Lori's Story: Leading The Pack

TW: ABUSE

I would have to say that I relate to your brand because of everything that I have been through. You see, my father was an abusive alcoholic who liked to disappear for months on end. When I was ten years old, my parents separated which allowed him to walk away from us and start an entirely new family. At that point, I was raised by my mother who immediately had to go to work full time to raise us three kids. I was alone a lot and grew up in the first real era of latchkey kids.

 
As a child, I suffered sexual abuse for several years at the hands of two abusers. I was bullied in school for being afraid to bath, and for being so poor that all my clothes were hand-me-downs. When I hit my late teens, I of course went a bit wild (it was the 80’s, lol). In those wild days, I had a date leave me at a stranger’s house and never come back for me. It took me several hours to find a way home from a town about 20 miles from my hometown. At one point, a date tried to set me up to be sold into a sex ring. I won’t go into that one. At 20, I lost the only child I was ever pregnant for, a tubal pregnancy.  Later that same year I was raped.

I spent my adult life going from one abusive relationship to another, always too afraid to trust a man with my heart. I spent a lot of my life hoping to find that one man that could be trusted and that truly loved me enough to never leave. Because of my lifestyle, I developed cervical cancer and had a hysterectomy at the age of 24.

So, at 45 I finally married. It was May 2015, on August 1, 2012, he came to me and asked for a divorce. He left me with all the bills due and $500 in the bank. As the divorce progressed, I discovered that he was planning another wedding with the woman he had been giving my money to. He lied many times over to people we knew, swearing that I threatened to kill him and that I was a drug addict. Truth is, he was/is a narcissist to the purest form of definition. He was a con artist, a liar, a manipulator, an abuser, a cheater, and a thief.

I had never had the kind of life where I could buy nice clothes for myself, never get that spa day or mani/pedi. I was in my 40’s before I ever had a massage and that was a gift certificate. A nice one too!  I have been through being homeless, survived a house fire, a tornado, and two hurricanes. I was diagnosed with PTSD in 1996, I was 27.

My turning point was in 2019, with the help of family I was able to move back to Indiana and away from the ex. They helped me establish my credit so that I could buy a house through the USDA program. I currently live in it and I love it. I landed the best job ever and wrote a book to help get all the bad stuff out of my head and it is on Amazon for paperback and Kindle. I also wrote a blog called A Renewed Life which is available on Wordpress. Writing has been my passion and how I deal with of my bad thoughts and memories.