“The ax forgets; the tree remembers.” I didn’t know this old African proverb until I was much older, but it has grounded me on many occasions when I’ve been told I’m not remembering things correctly or it wasn’t that bad and I should just get over it. The abuser has the luxury of forgetting, but I still carry the ax’s scars as reminders.

I didn’t know at that time that all this craziness we had been living with for 16-plus years was typical domestic abuse. I had been in denial for a long time, but I was at the precipice of educating myself and opening my eyes to what my children and I had endured. The veil was about to be lifted as to the real Rick Sinclair and the Christian Fellowship Center cult.

Therapy has been so helpful because it has given me enough time to process and the courage to step back into these situations and say, “Okay, I don't want to be an abuser.”

I want to stop running and instead I'm going to dive back into the trauma and try to help other people. That's what I've been doing for the past year or so. I have been doing advocacy work, because the cycle stops with me.

My parents told us that if we told the truth, social workers would take us away and we would never see our family again and end up in homes where we weren't loved.

Resistance seemed futile. God was a jealous God who would break my spirit and strip me of everything in order to gain my full submission. He was a sadistic, abusive being.