My Recovery Journey: The Events That Led Me to Treatment

The Refuge, A Healing Place

A note to you before you begin to read my story: Trigger warning! This article contains events of abuse and domestic violence. Do not read if this kind of content will be triggering to your own mental health.

On May 7th of 2020, I checked into a treatment facility in Ocklawaha, Florida called The Refuge, A Healing Place. While at The Refuge, I began a journey that would not only lead me to where I am now in my life but helped shape me as a woman that would learn to love myself and finally start to understand that I am truly good enough. This story will be shared in a series of blog posts over the next several weeks. This is my story of growth that happened through a series of events. I am not done growing, nor will I ever be, I am simply an imperfect person and at this point in my life, I am happy knowing that. In sharing my story, I intend to omit names to avoid further involving anyone who is not welcome in my journey. I feel as though this is very important because I want to make it clear that this story is about me, and no one else. Every person that I have crossed paths with in my life is part of my story and although things happen that we may wish had never happened to us, I truly believe that everything in my life has happened to me for a reason. I made the choice, almost a year ago, to find a way to share the things that have happened to me in my life so I may help someone else realize that they are not alone. I hope that if you are reading this and you resonate with some of the themes or feelings in my story, you know that you are not alone. You are enough. You are good enough. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. I plan to take you through this series and expand upon these experiences in different blog posts in the future. I want to use this series of blogs to lay a foundation for what I want to do in the world and give you all a greater understanding of where I am coming from. Before I begin my story within this series, I want you to know that there are a lot more details to all of this—it is not cut and dry. Through a large period of time in my life, I let others write my story. That stops now. I am sharing this to take control of my own life and to be the author of my own story. I hope that you appreciate my story and share it with someone that needs to hear it. The entire story will be broken up into pieces, and will be published each week over the next several weeks. Subscribe to my blog to be notified as soon as they are published, with a link emailed to you each Thursday when they go live. Note: I am not a medical professional or legal representative. All things that I share are purely from my experience and is not to be considered medical or legal advice. These are solely my experiences. Thank you for allowing me to share with you. - Heather

What led me to The Refuge, A Healing Place?

I began treatment in May of 2020. I went to The Refuge because of one thing (or so I thought). On a Tuesday night, in July of 2019 my life as I knew it, completely turned upside down. The things that happened that night, changed my life in ways that I could have never anticipated. An incident occurred that evening that led me to calling 911 for help. This specific evening, the abuse that I had been receiving at home for years came to a point that I feared I may not live to see the following day. I called 911 and the evening ended with an arrest for domestic violence. Little did I know how much that was going to change my life. Being someone in the (local) public eye made this incident front page and headline news longer than I was able to bear. The amount of social media harassment and scrutiny that I received for reporting the abuse was a huge shock to me as well. On top of that, everyone had an opinion about the facts of my trauma. Everyone from clients, to a server at a restaurant at one of my usual spots, to my employer, individuals that I had contact with through organizations I volunteered for, a check out person at Target, random people landing in my DMs on Facebook, college friends from different parts of the state that I hadn’t spoken with in over a decade, and many, many more. In the beginning, I had a really hard time trying to decipher who was communicating with me out of authenticity or out of being nosey and wanting gossip. That was one of the hardest parts—being unsure of who to trust. Being a victim of abuse creates an incredibly isolating feeling to begin with. Your abuser manipulates you into believing that they are the only person that has your best interests at heart and that causes you to question who you can trust, and that is exactly what the abuser wants. I won’t ever forget a phone call that I received within the first few days after the incident. It was a “friend” who, after reading a news article, called me up and accosted me for not ever telling her what was happening at home. She said to me, “How do I know that this is true, Heather, if you never told me about it?” Hearing that from a close female friend of eight years cut me, to the core. I simply responded to her that I didn’t share any of these things with anyone. Why would I? How could I? My self-esteem was constantly broken down so low that I honestly didn’t know what to believe anymore. Sometimes it was easier to stop questioning and just listen to the things that were told to me and do my best to not rock the boat to make all of the abuse worse. If I was questioning my own reality, even though I very much knew my truth, and then had a close female friend questioning whether I was lying, how was I was I ever going to get through the rest that was going to come.

I was constantly scared. Always being told that the things that were happening to me were “made up in my head” or I was awake and consenting when I knew I was asleep. I would be asked why I would ever consider saying these things?? Did I think they were a monster? The bruise on my arm? Well, it was because I hit it on corner of the wall. Didn’t I remember that? My fear of riding together in a car? “Heather, it's just your anxiety,” I would be told. I knew that it was because I had cried in the front seat so many times after erratic driving, screaming that they were going to run us off the road and kill me or the many times I wouldn’t be allowed to drive even though I was sober and they were impaired. Gaslighting me every step of the way.

The isolation that came after the incident was so much worse than the isolation that I had endured before and I had an incredibly hard time handling it. This time everyone knew details of the abuse and about my relationship and it was not by my choice. Due to our unique situation, every single document, every word I shared with the police in my statement, every question that I was asked and then answered, became public knowledge through the Freedom of Information Act*. From journalists submitting FOIA requests to write their articles for multiple news outlets, to a random man off the street wanting the information to post on the internet, every fear suddenly became very public in a way that I never, ever wanted to happen. This broke me down so much. I was sad, I was terrified and I was completely panicked. At one point, I had a little temporary rental home to stay in. I was so scared that I literally slept with a kitchen knife under my pillow each night. It was under my pillow because I was worried that if someone broke into my home, I wouldn’t have enough time to open the nightstand drawer. Very few people knew or understood the anxiety and paranoia that I lived with after the incident, frankly I didn’t even completely understand for a couple of years following. The gaslighting that I received from my abuser is something that I still try to unlearn to this day. I am overall much better, but sometimes something will trigger my cPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a diagnosis that I received at treatment) which leads to negative self-talk and could potentially leave me questioning things about myself and in my life. Luckily, due to the tools that I have learned over the last four years, those moments are few and far between and when they do happen, they are fleeting.

Due to the order of protection that had been granted for my safety following the incident, we were unable to communicate or be in any close proximity of one another for work and that made working with our joint clients a real struggle. After communication through my attorney with my abuser’s attorney, we came to the decision of dropping this OP to a mutual restraining order so we would be able to discuss our clients and our joint finances. My attorney urged me to not do this, but I didn’t take that advice. When I first reached out to my abuser to discuss any client issue, it would always venture off the topic of work. Keep in mind that I was scared, and I felt so alone. I also missed my abuser. That was really hard for so many people to understand but this is how some cycles of abuse work. You are manipulated into believing that your abuser is truly the only one that has your best interests at heart. You are manipulated into believing that they are the only person that loves you and could ever love you. In that moment, during a meeting to discuss work, it took one question from my abuser to strip away my knowledge and confidence of what I knew happened to me that night. My abuser asked me, “Are you okay? I have been so worried about you. Something happened to you that night and I don’t think you really know what happened.” I panicked in the moment. He was worried about me. I was scared and I called 911 which lead to an arrest for domestic violence, but he was worried about ME. He told me he wasn’t mad and wasn’t angry; he said that he knew that I must have been having a flashback from my childhood (I was doing some work in therapy around that subject). I began to cry. He wasn't angry and he knew I didn’t mean for it to get out of hand. He forgave me for calling 911. In that moment everything changed from the truth that I knew to be what happened that night to an altered version. Before I knew it, I was apologizing to my abuser for calling for help. I apologized to my abuser for believing he abused me, and in that moment, I was won over by the manipulation. I felt as though the huge step that I took to walk away from the abuse that I had received for years, disappeared into thin air.

The following weeks were the honeymoon stage all over. He called me to tell me that he was thinking about me and loved me constantly. He was helpful in every way that he could be. He made it clear that he would protect me through all of the public scrutiny. He bought me gifts, took me away for a surprise weekend, he ate the foods that I loved, and he hated. He was showing me that he was a changed man and he would stand by my side forever. I was hiding our renewed relationship from my family, my close friends, my coworkers. The only people that knew about our “renewed love” were his friends, his family and those he approved of, then again, the isolation of the abuse started all over again.

Sometime in early October of 2019, my abuser encouraged me to come out publicly and share with a local journalist that I wanted to share with the world the story of what “really happened” the night of the incident in July. I reached out to a journalist with the local paper (the journalist that my abuser suggested) on October 11, 2019. On October 13th, I met with this journalist and shared the story that my abuser “helped me remember”. We went over my story many times to make sure that I could correctly share what “really” happened. This article, that was shared both online and then the front page of the local paper created a storm for me that I was not ready to bear—not ready at all. It started on Facebook. The shares of the article, the comments on the paper’s post, the messages to me, some praising me for being “strong” and fixing the wrong that I did to a “good and upstanding member of our community”, some saying that I was a liar that should never be trusted again, some sending me messages and telling me to not to be afraid, some posting that I was a woman that takes away all credibility if other victims, the list of things goes on and on. Then the calls from other members of the media started. They too wanted an “exclusive” and wanted to talk to me. I was very encouraged to do these interviews. One of the media outlets that I sat with ended up posting the entire conversation on their website in addition to the pieces that they did as part of the story that was put on the news and web. When I had time I went back and watched the entire conversation. Looking back while watching this, I remember feeling disappointed with myself. The disappointment with myself was just where it started. I did all of this and had these interviews without telling a single member of my family, I didn’t share it with them because they didn’t understand why I was back with my abuser again, under the same roof. I will never forget the calls that I got from my sister and then my mother after the newspaper article hit online. They both, on separate phone calls, called me and cried while asking me why I shared the things that I did with the media to protect my abuser. They had seen firsthand the abuse I had endured. They knew the real story.

Over the course of the next seven months, I became afraid to leave my home. I hardly

associated with friends that believed me and knew deep down inside that I wasn’t safe physically, emotionally, or mentally. I became more and more isolated rarely seeing my family, and hardly seeing my friends that were there to support me. The “friends” that I was spending all of my time with were “friends” that were very supportive of my abuser. My life drastically changed as I no longer enjoyed going to all of the events and special occasions that normally were fun for me. I remember attending my church after the incident and someone coming up to me and saying “dear, how could you do that to your (abuser), he is such a good man and a man of the church.” I remember attending a political event for women, and someone coming up to me and saying “Heather, how could you say what you said about (abuser)? He is a good man and good for the community, in my day, we didn’t share our dirty laundry in public, we delt with those things at home. You are lucky that (abuser) is so forgiving and took you back.” Those comments ate me up inside. I couldn’t share them with anyone. I couldn’t take the constant media attention around every court date and every mention of something (abuser) related. I began to break down, I was depressed, I was anxious, I was alone, so very alone. I remember being on a vacation with (my abuser) and friends and not being able to have a good time, I kept being told to “lighten up” but I couldn’t. Being on a ship in the middle of the ocean with my abuser, who was very intoxicated the whole time, was extremely difficult. Being surrounded by people that believed I was some “crazy liar” raised my anxiety to an uncontrollable level. Then, shortly after we got home, the pandemic hit. The world shut down, you could no longer go anywhere. I couldn’t see my family. I was at home, alone, with my abuser. The only people I really got to see were the people of my “quarantine crew” that were supporters of my abuser and not of me. As the pandemic went on, and we were in "shelter in place" for over a month at this point, I was in a session with my therapist. She looked at me and said, “I know that you don’t feel safe, and I know that you are breaking down. I am worried about you.”

I was still getting used to my new therapist, she was a therapist that I switched to after the incident because my abuser no longer felt that the therapist I was seeing was a good fit. My new therapist was found for me, by my abuser’s friend that was also a mental health professional. The first few times I saw her starting in October of 2019, my abuser insisted on being there and doing most of the talking. It took me a long time to trust her because I was always worried that anything I could say may possibly be used against me. But when she shared what she did in that session, I listened. She handed me a pamphlet for The Refuge, A Healing Place. She told me that she thought that this could be something good for me. She said I would be in nature, and I could feel safe and I would be with other people that cared about me and that would help me. I took the pamphlet and agreed to consider this. My abuser agreed to allow me to go because he knew that I was going there to “get my mind right” and it would help his case because then people would really knew that I was mentally unstable and I was going there to get help.

I boarded a flight in Bloomington, IL where I was the only passenger on the plane. I changed planes in Atlanta and boarded a very large plane with two other passengers. I arrived in Orlando, Florida and walked through the deserted airport, went to the baggage claim, got my bags and then met my driver to bring me to start my journey at The Refuge in Ocklawaha, Florida. At about 10:30 or 11 o’clock that night the gates opened, my driver, Candy, dropped me off at the entrance of the Medical Unit building and the check in process for the most important journey of my life began.

Check back next week for the next piece of the story.

*For more information on The Freedom of Information Act