Healing Trauma From Hidden Abuse – What Gets In Our Way? Penny’s Take

Summary

Podcast Summary: Betrayal Trauma Recovery

Episode: Healing Trauma From Hidden Abuse – What Gets In Our Way? Penny’s Take
Host: Anne Blythe, M.Ed.
Guest: Penny Lane
Date: April 8, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deeply into the complex realities of healing from hidden, non-physical abuse—such as emotional, psychological, and financial abuse—especially within marriage. Host Anne Blythe interviews Penny Lane, whose life story involves surviving both an abusive childhood and marriage. Together, they explore why trauma from hidden abuse is so misunderstood, what helps and hinders the healing process, and practical steps toward reclaiming one’s sense of self and safety.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Hidden Abuse Is So Hard to Understand

• Lack of Visible Wounds:
  “They don’t see any bruises or scars or black eyes. We want to fit in. We want to be accepted. We don’t want to be taken different. And so we look normal on the outside, but the inside is where the pain and the results and the leftover baggage from emotional abuse is…” – Penny (01:16)
• Lingering impact includes ongoing fear, anxiety, self-doubt, and a compromised internal warning system.

2. Purposeful Erosion of Self-Confidence

• Anne describes how abusers intentionally undermine their victim’s intuition and self-worth to gain control and facilitate exploitation:
  “For years, someone was purposefully undermining your sense of self... He knows he’s exploiting you, so he takes that as a cue. Okay, I need to undermine her sense that something’s wrong, otherwise I’m not going to be able to exploit her.” – Anne (01:56)

3. Penny’s Story: Recovering from Years of Abuse

• Penny recounts the long-term damage inflicted by her stepmother and church community, which taught submission and diminished self-worth.
  • The process of healing was gradual:
    • Moving away, leaving the church, and seeking a new community.
    • Accepting support and “mirrors” from friends and colleagues who demonstrated her worth.
    • Pursuing education as a pivotal act of self-reclamation.

4. Exploitation as Central to Abuse

• Anne reframes abuse as fundamentally rooted in exploitation, not relationship:
  “Instead of caring about you, they care about what they can get from you.” – Anne (06:18)

  • The “proof” that abusers value the victim is in their reaction to potential loss: “If they think so poorly of us, why would they want to be around us?... If you weren’t capable and powerful and talented, they would not have anything to exploit from you.” – Anne (07:14)

• Penny agrees and adds that abusers often also use victims as “punching bags” for their own unresolved anger and regret.

• Childhood context: Penny could not escape as a child, underscoring the powerlessness faced by young victims. (08:13)

5. Why Outsiders Often Don’t Understand

• Many haven’t experienced such trauma and lack empathy or knowledge to offer meaningful support: “Those that have been fortunate enough to not have that happen to them, they really don’t get it.” – Penny (10:59)

• Importance of trauma-informed, validating community and the shortcomings of therapy when not rooted in lived experience.

• Well-meaning but hurtful advice, such as “just move on” or “forgive,” misses the ongoing reality—especially with post-separation abuse. (10:01–11:51)

6. Resistance and Survival Strategies

• Women try various things to survive and improve the situation, often shamed by therapists or friends for their responses. “Nobody wants to be abused. Nobody wants to be exploited...if you’re financially dependent, it’s very hard to leave. And they make us emotionally dependent.” – Penny (13:43)
• Anne identifies two main forms of resistance: compliance (hoping things will improve) and confrontation (standing up or fighting back). Neither is effective long term; both have risks.
  • Importance of “safety strategies”: Ways to resist exploitation without engaging in open conflict or risking more harm. (18:15)

7. The Role of Education in Healing

• Education gave Penny not only practical tools and financial independence, but also rebuilt self-esteem and a positive sense of self-worth: “Going to college built my self esteem and showed me that I wasn’t stupid...I was able with a college degree to work in finance, which is a very rewarding career that allowed me to make enough money to own a house.” – Penny (20:49)
• Advice for women with children or limited resources:
  • Seek incremental progress—even one class at a time can foster pride and open new possibilities.
  • Explore certificates or training for practical, attainable goals. (23:53)

8. Hope and Realism for Victims

• It’s not the victim’s fault, and while controlling the abuser’s behavior isn’t possible, victims can take small steps to improve their safety and well-being.
• Anne stresses:
  “There is a better life possible for you. I don’t know what that looks like...But I want women to believe that it’s possible. Because when women believe that safety is possible...that is when the magic happens.” (28:15)

9. Penny’s Memoir & Final Encouragements

• Penny’s memoir, "A Memoir of a Stolen Childhood," offers her detailed journey from abuse to wholeness (29:00).
• Empowering closing advice:
  “Once you start making the baby steps to stand up for yourself and change your own life and to stand up to people who abuse you and oppress you and verbally attack you or denigrate you, you will start feeling a power and a strength in your soul that you’ve never felt before. And so I encourage you to start taking those steps because it’s the beginning of change.” – Penny (29:49)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On long-term impact:
  “That doesn’t go away overnight. It takes time and it takes a community.” – Penny (03:02)
• On the futility of changing the abuser:
  “Standing up for yourself or fighting is going to get you emotionally hurt. It’s time to step back…and find a plan. Because that’s how you stay safe.” – Penny (16:53)
• On hope: “If I could do it, they can do it, too.” – Penny (29:11)
• On baby steps:
  “You will start feeling a power and a strength in your soul that you’ve never felt before.” – Penny (29:49)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:16] – Penny on invisible nature and long-term effects of emotional abuse
• [03:02] – Penny’s journey from childhood abuse and its impact
• [06:18] – Anne reframes abuse as exploitation
• [08:13] – Penny describes her stepmother’s motives and environment
• [10:01–11:51] – Challenges in getting outsiders to understand, and importance of validation
• [13:43] – The complex dynamics of resistance and dependency
• [18:15] – Introduction to “safety strategies”
• [20:49] – Role of education in Penny’s healing and empowerment
• [23:53] – Advice for mothers or those with limited resources
• [28:15] – Anne stresses hope and the possibility of better days
• [29:11] – Penny promotes her memoir and offers encouragement

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Resources Mentioned

• Living Free Workshop: btr.org/livingfree
• Group Sessions: btr.org/group
• Penny’s Memoir: "A Memoir of a Stolen Childhood" by Penny Lane

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Tone

• Gently encouraging and validating, but unsparingly honest about the depth and challenges of hidden abuse.
• Conversational, supportive, and actionable—rooted in personal experience and a strong commitment to survivor empowerment.

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This episode provides both practical and emotional support for anyone healing from hidden abuse, stressing the importance of community, incremental progress, and the persistent hope that a different, better future is possible.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, it's Anne. If you've listened to this podcast, you know I interview women who are dealing with their husband's lies, anger, or infidelity. I've interviewed over 200 women and counting. If you relate to anything you hear in this episode, we can help you today. I created our daily live group sessions because when I was going through it, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find the help I needed. We know exactly how to help women in this situation. The entire BTR team has been through it. So we know how to anticipate the issues you're likely to face. And when you discover your husband's lies or infidelity, no matter where you are in the world, we can help you immediately. Check out our group session [e-mail] group penny is back on today's episode. You can find her story in an episode called how to Start to Heal From Emotional. Penny's story. We wanted to talk about the aftermath of emotional abuse and how it's very misunderstood by people in general and how to face that. So welcome back, Penny.

[B]

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[A]

So this type of hidden abuse where you don't have someone who's charged with domestic violence, why do you think it's so hard for people to understand what it takes to heal from this type of abuse?

[B]

Yeah, I think, like you said, they don't see any bruises or scars or black eyes. We want to fit in. We want to be accepted. We don't want to be taken different. And so we look normal on the outside, but the inside is where the pain and the results and the leftover baggage from emotional abuse is things like fear and anxiety and unsureness. Am I doing the right thing? Am I saying the right thing? And so this kind of stuff lingers with a person for a very long time, or at least in my case, a very long time, and still does, even though I've been working on recovery for decades.

[A]

Yeah, the lack of self confidence is a result of emotional abuse because that was the purpose of the emotional abuse. For years. Someone was purposefully undermining your sense of self. Also purposefully undermining your, I call it sacred internal warning system, where you know something's wrong, you're trying to resist something that's harming you. You don't have the words to describe it. You're going to the person who is harming you and telling him that you're harming me. But he already knows. He knows he's exploiting you, so he takes that as a cue. Okay, I need to undermine her sense that something's wrong, otherwise I'm not going to be able to exploit her. So it doesn't help to share your feelings with him. He purposefully erodes your sense of self over time. And when you're safe from the abuse and you're not exposed to it anymore, rebuilding that sense of self is such a process.

[B]

Part of the emotional abuse that I was put through was with my stepmother when I was a child, and it carried with me to my young adulthood. When I married really early, my stepmother told me constantly, you're, you're dumb, you're stupid, you're worthless. You'll never amount to anything. So of course, I had a low opinion of myself going into adulthood, even though on the outside you may not have seen that. And so when I married young and married a partner who tried to control me and told me that I was in sin because the pastor told him that I was in sin, he wouldn't listen to me. There was nothing to talk about, and I was wrong. And as soon as I repented, we would be back to normal and all would be fine. And I think it was pressured to have me to confess to something because I was too strong willed for this particular church and this particular pastor, and I was too questioning. I wasn't as docile as they wanted women to be. And they actually taught women should submit to husbands and that they should glorify God by glorifying their husbands. And so anything I said or did that wasn't according to the pastor or my husband's wishes were considered wrong. And I was told this constantly. So when I left that abusive situation, finally, at 32, I questioned everything I did and said because my whole life, my young, my childhood, my young adulthood, my early 20s, I was told I was wrong and that my thinking was wrong and who I was wasn't good enough. That doesn't go away overnight. It takes time and it takes a community. In my case, I moved far away. I left the church, I stopped practicing that religion. And I surrounded myself with people who were smarter than me, that liked me and accepted me for who I was. And here's an example of how I rebuilt it. Like, one of my friends said, penny, you should come apply for this job. We have an opening at my firm. This woman was college educated and I wasn't. And she worked in finance, which I hardly knew what that meant. And she said, you should apply to this job. And I said, oh, no, I can't. I'm too stupid. And she said, penny, you're not stupid. You're really smart, and we'll train you. You should apply. Guess what? I applied and they hired me over the 30 or 40 other resumes that they had on their desktop. I saw a stack of resumes, so I knew, wait a minute, maybe my stepmother and my ex husband and the pastor, maybe they were all wrong. And that's how I slowly started rebuilding my life, Surrounding my life with people who believed in me and who held up a mirror to me that said, you're not stupid and you're not ugly and you're not dumb and you're not worthless and you are able to. And here's the proof. And then I started college. I put myself through community college, and I started getting A's and B's. And the teachers started calling on me in the classroom and holding me up as an example of, here's some good thinking, here's a person who read the work, or here's the person who gets this idea. And slowly, over time, and I'm talking decades, with the help of friends holding up a mirror to me and showing me who I was, I started to change an opinion of myself. But it took a very long time and a lot of work and a lot of struggle and pain because those old thoughts and those old scripts still played in my mind.

[A]

One thing I want to point out to victims is that exploitation is such a huge part of abuse. It is the abuse in that they want something from you. Your labor, your admiration. They want you to cook them dinner or have sex with them or go to a party with them. They want something from you. So instead of caring about you, they care about what they can get from you. And because of that, anyone who is hearing, you're not good at this. If we knew what was happening. The best defense is to say in a strategic way, and I actually teach this in the Living Free workshop, is to say something like, oh, you're right. I bet you don't want to be around somebody like me. That makes sense. And then leave. And then they're like. They'd be like, wait, no, you can't go. We know exploitation is the issue because if they think so poorly of us, why would they want to be around us? Why do they not want us to leave? When we say, oh, okay, we're going to leave, Suddenly they're like, you can't leave. And then they want to stop you from leaving by being even more abusive, which also doesn't make sense. If you weren't capable and powerful and talented, they would not have anything to exploit from you. I think that's the thing they're trying to hide. I think they're thinking, she's capable, she's smart, she's awesome. If she finds out how capable she is, if she finds out how smart she is, she's not going to want to stay here. And so I've got to hide that from her because I want to use her talents for myself. Heaven forbid. She used her talents for her own self and her own life. Do you think that your stepmom was exploiting you?

[B]

I absolutely do. She was handicapped, she was crippled. She was in pain. My father was no help to her at all. He didn't provide well. He didn't help around the house. She needed me. But there was more to it than that. These people who exploit us, who hurt us emotionally and psychologically. And physically. In her case, she was bitter, she was angry. And now that I'm much older person and I look back on it, she was angry at herself. She married my dad, who was a complete loser, and her parents warned her. Her parents said, don't marry this guy. He's a liar. They saw through him. She didn't. Or if she did it anyway because she wanted to get out of her house. So not only do they exploit us for our labor, in her case, house cleaning and babysitting and chores, we become their punching bag because there's nobody else to defend us. She knew my dad was never home, so she did it when he wasn't home, of course. And he. When he came home late at night, he was drunk. She had hours. She had all day until 8 or 9 at night. To take advantage of me and to abuse me. They break us down and make us feel small. To exploit us for our labor or whatever they want from us. Because if we're smarter than them, yes, we will leave. And eventually I did. When I was old enough and had the wherewithal.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I couldn't leave at 8 or 9 or 10 or 11. I had no idea where to go or how to do it.

[A]

Why do you think it's so hard for other people to see this type of abuse when a victim is either in it or. Or healing? And they might blame her or say something like, you're just bitter, or you need to move on, or why can't you get over it even when you're out of it? You're not married anymore, for example. I'm talking about the universal you.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So a victim is not in the relationship anymore. She's relatively safe. Most of us experience post separation abuse. I was abused after my divorce for eight years through my ex's messages about our children. So most women deal with post separation abuse. And that's why, you know, we're not quote, unquote, moving on, because the abuse is right then, like it happened today. He wrote me an abusive message and lied about me today. But in terms of women who are healing and they're maybe in a stage where they need to talk about it a lot or they're trying to process what happened. And bystanders say things like, you need to move on, or why can't you just forgive? Or you're giving your power away or any of these, like, super hurtful things, because they don't understand that she is healing from this type of trauma.

[B]

Part of it is that for people like you and myself and those that have been abused and traumatized, we get how deep and painful those wounds are and how they don't go away. And those that have been fortunate enough to not have that happen to them, they really don't get it. They really don't. That's one of the reasons why we need somebody to talk to that will validate us and help us heal and give us a safe place where we can talk about the everyday nightmares and fears that come up in routine life. Now, friends, it's quite possible they just don't have the capacity. And someday they will. One of the reasons to read memoirs that may be different than your life is so that you can learn what other people have to go through to survive and to succeed. I mean, that's why I read memoirs. And I think that's how I learn about other people and how that happened to them.

[A]

Reading is so valuable. You can really get inside someone's head in a way that you can't from like a movie or other experience to develop compassion for others. But I also think that's why it's so important to make sure that you're connected with other women who understand. That's why we do our daily group sessions and our individual sessions, because everybody at Betrayal Trauma Recovery has been through it. We all totally get it. And even a really good therapist who hasn't been through it is going to have a different take than someone who has been a victim who understands on that deep personal level what it's actually like. Because we've had so many women come to us who have gone to therapy and the therapy actually made the situation worse. They didn't understand that she was resisting the abuse the entire time in Your story, and if you haven't heard it again, her episode is called how to Start to Heal from Emotional Abuse. Penny's story. There's a part, Penny, where you move out into the country and you did that as an act of resistance. You thought, if I do this, maybe it will improve our marriage. Maybe I can make things work. Same thing with the church. But some therapists might say something like, why did you do that? If you knew things were so bad and you didn't like him, why did you move away? And the answer to that is, I'm resisting. I'm resisting. I'm trying to improve things. I realize it did not improve things, but my intent was to improve things. Same thing with women who are being lied to and yelled at. They might have sex with their husband, for example. And a therapist might say, why did you do that? And it's because I thought that if I had sex with him, he would not be mad at me anymore.

[B]

Nobody wants to be abused. Nobody wants to be exploited. We just don't realize, especially if you're stuck there financially and you have children, it's very hard to leave if you're financially dependent and they make us emotionally dependent, it's not your fault if you're a victim.

[A]

Yeah. And they've done a lot of damage. But I think even if it's not a therapist, just people around saying something like, why didn't you do this? It's just so not helpful.

[B]

Not helpful. It's actually hurtful because then it makes you feel like something was wrong with you for not doing more. But I don't think you really had a choice.

[A]

As I interview victims, it's interesting because I'm asking questions like, and then this happened, or tell me about what you were thinking. And that's not to victim blame or say that they did something wrong, but to help other victims realize that this thought process that all of us go through is really common and that they're not doing anything wrong. They actually are doing what anyone in this situation would do. Another point to make is that the quote unquote, right thing to do, for example, stand up for yourself, which you would think would work, is not the solution. Your background is you had a low opinion of yourself as a result of your stepmother's abuse. In my case, I had a really strong self esteem and I thought that I was super smart. And so I would fight my abuser and be like, what? No, you don't have this right? And I would usually win our arguments and he was confused and he would Say things like, wait a minute, how are you winning this argument? I went to law school. My ex is an attorney. And I would say, because you don't make any sense. And the reason why I would say that is because he wasn't making any sense. Because he wanted to either exploit me or do something that was genuinely terrible for our family. And he was trying to give me like a bogus reason. This will be good for our family because we'll have this awesome rally car in our driveway and it will make our neighbors think that we're cool. Something like that. And I was like, what are you talking about? Like, you are not making any sense. But the reason why I bring this up is there's so many women who are actually really confident and they don't have a low self esteem, but it's not keeping them from being exploited or abused. Because fighting with the abuser also doesn't actually get you out of the abuse.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You just end up in an argument. Sometimes it ends with you just giving up. In my case, I didn't give up. So our arguments would last a really long time until basically he would pretend to give up. And then like literally 10 minutes later, that rally car would be in our driveway. That's just a metaphor, you know? And so that's what's really hard for women too. Because I think inside of ourselves, we're thinking, maybe if I would have been quieter, maybe if I wouldn't have asked so many questions, maybe if I would have stood up for myself more, what if I would have done this or that? Would it have changed things? And the answer is no. They're gonna choose to do this no matter what.

[B]

Yep. All of us, I think, are taught as young girls like believing in the happily ever after. And most of us take our marriage vows very seriously. I did. And so I couldn't fight because I was under the dictate of women submit to their husbands so I could try to express my point of view. But it didn't carry any weight whatsoever. And I just had to live with it until it got to a point when I realized I can't be here anymore. This is not who I am. This is not where I belong. The church is asking me to do stuff that I don't want to do. My husband, I no longer respect him or love him. Standing up for yourself or fighting is going to get you emotionally hurt. It's time to step back and say, you know what? I made a mistake and it's okay to make mistakes. I didn't have all the information, I did not know who he really was. He didn't show me who he really was. But now that I know and I don't feel comfortable, and I feel abused or exploited, it's time for me to step back, keep my mouth shut until I can find a plan. Because that's how you stay safe. You have to stay safe for yourself and your children till you can make a plan. And that means find community, find help, whatever it takes to be able to set yourself up, to successfully extract with the least amount of trauma.

[A]

Absolutely. And that's why I wrote the Living Free Workshop. Because in my experience interviewing all of the victims that I've interviewed over the years, over 300 on the podcast and in person, in our efforts to resist this abuse, we've all tried different things, but it usually falls into two categories. Either we're trying to stay safe by keeping our head down, thinking that if we do what he says, it will get better, or we're trying to fight it. That's not right. You can't do this to me. You need to go to therapy. I. I'm going to explain this to you. Those are the two categories that resistance falls under. But it could fall under any form of resistance. But because neither of those things work, the victims need safety strategies. And what safety strategies do is they enable you to resist in a way where you're not doing what he wants, so he can't exploit you, but you're also not fighting him, so he can't fight back, really. And so it's this really interesting middle place where took me so long to figure it out, because I could not figure it out. Eight years post divorce, right. Of post separation abuse. He's writing me messages almost every day about our children, medical neglect, all kinds of things going down. I try to go to the court to say, hey, this is what's happening. Please stop this. He got more custody as a result of that court case, and things just got worse. And so then I prayed and developed these strategies, and they worked. And now I have full custody of my. That's great. So I think, like, having safety strategies is really important, but a lot of people don't understand that. They think, oh, everything would be fine between you and your ex if you just let him take him seriously.

[B]

Or.

[A]

And it's like, that is not what's going on here. It's so much more.

[B]

I think it's really important to surround yourself with people that think highly is highly of you and support you, because the people who are saying those things, again they really don't get it. And it's not a helpful thing to hear when you, even if you should have left sooner, or even if you should have done something different, you did the best you could. Nobody submits to abuse willingly, nobody. And so those people just don't get that. And it's not helpful in your healing.

[A]

I love that getting more education was part of your healing process. Can you talk about how your college education helped you heal?

[B]

It helped in many ways. One, I was a waitress, right? I was financially at the bottom of the food chain and I couldn't, you know, work enough hours in one place to make enough money. To live in San Francisco at the time was pretty, it's very expensive. So I, I worked two or three jobs at a time to make enough money just to pay rent and have groceries and stuff and, and I was much older than the people around me. I was living in a roommate situation with somebody who was five years younger than me. And all of these people had college degrees. And the people I, I was living with, they were pursuing a graduate degree and, and they had what I looked at as cool and interesting jobs. And so I said to myself, I need what they a college degree. And I started going. And so it did two things for me. Number one is I vowed never again to be dependent on a man to support myself. And that I wanted, I didn't like living in a roommate situation. I wanted my own home that nobody could take away from me because now this was two homes. One, I, I left home at 16. I ran away from home. So that's one home lost. And second, I left my marriage and left my home and everything in it to my husband, my ex husband. And so that was two homes I lost. And I vowed I would never lose another home. So the college degree. First of all, as I started accruing classes, I could only take two or three classes at a time because I was working during the day and going to school at night and I started getting A's and B's. The going to college built my self esteem and showed me that I wasn't stupid. And I was going to school with other adults who were also working during the day and going to school at night. And everybody had a different story. Some people were immigrants, some people just didn't have the money to go to school during the day. And they were, they, let's say they were married and now they're going back to college. So it boosted my self esteem and my value, my thinking about how, how smart I was and Number two, I was able with a college degree to work in finance, which is a very rewarding career that allowed me to make enough money to own a house. And I did eventually remarry and do have a partner who shares expenses with me. But had that not happened, I still would be able to maintain this lifestyle on my own. And so that was my goal. And it really created the college degree, created financial independence and huge self esteem for me. I since then got a master's degree. And so again, graduating for a second time is huge. It's a huge honor and thrill and achievement and I'm very proud of that. It took a lot of work, it took a lot of time and sweat and loss of sleep and loss of money. Right. Because college costs money. It wasn't free. I was able to also pay for it out of my own income as opposed to taking out loans, which was pretty important nowadays because student loans can really create financial problems in the future.

[A]

That's wonderful. For women who are doubting themselves, they're listening to this podcast and they're thinking, great, good for you, Penny, you did this. But I'm never going to be able to do that. I have kids, they're little or I have this going on. What type of encouragement might you give them?

[B]

I would say, yes, I was lucky in that, or unlucky. I was unable to bear children, so I didn't have children when I went through this. So that was the good luck. Bad luck. Right, bad luck. I couldn't have children. And so good luck was I didn't have children. I was able to go to school at night. I didn't have any responsibilities besides getting up for work the next morning. But I would tell them that to find a way or wait until the kids are older and all in school and see if they can find an online program so that they could take maybe one class at a time. And even if it takes you 10 years to graduate college, if you can do one class at a time and start accruing credits and grades, A's and B's and C's and improving the C to an A to a B and the B to an A, you'll start feeling such a boost of self esteem and pride and say to yourself, I'm a quarter way through college, I'm A halfway through college, I'm three quarters of the way, or even a certificate, like maybe some colleges offer like certificates. It's maybe an 18 month program for, I don't know, dental hygienist or nurse, nurse's aide. Or something like that, but kind of certificates then allow you to move up the food chain financially and get a respectable position maybe in a large organization that provides people benefits. So you might have to shelve it. Now, if you have little children that are dependent on you and you can't afford daycare, but when they get to school, you could do that. And I think you could also go to your community and say, hey, can we do a trade? Can you watch my kids this night so I could go to class and I'll watch your kids that night so you can go to bingo. Right. So there's always a way to do it. It does get easier when the kids get older, I think. But make it your goal. Set your mind on it and don't stop until you have that goal, your certificate or your associate's degree or your bachelor's degree.

[A]

And even if it's not school, like you said, like a radiologist, tech or. Yep, something like that. Or just. Or a job, even if it's not school. I think the thing that breaks my heart the most is when victims feel like, and for very good reason that they can't do anything about their situation. And it's a very fine line between victim blaming, which we do not do here at btr, and letting victims know that this is not your fault. Nothing about the situation is your fault and it has nothing to do with you. And there are things that you can do that will improve your life. They're not going to change him. They have nothing to do with him. But you can take little tiny steps. I talk about those in the Living Free workshop and I haven't given the URL for that. It's btr.org livingfree it's btr.org livingfree there are tiny little baby steps that you can take that are free, that are just minute. But I think that's why some people accidentally victim blame is because they realize, yeah, she's right, there's nothing she can do to stop him from harming her or her kids. She can even get divorced and he can continue to do that. And so how can we help her make her way to safety? And most people don't have an answer for that. They can't figure it out. Except for you need to do this differently rather than realizing that some safety strategies are simply just because someone's never heard it before and they didn't know it was possible or they didn't feel like it was possible for them. And so the thing that I want to let everyone know is that There is a better life possible for you. I don't know what that looks like. I don't know how that's going to come to be. But I want women to believe that it's possible. Because when women believe that safety is possible, when they believe that they can improve their lives somehow, that is when the magic happens. When they start taking steps to improve their lives and also start taking steps to get themselves out of a situation that they absolutely did not cause and had nothing to do with them in the first place.

[B]

Yep, I agree.

[A]

Is there anything else you wanted to cover?

[B]

I would love to mention to your listeners that I wrote a memoir of surviving both an abusive marriage and abusive childhood and how I made a recovery and became very successful and happy and rebuilt my life. It's called A Memoir of a Stolen Childhood. It's by Penny Lane. It's available wherever you buy books. It's really inexpensive. It's available at most libraries as well. So I'd love for them to look at that. And I'm hoping to inspire people to make some choices and to know that I'm nobody special. I'm just a kid from Queens, a runaway from Queens. And that if I could do it, that they can do it, too.

[A]

Yeah. Thank you. And to hear her story on the podcast was amazing, too. She only told a small portion of it, and hearing her whole story and how far she's come in her memoir would be awesome. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom that you have accrued over the years in thinking about this. And it's just so inspiring to talk to victims who have taken something so difficult and made it into something beautiful.

[B]

Yeah, I think it is possible. And I. I want to just tell your listeners that once you start making the baby steps to stand up for yourself and change your own life and to stand up to people who abuse you and oppress you and verbally attack you or denigrate you, you will start feeling a power and a strength in your soul that you've never felt before. And so I encourage you to start taking those steps because it's the beginning of change.

[A]

That's awesome. Thank you so much for talking with me today, Penny.

[B]

You're very welcome. I wish all your viewers well and happiness and safety.

[A]

If you've already purchased a copy of my book, Trauma Mama Husband Drama on Amazon, please circle back and give it a five star rating. A lot of women are searching for books to figure out what to do about their husband. And rating Trauma Mama will also help them find this podcast, which is free to everyone. And of course, your donations help keep this podcast going. Go to btr.org, scroll to the bottom and click on support the BTR podcast until next week. Stay safe out there.