she was allowed to eat whenever she thought she was allowed to, and not on Mama's schedule.

I also have notes from the doctors, where they specifically said if your daughter doesn't start gaining weight, we're taking her from you and Mama didn't want to stay in the military. So she started feeding me. She came home to Vashon Island, which is out in Washington state, a little tiny Island in the Puget Sound, to live with her parents. She spent the next years basically leaving me with her parents so she could go out partying. When my grandmother would say things like, this is your daughter, you need to be taking care of her, mama would pick me up, take me to the parties, and then just leave me on the floor somewhere with whoever there was. No caretaking that happened, no maternal instinct with this woman.

When I was two, my mother decided she had found the man of her dreams, got married and moved to Canada. She took me with her, lasted about six months, there were lots of trauma there. When she came home, again, she was pregnant. This would have been her eighth pregnancy, which she also terminated in the backseat of a car where I saw the whole thing.

Another Big trauma there. Oh my God! By the time I was four, I was having, like, I understood death in a real way. And I would see butterfly wings on the ground and have a full-fledged funeral for them. I understood death in an exceptional way. Not to brag, but I was a really smart kid.

My IQ was 145 when I was four years old. I was very smart but the problem is when you're that smart, you can understand things like death, but you don't actually have the brain capacity to work through what that looks like. And so it was just continued trauma for me. Mama left, and went to North Carolina to find herself.

From what I understand, she became a street walker. She was a sex worker for a little while and finally found herself adopted by a sweet couple, who took her in and invited her into a cult. So she joined this cult, met my stepfather, got divorced from her previous husband. She got divorced from her previous husband the same day that she married Robert, like immediately.

Mama cannot go without a man. It's not a thing. So they got married, moved into a tiny little house and started popping out babies. They had two boys and at this point I was five. I was in therapy. I also was in special classes because I was so smart and my grandmother had taken on full custody of me. At one point I lived with my auntie.

That's like a whole nother story. But basically when I was two, the family, the extended family got together, put me in the middle of the room and said, Who's going to take her? Not traumatic at all. No abandonment issues there. It's fine. So when I was five, she contacted grandma and said, hey, I've got my life together, I'm going to this church, I've got two babies now I'm married, I'm stable, would you be willing to give me my daughter back? And grandma who knew her kid said, no, this is not a good idea. So she contacted my grandfather and said, daddy, please, can I have my baby back? And grandpa, who had just retired from the Navy and was very much not interested in having a small person, especially a high-needs, emotionally traumatized small person in his house said yeah, you can have her back.

We'll put it on a test run for three months. And so my grandmother flew me to North Carolina, introduced me to my mother, who I had very few memories of, and introduced me to my stepfather and my two little brothers. Got back on a plane and left, and I was left alone with these people.

First time I'd ever met them. Immediately after me getting into the house, I became the helpmate. I did dishes, took care of the pets, took care of my little brothers and changed diapers. I was five.

My stepfather immediately began abusing me. Essentially, my parents would go into my brother's room and sing them worship songs and pray with them and then they would come into my room and sing worship songs and pray with me. Then Mama would leave Papa in my room and go back to her room. So she basically donated me to him.

At that point, she stopped talking to her mother. No letters were getting to me, mama would rip them up, put them in an envelope and mail them back to her. She turned off her phone so Grandma couldn't talk to me. And I was trapped in that house for 18 months.18 months, my grandmother had full legal custody of me.

So she contacted Mama through a friend and said, ‘I will be down there on this date. If I don't have access to Jesse, I'm going to court, you will be arrested. This is not a good scene for you.’

And so grandma came down to visit me. Now, at this point, I had been very well trained that if I told Grandma what was going on with Papa, the home would be broken.

Papa would go to jail and it would be my fault. So I didn't say a word for the first five days that Grandma was there. Mama took great care to make sure that I was never alone with Grandma. And finally, my grandmother, who knew her daughter, said I'm taking Jessie out to lunch without you. Don't fight me on this.

So grandma took me out to lunch.

We finished lunch, sat in her car and she said, okay kid, what's going on?

Nothing.

What's going on? There's something going on and I need you to talk to me.

And I told her, I told her everything.

Now, here's the problem. My mother is five foot 10 and violent. My stepfather is six foot two and a staff sergeant in the Marine Corps. Also, my grandmother is five foot nothing and weighs a hundred pounds dripping wet. If this got out of hand, grandma was going to get hurt. So we made a plan. Grandma was going to take me to school before she went to the airport. She was paying for a private Christian school to make sure that I continued to be educated.

Of course, mama was like, Jesse doesn't need to go to school. She's five. She doesn't need to go to school, she's six. I don't know what the problem is, but grandma paid for this school and that was part of the agreement with me coming down there as I would continue to be educated.

So grandma said goodbye to everybody.

We said goodbye to everybody, we got in the car and went to the school, grandma sat down with the teacher and the principal, explained the situation, showed the documentation that she had little custody of me. We got in the car, went to the airport, got on a plane and left, losing both of my brothers in the process.

Nine months later, it's Christmas time and I am listening to Bing Crosby. Bing Crosby's Christmas album rocks and I had these big old navy headset that grandpa had like they were so big they covered my head. But if I had, if I had the headset on grandpa could still listen to the football game, right?

So I had my play clothes on, I was all dressed up as a princess, no shoes. I'm dancing around the carpet and every day. At about six o'clock, so after dinnertime, grandma and grandpa, who at that point lived in Kent, Washington, they were in a seniors trailer park and they would take a walk just down, down the lane to the mailboxes.

They could see the trailer and it gave them like a whole five minutes without a little person up their ass. So, my mother, who was the North Carolina director of an organization called WEBA at that point stands for Women Exploited by Abortion. They were the anarchists, I suppose, of the pro-life movement.

Like, if you go back and you look at places that were burned, abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood, places that were actually lit on fire or bombed I've toured those. when I was little. My mother was the North Carolina director of WEBA. She met a lady who was the national director of WEBA Mary Sue.

Told her this whole wives tale of my mother took my daughter from me and she's abusing her and she's not safe there and it's my baby and da da da da. Completely excluding all of the abuse that she had heaped on me at that point. So Mary Sue agreed to fly out to Washington State to kidnap me. They followed me for three days, followed me to my school on the school bus watched my grandparents take a walk every evening, and waited for them to take their walk on the final day that I was there.

I'm there by myself with my headset on, and there's a knock on the door. I answer the door, and at this point, I'm seven, and I answer the door, and there's a lady there that I don't know. And she goes, come with me quickly, your mommy's in the car. 

And I'm like, stranger-danger. And I said, no ma'am, I don't go with strangers.

And she goes, You're a very good girl. And then she left and I shut the door and I was like, I did the thing. Wait a minute. There was a stranger on my front porch. I better call my aunties. cause I had no idea how far away my grandparents were. And my aunties both lived within a couple of blocks of the trailer park.

So I walked over to the phone, picked the phone up, started dialling and all of a sudden the door was kicked in and my mother, all five foot 10 of her walked in, grabbed me by the arm, kicking and screaming, pulled me down the stairs. I had splinters up and down my arms from holding onto the staircase, threw me in the back of the car with my new baby brother, James, who was almost a year old.

And I am in hysterics.

They peeled out of the trailer park and we disappeared. My mother turns around, starts screaming at me for upsetting the baby, and then I need to get my shit together. We drove, excuse me, we drove three hours from Kent, Washington to Portland, Oregon, crossing state lines and getting the FBI involved.

We stayed at a friend of WEBA's. I believe her name was Esther. And that night, when everything was quiet, and the baby had gone to sleep, and Mary Sue was asleep, my mother challenged me for betraying her. For betraying the family.

What made you do this?

And I was like, Papa's not safe. Papa's doing things to me that I am not comfortable with.

There was silence, and my mother said, Oh God, tell me you didn't tell your grandmother that. Rolled over and went to sleep. It's the only time we ever talked about it. The next morning, I was dressed as a little boy. I went with Mary Sue as her son to the airport. My mother, in a wig and sunglasses, got on the plane with the baby.

We stayed 10 rows behind her as Mary Sue and her son, and flew to the Atlanta airport. I found out later, that there were two FBI agents on the plane. They had spotted Mama, but didn't know where I was. They lost us at the Atlanta airport and I flew home to North Carolina. Two days later, three police cars pulled up to our driveway.

Papa calmly walked into my room where I was playing my little ponies. Put me in my coat and dropped me out the window to a neighbor who ran me to her house and I hid in a closet for three hours. At that point, I was in hiding, I didn't see my little brothers, I didn't see mama and Papa. I stayed at random people's houses for over two years.

During that time, there was a massive court battle between my grandparents and my mom. Mama was arrested, and she went to jail for a whole three days because her church and mom was part of an organization called the LaLachie League. None of you heard of that, but it's a pro-breastfeeding league or chest-feeding league.

They basically like walk you through a lot of the steps of what it looks like to chest feed. The pros, the cons, what you can do to support your baby, what you can do to support yourself. It's a great organization. At this point, I have no problem with them, but they wrote a lot of letters to the judge and said, you know, you are doing emotional damage to a new baby by taking this away from this child. I have the letters.

And so the judge in the case, let her out and put her on probation for five years. My stepfather was never charged. He was looked into. I have the cassette from the social service worker who sat down with me to talk to me about what happened with Papa. They brought in an older male social worker to talk to a seven-year-old about sexual abuse.

Things are not like they were in the eighties. Thank the heavens. But it was like, you can hear it in my voice, how freaking embarrassed I am. Like, I am mortified that we are talking about this. So, of course, I'm not going to be honest with him. I don't feel safe. I was in hiding for two years.

We moved to a little town called Lyle Down once.

What ended up happening, and I found this out, like, in my 20s, because Grandma started sending me these boxes that she had saved with her journals. I actually have the missing child notice because they didn't know where I was. Grandma didn't see me again until I was 21.

So I have all of these boxes.

When I was in my 20s, grandma started sending me these boxes. And in one of the boxes, was a bunch of the court documents and I mean like there's a stack like this. I've read all of them. The Judge in Washington State said that not only should Mama not have custody of me but she should probably not have custody of her other three children that she was dangerous. The judge in North Carolina Echoed that statement. When it came back around while I was hiding, a new judge was put on the case.

The original judge in North Carolina had stated for the record if this ever came back to the court regarding Dolores and Jesse. I get custody of this case. No one else is allowed to touch it. And I know that's because the judge, the new judge, literally picked up the paper and said on the record, I recognize that this judge thinks that he can have custody of this.

I'm denying this and taking control of this case. And he said, Jesse's been passed around so much she deserves to be with her mother. Case closed. Apparently, my grandfather, the Navy man, stood up, pointed his entire hand at the judge and called him a son of a bitch. And the judge said, 500 contempt of court.

My grandfather turned to my grandmother. How much money do we have in the bank account? Because I have some other shit to say to this man. He was so salty, as he should be and they didn't see me again until I was 21. We moved to a new place, and my mother decided to start a home for Unwed Mothers who were down.

It was a beautiful mansion, three stories, a wraparound porch, and a gorgeous little tiny lake. We had, we had a cow field with three cows, mom, a cow and two baby cows and there's a whole story in there about how they learned to jump on the trampoline. So much fun! We had chickens and guinea fowl. And my mother did about 150,000 worth of damage to the property.

In the name of starting a home for unwed mothers, which she did. I grew up having unwed mothers in our home pretty consistently. When I was 14 and we were living in the farmhouse, we had an unwed mother with us.

She was 16, her name was Autumn, and she was pregnant with a black man's baby. Oh yes. such drama in a town where they still had k, k, rallies in the square. Big drama in our town. She had gone to jail as a minor and my mother agreed to go pick her up, and pull her out of jail. She was eight months pregnant and separated her from her friends and family because we were like 30 miles outside of town.

We were a 10-minute walk to the nearest house. We were in the boonies. My mother took her away from her friends, took her away from her family, took her away from anyone who could protect her and took her away from the man who wanted to be the daddy and proceeded to explain to her. In sort of a boot camp sort of way that she couldn't take care of this child.

She didn't have a job. She wouldn't be a good mom. It's not good for you to be a mom. You need to have a life. You need to let me have this baby.

So Autumn gave birth on my bed. She came and climbed into my bed at two o'clock in the morning.

My stomach really hurts. Okay, babe why don't you climb in bed with me? We'll just talk through it. And after about 15 minutes, I'm like, how are you feeling? She's like, actually, I feel okay. Okay, cool. Do we wanna go to sleep? Oh no, it's hurting again. Is it like coming and going? Yeah, that's labor, sweetie.

That's what that looks like because at this point I had already been to my brother's birth and delivered my baby sister. So Autumn is now in labor. I go and tell my mom, she calls the midwife who happened to be unlicensed. Oh dear. Fast forward 12 hours. Autumn has the baby, mama takes the baby downstairs to the adoptive parents.

Mama loved giving babies away. Loved it. Lived for it. It was her whole life's goal, to gift babies to families who couldn't have them. Sometimes with paperwork, most of the time without. I know several children who grew up with families without birth certificates. Without social security cards, no record of who their bio parents are. So Mama takes the baby downstairs, and hands it off to the adoptive parents. The adoptive parents get in the car and leave. Autumn begins hemorrhaging. Blood was everywhere, dripping off the side of my bed. Autumn is in and out of consciousness. We call 9 1 1. The firefighters are on their way.

The midwife, Amsgrace. She's like, I am not licensed, I am out of here. Like, way to take care of your patient, lady. Good job, Good job. The firefighters show up. They bundle her up, they take her to the hospital. Now she is no longer pregnant with a black man's baby. So now her parents will talk to her again.

Baby Grace grew up in a very sweet family who genuinely cared about them. When the firefighters showed up, so did the police. They got on the bullhorn and announced that there was a dead baby on the property. Because here we have a woman who has very obviously given birth and no child. They call in the dogs.

My mother hands my newborn baby sister to me, hands me my shoes, and tells me to run. Because at this point, she only barely has custody of me and she firmly believe that. Everyone in any form of law enforcement, if they found me, they'd take me back to grandma. So I took the baby, I ran down the hill in the dark, across the bridge, into the woods, to the fescue field, and hid in the grass.

For hours, waiting to find out whether or not I could come home, whether or not it was safe, and whether or not my mother would go to jail that night.

So I posted this story on my TikTok, and somebody commented, Oh, so your mother dabbled in human trafficking? And I went, no, no oh. I kind of guess she did shit. Just a whole nother, and this is like recently a whole new level of trauma that now I have to look back and go, oh my God.

All of these women were in a situation where their baby was trafficked by my mother. Dozens of babies that she just randomly gifted to people. Crazy. So anyway, I grew up in this environment, taking care of my siblings, taking care of our yard, taking care of a farm, goats, rabbits, chickens and cows.

Taking care of my mother, who was 90 percent bedridden when I was growing up. By choice, she would spend her time on the phone talking to friends, she would read books, she would write journals and I would bring her food, take her dirty plates back to the kitchen. I would help her to the bathroom if she was sick.

I would clean up her vomit when she was pregnant, multiple times a day, while raising children, while making sure my siblings got educated. When I was 19 and left home, my baby sister, my youngest sister was 2, Louise. I met her again when she was 19 and she finally got out from underneath my parents home and she didn't know how to read because I wasn't there to teach her. None of my siblings went to school. When I left, the education they had when I left home was the only education that they got. So I left home. I was working for a radio station. I was the only female DJ on four radio stations and I was six weeks away from taking over the morning show on a hundred thousand watt FM station covering four states. I was going to be big news. My mother said that I was getting too worldly and that I needed to quit my job and come home, and I'm not kidding you, learn to make quilts.

So my last day at the radio station, the night before, I got into an argument with Luke my next oldest brother. Mama said I was having a bad attitude and Papa gave me a spanking. It was a week before my 18th birthday. That was the first time that I went okay, this is wrong. No, that's wrong, I'm an adult what the hell is happening here? Okay.

So I took my paycheck, which I usually just signed over to cash and gave to mama and papa. I took my paycheck to work. I was going to close out the radio station that day. I was going to take the van that I drove. We had a truck and a van and I drove the van into work and I was going to take the van to the bus station.

Cash my paycheck and use it to get a ticket to Michigan to stay with Mary Sue because I knew that she would tell me if I was out of line and Mary Sue's two children lived in the inner city commune in Chicago and that day at the radio station about 45 minutes before I was supposed to be off the air, I was in the studio and my parents ransacked my office.

And found my bag and mama came in and spent three hours calling me every name in the book. Insisting that I was demon-possessed, insisting that I had betrayed the family, that I was out from under if you know anything about IBLP and like the shiny happy people documentary, that I was out from under my father's umbrella, security and support with God, that I had lost my salvation.

After three hours of Mama yelling at me. Papa said, Dolores, go home. Nobody tells Mama what to do. But she listened, and she went home.

And Papa says, Are you pregnant?

No.

Are you on drugs?

No.

Are you on your period?

Are you kidding me right now? Are we having this conversation? You don't think that I just don't want to be here? How is me having willpower or having an expectation of what my life is supposed to look like? Oh, good Lord. So anyway, that was another fight.

Papa convinced me to come home. I got home and there was a note on the door from one of my brothers. Mama had been home for half an hour, she was in her room and the note said,

‘Jesse, I'm so sorry. We've been bad. Please don't leave us. We promise to clean the house.’

So I went inside and I hugged my brothers and I went upstairs to my bedroom and I'm sitting there shell shocked. My baby brother, the one who I was there when he was born, had the most amazing blue eyes, he was seven. He sat down on the bed, put his arms around me and started sobbing and he's just like, Sissy, don't you love me anymore? Why don't you love me anymore?

Bubba, where is this coming from?

And he replied, Mama said that I was bad and you didn't love me anymore. And that's why you have to leave.

No, that's not what's going on. And then my little sister, who I delivered, who was five, my sweet Faith, she comes in and she climbs up on my lap. She puts her knees right on my, right on my lap so that she can look me in the face. And she holds my face in her little hands. She's looking at me very seriously.

Sissy, do you have demons?

No, sweet girl. I don't have demons. Okay, good, because I prayed to Jesus that you wouldn't have demons so that you could stay with me. So my mother had a half an hour alone with my siblings and she did everything in her power to destroy our relationship.

So I moved to Chicago out of the frying pan and into the fire and it felt like freedom. I had a room that I shared with two other single sisters.

It felt like freedom. You don't get a paycheck, no money. Everything is provided to you by the commune. Your food and the place that you stay. Though you don't really have a choice in where you stay. They tell you what room you're going to live in and with whom.

What you wear is policed. I had the audacity to have cleavage. Dude, I get cleavage when I'm wearing a t-shirt, but I didn't want to stumble into the single brothers. You're not allowed to hang out with the opposite sex. Homosexuality is of course frowned upon.

And they have all of their reasons for it. They were part of the Evangelical Covenant Church. That should tell you a lot. I lived there for 12 years. Met and married Leonard, who was problematic. I did everything for him. I had been trained my whole life. My mother told me that from the time I was little, if you want to grow up to be a good Christian wife, you need to practice your wifely duties.

With your father holding hands, Fixing his dinner, making his lunches, checking in on him throughout the day, Praying for him. So I met Leonard, and we got engaged. Mama found out and hit the ceiling. She actually hit the ceiling with me and then sent Leonard a 10-page Bible study explaining why he was out of line for dating me.

Outside of my father's umbrella of protection, we got married.

Long story.

Leonard was pretty useless, bless his heart. We lived in the Japuza building, the name of the commune is Jesus People USA and we call it Japuza affectionately. The Japuza building used to be the old Chelsea Hotel building in Chicago.

Beautiful building, worn down and needs love, but that's neither here nor there. And so it was a hotel room that you stayed in as a married couple. As a single person, you stayed in a room with two others of the same sex. As a married person, you would get your room. The bed is usually in a loft form.

So you would climb up to your loft and you'd have your bathroom. I struggle with sleeping because of my trauma, like horrible, violent nightmares, night terrors, sleep paralysis, and all of it. I had finally fallen asleep and Leonard would wake me up if his blanket fell off the bed to get up, climb down the ladder, pull his blanket back up to the top of the bed and cover him up again.

Just to give you an example of how useless this human being was. We were married for 10 years. And

I had an affair when I lived there. We'd been married for almost 10 years. In Japusa divorce is unacceptable and not an option. A lot of Christian churches are like that. So it's not like just Japusa. And I was so miserable in this relationship that I thought the only way out was to unalive myself.

I was trying to figure out how to do it without being found. I didn't want them to find my body and for it to be traumatic for them. I just kind of wanted to disappear. I just didn't want to be there anymore.

And the only person, this is not an excuse, do not have an affair, It's a bad idea and there is nothing beneficial in it. But the only person that I could hear from was my best friend's husband. We started sharing stories, discussing our marriages and how unhappy we were. Instead of going, dude, this sounds like a problem. You're going to want to talk to your wife about this. We would just commiserate, and work out together. They say it just happens, It doesn't just happen. It's literally like a big choice. You don't walk into it and go, I'd like to have an affair with you. That's not a thing. But there's a lot of like, okay, we're just going to hug.

Hugging is fine. Okay, maybe we hug a little bit longer. Okay, well, maybe we get in the elevator together. Well, okay, maybe we, and at the end of the day, you look back and you're so many steps away from the line and you’re like how did this happen? Well, it's because of all of these little choices. So it sneaks up on you, but that's how it happened.

Anyway, we had an affair for about six months. The pastor found out about it, big drama. They basically raided my computer at work, long story. So I left. I stayed there for three days and realized how incredibly unhappy I was. Everyone at JAPUZA knew. The gossip chain at this organization is off the Richter scale.

Oh, well, we need to pray for them. What happened? Well, do we know? Did she decide to stay with him? Like, what's the gossip? So I called my real bestie, my true heart bestie who lived out in Seattle. Her name's June. She is my rock and she has been with me every step of the way of writing this book.

I called her up and I was like, I did this thing, I fucked up and I don't know what to do. And she's like, I'm buying you a plane ticket right now. You will be on a plane today and I flew out to Seattle. I just remember being really startled that color still existed. That just blew my mind. And I flew up to Seattle.

And she started walking me through some shit. Walking me through what my relationship with Leonard was, looked like walking me through what my relationship with this man that I had an affair with looked like. Walking me through a deconstructed Christianity and figuring out what my spirituality was and what that meant.

She just babystepped me through all of the things. And I've lived with her for about three months. And then I moved out on my own, got a little apartment, realized how fricking happy I was. I was working for a little non-profit, doing all the marketing. I got to be in front of people and was just like that to be my bubbly self.

And it was great. So I took up swing dancing when I lived in Chicago. I had taken up swing dancing, which was really troublesome because I could only go out dancing in a group because you never go anywhere by yourself. Inappropriate. so I had to get a group of people together who wanted to go dancing.

I had to get a babysitter for my husband for the night. I am not exaggerating. I had to make sure he was fed, that his room was clean, and that all of the laundry was done. There was a laundry list of things that had to be done for me to be allowed to leave him alone. Useless. And so a bunch of us would go out dancing.

I started teaching East Coast Swing in Chicago and with one of the single guys who lived at Jacuzza, who was also best friends with my ex-husband. I got divorced and moved out here. Joined the swing dance community and somebody was like, girl, you're so good at swing. You should take up blues.

And I'm like, what the heck, let's do it. So I jumped into the blues dance community, which was fricking amazing. And I'm dancing and having a great time, I was taxi dancing. I had discovered how incredibly happy I was being single. It was the first time I'd ever been single in my whole life. Like legitimately single on my own.

I was taxi dancing, which is where you wear a scarf. Black and white checkered scarf around your arm, and that basically signals to everyone on the dance floor that you will dance with anyone. You'll dance with new dancers, you'll dance with old dancers, you'll dance with old dancers who just got into the community, like you'll dance with anybody.

Let's get you out on the dance floor because if you fall in love with dance, you're gonna come back, you're gonna wanna take lessons, you're gonna wanna get excited about it. And there was this new guy and I was like, Hey, new guy, do you want to dance? And he's like, yeah. He was a really good dancer. He was a really good dancer.

So I asked him to dance again, and again, and again, and then again after that. I was like, Oh no, I have a dance crush. So it's really easy to get a dance crush, especially blues dancing, which is kind of low and slow and a little bit sexy. And the cure for a dance crush is actually to know the person.

So what you do is you go, don't, don't laugh at me. You go, Oh, it's so warm in here, I'm going to step outside and cool off. If they're interested, they'll follow you. So, Alex follows me outside and we start talking and talking and talking and then we start texting. And then he came to a couple of other dances and we didn't do a lot of dancing.

We did a lot more talking and then he asked me out and I was like, yeah, I'm not going on a date. This is just dinner. It's just dinner, but I didn't tell him that until after the date, which is like another story and we sat there talking and I was like, okay, I'm in my 30s. I don't have time for games.

I'm not playing games, whatever.

He had been married for 15 years and been divorced for a little over a year. And I was like, okay, bring me your baggage. What is it that you have that I'm going to need to deal with? Like, are you a narcissist? Have you killed anybody? Like, what's the deal? And he's like, Oh, you know, I'm a computer engineer.

I ride a motorcycle and play four instruments. I cook.

Oh my God. You're not helping me at all, sir. This is, I'm just swooning over you. And he's like, you know, and I've got four kids,

four kids, huh? I am very much like, I have mint condition uterus. I've worked with children my whole life. I am not interested in having small people in my life. Thank you. But my immediate response was looking at me go, huh, cool. Where the hell did that come from? And he's like, what about you?

Like you said you were married for several years. I'm like, yeah, I was married for 10 years, lived in an inner city commune in Chicago, and he's like, okay, why'd you leave? Now understand at this point, I'm kind of head over heels for this guy, and I have been very upfront about the fact that I had an affair because when it came out that I'd had an affair, it turns out I know a lot of women who had had affairs or nearly had affairs.

And nobody talks about it and I'm like, where were all of these amazing women when I was going through this because you guys should have seen it. I should have felt comfortable enough to come to you and talk to you about it. So I'm honest about it. And here I am in front of this beautiful green-eyed man with broad shoulders and a motorcycle.

And I did not want to tell him anything. So I took a deep breath and I was like, look, I've had fun with you so far. If this is it, this is it. And I told him, I had an affair. I was married for 10 years, I had an affair with my best friend, Japuza's husband. And he broke my heart, and my ex-husband broke my heart.

I'm still kind of hurting. He looked at me for a second and he goes, so what brought you to Chicago? Not even a blip on this man's radar. Not even a blip. Like, he literally was like, Huh. Cool. Anyway, moving on. This was a choice that you made. Probably not the right one. You're not sitting here going, I did this and it was a good idea.

Cool, let's move on. We have been together for almost 14 years. His kids adore me. His youngest when we got together was 11, and his oldest was 19. He's got two boys and two girls. I fell in love four more times after I met him. Like, literally, we've been together for like six months, and I was like, you realize if we break up, the kids go with me. These are mine now.

And now we have four grandbabies. Our oldest is twelve, and the baby baby is three. And they are the absolute light of my life. There is nothing that compares to being a mama. Like it is the best thing that ever happened to me. So I wrote this book and I wrote it for a couple of reasons.

I wrote it because I needed to heal. I needed to walk through these memories and figure out what was real and what wasn't. Because after the second kidnapping, I lost my memory. I didn't remember Grandma and Grandpa. I didn't remember my aunties. I remember the abuse from Robert, and I remember the kidnapping.

Those were the only memories that I retained. I started getting my memory back in my high school years, and I didn't start really realizing how many stories Mama made up to make herself look good until well into my twenties. So I would, like, write a chapter, and then be like, Okay, it's done. I've written this chapter, this story is done.

And then I would get a box from Grandma, and I'd go, Wait a minute, this timeline doesn't match up. Who's so and so? And I'd call so and so. What the hell happened? And get a whole different version of events and have to go back and rewrite it. So it took me a really long time. And once I got to the point where this is, this is close enough to being done that I could publish this.

This is, this is a good story. I realized that it needed a purpose and I wanted this to be a survivor's guide so that you can walk through some of the most incredible trauma and you can do more in your life than just survive. You can thrive. And so it was really important to me

Therapy is awesome, I highly recommend therapy. If you can, if you need to be diagnosed with something, get diagnosed. Medication is a thing that you want to explore, you can explore it. It makes a difference. You do not have to go through this struggle alone and other people have had similar experiences. Find those people and talk about it.

Commiserate. You're not alone in this. You have younger buddies, like I didn't see my siblings again for almost 20 years and the stories that we share, the connection that we have from the abuse that we experienced is like no other. And while my brothers are all like, good old redneck boys, we are not on the same spectrum at all.

We don't live the same life. We don't have a lot of the same worldviews, but we both experienced something that nobody else I know did and have that connection. That commiseration is incredibly healing. So yeah, that's the story of Girl Hidden. I tried really hard to bring magic into it. And some of the beautiful things that happened growing up on the farm, like we had cows that jumped on trampolines and I delivered my little sister, which is a great story.

My brothers and I, and my sisters and I found magic in some of the most random places. I have tried so hard as an adult to see glimmers of that magic daily, and it really does make a difference. Girl Hidden, my book.

Wow, what a story!

It's a lot, huh?

When you began your healing journey, what was the first step that you took? Do you remember?

Yes. A friend in Japusa lent me a book and I don't remember the name of the book, but it was all about forgiveness, which looking back now, is who I am today. We don't talk about forgiveness in this household because forgiveness means that person is let off the hook, which isn't what I need to do.

Letting something go, letting healing happen. That's for me. And it doesn't have anything to do with you. You have to ask for an apology to receive forgiveness and even when there's forgiveness, that trust is broken, but the one thing about this book that I took away is that the person who wrote it specifically said that any time a memory comes up that they stop what they're doing and they deal with it in real-time.

You take that moment to go, okay, I know that we're shopping at Kohl's right now and I'm trying on jeans, but I just remembered the one time that my mother took me clothes shopping and I needed a minute and I still do that today where I'll be like, okay, I've had a flashback that just came out of nowhere because of whatever it is that you're cooking and I need to take that moment and feel those feelings and be honest with myself and then get into my body and remind myself that I'm safe because this has triggered an emotional response. But yeah, I'm not a big fan of forgiveness. That lets the other person off the hook. And a lot of religions that just broad over generalizations, really do talk about forgiveness.

For me, that insinuates that now this person has a clean slate and that what they did, however harmful, is now completely clear. That's not a thing. If you break a plate, even if you glue it back together, that plate's broken. So, how can we rebuild trust in our relationship? And even the question of whether or not trust is going to be accessible.

Like with my mother, it's not an option and I'm still mad at her, and will probably be mad at her well into my 90s because little things will come up and I'll be like, Screw you lady, you did this thing and I'm hurt by it. I have to deal with that right now, I have to feel those feelings and then allow that anger to leave because sometimes anger protects us, but for me to allow that anger to leave and to let that go, I suppose, is healing for me. It doesn't have anything to do with her.

Dealing, allowing yourself to feel the feelings when the flashback comes up, that's huge. So where can our listeners connect with you if they would like to do so?

So if you go to girlhidden. com, you can find all of my socials. I'm on Facebook, Instagram, and the TikToks.

I don't keep up with it as much as I should because it's a lot. But I am on there and I do post fairly regularly, like, hey, this is something I've been thinking about. This is something I've been dealing with. Here's a chapter of the book that I haven't released yet. You know, all those kinds of things.

It has my story, and my bio, obviously. And you can also find my book on Amazon, Google books, Spotify, and in your local bookstore. Any bookstore like Barnes and Nobles borders, if they're still around you can actually go and request the book and have it shipped to you. But you can find it on Amazon.

Super reasonably priced and we do have an audiobook, which the lady who did the audiobook, Lessa Lamb. Oh my God! She's so good. When she started, she did all the voices. Little Southern people. I love it. But when she talked about Robert singing songs to the boys before he came into my room, I had to turn off the tape. I was like, pause! I gotta go sit outside in the garden. This is too much. It's too much. So it's well done. Thoroughly enjoyed. It's about a 10-hour book.

Awesome. So I will include links to Jesse's website, socials, and a link to Amazon for you to purchase the book if that is something you would like to do.