Turning Pain Into Purpose with Victoria Smith

Summary

Barely Famous - "Turning Pain Into Purpose with Victoria Smith"

Host: Kail Lowry
Guest: Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor & Life Coach)
Date: February 27, 2026

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Episode Overview

This deeply moving episode of "Barely Famous" explores the journey of Victoria Smith, a mother of three, survivor of domestic violence, and now a certified domestic violence and trauma life coach. Host Kail Lowry facilitates an honest, vulnerable conversation about generational trauma, cycles of abuse, addiction, motherhood, and the difficult process of healing. Victoria shares candidly about her past, the challenges of escaping abuse, and her mission to help others turn pain into purpose.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Victoria’s Childhood & Family Trauma

• Early Family Life:

  • No physical domestic violence, but extensive emotional abuse and untreated mental health in both parents.
  • Parents divorced when she was 10; her father remarried her Girl Scout leader, who became abusive.
  • Entered foster care at 14 due to parental addiction and stepmother's abuse.
  • "My older brother sheltered me from so much... He grew up being like a dad to me." (04:01)

• Understanding Abuse and Its Scope:

  • Kail raises the question: is domestic violence limited to partner violence?
  • Victoria clarifies: "Any family is domestic violence." (04:52)

Teenage Years and Early Motherhood

• Rebellious teenage years, persistent in seeking a better life.
• Became pregnant at 17; struggled alone after discovering her boyfriend's addiction.
• "You’re dating somebody, you just... find out you’re pregnant, and what you think he’s going to every Thursday is a masonry class [really AA]." (07:01)

The Cycle of Domestic Violence

• Reconnected with the father of her two younger children—childhood acquaintance—ignoring early red flags due to long-term crush and hopefulness.
• First physical violence happened during pregnancy: "Threw me over a couch, hit my stomach... my best friend and her mom pulled up..." (14:12)
• Pattern: Apologies, blaming, isolation, and emotional manipulation.
  • "There was so much mental anguish and control that I... wasn’t allowed to go places... I was depressed and I started to believe what he said." (14:53)
• Kail notes the insidiousness of isolation and control — even when Victoria was primary provider.

Notable Quotes:

• "I’d wake up from being passed out from the abuse getting hit... all I hear him saying is ‘stop faking it, stop faking it’ and he’s still beating me.” (15:29)
• "For many years I tried to block it out... moments I didn’t think I was going to live to see another day." (15:31)

The Breaking Point and Escape

• Turning point: Attending bachelorette party in NYC and realizing something needed to change, starting with her health.

• Underwent gastric sleeve surgery, newfound confidence bolstered resolve to escape.

• Legal barriers: Property law required abuser’s name on trailer title.

• Sold trailer, bought a house, used legal means (PFA) for safety—but stalking persisted.

  • "He showed up at my house... breaking in when I wasn’t home, bypassed my security system..." (21:35)

Addiction: Transfer of Pain

• After his imprisonment, Victoria fell into substance abuse: “For years I chased him to fix his drug addiction... I fell into drugs…” (38:51)

• Describes "transfer addiction" after weight loss surgery: from food to alcohol, then to cocaine and painkillers.

• Addiction coincided with struggles of self-discovery and coping with past pain.

  • On addiction: “That was my number one fear. Everybody’s gonna find out. Nobody knew I was an addict.” (48:30)
  • “That was the day I stopped. Cold turkey.” (50:23)

Climbing Out & Building a New Life

• Ended the relationship with the fellow addict after a serious overdose scare.
• New relationship: met her now-husband (nine years younger) through motorcycle friends — became a supportive, stabilizing influence for Victoria and her children.
• Managed traumas, including her husband’s devastating motorcycle accident and his career-ending injuries.

Motherhood, Generational Trauma & Healing

• Her children experienced secondary trauma—especially her teen daughter, who struggled with addiction and mental health.
  • “With mental health comes addiction and now here I am watching my daughter struggle with addiction and violence…” (63:07)
• Victoria's efforts to help her included sending her to her father in South Carolina (a decision she later questioned).
• Ultimately, her daughter achieved sobriety and significant mental health recovery.

Notable Quotes:

• "No mom is perfect, we’re all doing it for the first time... Unconditional love is something, man, it is something." (72:10)
• "She’s done things that grown adults can’t even do. That’s something to truly be proud of." (72:21)

Turning Pain Into Purpose: Coaching Survivors

• Inspired by her own healing process and her daughter’s progress, Victoria trained as a life coach for domestic violence survivors.
• "I started working with people who were still in active domestic violence but realized... you can’t make people leave when they’re not ready. I only want to work with survivors now. I want to push people and help people gain that self-confidence..." (01:14)
• Coaching focus: rebuilding self-worth, healthy boundaries, future planning ("therapy deals with the past; coaching builds the future"). (91:23)
• Her Facebook group: “Turning Victims into Survivors” (91:23)

The Psychology & Social Dynamics of Abuse

• Kail and Victoria discuss why leaving is so difficult—danger, housing, finances, and continued manipulation.

• Both reflect on society’s misunderstandings, victim-blaming, and lack of support for survivors and their children.

  • “People get crucified online: ‘Why don’t you just leave?’ If we could just leave, we would have.” (30:39)
  • "A lot of people are too scared... or lose friends who can’t keep watching them go back.” (76:30-77:35)

• Addiction and domestic violence cycles compared:

  • “Victim of domestic violence and addiction go hand in hand... You can’t force people to change if they’re not ready.” (77:02)

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• On Her Foster Parents:
  "My foster parents were amazing... My foster mother would drive from Dover to Milford just to go home and come back three hours later to pick me up from work." (05:09)

• First Experience of Physical Abuse:
  "He threw me over a couch, hit my stomach... my best friend and her mom pulled up." (14:12)

• On Surviving, Not Just Escaping:
  "The more weight I lost, the more confidence I started to get... I started to gain that back and that's when I said, okay, I’ve made this change, I can do this." (19:39)

• On Addiction After Weight Loss Surgery:
  "We go through transfer addiction... Now that I can’t eat, I started drinking. Then, I started using." (39:15)

• On Hard Choices as a Mother:
  "I called him and I said, you gotta come get her... If this is the life that she wants to live, you have more experience in this life than I do." (65:06)

• Victoria’s Reflections on Generational Trauma:
  "I ended up in foster care... I went through all this and then I placed my daughter into the hands of the person who was supposed to protect me... We live and we learn." (81:15, 81:32)

• Victoria’s Approach to Coaching:
  "I’m going to make you think about the hard stuff, set boundaries and stick to them... Accountability is coming from me." (89:39)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Victoria's Early Childhood Trauma
  (03:17–05:13)
• Becoming a Mother as a Teen
  (06:29–08:00)
• First Domestic Violence Experience
  (09:46–14:12)
• Cycle of Abuse and Control
  (14:32–15:29)
• The Breaking Point and Escape
  (18:32–22:57)
• Addiction and Recovery
  (38:51–50:23)
• Meeting Her Now-Husband
  (55:20–58:19)
• Husband’s Accident & Family Hardships
  (58:20–61:47)
• Teen Daughter’s Addiction Crisis
  (63:07–71:45)
• The Power of Coaching & Helping Others
  (85:19–92:00)

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Victoria Smith's Coaching and Resources

• Facebook Group: Turning Victims into Survivors
• TikTok: Life Coach Victoria Smith

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Final Reflections

Victoria's story underscores the complexities of domestic violence, addiction, and generational trauma. Through raw honesty and resilience, she demonstrates how survival can blossom into purposeful help for others. As she tells her clients and her children:

"Unconditional love is something, man... My daughter taught me so much through her trauma." (72:10, 83:16)
"We live and we learn. Sometimes trauma and what we've experienced helps mold us into the people we become." (81:32)

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, resources can be found in the description of the episode.

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Listen to Victoria's entire story and find support at the links provided in the episode description.

Transcript

[Justin Sylvester]

the greatest to ever play the game return to finish what they started welcome to survivor fifty i wanted one more shot to play the game that i fell in love with twenty five years

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

ago i want to win against the best of the best i chickened out

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

at the final tribal season fifty it's

[Justin Sylvester]

an honor light your torch i've got

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

some unfinished business be part of history

[Justin Sylvester]

i have more to play for this time bigger than ever survivor fifty new cbs wednesday at eight seven central and streaming on paramount

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

welcome back to another episode of barely famous podcast today i'm sitting with a mother of three and a survivor of domestic violence you work as a certified domestic violence and trauma life coach is that right y okay

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

survivor life coach life coach survivor life

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

coach so you're supporting women who are no longer in danger correct okay so in addition to this you've lived with obviously domestic violence as the certified domestic violence and trauma life coach for survivors you you carry your experience through that what is that like for you my

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

journey as a life coach started in twenty nineteen around covid time i was opened up to the world of public speaking and being able to give my story and i realized that it started to heal me in places that i didn't even realize needed healed so i started working with people who were still in active domestic violence but i realized that it was taking a really big toll on me all i wanted to do was run up in the house beat up the abuser right and rip her out or him because men are abused too and i realized that you can't make people leave when they're not ready so i had to shift things so i realized having three kids that they went through that trauma with me right so i switched my view over to the children i petitioned the delaware department of education to change the curriculum i want them to start talking about domestic violence in kindergarten because when a child goes to school who's their first best friend their kindergarten teacher so if they start talking about it then they'll realize that you know johnny coming in talking about his dad beating up on his mom or his mom beating up on his dad is not the way of life right it might be normal for them but it's not normal for sally who's never been through that and that creates a lot of havoc in the future because people start kids start to realize that that's a normality i realize there's only so much you can do with children because of legalities and things and parents have to be willing to give permission so i really started critiquing where i wanted to go with this right the trauma that they go through you carry that right trying to help them so i realized that i only want to work with the survivors now because i've been able to survive and i want to push people and help people gain that self confidence you know relight that flame inside of them that was taken away you know set healthy boundaries and be able to live a life beyond domestic violence being that i've done it myself so let's take

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

it back to the beginning and your childhood and your sort of experience with your parents was there domestic violence there

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

so not physical domestic violence but both of my parents had their issues today i don't speak to either one they're both still alive but i don't speak to either one my parents got divorced when i was ten my dad found my stepmom who was my girl scout leader and my mom's best friend there was a huge custody battle and you know with parents that have untreated mental health a lot of that gets put on the kids so i heard a lot a lot of things were said to me growing up that i learned later were not true growing up i found out you know later in life certain things that i didn't know because i had an older brother and i have a half sister we don't communicate but my older brother sheltered me from

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

a lot like he took the brunt of a lot of the things that you guys were going through absolutely he

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

kept us you know together if we moved out of my dad's house we were together if we moved out of my mom's house we were together there was no place that we didn't go together and ultimately he grew up being like a dad to me he he protected me from so much i ended up in foster care when i was fourteen because my parents had some addiction and my stepmother was incredibly abusive to

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

you guys or domestic violence towards your

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

dad to me okay she had two children of her own and she didn't want my brother and i in the

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

picture this might be a stupid question but for my own self and for all the listeners is domestic violence only between partners or exes or can domestic violence be towards like a stepchild or would that be considered child abuse any family any family is domestic violence yes

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

okay so i ended up in foster care bounced from home to home for a little while until i found until they found me an amazing foster family who stood by me supported me you know drove me from milford to dover every day just to go to school and then they would go back home

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

don't like why do y' all keep doing this to me i can't keep

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

crying in every episode so my my foster parents were amazing they were older i had a foster brother who had fetal alcohol syndrome so that was kind of a flip in in my childhood because not being raised the best way or guided the best way i was on a path to destruction and fourteen

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

is a really difficult age especially i also moved in with my neighbors around that age and that was a really challenging time for me you know and i was rebelling in other ways getting kicked out of school having sex like doing i was on a very destructive path so i could resonate with that a lot fourteen is hard just for anyone in general with a normal stable life it's hard so imagine with all of these factors for your life like how challenging that would have been for

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

you absolutely so i kind of i was still very persistent at having a better life my thankfully my foster parents did teach me a lot and supported me in all of that i mean my foster mother would drive from dover to milford just to go home and come back three hours later to pick me up from work she made sure that i was supported and if i wanted to work i had that opportunity i later pushed forward i got pregnant at seventeen with my oldest daughter were

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

you still in that same foster home

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

at that point no the foster system is incredibly screwed up in delaware and they placed me back with my mom okay there was a lot of alcoholism in that house between her and her boyfriend lots of abuse on both parts and i just kind of went through hell yeah essentially but i was working you know basically taking care of myself i could stay and go and do whatever i wanted sure but i was working full time and i was doing my best to try to get out of there yeah at seventeen i got pregnant i moved back in with my mom at this point i wasn't living with her i had moved in with my dad daughter's dad and things didn't go very well for there because i found out he had an addiction issue that was an incredible situation to find out at seventeen you know you're dating somebody you just you know find out you're pregnant and what you think he's going to every thursday is a masonry class you find out is an aa

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

meeting oh but was he actively using also and then so he was using but then going to the meetings to make it look like he wasn't using

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

so he was using drugs at the time but you didn't know i had no idea i was oblivious i was

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

naive well we all are right like seventeen don't be so hard on yourself i mean we all of us at seventeen think we know it all and then everybody else around that time too is like we we think we know everything and we're all naive we all think that we're above it and that we're invincible and nothing's going to happen

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

to us absolutely the last straw with that was when you know he came home high as a kite on morphe that morphine morphine that he stole from his diet grandmother so that was the day i said enough was enough there right and here i am pregnant seventeen i've got to make ends meet i had my daughter i moved out of my mom's house with my first paycheck after going back to work and i got an i got a a rented room in harrington and that's when my life really blossomed and began my brother was going through a really tough situation i you know invited him to live with me because you're my brother you know what i mean that's what we do many situations throughout life my brother's lived with me my mom's lived with me in my home right so here i am being the baby of the family and taking care of everybody else still trying to take care of everybody else and raise my children shortly after all of that i reconnected with my younger two kids dad who later will be discussed yeah i've known him since i was six his sister and i were really good friends best friends for years they were irish twins so we were really close in age his older brother and my older brother were super close really good friends so it's just all of our childhood you know i had the crush on the older brother the brother so at eighteen you know he reached out to me one day and we decided to go out on a date and we reconnected i didn't realize what that was going to do to the rest of my life and because i had had a crush on him my whole life i looked over a lot of the red flags i thought it was a circus right like you see the red flags you're like

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

this looks funny run right towards him just like i do i get it

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

shortly after i found out i was pregnant with my middle daughter and that's when the physical violence started do you

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

think that your pregnancy triggered the the violence or absolutely not no because i've i've read things online and you know over the years that sometimes certain events can trigger that like initial but no

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

you don't think so so i quickly learned that this is always who he was i just didn't know he had a long term relationship with another girl before we got together and i later found out he was the same way

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

with her and by then it's i don't want to say too late but like you're already pregnant with his child and so and you're invested in the relationship and then also on top of that you've known him essentially your whole life and so you want to give them the benefit of the doubt but then there's a psychology behind domestic violence and relationships in that cycle that i definitely want to talk to talk about in this episode because people don't understand

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

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[Justin Sylvester]

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[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

boyfriend says we got eggs in the

[Justin Sylvester]

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[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

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[Justin Sylvester]

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[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

done it will continue if you don't put your foot down i mean they say it takes seven seven attempts at minimum you know average you still risk

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

your life when you leave when you try to leave all those seven times

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

we'll get to that yeah oh yeah

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

yeah yeah i'll have to tell you guys about the what a judge said to me at one point surrounding domestic domestic violence for me but for you you find out okay he's now he's being violent towards you while you're pregnant

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

right yeah threw me over a couch hit my stomach all sorts of things my best friend and her mom pulled up you know things didn't go very well that day but i gave him the benefit of the doubt you know he cried you know narcissistic stuff never

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

do it again this isn't who i am i love you or flips it on you and you got me so

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

mad yeah yeah oh yeah it's always it was it's still to this day it's always my fault oh right of course it is so it progressively got worse but i continued at that point there was so much mental anguish and control that i i was a hermit i wasn't allowed to go places i wasn't allowed to do anything i was depressed and i started to believe what

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

he said right couldn't go places because he didn't want you to tell people just the control okay so like alienation yeah like isolation and then i'd be

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

covered in bruises so i was too embarrassed to walk out of the house right i didn't want all the questions because then i felt like i had to lie and then if you say

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

one thing and then you show up another day and you still have bruises now you're having to cut come up

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

with other right stories yep and there was a lot of our relationship he didn't work so i was the sole provider you know i felt stuck you know even though i was a sole provider in my head i believed how can i do this without him right

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

nobody will love you like i do

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

right right and he used the fact that i had a crush on him my whole life against me right like you dreamed of this you wanted this and then it was the i gained a lot of weight depression does that yeah right isolation and i was over three hundred pounds so he used that against me right nobody's gonna want you with you know all these kids and two baby daddies and you know the the crazy stuff and it just progressively continued i mean there was moments that i didn't even think i was going to live to see another day you know i'd wake up from being passed out of you know from the abuse getting hit in the head knocked out i'd wake up and all i hear him saying is stop faking it stop faking it and he's still beating me you know wake up on christmas morning and it's four in the morning the kids wake up because they hear commotion there's a broken chair on the floor where i got hit in the head with it and i have to tell the kids oh santa came let's open presents now so for many years i tried to block it out i later got pregnant with my youngest same person same one yep and that was another thing i had a previous a daughter from a previous relationship and he did step in and he was you know there for her for at the time what i thought was being a good father and you know not having one of my own you know i thought this was the dream come true right so later had my youngest and it still continued how was he as a

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

dad to them at that time like i know at that time while you're in it you don't see sort of red flags or concerns right but in hindsight when you look back was he a good dad to them yes and

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

no okay yes and no there's a lot of addiction lots of alcohol and

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

drugs on his part definitely trauma but not domestic violence towards them or childhood

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

there were moments okay there were moments but i always tried to take the blood of it if i realized he was i knew from the moment he opened his mouth coming into that house how the rest of the night was going to go and that's when it was time to get the kids to bed you know quickly right girls let's have a sleepover in your room tonight we're gonna watch movies and eat popcorn and i always tried to shelter them yeah and then there would you know i tried i tried to leave i would try to kick him out it was my house right i bought it we lived in a trailer and i in dover and i bought it and i would try to tell him to leave and he would start packing his stuff and then he'd tell the kids because the kids didn't see what took place before that right so they don't know what's going on they had no idea you know they heard some yelling probably i'm sure at that point but they didn't know mom's getting beat up and all the things and as he was walking out the door look what your mom is doing daddy didn't even do anything and she's making me leave so for years my kids believed i was the bad guy right i was i was the crazy one i was the bad guy and in twenty seventeen i officially like how am i going to get rid of him how am i going to get out of this

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

what do you think was the turning point to get you to that place i need to figure out how to get out of this what what was the click for you rewind it back

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

a little okay my brother was getting married okay i was really close with his fiance at the time okay and we went to new york for her bachelorette party okay my mom was there her parents were there her aunt was there or her mom was there her her aunt was there and we walked around new york i'm the youngest one and i am exhausted because i was over three hundred pounds and everybody else is you know still going and i'm ready to go lay down and go to sleep but that night i laid in that hotel room and i realized like i'm so uncomfortable even laying down so i called my doctor and i'm like what can i do about weight loss like i got to figure this out

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

that's kind of interesting like to hear you say like that that was what it was that because you probably realized in that moment too that you weren't always this way and this relationship kind of had you there something had

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

to change yeah right okay so i talked to the doctor i started going to the gym i was eating healthy that fast yeah yeah i mean you

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

were like i'm making this change like

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

i'm committed january by september i was in for weight loss surgery we found out that i had a thyroid issue okay that's the reason i wasn't losing any weight okay i mean i was at the gym five to seven days a week i was barely eating like grilled chicken and greens was like my diet and i just dropping pounds so the doctor was like let's run some more tests found out i had a thyroid issue okay he said look the only way we're going to save your life is is weight loss surgery okay so i went in for gastric sleeve surgery it's a process right yeah it's just a tool it doesn't make you lose the weight it just helps you right portion control naturally like a jump start yeah so i started the journey with weight loss okay and the more weight i lost the more confidence i started to get okay right within myself because obviously at three hundred pounds all the abuse the negative things that was said to me like i really lost a piece of me and i started to gain that back and that's when i said okay i've made this change i can do this yeah i can i can do this you can do hard stuff and things were getting progressively worse his addiction was progressively worse i was you know there'd be nights where i'd call the neighbor over to watch the kids so i could pull up to the house and rip him out of his ex girlfriend's house while he's like nodded out on the couch like so for many years i fought his addiction for him right so twenty seventeen it got real bad and that's when i said what can i do so i knew a lawyer i reached out to him and i said what can i do right what can be done so he's like look you're kind of stuck in a situation because the trailer park that i lived in required me to put my child's father's name on the title oh on the title if he was going to be on the lease anybody who's over the age of eighteen in the home has to be ownership of the home or they can't be in the park so i said how am i going to do this like i'm going to lose everything like do i just walk away like do i just grab my kids and leave in the middle of the night like i don't have anywhere to go and

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

then money is also an issue and then the kids and the clothes and

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

all my name is on this how's it going to affect me in my future like all of these things right so i finally put the house up for sale it was under andor i don't need his permission i can sell it it was mine anyway so i put the house up for sale and i started the process of buying a home an actual house it was my only way out i didn't know what else to do i gave him the notice you have thirty days because i'm selling the trailer obviously all hell broke loose police were involved throughout the years i mean more than twenty times the police got called and finally he left not willingly but he left in assistance with a pfa i was able to sell the trailer i bought my house i moved into my house that wasn't the end of him right he showed up at my house and he would you know show up on an ounce break in when i wasn't home bypassed my security system i was in my my bedroom is in my basement i'm in a three story townhouse okay my bedroom's in my basement and i see something moving out of the window outside and i'm like what is going on so i open up the door and he's like hunched down behind my ac unit which is like right outside my bedroom window in my basement window and i'm like what are you doing like

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

what is what's going on right

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

would

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

that be a form of stalking absolutely and would that fall under the category of domestic domestic violence or domestic abuse

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

yeah okay yeah because he's the father of my children okay right i mean rewind it back a little bit too i got arrested over him i found him in a hotel room with a stripper doing drugs and yeah but you're

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

in a toxic relationship that's to not to be expected but like when you're in a relationship like that and it's so hard for people who have never experienced domestic violence in a relationship for them to understand the levels of tension and animosity and like these heightened experiences for things like that like when someone has never experienced that they can't wrap their head around it and so you're talking to someone who fully understands what that's like it's like the the good is really good it can be really good and then that the lows are really low really really low so you you're being abused by this person but ultimately you love them and now they're cheating on you you don't want to see them cheating on you you just want your family you want it to be good you want it to be healthy you want all those things when you're in that cycle right i get it

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[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

i chase his addiction for him right like i battled it i tried to get him out of it i tried to save him and it just progressively got worse well twenty eighteen is when i twenty seventeen is when you know i officially left him sold the trailer i had to go back and live with my mom for two months while the bank was processing all of the stuff for my house my mom had a two bedroom trailer i had three kids my kids slept on a couch on a pull out couch and i slept in essentially a storage room that was full wall to wall totes boxes and i slept on a twin size blow up mattress for two months and my clothes my dresser was my daughter's barbie house i had my clothes folded up and like piled up on this barbie house and that was my dresser we lived out of a suitcase everything else was in storage i moved into the house and obviously he just kept coming around one day i came home he wasn't supposed to be there you know here i am trying to move on with my life and he just would not leave me alone right so i just it was still my norm like what am i going to do now i've done everything what am i going to do now i came home one day and he was there and in the house in the house because my oldest daughter and my middle daughter had come home from school and i had picked my youngest up from daycare i come home and he's there well we had just gotten a new puppy right because with everything going on i need a protective dog i need a dog that's gonna you know do the business if it's if it needed so we're outside talking to my neighbor he comes out of the house with a fifth in his hand of vodka and i'm like what are you what are you doing here right he quickly turns around and runs back inside and puts the fifth in the freezer he didn't realize i was home yet then he comes back out and pretends like that didn't happen like like i didn't see it so i let it be for a minute and the kids were playing my four year old at the time my youngest is holding the puppy another kid walks past her and bumps into her and she dropped the puppy well four year old is what two feet off the ground the puppy obviously fell he yelped it scared him he's only six weeks old my kid's father backhanded my four year old across the head and threw her across the yard for accidentally she accidentally dropped the puppy so i went in the house and i was like what am i gonna do like i grabbed my daughter i go in

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

the house did anyone see that everybody

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

saw it everybody saw it so i went in the house and i'm like what am i gonna do like i just had a process for a minute because here i am trying to heal and be a better person right i don't want the reactive abuse my kids are here neighbors are here i'm still in that let me shelter it right he comes in i send the kids upstairs he comes into the basement and it just went off from there so i went upstairs and i grabbed the alcohol out of the freezer and i was like you shouldn't even be here on top of that you're drinking me he grabbed me by the back of my head and drugged me down the stairs my middle daughter was standing at the top of the stairs screaming daddy don't do it seen it all this was the first time my children had seen him physically assault me it was not the first time he did it i mean twenty arrests or you know twenty times the cops got called and him being told to leave and arrests and all of that throughout the years like this is the first time my kids saw it and at that point that i looked up and i seen my daughter's face while he's dragging me down the stairs and i just knew like something has got to give right now something's got to change so i mean it there was a scuffle in the basement for quite some time and i was able to get i remember waking up i was knocked out in the corner of my basement this is still the same house i live in so there's still a lot of trauma in that house my husband and i are currently working on getting us out of there but i was in the basement and i remember waking up and i already had another dog who i'd had since she was nine months old he helped raise her you know what i mean like he was her caregiver too and i woke up to her barking and holding him against the wall with her teeth bearing that gave me just enough time to jump up and run out thankfully i had my phone in my back pocket i knew that if i picked up the as i'm running out he's screaming if you call the cops i'm gonna kill you so i knew i couldn't pick up that phone and call anybody i couldn't verbally say anything so i had a close friend at the time and i i text her i knew that her kids had a baseball game that afternoon at the camden little league so i text her and i said nine one one my house now and i sent a picture of my face did they do

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

it did they call because i did something very similar and they didn't call

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

well there was many times that for years nobody called right nobody would they got tired of me calling him crying wolf and then because then you get

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

back with him and it but it's like nobody can understand why you go back and that's the hardest part and i've seen people survivors of domestic violence get crucified on the internet or you know facebook posts if there's a facebook post about it and they get ripped to shreds why don't you just leave there's if we could just leave we

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

would have and that is exactly why i do what i do now that

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

right there it's so frustrating because you can't you don't know what you don't know and you're speaking on something you have no idea the psychological yeah aspects

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

behind absolutely and it's frowned upon nobody wants to talk about domestic violence no mind your business there's also like reactive

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

abuse where it's like you're fighting for yourself you're defending yourself but they don't really see it that way either it's like well no you're the aggressor no i've been abused for x amount of

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

time yeah i'm defending myself yeah yeah so i text my friend you know nine one one my house now her well two carloads pulled up we'll say that her her ex husband her seventeen year old son and a group of girls they all pull up at this point he's still in the basement i don't know what he's doing down there but he's the dog okay yeah the dog was fine okay the dog was fine so the ex husband and the son run in my house run right past me into my house at this point they know he's in there and i heard them say like where is he and all i said was the basement the girls grabbed me they've already called nine one one her ex husband and her son beat the bricks off my kid's father and literally drug him out the house and laid him in the front yard he's unconscious in the front yard police are starting to pull up there the girls are standing in front of me the ex husband the son are kind of hovering over top of him making sure he don't get up right they're all standing in front of me on my front porch and i'm behind them they're shelter you know basically sheltering me he jumps up cops are standing like at the end of my driveway walking up to my house he jumps up and tries to reach over top of the girls to hit

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

me again in front of everyone in

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

front of the cops in front of everybody at that point that's when they finally arrested him and that's the chief of police at the time in camden for the first time i felt heard

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

did you feel conflicted at that time

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

yeah absolutely yeah for so long i mean every time i would call the police on him you know even sexual assault right i reported it went through the whole testing at the hospital and

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

and then you feel bad there was

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

a lot of legalities that they couldn't really hold him to it right they charged him with it but then they pled down his charges yeah so what was first degree rape turned into intimidation of a victim so i felt no support right i was terrified at this point like what's gonna happen that chief looked me dead in my face and he said i will stand by you in every court case he said i will monitor your house he was like when i'm on duty when my guys are on duty i'll make sure that they're watching like if we get a call and it's your address we are on the way i don't care if i'm in the middle of a traffic stop i'm coming like so for the first time in forever i felt supported and he kept to his word you know he showed up he was there every court date they finally sentenced my kid's dad to ten months in prison ten months ten months and at that time i was like i finally have a moment to breathe right like at

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

least it was enough time for you to sort of get your ducks in a row to figure out what the

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

next step was i thought lot right

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

oh god he wouldn't serve ten months

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

did he well he served his ten months okay but he was sending letters and pictures through his through a family member i'm not gonna disclose because her and i do communicate but a family member and because it wasn't there was no conversation saying give this to her or give this to the kids just

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

for the listeners when you have a pfa or something like this you cannot contact your the victim even through a third party so you cannot contact them through another person to say hey can you get this message to so and so that is part of the pfa to protect the victim but it does happen in other ways you can do it without saying hey can you pass this message along you just say it and they know to pass the message

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

along he mailed it to her with his names on it and with my name on it and then she would call me and say hey i got this stuff can you come pick it up up and it was like pictures that he had a prisoner draw for the kids or whatever but at that point i'm lost right mentally he goes to prison and here i am standing in my front yard like my kids just witnessed all of this like my neighbor thankfully took my kids in her house ordered pizza like you know made sure the curtains were closed meanwhile he's going to prison i still kind of giggle because the chief let the female copy arrest him so like imagine a

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

grown ass man being arrested by a

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

woman right right and he's intoxicated and just beat the crap out of his you know kid's mother yeah so at that point you know here i am i have some breathing room but i didn't realize that that was going to turn into something tragic for me

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

all

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[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

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[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

for years i chased him to fix his drug addiction i didn't know who i was here i am alone right i fell into drugs i went downtown dover i haven't been out in years i didn't know how bad irish

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

mike's was also you had weight loss surgery which i think also impacts your ability to transfer metabolize alcohol and things

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

like that not even just that you go through transfer addiction what is that i had a food addiction right that most people have but we don't know and now that i can't eat so

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

much now i'm gonna drink it now

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

i started drinking while i was still with him and then i cut that off because i quickly realized like oh no this is not this is not for me but i went downtown right i'm gonna go celebrate i'm gonna go you know try to find a piece of my prior to this the day he got arrested i walked into the tattoo shop and i said you see his name right here covered up and then i also got my dog's paul oh so i had his name covered up and the paul the day he went to jail okay right gotta do what you got a little healing right but at this point i went downtown dover and my roommate at the time i had a roommate she was supposed to come with me she backed out so i'm like i'm already here i'm gonna go inside i guess i ran into some friends from when i was in my teenage years and of course we hung out they're like hey i got i got an apartment over here on top of golden fleece let's all go over there and hang out so i went in to mike's and you know we all went upstairs to the apartment we're hanging out you know and i walk in one of the rooms where everybody was i'm like where everybody go right i walk in and they're doing cocaine and at this point i'm like might as well celebrate right let's go that was the start of my

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

addiction two cocaine huh so that shit's

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

expensive oh it is yeah but then i started hanging out right at this

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

point i bought a motorcycle tattoos drinking cocaine motorcycles right all the things i'm

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

down a terrible path at this point right now i have to say my motorcycle did save my life okay obviously that addiction you know was something right

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

did you purchase the motorcycle because of this path that you went down you were like okay let me because sometimes overspending or spending on things that are not that's that can be like a form of coping too so no i

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

had a friend that i grew up with we were you know now that i'm away from my kids dad people started to feel comfortable reaching back out to me oh and he rode bikes and he kept calling me he's like hey come for a ride with me one day and i was like no no no like no like i can't do that well i was having a really bad day the kids are in bed my roommate's home hey girl can you watch the kids for a few minutes like i know if they're in

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

bed you're not really watching them just making sure they stay just make sure

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

they all you know nobody whatever yeah so i called him up i'm like bro it's ten o' clock at night come get me like let's go for a ride he's like bet he's like let me run home and grab the helmet i'm on the way so he picked me up right he didn't want to wake the kids up with his bike so we met at camden walmart okay right left my car there he gives me this helmet the visor on the helmet's like not clipping on the one side so i'm like like and he's a big dude like when i say big dude he's a big guy okay so here i am on the back of this sports bike with this big guy in front of me i'm holding one side on the helmet right and i've always rode like dirt bikes and stuff my whole life so this is nothing new to me and we go for like a two hour ride up and down thirteen up and down route nine it's like the middle of the night i get back that night we had hit a bump and like both of us almost flew off the bike like it was cr it was a crazy experience we had to pull over he was like holding himself for like forty five minutes because like it hurt he smacked against the tank oh poor thing so we get back drops me off to my car and i was like i love riding right this adrenaline of it right like maybe this will help me but i can't ride on the back of your bike anymore

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

i need my own bike i want

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

my own bike so i started looking on facebook marketplace and at this point i'm in a better financial position you know than i've ever been and i start looking on facebook marketplace and i i met this guy he's like yeah i got a motorcycle so i was like all right bet i'll come over and look at it tomorrow no clue what i was looking at nothing about bikes but i was like i'm gonna do this so i get over there and it's like this old like nineties ninety eight ninety seven like ripped apart like you can tell it's been wrecked probably five times plastics on it are all broken up wheels bent he's like so listen if you want to learn to ride i don't want to put you on this thing he's like i could he said morally i can't but i would he's like you know i'll even fix it for you if this is the bike you really want like i'll even fix it for you he was like but i feel like we need to spin the block about you know something else i was like what are you talking about he's like you think he can finance something i was like depending like i think so i'm in a financial i'm in a good financial spot this guy's not draining all my money anymore so and at that point i really wasn't using like it was a more or less like when i seen certain people so it was just a hobby right essentially not a not a habit so this guy actually the next day he's like go home look on diamond motorsports see what you find he was like and tomorrow we'll go up there together he's like i'll go with you i don't know this guy from can of paint i just met him on facebook marketplace okay he's

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

like ready to help you get a

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

bike but he's got a garage full

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

of motorcycles yeah he knows what he's

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

talking about probably obviously he's got something going on here yeah yeah there was no stopping me and i named my bike cinderella because she cleaned up my mental spaces right but being on that bike i also fell into crowds of people who had drugs right so as you said earlier cocaine's an expensive addiction

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

yeah not that i've had one it's

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

not for somebody who gets to come home every day to it broken up on a mirror on her bed that she's not paying for because her friends are paying for it and that's how my life kind of spiraled out of control for a while and i was doing like an eight ball a day which is a lot if anybody knows you know and i wasn't paying for it one of the people that i hung out with one of my friends was dating a guy who was a heavy addict and i mean he was taking out loans to go buy the stuff i didn't care it's not my money that's your problem i come home and i'm like oh there's coke did

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

you think that it was a problem

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

or did you like i knew it yeah subconsciously i knew it like this

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

is wrong but i'm gonna do it

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

anyway but again i was still trying to figure out who i was yeah and all i knew was chasing and trying to battle his addiction so that's where i came into that right like that's all i knew i knew about addiction i knew the struggles of it and now it's i turned it into my own but you don't think it's

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

gonna happen to you you're like oh i can do this a couple times recreationally and i don't think i'm gonna get addicted to it until you do

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

i of drugs yeah terrified because i seen what it did to my kid's dad and other people in my life yeah so that quickly spiraled out of control and then it turned into pills and i started using percocets and i met somebody who i thought was like my dream come true and what turned into one every now and again was a dollar five hundred a day habit

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

a day a day so what kinds of things are you doing to be able to pay for that i was

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

working i was working he was working while you were high absolutely absolutely crowd went to work three days after over or three hours after overdosing that was my final straw was when he would work and his money went to the bills in the house and everything got paid so my kids were always taken care of like they were always my number one i would go through withdrawals whatever if i had to but it never got to that because we had two incomes in the house and at the time my mom was actually living with my roommate had moved out my

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

mom had moved in now there's three

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

adults my mom's paying me rent you know what i mean so like we were set financially we could afford it yeah and he was working i was working i was making great money he was making great money cdl driver and

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

he's getting high and he's a cdl driver absolutely so y' all are in the trenches right now right in the

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

trenches and we ended up getting some bad pills right we were up to like thirty milligram pills at a time snorting them up our nose and we were fighting over at drugs like i was hiding them from him he was hiding because you didn't want him to

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

use what you wanted to use like

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

i know he's he's a heavy user you know he's worse than i am

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

right yeah he's probably bigger than you yeah yeah of course you know what

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

i mean so it was it was terrible it was terrible i wouldn't say it was like domestic violence terrible but like it was just a top different type of terrible it was a toxic relationship we were horrible for one another we got some bad pills and when we got it when we got them we both knew that something was wrong about them like they didn't quite feel right it didn't look right just hit different but when you're an addict you don't care i'm gonna try it anyway right like what's that song i knew the perk was fake but i still ate it that's accurate in addiction a thousand percent like absolutely so we go home and we both did our pill snorted it up our nose i instantly within like two or three minutes started throwing up i'm like hugging the trash can right i finally get a break and i look over and he's blue

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

like overdosing blue oh yeah we were

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

both overdosing at this point i had one vial in our can and i gave it to him you didn't save yourself in that moment i wasn't thinking i'm still coherent he's not act like and i don't want to call the police i got kids like what are

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

they scared because what's gonna my kids

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

yeah like you know that was my number one fear right everybody's gonna find out nobody knew i was an addict like i talked to people today that were around daily in and out of my house like always around like people i worked with nobody knew i was

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

using i was gonna ask you that because sometimes addicts and alcoholics think that nobody knows and then you look back and everyone tells you know like we knew no but these people didn't know

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

nobody had an idea nobody and i mean they didn't even know he was using like we were i don't know how we covered it up right like there was a few people that we openly honestly told because like they were doing it too but nobody knew bills were paid there was no signs yeah we were still living like kids were taken care of yeah you know we were still going out to dinner and whatever right thankfully i was okay i started like i had a one of those neti pots yeah i started flushing my nose like i hit him with the narcan he came back he was fine he was mad actually that i

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

just pissed off yeah i've actually heard that like when you give someone narcan like their high was so good like why did you that up you're taking away from them but then you're like

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

and now they can't do it amount of hours because it's not gonna work

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

wait what do you mean so once

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

you hit the narcan it puts a blocker on your system them that's what it blocks the opiate from you being able to feel it from it being

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

effective so you can't then use drugs

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

to make you sick okay and you won't get high so he was mad but that day i i came downstairs we had just bought these pills like this is the first one and we each we had dollar five hundred worth of pills in my hand and i looked him dead in the face and i was like like it's me or the drugs and i picked up our stash and he's like where are you going and i walked upstairs you flushed him i flushed him down the toilet and that was the day i stopped

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

cold turkey cold turkey you never went

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

to rehab no i went through hell i was sick like withdrawal oh yeah

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

i was sick what was the withdrawal

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

like shakespeare throwing up i've cold flash it like hot and cold yeah yeah i almost felt like covet in the flu all in one and this went on for like a week and it started to ease up and i started to feel better so i mean it was it was like getting sick but i i've been through so much worse

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

yeah right i feel like i can

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

do this i can do this i this is not who i am and that's why every day i would get up and look in the mirror this is not who the you are when you're you're locked up in your bedroom puking in your trash can and nobody's there you know maybe one or two close friends come in and check on you whatever but most of the time you're not honest about it right right those are the ones that do it in the darkness cold turkey are most likely the ones that were doing it behind closed doors and nobody knew right so there isn't a lot of support there or limelight right so so at this time i still have my motorcycle right did you guys break up oh

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

yeah oh because you said it's drugs or me and he wasn't ready so

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

he's done well at first he said he was okay and then i noticed money was missing hey i gotta go get gas why do you only have a quarter tank when you got back and you pulled out dollar forty at the valero right so me being hyper vigilant from what i've been through before you already know and at this point i'm not taking anything less than perfect so get out of my house so he was gone we did break up and he's still off on doing whatever he does last time i seen him he looked terrible but he stole my he cleared out my bank account like just dipped like and he didn't even tell me that he wasn't ready like he was lying about it right and

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

maybe he thought that you would would continue to do it with him like that you weren't actually done when you said you were done i don't know

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

i was pretty stern about it so he was still there for a week and i was still trying to give him the benefit of the doubt you're

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

sick going through withdrawal that week and

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

he's still going out and getting pills and coming home and pretending like nothing's happening yeah actually the way that he left was he went to work at three o' clock his location got turned off and he never came home he's not answering my calls he's not answering

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

my texts and you're going through withdrawal you're like what the i need my

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

man i checked my bank account and it's no nope empty savings gone rent or mortgage money gone everything everything this was build day friday right this is the one we pay all the bills he took his money and mine his brother actually his brother and his brother's girlfriend who was one of my friends at the time stepped up and paid my mortgage that month because i had no idea what i was going to

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[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

he never came back ghosted me ghosted me so that was the best thing right i'm grateful because i don't know after everything i've been through in life if i would have had enough guts to really like bring it to an end right right right and then

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

if so kind of a silver lining that he did that it's like obviously you didn't want the money to be gone but it was sort of a silver lining that he did that because now you're like i don't know if i would have had the the courage to keep it done i was wrecked

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

yeah right here i am walking away from an addiction which anybody who's been through addiction that's like the love of your life right that's your that was what was healing and masking my pain i'm not going to say healing but masking my pain from everything i've been through before before right at that point my brain shuts down i don't listen to that i feel what i feel right now yeah so i'm walking away from that now he leaves right like and this is the first time somebody's like really left me so here i am like what in the world like you really are choosing drugs over me but it was the best thing so once i felt better hop back on my bike and one of the guys that i was you know the guy that actually introduced me to bikes right introduced me me to my now husband okay at cars and coffee in milford okay right i was still with the other guy when i met him standing there with my dog the moment he pulled up on his bike like i still say this to this day like i instantly felt this connection to this man that's where things started to kind of blossom and i posted on my facebook story like just a video of my bike like you know whatever that's what we do proud of our bike he got off work a half hour early that day and came all the way to harrington where i was working just to ride me back to my house in camden for me to jump in my car with my kids and take them to a school dance oh so you got off work early just to ride me back to my house and leave he's like hey let me know when you get back and i'll meet you back at the house maybe we'll go grab something to eat so eight o' clock comes i text him how he made it to my house in like two minutes he had to have been like sitting waiting right like

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

yeah where's this girl at he had a crush on you yeah oh yeah

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

oh yeah and he's much younger than

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

me too they always it's always the young ones how much younger nine years zero nine okay okay so we went

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

to buffalo wild wings okay and we come back to my house my house was like the hangout all the bikers would come back there i had a bunch of big brothers you know what i mean like these some of these guys were even helping with my kids like getting them off the bus like yeah i'd come in the house and they're baking lemon tarts with my daughter like homework's done my underwear is folded on the couch like they've done did my laundry the house is clean like

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

oh that's actually really sweet like knowing that you're like a single single mom you're working your ass off you have to provide for three kids like you've been through it yeah right yeah so

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

they were all so supportive so it was nothing to invite him in to come hang out so we we come in and we just talk right for hours three movies done played in the background we ain't even looked at it and we're still talking yeah and we look down at the clock and it's like three four o' clock in the morning and he's like man i really don't want to ride this bike home

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

so he stays the night i was

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

like so dog don't we both you knew we just knew yeah right so that was twenty nineteen may of twenty nineteen and he hasn't left since y'

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

all been together so when did you

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

get married so september of twenty nineteen my husband gets into a bike accident right in front of me he's on his bike at the time he's my boyfriend we've only been together for a few months he's right in front of me two car lengths ahead of me i watched the whole thing oh my

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

god the trauma of like i it would be awful regardless but the trauma of seeing it in front of your

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

face i thought he was dead i thought he was dead like watching it happen like oh my god he said he could hear me screaming in my helmet before he hit the car no and car pulled out in front of him so he gets rushed to the hospital and he spends a week in a little over a week in hospital two major surgeries shattered his femur shattered his clavicle so all this time in hospital and he comes home he's in

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

a wheelchair is he shattered his femur he can't walk he has a rod

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

from his knee to his hip he's

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

got now you have to take care of him right which that sounds awful the way that i said it but you are a recovering addict you've been through domestic violence you're raising three kids you're a single mom you're working full time and now you're taking care of your partner essentially full time who just

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

became a diesel mechanic and can no longer do that as a career because

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

of his shoulder oh at all ever not just during the healing at all

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

all even to this day he can't do one he doesn't he can't lift his because i mean they put those big trucks on this he can't reach up like this for long periods of time so here goes his career right so now i'm paying all the bills we're fighting the other guy's insurance like who doesn't have insurance we found out so it's like this big old thing so we're now fighting my husband's insurance trying to get all this you know at least some kind of help financially but in the meantime time i'm paying for everything right medical equipment medications it's all coming out of my pocket but that's what you do for someone you absolutely right so i spent i spent the week in the hospital with him his cousins came over and took care of my kids for that week it's really grateful as hell right my kids obviously were very connected to him at this point while he's in the hospital obviously i come home i tell my kids like this is what happened mommy's got to go stay at the hospital they're all like like devastated because they

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

know him at this point right okay

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

they're close with him he's he stepped in and stepped up he has no children of his own he was twenty one when we got together so you know he comes home from the hospital my kids god bless my oldest daughter like they moved our bed upstairs to the main floor so he had to

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

use stairs oh with the wheelchair my

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

next door neighbor came over and helped us carry his with me helped me carry the wheelchair and him up the steps once he got up there you're

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

staying you can't go anywhere right he

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

became more mobile over time but the beginning was really tough he starts to heal obviously you know we're going through all that but we realized like he realized at that point like this is the woman i'm gonna be with forever we ended up getting married in twenty twenty three okay beautiful wedding beautiful wedding it was great slaughter beach on the beach like at the pavilion cowboy hat you know my husband's black my kids are all white so people were like what's going on here but that's not

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

funny but it's funny like it happens

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

all the time the schools have questioned my kids do you feel safe with this man they're like what are you talking about that's my stepdad like what

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

racism at its finest cuz my kids

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

were never raised like that i mean we've had a gun pulled on us you know because so they this isn't

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

like weird for them like they've been around all races and ethnicities and yeah

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

so like that's not they're like mom's happy that the happiest mom's ever been you know what i mean like and this man stepped in and and healed hearts that he didn't break like mine and all three kids but where we thought the happy ending was was not quite the happy ending that we thought it was going to be for a long time because obviously my kids have seen domestic violence yeah and you know there's help for people that are victims of domestic violence but nobody takes into consideration the kids that went through that battle with them right they're not the victims in the state's eyes or the you know justice system a judge told

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

me that she was not going to consider the domestic violence towards me because he did not hurt the kids so to your point about the kids not being the victim no but they've heard the yelling they've heard the crashes they've heard they've heard just from being in the same house some of those mommy got black eyes and i which is a stark contrast to another judge in the state of delaware in the same county that said that i at the point that i was strangled it was the next step was i was going to lose my life absolutely and she looked us both in the face and said that and i just thought that was they were both female judges and i was very surprised by the the contrast between the two so once your

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

abuser has strangled you you're at a a higher risk of being unalived yeah so you know we start teenage daughters right teenage years hit and one of my kids became very rebellious now for her i'm going to keep it you know kind of private but she became very rebellious there was a lot of mental health diagnoses in that process and with mental health comes addiction and now here i am watching my daughter struggle with addiction and violence and all the things so we got to a point where what do we do right in and out of you know hospitals and treatments and all the things and we're not getting any better because she's just angry right and not understanding how to process she may not have witnessed a lot but even that one incident where she was able to see it and it click with her that's where she realized all those other times mom wasn't the one at fault right it got harder for her and she didn't know how to process this we ended up getting to a point where my kid's dad was out of jail he really he had applied for visitations they weren't really working out right supervised and he was every time i'd have to go get them something was wrong i try to give the benefit of the doubt for the kids i want my kids to have a relationship no matter what happened with him and i i'm hoping he can be a better father sure right it didn't work out that way well there was a point where he had moved to south carolina and was staying with his parents and he was sober he was sober he was working things were great well this is in the middle of my daughter's crisis crisis and we got to a point where i don't know what else to do like i can't keep she's attacking my other kids myself like you send her

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

to south carolina i called him and

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

i said you gotta come get her i don't know what else to do if this is the life that she wants to live you have more experience in this life than i do with the anger and the abuse and the drugs and you know let's try it you're sober you're living with your parents so i have more trust that somebody even if you screw this up your

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

parents can help help you have your

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

adult sister and your two parents so there's three other adults in this house that can help guide her right i sent her down there what i thought was going to be the best thing for her was not was the worst

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

thing for her wasn't it things seemed

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

to be okay for a while but he never got her back into mental health treatment which she needed so bad right i mean we were fighting it up here she needed that never got her into a doctor was too late enrolling her in school like she only went to school for three days down there then i get i don't know what flipped in him but he just packed them up and moved them back up here

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

and was it just her was it all three just him and

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

her my other he moved both of them back up here him and her yeah yeah yep him and my daughter but they ended up packing up and they came back here he's never been stable on his own he's always lived with somebody so currently living with the grandfather father who is ill right older in his eighties and my daughter's just running rampant boys addiction all the things in between i'm getting phone calls from the school on a daily that she's getting in trouble we can't get a hold of dad so here i am having to go up to the school

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

take off work do whatever you got to do to be up there be

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

the bad guy guy right because now you're in trouble why am i getting these calls you're supposed to be doing this this and that i'm not going to reward your bad behavior right so here i am still the bad guy and he's got her convinced that like you're the bad guy i'm the terrible person right i'm asking for too much i'm asking for the bare minimum man sobriety and keep focused on the books that's it number one rule in my house is education school is number one if you f that up you don't get another shot at it this is it you're you got to go anyway you might as well just use the opportunity for what it's worth right right yeah instead you're doing drugs in the bathroom and getting caught getting kicked out getting into fights getting caught with boyfriends skipping class all these things so thanksgiving comes around this is november i get a phone call from a family member of my kid's father and he left her live by herself how old is she at this point thirteen thirteen so

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

to live by herself well this was

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

more or less i'll pop by and check on you from the driveway and he would drop off food and snacks and a vape a vape because he taught her how to self medicate we're

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

supposed to be parents not friends right

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

right so i get a phone call from one of his family members this is what's going on she's been there for a week absolutely not i didn't even like call him i just go get her let's go but i knew she's worse off now than what she was when i sent her right she can't come back to my house my mom and i right as a as a daughter i forgave her my whole life but now as a mother i look back and i can't forgive you for some of the things you've done and said and did and continue to do do right so i called my mom because what else am i gonna do i got nobody else and i said mom i need you to take her so we go over there and i have my other two kids with me too because like we're gonna need help packing and i walk in the house and there's like mold all through my ceiling there's like rat feces like in the closet like all over my daughter's stuff my daughter has two plastic totes full of her clothes and they're just like like they're destroyed from like mold and moisture and all the things and at that point i called him and i was like i'm taking her you're done you up like you have one chance and you it up like you couldn't even do right by her so my mom takes her and i guess at the time just i wasn't thinking you know know and i don't feel bad about it like because things happen but i realized that like my mom was letting her run amok you're getting kicked out of school two days before spring break and then you spend your entire spring break over at a friend's house where you're not even supervised and come to find out like you're over there partying and people are doing drugs and having sex and like doing all the things my mom was lying to me about a cell phone the dad bought her a cell phone gave it to her on christmas my mom was still letting him come over and see here he bought her a cell phone and nobody told me about it

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

why was your mom colluding with him

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

i'm not sure well i honestly can't answer that because i don't that just

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

feels so weird to me it was

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

super weird especially knowing that this man did so much to your daughter absolutely right so like like i said as a daughter i forgave her for years and years and years but like as a mom i look back now and it's like what the hell right like how could you my daughter didn't even want to come see me because that meant she would have to leave her cell phone at my mom's house house when i found out that my mom was lying to me to cover things for her finding vapes in her room my daughter was smoking weed in her room like at my mom's house right my mom's letting this happen you live in an old sixties trailer and you're going to tell me the gap underneath her bedroom door wasn't protruding the smoke out into the living room if there wasn't here to your wall over here like you're gonna know you can't tell me that your nose blind to it i know better right so i went over there and i found out my daughter had a phone i was like give it me to me give it to me and that's why i went through the phone and i found out so much more and i was like that is it you're coming home i already knew was going to hit the fan and i knew that my daughter was not in a mental position to leave to leave and come straight to my house so we had the police follow us down to a treatment center okay and that's where she went it was off and on for quite some time but she did come home and it was still a battle when she came home and you know police involvement other things but i can say that she has been sober since february of last year good she has done a complete three hundred sixty mental health wise she is the most kind and caring person and i finally have my daughter back right but that's what led me to coaching because i realized like through all of that we didn't have help for her we didn't have the help

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

you're focused on your own trauma and sobriety and keeping yourself together and you don't realize the trauma whether they see all the incidents or hear it or just know what's going on you don't realize the impact that it can have on the kids absolutely and then you think they're fine until they hit their teenage years and a lot of it will come out at that time yeah

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

and so healing as a mom i obviously made mistakes like we no mom

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

is perfect we're all doing it for

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

the first time so then like i beat myself up for so long like did i i do something wrong did i cause this was i you know did i lash out or crash out too much or you know whatever did i yell at them the wrong way and just all the things and just the rebellion itself like i get it she's so much like me like so much like me and i say that every day she's so much like me she's very stern and hard headed and but she's so like dominant right like very dominant and she's worked so incredibly hard so i do want to to take this moment give her you know give her her kudos for that and it's something that she should be proud of there's and i've told her like every day like there's so many adults in this world that haven't battled what you've battled or if they did they haven't gotten through it you've done things that you know grown adults can't even do and that's something to truly be proud of right and i mean she's a light in in every day of my life like we battled this together and i never gave up on her and i i loved her through the hard and and the good people ask me like how do you do it like how do you i would i wouldn't be able to like unconditional love is something man it is something so i mean that's really what led me to coaching because like she everything was textbook with the doctors with the therapists with the you know the schools everything is textbook right nobody can relate to what this child has been through do

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

you guys talk about it now absolutely is she open about it or does she struggle with it she has her

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

days yeah so she's still very emotional when dad gets brought up because she did get to spend that time with him just him and her and he

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

was her friend but they it was also very toxic she sees that now

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

and the mental mind games that he plays even to this day like it's terrible but he i won't they don't talk to the kids anymore he doesn't talk to the kids anymore i won't allow it like court orders had now state it like you have to be sober in your own place like you voluntarily signed this paper i caught him in like a very sober moment when i took her back and like we got him to look this document over that i typed up and i was like these are the stipulations and he's like i agree with you and he

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

signed it so he recognizes that he also has an issue not now oh

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

not now it's been like i don't know what moment i had him in at that time but he met me at the family court and was willing to sign it and i said okay we're gonna keep it at that i

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

feel like that's kind of common though with like people with addictions like you see who they are when they have moments of clarity or moments of sobriety and it's like at in those brief moments they know what is wrong but then once you are are relapsing or you're you know going through withdrawal you're like desperate to just go back to whatever it is so i mean i've experienced that with my mom right like she's so funny and like fun when she's sober and acknowledges some things when she's sober but then when she gets up it's a completely different story and so i think for you like maybe your ex was the same way and

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

it's the same with domestic violence right

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

like i just want to talk about that for a second too like you obviously went through all of this when she was way younger but then i mean five ten years later you're still dealing with the consequences of being in that cycle absolutely and it's so hard to explain to people who have never been in a situation like that but this like sort of what we were talking about earlier with like you know you want to call the cops but then to protect yourself but then you feel bad so you take it back right i was in a situation one time where i called the cops they came he got in trouble he got arrested and then i turned around and hired a lawyer for him to beat

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

the charge yeah or you go in and you try to drop the charges

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

called me and asked me what i saw what i wanted out of it and i said i just need him to get help i don't think prison's going to help him i want him to have help and so they listened to me and then he didn't get help and he didn't follow through and he didn't do all the things and then we were right back at square one but it's it's like it's not as easy to get out of it as everyone thinks it's like oh just leave oh if he was that bad you would just leave or no there's a reason why we're in these situations for in your case over a decade

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

and leaving's not as easy as it

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

sounds no and it's dangerous absolutely i

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

sold my house and bought a new one and he was still coming into

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

my new house i mean this is not as easy as people think and so stories like yours i think are important to share because you can get out of it but it can be dangerous and there are resources absolutely but people don't know about them absolutely and

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

a lot of people are too scared

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

yeah right or how about the people who want to help but every time they help you go back to them so now they're frustrated absolutely now they can't understand it they're helping you helping you helping you and you just go back and now they don't now they're stepping away now it's them too it's not helpful it's not healthy for them i've had friends walk away and say i cannot do this anymore you keep inflicting this yourself by going back and it's like i don't want to be back that's not the goal i just can't help it and at the you don't have the resources to leave and so friends are leaving because they don't

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

they're at a loss so victim of domestic violence and addiction go hand in hand when it comes to like the reality on the outside because you can try to get somebody clean and sober and they're going to go back right if they don't really want to do it because they still love that drug a drug what happens in domestic violence

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

the same thing they're trying to save

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

person they're trying to save you and you go back every time and they get tired of trying to do that repetitive cycle and they it's like crying wolf and at one point they're like you did this to yourself right we tried to help and they don't understand the reason why we go back it's

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

a double edged sword because yes we're going back but it's a psychological there's there's factors that we cannot we still

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

need you yeah we still need you

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

but i i forgive people in my life that had to step away because there's no way that could have been good for their own mental health or their own safety like i had a friend who completely stopped being friends with me and she we when i finally left we became friends again and she said one she said she was afraid for her own life for helping me yeah because if she's around and something pops off and she's trying to help me well guess who he's going after next absolutely so she was living in fear and then it's exhausting to kind of experience that and so to your point like for addiction i think i never thought of that like i never thought how similar they are but yeah

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

that's i mean my friend's ex husband and son who ran up in the house and drug him out you know the day he actually went to jail they caught charges for that are you serious assault charges he pressed charges on them and in the state of delaware if the victim of the assault says they want to press charges charges they

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

get charges are you still friends with them absolutely oh good yeah so they didn't it didn't like ruin the friendship

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

no they were protecting you i did lose a lot of people for a really long time like even my brother my brother and i's relationship kind of

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

crumbled because of the domestic violence or kind of all of it or yeah

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

i would text my brother you know because who else was i gonna call right he's my big brother he's like a dad like i would text my brother sometimes and there was a lot of things i didn't tell him obviously because i was ashamed right yeah i know my brother's gonna kill this this man so there were some moments where like it just got really out of hand and i was terrified who else am i going to call so i would text my brother and like they surrounded my trailer one night like i left the back door open and i hid my phone because like he he was quick to steal my phone and break it and like stuff like that so like my brother and his friends were at the gym and they surrounded my trailer all these big country bumpkin trucks like pull up you hear all these spotlights like shining in my trailer they're my neighbor's yards and stuff like and my brother and all these people come flying through my back door kid's dad had no idea they were coming and like they just roll in there and like pick him up and like my brother's my my brother's wife at the time her brother is humongous like he's a real tall like military guy like man scaring him a little bit kind of bittersweet to sit back and watch it happen but like two days later he's back and then they get

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

frustrated because they're like what the are

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

you doing we threw him out like he was gone what are you doing

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

but and then you feel guilt and shame i don't know if you experienced it but there was a time where it was like like i just kept going back and then i had to start lying about it so it was like where's kale oh i'm on a trip well who you on the trip with i'm by myself yeah no the you're not no the you're not and i got caught in several lies like i wasn't with him i wasn't with

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

him and the ones that i walk away you alienate from because you don't want to disappoint them you don't want them to you don't want to lose them because you've already lost people right so the less they know at this

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

point right the better i think the

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

better right yeah but it was the complete opposite yeah right and it for a long time i struggled a long time i struggled and i have to say like what happened with my daughter like really threw me into another dark place like mentally right i could imagine like it was so hard cuz this is my child right but i woke up one morning i was in the shower and it like flipped in my head like like what was i thinking like i ended up in foster care i went through all this and then i placed my daughter into the hands of the person that was supposed to protect me from all of that right

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

and i see where you're coming from but i also think that at the time when you're so desperate desperate times call for desperate measures so you do things that you wouldn't normally do in

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

the heat of the moment that's what

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

i thought was or like if you're in a place of calm and clarity you can make better decisions and if you're in pure chaos you you can't make good decisions when you're in chaos

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

absolutely and i've i've actually had that conversation with my kids and i'm like you know in the moment we do make mistakes but we live and we learn right we don't know what we don't know and sometimes trauma and things like you know my daughter situation what we've been through and what we've experienced sometimes help sometimes helps mold us into the people we become right and it's not always a good thing right going from his addiction and turning it into my own and then watching you know my kids struggle with that and you know just praying for the best for my other kids like the whole time

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

like how did they how did they

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

do during all of that i had kind of mentally checked out right like i i was there but like i was not as supportive as a mom as i probably should have been but i i didn't have anything else to pour out of my cup if if that means anything and my kids they it took a lot of you know the stress and abuse and things coming from my other child and it was

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

hurtful like well because i mean i've heard you know when one child is struggling in any way medically addiction abuse anything and the focus is on that one child not that you were i'm not going to speak for you but you know the other two you can't pour into them the same way when you're dealing with a crisis over here with the other child so it's not just you and it's not just her now they're get dealing with the consequences of the entire cycle on the back end and so then you're feeling guilt about that because you're like now you're in a place of clarity and you're like okay i shouldn't have done this i could have done this better here we are we got to move forward we just got through this with her and now we have to deal with

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

this with the other two unfortunately i wasn't the person that was like there for them right i mean i was people my husband good my husband he knew that i had to focus on on your own daughter and he he filled in the gaps where you know we needed to if things were popping off at the house and we're yelling and screaming and things are going nuts he took the other two kids out hey guys let's go get ice cream let's go let them handle what they need to handle but he i knew that he was only a call away if things got crazy right cuz she would get violent very violent and he didn't tolerate that my and my oldest too like she's old enough now that like she she can handle business if needed right so my oldest like i am so grateful for her she has she had to grow up way too soon having her at seventeen and her watching me go through every step of the process of all of it and she felt that you know what i mean like she was there was times that like i would because she wasn't his daughter you know i would snatch her and we'd leave and we'd get a hotel room in wilmington for the night you know what i mean just to be that far away and you know know there are so many things that we went through together that you know no child should ever have to go through and she matured so quickly doing so and stepped in and like took over you know caring for my youngest when it was needed right you know so it was i'm grateful for my kids in all aspects even through the chaos like my my daughter taught me so much through her trauma i said this earlier when i first got here bobby jones you had him on yeah the podcast last week i actually worked for him i became his right hand man right like literally i was director of first impressions when i first started there like i was the face of the company right next to him so i seen that he was on the public speaking he knew my story and obviously working there with him all the time you know all this stuff all of this stuff with my daughter really started when i was working there and there was a lot of support lots of support from him but i

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

also think you it takes one to know one and so he went through a lot of trauma he went through the trauma the foster care system and you know all the things and his parents addiction and things like that so he's going to empathize and sympathize and you know be we could relate in

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

so many terms and you know he didn't dig much into like the aspect of his sister and stuff but like he could certainly relate with my daughter and i mean his wife was in my wedding with me so she was made of or bridesmaid but yeah he like like he led me to meet all these great people that are coaches and mentors and public speaking and he gave me the chance to like stand up and like talk in front of group so that's when like i i really started talking to a few of bobby's like mentor coach friends and i'm you know explaining my daughter's situation and what we've been through and my story and i've had the opportunity now to stand up and talk in front of these people and like you know you know big rooms with all these people and i'm here i am thinking that you know my domestic violence story is nothing right but it's everything i've got people every time i would stand up and talk bobby's like in the back crying like but so were many other people like because they know like you could when i a lot of times when i say it you can feel it right yeah and one of them pulled me aside one day and was like listen how about coaching like what do you think about coaching and i'm like like nobody wants to hear but that was still where that self doubt was yeah right and he's like listen let's sit down let's talk he's a coach and he was like let's sit down and let's talk he's like and after we get through a couple you know conversations he's like i'm not going to charge you none of that he's like we're just gonna friendly conversation he's like once we get through a couple of those let's see how you feel i'm like all right so he started coaching me without me even noticing right

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

and you didn't even we were just

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

going on lunch dates like like just talking and he'd ask me questions and i'd answer them and he asked me more questions and i'd answer them and a couple weeks go by and he's like how are you feeling i was like i don't know different right and he's like i think you'd be a really good so then he like kind of reversed it like he started telling his parts and i'm like tuned in

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

listen i said this to somebody after i had bobby in and what you're describing to me there is and i don't know how to say it without it coming off offensive because that's not my intention yeah people who have gone through stuff like this and then people like bobby who struggled with crime yeah people that have con artistry skills yeah yeah make great sales people and great like public speakers absolutely so it's just that it's almost like they had those skills all along they just channeled it in the wrong way and it went like you went down a path of crime or you went to you know toxic relationships or whatever or you went and down in of front to addiction because addiction people can cause people to be manipulative or whatever and so i'm like i literally kept resaying that in my head i'm like bob no wonder

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

he's good at sales i told my

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

daughter i wonder he was good at

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

selling drugs my husband and i tell my daughter all the time like you are the smartest person we know like

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

she's so so same for this mentor person that you're describing is he's turning you into a coach without you realizing me knowing right that's what i'm saying he's channeling that history in a positive way for a positive outcome and so

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

so he made me look at it from a different light right but without

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

you even realizing that he was sort of changing the way that you think

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

so you know he started kind of reversing it on me he started telling my or his story and i'm starting to question him like questions i never even thought would come to my mind right and by the end of that conversation he's like you did a great job and i was like with what what i do and he's like you just coached me i was like are you serious series he's like that's what this is he's like you ask the right questions to dig deeper into my brain and make me think about things that my subconscious would not allow me to think of because you're an outside view okay and that's essentially what coaching is okay right me asking you the questions the right questions that you your best friend your cousin your support team is not going to ask you i'm going to make you think about the hard stuff i'm going to make you test yourself i'm going to make you hit those you know set those boundaries and stick to them because accountability is coming from me right i'm going to make sure that you're held accountable and not in a bad way but we're going to set goals and we're going to hit them and we're going to start off small and then we'll work our way up right right so i started secretly coaching my daughter i did a ton of research like lots of it and i started the certification class but then things were hectic so i backed out right and then i just kept digging i was listening to audiobooks and i'm watch youtube videos and like all the things and like i like oh that's a great question and tik

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

tok yeah have you told done like story times on tik tok at all a couple yeah a couple actually you did this entire podcast in part one two three four five six seven eight

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

i could yeah this is actually the first time i've actually sat down and like pushed it out how do you feel oh i'm great i'm ready for

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

it are you nervous about how people

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

will respond i was but i'm not not because like this is my story yeah like i have a little group chat a bunch of biker girls and like i pushed out a couple things yesterday like i went in my google photos and i found a bunch of like bruises and holes in walls and pictures that i took because back then like we didn't really take a lot of photos like we do now yeah right so like i'm surprised i even have those we didn't have ring cameras and things like people do now like i don't have videos and things of the abuse which you know to me it's in my head like i i remember remember it i vividly remember it right like now that i actually let me revert that like now that i'm healing and healed in a lot of places i remember a lot more interesting because i blacked out a lot of that it was so traumatic that like it it doesn't even feel like i'm the same person right i feel like that happened to somebody else in some ways right but like the things i've healed from right but there's still moments now that like things are starting to come back and like i hope that

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

happens to me do you still do coaching like okay so turning victims into

[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

survivors so i'm really launching the coaching now like right you know i've seen this change in my daughter and i realized that like it works it really does work look at her like if i hadn't done this i don't know where she'd be and it took a while you know coaching's not easy it's just like therapy they go hand in hand i'm not a therapist i don't do what therapy does therapy handles the trauma and the things from the past past coaching works on the future and building the boundaries to give you a better path and relighting that light inside of you that was taken away so i have turning victims into survivors facebook tiktok is life coach victoria smith and then facebook is victoria smith well i

[Podcast Host (Possibly 'Barely Famous' Host)]

appreciate you coming here and sharing your story and we will put all of those links in the description of this episode so if you know someone that is suffering from domestic abuse or just domestic violence their resources in the description of this episode and i appreciate you coming on barely famous hey thanks

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[Justin Sylvester]

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[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

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[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

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[Victoria Smith (Domestic Violence Survivor and Life Coach)]

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