I’m Andrea Giles, and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast,
episode number 195, Reclaiming Your Life After Abuse with Alysha Lee.

Hello and welcome to the Heal from Infidelity podcast for courageous women
learn not only to heal from their spouse’s betrayal, but to become the
boldest, truest, most decisive and confident versions of themselves ever.
If you know there’s more for you than the life you’re currently living but
don’t quite know how to get there, you are in the right place. Stick around
to learn how to create a life that will knock your own socks off. Is it
possible? It is, and I’m here to show you how I’m your host, Andrea Giles.
Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

(00:49):

Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Heal from Infidelity. I have
an amazing guest today that’s going to be sharing her intent story of
leaving a abusive relationship. I decided to have her on because I know
that while most of you aren’t dealing with the level of abuse that Alysha
dealt with, it may ring true for some of you. There may be some of you that
are in situations that you’re not sure how to get out of that you might not
see that you might not fully understand because when you’re in it, it can
be very, very hard to see, and she’s going to be sharing her story, how she
woke up to what was going on, and ultimately how she got out of it. I hope
you enjoy listening to her and I will catch you next week. Hello everybody.
Welcome back to another episode of Heal from Infidelity. I have a wonderful
guest to bring on today. I know you’re going to love hearing from her
hearing her story. Her name is Alysha Lee. I knew that I needed to have her
on today to share with you her own very real story of resilience, of
growth, of really reclaiming her life. Alysha, can you please say hello?
Introduce yourself. Welcome, welcome.

Alysha
(02:05):

Hi, Andrea. Thanks so much for having me on today. This is such an honor.
Your podcast has just been such a safe space for me. I love the work that
you do.

Andrea
(02:16):

Thank you.

Alysha
(02:17):

Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, my name is Alysha, and I went
through some pretty hard stuff at a pretty young age When I was 19, I kind
of conformed to religious expectations and I married a person who I had met
through church and thought he was a pretty good guy, even though everyone
around me seemed to see some red flags. But when you’re 19, love is pretty
blind and you choose to see what you want and kind of ignore the things that
you want to pretend aren’t there. And things got pretty bad pretty fast.
Just for sake of time, I’ll just give you the short version, but there was
a ton of manipulation, isolation from my family and friends, physical
abuse, I’d say spiritual abuse. My book that I just released does a little
bit more, goes into the story a little bit more, but that’s just a little
bit about me and then we can talk, I guess a little bit more about how I
broke free from some of the chains and live in a pretty good life now.

Andrea
(03:26):

Perfect. Thank you. I wanted to have, I actually told Alysha this right
before we started recording, but I wanted to have her on because for some
of you listeners, some of you are not necessarily in an abuse situation
where it’s a pattern of abuse. For some of you, it’s a one-time thing or a
period of time where the infidelity occurred, and then some of you, there’s
more of a pattern of abuse that’s been over many years, and we do need to
talk about that. We do need to make sure that we understand it. And Alysha
has done so much healing from her own abuse left. The relationship has done
so much work on herself to heal herself that I’m hoping that for those of
you who are listening to this episode that you can hear maybe some
familiarity in your own story and things. Well, hopefully not, right? We
don’t want anybody to be abused, but if you hear familiarity, if something
resonates with you, I hope that you can listen to this as a way to build
courage in yourself and insights into what is possible for you, and even
some of the things that maybe to think about that maybe you haven’t thought
about, possibilities that you may not have seen for your own life. So I
want to just go into the story a little bit more. Is that okay?

Alysha
(04:51):

Yeah, absolutely.

Andrea
(04:52):

Okay. So I want to ask you, Alysha, 19 years old, I know this story. I was
also 19. I understand that, right? How soon did something or register for
you that something was very wrong, or when did you first kind of go? Wait a
minute. I don’t know if this is normal. I don’t know if this is okay. How
soon did you start to pick up on it?

Alysha
(05:16):

Yeah. For me, it was pretty quick. There were a lot of things that were
promised initially from the marriage that didn’t happen. Silly things like
my ex told me that he was planning a honeymoon for us, and unfortunately,
our honeymoon was hanging out at his mom’s house because he had taken a
trip a few months before we got married and spent most of his money. So he
didn’t have money to take us on a honeymoon, which would’ve been okay if it
was just something that he didn’t have the money for. But things just kept
escalating. We went off to school and I had registered for classes and I was
starting school. We were still young, we were in college, and I kind of
found that he was just sitting on the couch and not going to class for a
week or so, and I asked him why he wasn’t going to school.

(06:15):

And come to find out, he had actually been kicked out of school and hadn’t
told me that. So he wasn’t going to school. He didn’t have a job. He was
kind of trying to get a business up and running, but didn’t really have any
experience. And so a lot of it was just kind of hoping something would work
out. At the time, we were actually living in my parents’ condo that they
had property where we were going to school, so he didn’t really have to
worry about rent or anything like that. He had an office, and most of the
time he would lock himself in the office with his computer, and I wasn’t
really sure what was going on in there. Soon enough, he started memorizing
my school schedule, and then if I wasn’t home within five or 10 minutes
after my last class ended, he would get so anxious and start calling me and
freaking out. And I knew when I got home that he was just going to explode
because he assumed that I was telling everyone all of his business that he
didn’t want anyone to know, which wasn’t the case sometimes it just took
longer to get home from class.

Andrea
(07:30):

Then lemme pause here. I’m going to pause you real quick. So it wasn’t out
of concern of where you are. His mind, I hope she’s okay. It was jumping to
what is she telling people?

Alysha
(07:44):

Yeah, exactly. Kind of paranoia.

Andrea
(07:46):

Yeah. Okay.

Alysha
(07:47):

Yeah, he was paranoid. He was worried that I was just airing his dirty
laundry, and he was really concerned about his own reputation. Eventually,
my parents called me because I’m still pretty young, and they hadn’t heard
from me for a few weeks, and they just wanted to check in and see how
everything was. They knew something was off. Parents and I kind of broke
down and kind of told them a little bit that things weren’t going super
great and kind of broke down a little bit, and he was secretly listening in
on the conversation. And after that took my phone and put some kind of
restrictions on it so that only I could call him and only he could call me.
There was no other way that I could use my phone to talk to anyone else. So
that’s when the isolation began and I was How

Andrea
(08:44):

Far into the relationship were you at this point?

Alysha
(08:47):

Let’s see. We got married in October. This was probably January or
February, so this was pretty, oh, so

Andrea
(08:55):

It was quick. Okay.

Alysha
(08:56):

Yeah. So I started getting pretty paranoid because he set some rules for
me, and he was about six years older than me, and I’m still pretty young,
and so I don’t really have a voice, and I am just kind of following, even
though I know this isn’t okay, this doesn’t feel okay. But I kind of stayed
silent just because it felt like survival for a little

Andrea
(09:21):

Bit. Okay. Kids, no kids,

Alysha
(09:27):

No kids. Thankfully, that would’ve been super messy if there were kids. So
that’s one thing that I’m grateful never happened.

Andrea
(09:36):

Tell me, okay, so your parents are not allowed to call you. You’re not
allowed to call your parents. How far away from your parents did you live?

Alysha
(09:45):

Yeah, so my parents were in Colorado, which is where I’m originally from,
and we were living at the time in Idaho.

(09:52):

The one saving Grace was, my brother was actually up there too at the same
college, and so it sounds so silly to say I would sneak to see my brother,
but we would sometimes meet up on campus when he kind of knew my schedule
too. And there was a weekly gathering on campus, and it kind of became our
spot where we would meet and I would just kind of tell him how I’m doing,
and he kind of became the middle man. He in turn kind of told my parents,
this is not okay. There’s a lot of weird stuff going on, and she’s paranoid
and she is isolated, and she goes to school and she comes home and that’s
it. And so my parents, they did own the condo, and they actually basically
reached out to an attorney to get some legal advice since it was their
property, about how they could evict my husband and basically just to get
me to come home for a little bit of time and kind of get some therapy and
get some healing because the world that he created for me was completely
delusional,

Speaker 3
(11:04):

And

Alysha
(11:04):

I was living in this delusional world. And so they basically tried to get
some legal advice to see legally what they could do to get me out of the
condo. And since they owned it, they were able to showed up one day and
they said, we need to talk to our daughter. There was actually a policeman
that came with them because they weren’t sure if he was going to get
violent because it wasn’t unlikely that he wouldn’t. And basically I had
five minutes to grab some of my stuff. My parents, they are pretty nice,
and they didn’t completely evict him. They let him stay, but they said,
we’re going to take our daughter at least for a couple months and get her
some help and some clarity, and then she’s going to make the decision if
she actually wants to come back into this relationship.

Andrea
(11:59):

And how far in was that? How long had you been married at this point?

Alysha
(12:04):

At this point, it was probably, I want to say eight or nine months. It
wasn’t even quite a year.

Andrea
(12:10):

Yeah. Okay.

Alysha
(12:12):

Yeah.

Andrea
(12:12):

So tell me how much, in that short time, how much did you get tangled up in
what he was saying about you?

Alysha
(12:21):

Yeah,

Andrea
(12:22):

Sucked into his story, his narrative. That’s question number one. Question
number two, what was it like at home when you got home from school? What
was it like?

Alysha
(12:34):

Yeah, those are some great questions. Well, a lot of what I had been
experiencing up until this point was emotional abuse. And I think one thing
that emotional abuse doesn’t do is it doesn’t always scream in your face.
For me, it would just whisper, and it was just a constant questioning of my
intuition. Am I going crazy? Is this really as bad as it is, or am I just
weak? Is this how marriage is supposed to be? Does everyone have problems
like this? Is he actually concerned about me? But a lot of the disapproval
was masked as concern, and a lot of the rules that he set for me would
change without notice. There was a lot of spiritual manipulation that he
made me feel guilty for wanting boundaries, and I just began to really
second guess myself at every turn. I think when you live like that long
enough, you forget to trust your own voice or if you even have a voice. So
really writing the memoir really helped me kind of articulate what
happened. And at this point, the abuse didn’t necessarily leave bruises on
my skin. It would eventually, but it did mostly scar, just my self worth.

Andrea
(13:47):

So there was a lot of confusion, a lot of twisting of manipulation. And the
thing that’s so painful to realize about emotional abuse, about
manipulation, about those kinds of practices is how it’s intended to mess
with us. It’s intended to disorient, to get us to doubt our own intuition,
because it’s control, right? It’s intended to control. And so it makes sense
that you quickly because of what was happening, that it sounds like you
quickly stopped trusting yourself, that you’re like, am I going crazy? When
your parents showed up, was that a relief or were you afraid of what would
happen?

Alysha
(14:34):

It was a little bit of both, to be honest to you. I was relieved because I
felt like I had a way out if I wanted it, but also in a very twisted way. I
felt like for whatever reason, I still loved him, and there was a slight
sliver that wanted to make it work. And so it was this fear that if I did
return, things would just get so much worse because of what had happened.
And with my parents showing up and with me leaving, and I just knew that if
I ever come back, it’s going to get way worse. He’s going to lock me down
so much further, or there’s going to be way more abuse, or he’s going to
use different tactics to scare me. And so it was just kind of this weird
thing where I so badly wanted out of it, but then I so badly wanted it to
work with him, but in a different way. I wanted him to be a different
person, even though I can’t. That’s unfair to ask someone to be a different
person when they’ve already kind of showed you their true colors.

Andrea
(15:47):

So you went home. Yeah. Tell us what happened

Alysha
(15:50):

Next. Yeah, so I go home and I’m just kind of going through the motions.
Some days it was just like, can I get up and just brush my teeth? Just
going through a lot was, I think I got a new phone at this time, and he was
constantly texting me or sending me emails, just pouring his heart out and
telling me, oh, you can’t trust your family and you can’t trust your
friends, and no one knows our relationship like we do, and no one knows
what’s right for you, and I want what’s best for you. And just constantly
muddling everything that I was trying to decipher. My parents actually
found me a trauma counselor, so I went and talked to her. She had me take
an assessment, and I can’t remember exactly how she scored it. I talk a
little bit more about it in my book, but basically I was, as far as
emotional stability, I was way off the charts.

(16:56):

She was like, we have so much work to do. I didn’t even know. I remember
she asked me to have a seat in her office, and because I wasn’t used to
making decisions for myself, I just looked at her and I said, which one?
And she looked at me and said, well, anyone you’d like, it’s your choice.
It doesn’t matter. And that was kind of a breaking point that, wow, I don’t
really know how to make decisions. I’m used to people making decisions for
me. So we worked through a lot of that. Then I actually was still really
struggling with everything that was going on, and I felt like everyone was
in my business. I felt like everyone knew what was going on because I was
back in my hometown. And I’ve later learned that really no one cares what
people aren’t actually in your business as much as you think they are.

(17:53):

But it was just hard for me to go to the store and just see people I knew
from church or from school or whatever, and I just felt like everyone was
shaming me or judging me, and you’re so young, you should have known this
was never going to work. And anyway, I just had these constant voices in my
head. And finally, I had a good friend at the time, one of my best friends
from high school, her parents had just moved to DC and they actually kind
of suggested that I come stay with them for a few months and just kind of
go somewhere new and get some clarity and just be able to get the healing
that I need without what I thought was just a bunch of voices in my head
telling me what to do.

Andrea
(18:39):

Wow. So you went,

Alysha
(18:41):

Yeah. So I went for a few months. Yeah.

Andrea
(18:45):

So does this mean when your parents showed up, did you drop out of school?
Did you have to drop out to go home?

Alysha
(18:51):

Yeah, so I actually dropped out of school, and then I ended up reapplying
to a different college. It was in Hawaii, actually. And my ex was from
California, and he kind of had a bit of a surfer vibe. He really liked
surfing, and he liked the beach. And when he found out that I got accepted
to a college in Hawaii, he freaked out and I thought that he was freaking
out because I was going there and he knew it was over. But then he said
things like, why would you go to Hawaii? That’s not even your vibe. It’s
more my vibe. And so it started feeling like, okay, he actually doesn’t care
as much that I’m going, but he’s just more jealous, I guess, is a word that
he’s not going instead

Andrea
(19:44):

Or maybe threatened by it somehow too, perhaps.

Alysha
(19:47):

Yeah, probably. That’s probably a better word, threatened.

Andrea
(19:51):

So all this time, you were still in contact with him some, and he was still
trying to get you to come back. Okay.

Alysha
(19:58):

Yeah. Yep.

Andrea
(20:00):

So how did, oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

Alysha
(20:02):

I was going to say I did something pretty stupid after that. After months
of healing in dc, he was sending me, like I said, pages and pages of what
he thought were love notes, and you deserve to be with me, and we need to
start our life again. And I’ve stopped drinking. He was drinking pretty
heavily, and I’ve been going to counseling. We tried to go to counseling,
and he just thought it was the dumbest thing in the world, and so he
refused to go, but he started telling me all these things. I’ve stopped
drinking. I’m going to counseling. I kind of knew it wasn’t true, but there
was a part of me I think, that wanted to believe that it was true. And I
was scheduled leave in a month or so to go to Hawaii and to start my new
life there. And I had been in touch with some people over there, and they
said, yeah, you can come here.

(21:02):

And I kind of told them my situation and I was kind of separated, and they
were like, okay, that’s fine. As long as your spouse doesn’t come here, you
can live in just housing with normal girls, and it’ll be fine until we kind
of work everything out. I was like, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I
just felt like I need to try something new. And I felt like the Lord was
calling me there. So I was leaving DC and I was going to go back to
Colorado for just, I think it was at this time, it was close to Christmas,
so I was going to go back just for Christmas and then head out to Hawaii
right after that. And I had a moment of weakness, and I told my ex when my
flight was landing in Denver, and he drove all the way from, where was he
at the time? I think he was living in Utah at the time. He drove from Utah
all the way to Denver, and he kind of took a page, I guess, out of my
parents’ book, and he brought a officer with him to the airport

(22:06):

And showed up when I was there, and basically was like, this is my wife.
And the officer looked at me and said, is everything okay here? And I
didn’t really know how to respond, and so I said, yes, it’s good. And then
kind of a long story short, he took me across state borders without my
consent, and that’s when it got pretty messy. He wasn’t going to give up. He
saw me getting ready to start my life over, and I had some stuff going for
me, and it was just power and manipulation and just not wanting me to have
some of those things. Oh,

Andrea
(22:50):

Wow. And you likely didn’t have a way to communicate, I’m guessing.

Alysha
(22:59):

Yeah. Yep. That’s the first thing he did was he took my phone again. Well,
he had me call a mutual friend so that I think he knew that if I didn’t
show up that my parents would probably call the police or something. And so
he had me call a mutual friend, and he told me, this is what you’re going
to say. You’re going to tell him you made a mistake, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, and you’re going back with me. And again, scared, nervous,
paranoid. I did exactly what he said and drove off. We went back to Utah
where his mom was living, and yeah, I didn’t have any access to the outside
world for a solid month. No one knew where I was. My family, my friends, I
didn’t have, he had a computer, but it was password locked, and so I
couldn’t get on to shoot an email or Facebook message anyone. I obviously
didn’t have my phone, so I was just kind of living in this hell hole for a
solid month thinking like, okay, this is my life. Somehow I guess I deserve
this in whatever twisted way. I guess this will be my life and I should
just get used to it.

Andrea
(24:22):

What happened at that month point?

Alysha
(24:25):

So after that, he ended up having to take a trip, and he didn’t want to
take me with him because he actually had to go back to Colorado, and he
knew that I was too much of a flight risk. So he called one of his
brother’s girlfriends brother was dating at the time, and asked if she
would, I guess, for lack of better terms, babysit me while he took this
trip. And I basically kind of played along for a little bit. And then I
told her I had been working through some therapy while I was in DC and we
had talked a lot about courage and fear with my therapists and how they are
different, and that courage makes you act on the things that you’re scared
of. And so I just had this moment of courage where I was going to tell her
that this wasn’t going to be my life and that I was going to leave.

(25:25):

And I was a little bit nervous how she was going to respond, and I knew she
was probably going to tell her brother who was going to tell my ex, and the
whole thing would get messy, but I was like, I can’t live like this. This
is absolutely insanity. And so I told her basically, I’m not going to do
this. I’m not going to stay here. I didn’t even want to be here. I’m
against here on my will at this point in time. I was supposed to be in
Hawaii, and I had to basically defer because I missed my semester. And I
thankfully was able to hack, I guess, for lack of a better term, into my
ex’s computer. After trying a couple different passwords, I was able to
figure out what the password was and send one of my friends a message who
happened to have a relative that I knew lived nearby.

(26:21):

And from that point on, I was able to kind of get out through them, and
they were able to help me get out. My parents bought me a plane ticket, the
first flight they could find back to Colorado Springs. Then I kind of
started over, and from there I went back to therapy. There was a serious
court proceeding because my ex had abducted me. When you take someone
across state borders without their consent, it’s an abduction. And so we
went through some serious court proceedings. We got restraining order. I
was worse off than I had been when I left. So we had a lot more work to do
with therapy.

Andrea
(27:08):

Okay. So at this point, that’s a lot of life in a short amount of time.
Tell me about your healing process and what that looked like. And you had
mentioned earlier that you wrote a book about your experience and what that
looked like for you, which later on, we’ll share more about that and how
people can find it. But how did you start to really put this behind you and
challenge some of the stories that you had made it mean about you and all of
that? How did you begin that process once you were really out?

Alysha
(27:43):

Yeah. A lot of it was therapy. Working with my therapist really kind of
opened my eyes to what is normal and not, and I think growing up, I mean, I
always believed that if I prayed enough or if I submitted more, if I was
obeying perfectly, that God would reward me with being happy. And I feel
like that belief was reinforced just when I was in the midst of my abuse
with my ex, and that I felt like I would be praised if I was the good wife,
but I was really just suffering in silence. And I started to realize that
performing wasn’t the same as being faithful. That real faith and real
healing invited me to bring my brokenness to God and to not pretend that he
wasn’t there. So I kind of had to relearn this idea of faith and healing
and just realizing that I can bring my brokenness to save people, whether
that’s through God or whether that’s through my therapist, that I can bring
that brokenness to them. And I think so much of what I carried was shame
and was guilt that if I had done things differently, that things would’ve
worked out. And a lot of it was, oh, it’s all my fault and I broke trust,
or I did this, or I did that. And then just fighting through some of those
moments of weakness and realizing there’s really no excuse. There’s never
an excuse for someone to abuse you, whether it’s emotional, spiritual,
physical,

(29:22):

But there’s nothing that you could do to deserve that. So once I’ve rewired
my brain that this wasn’t my fault, and finding just a safe space to talk
about it, I think that’s when the healing really happened.

Andrea
(29:36):

I appreciate you saying that. I have listeners from all different faiths,
all different, all over the world, and something that I say a lot in my
calls with people is that for some people, it’s God that they’re kind of
confiding in and saying, okay, here I am in all my glory, all the things,
and really being able to be open. Sometimes it’s a person, a trusted person,
but what I’m hearing is instead of being in that shame place, you kind of
broke out of it by talking.

Speaker 3
(30:11):

Yeah,

Andrea
(30:12):

100%. You broke out of that shame cycle by talking, by sharing, and by
saying, wait a minute, maybe there’s more to this, which probably took a
lot of courage, right?

Alysha
(30:23):

Yeah. So much courage. I mean, just kind of the expectation that I am so
young still. I think I am 20 or 21 at the time, and I’ve been through all
these horrible things, and most kids my age are just out going to college
and living their life and dating and having fun. And I had so many scars
and so much life that I had already been through that I did want to just
hide it and sweep it under the rug and pretend that I was like all my other
peers and just out having a good time. But once I did find that safe place
to talk about it, that’s when I was able to kind of break free a little bit
from those chains that have kept me down for so long.

Andrea
(31:11):

Yeah, powerful, powerful. From there, tell me what your life has been
since.

Alysha
(31:19):

Yeah. Well, the healing process was slow, really, really slow. I really
didn’t want to talk about it with anyone outside of my safe space, which
really just included my counselor and some of my close friends who knew me
and were living through the midst of the whole thing with me. It wasn’t
really something that I wanted to just talk about with random people that I
met. I still felt like it carried a bit of a stigma. And how do you open up
with something like that when you’re 21 years old? So the rest of my life,
the healing process was slow. I feel like there’s still parts of me that
are still working through some of the stuff that happened, even though I
feel like I’m healed, but there’s still just questions that sometimes will
pop in my mind. Why did this happen? And was there anything that in
hindsight that I could have done differently, which isn’t really useful,
but I’m human. You’re

Andrea
(32:22):

Human. Yeah.

Alysha
(32:23):

It does pop up. But I did eventually get my degree. I got my undergrad and
I ended up getting a graduate degree. Right now, I am married and I have
three little girls, and I’m with me, my husband. We’ve been married for 11
years now. Wow.

Andrea
(32:43):

Did you go to Hawaii? Did you end up going to Hawaii at all?

Alysha
(32:47):

I did. Yeah. You did? I went to Hawaii and I graduated from Hawaii, and
there’s definitely a whole story there and a whole another life that
happened there that really did help in the healing process. But I did end
up there and I went on and got some really good internships, actually ended
up going back to DC and interned with the Treasury.

Andrea
(33:13):

Wow.

Alysha
(33:13):

Just kind of like a full circle.

Andrea
(33:16):

That’s amazing.

Alysha
(33:17):

Yeah.

Andrea
(33:18):

Wow. Wow. So what led you to decide to write your book?

Alysha
(33:23):

Yeah. Well, I started writing my book in 2019, honestly, is just another
form of therapy. And just as another way to kind of articulate what had,
because sometimes what happens, but you don’t always know why it happened.
And I think that was my goal for writing was I wonder if I can articulate
some of the things that happened and some of my thoughts and feelings
behind it. I spent so much time talking about it in therapy, but I also
just wanted to see if I could articulate it in my own words. So I started
writing it in 2019, and then COVID hit in 2020, and it kind of became, I
guess more or less a passion project. And I like to call it not a COVID
project. I started before COVID, and it was just a form of therapy, and I
heard so many parts of the story that I wanted to completely forget about.

(34:22):

But at the same time, those parts, even the messy ones, were really
important to the story, to the healing process. So I just kept writing and
writing, and then I realized that I really loved it, and I really loved how
it was making me feel and some of the sense of freedom it was giving me.
And I started just briefly sharing my story with people close to me. And I
started realizing that there’s a lot of people that would tell me, oh, my
mom went through something similar. My sister’s going through something
like this. And I realized that I really did want to share my story just to
help those people, those moms, those sisters, realize that they aren’t
alone and that they can get through this.

Andrea
(35:10):

Amazing, amazing, amazing. And now, where has this led for you as far as
this thing that you intended at first to do for your own healing? What has
it evolved to now for you?

Alysha
(35:25):

Yeah. There are so many people that have read the book and they’re like, oh
my gosh, I just want to hug you right now. I want to cry with you right
now. And that’s so great, and that’s so beautiful, and I love that people
are coming to me and they’re resonating with a book, but really I wrote it
for those people that are struggling. That are in it. That are in it. Yeah,
exactly. And instead of, my goal would be instead of if someone is going
through a situation where there is abuse, instead of just throwing my book
in their face, which is great, and I love that, but they have their own
story, that mom, that sister, whoever’s going through it. So instead of
just inviting them to read my story, I would love it if those people saw
with their mom or their sister, whoever, and asked them for their story.

Andrea
(36:23):

Wow. Wow. That’s so powerful. That’s so powerful. I want to know more
about, I’m curious, in the really, really acute, really intense times where
you had some tough decisions to make, were there people there for you that
were sharing their stories that helped give you courage?

Alysha
(36:46):

I hadn’t known anyone at the time that had gone through anything I had,

Andrea
(36:51):

Which is tough. That probably made you feel even more isolated, huh?

Alysha
(36:55):

Yeah. That’s hard. It is isolating, and I think a lot of times people, when
you go through something like this, you don’t know what to say to someone
who’s been through something like this and you don’t know how to help them.
And so it was isolating. I feel like there were people that stopped calling
or stopped inviting, and there were just subtle times where it hurt when I
needed that community. I feel like there’s just a lot of pressure to
protect the institution, whether it’s church or just school or whatever,
rather than protecting the individual. But I did find some beauty on the
other side. I found some real community that there were people that were
accepting of who I was and didn’t need me to be perfect, and who, even
though they hadn’t been through a situation like this, they still held that
space for grief and truth and growth. And so it wasn’t easy to maybe lose
some of those people that I thought were going to be there during the time
that weren’t. But I felt like I did gain so much more of a circle of people
that did show up and that who I fully did know and that they still fully
loved me despite some of the things that I’d been

Andrea
(38:12):

Through. Wow. So powerful. Let me ask you, if you could give the listeners
a message, anything you want to say to them. If there are people listening
where this hits a little too close to home where they have some
understanding of what you’re sharing, what would you say to them?

Alysha
(38:33):

Yeah, 100%. I would tell them that you’re not alone. That I know firsthand
what it feels like to be unseen and unheard and just uncertain and inside
your head, but you do have permission to choose yourself. You have
permission to heal even if no one understands. And there is life beyond just
mere survival. And I would tell those listeners that they can write their
own story, and I promise it won’t be easy at the time. And there are some
days where it seems more comfortable just to go back to where you started,
just because it’s familiar, but I promise that it will be beautiful on the
other side.

Andrea
(39:15):

Thank you. Thank you, thank you. I want to reiterate one more time what you
said about the shame that you felt, the blame that you put at your feet,
that it must be me, I must be deficient in some way. And that when you
started becoming emboldened and recognizing, wait a minute, no, this is not
okay. And then you started speaking. I hear from people often who they
might’ve shared some of their story here of there, but there are some that
haven’t told a soul that they just feel so much shame. And what kind of
freedom did you find in finally telling the truth of what was going on for
you?

Alysha
(39:57):

Yeah. There’s so much freedom. I mean, it’s like that analogy that they say
that it’s like a weight lifted off. I mean, it really did fill that. And I
did find, even though I was nervous to share my story with a lot of people,
because I felt like there would be judgment, I felt like most people, or at
least the ones that mattered and the ones that were going to stick around
didn’t really care. I mean, they cared. They, I’m so sorry you went through
that, and that’s horrible and that kind of thing. But they were like, that
doesn’t define you. Your past doesn’t define you, and the things that you
went through that’s horrible. And I’m so sorry, but I want to get to know
who you are now.

Andrea
(40:40):

I love it.

Alysha
(40:41):

The person that you became because of it.

Andrea
(40:44):

Yep. How often we can almost see ourself with this permanent black mark on
us of somebody who’s been abused or in my community cheated on, or even I
have people in the community who maybe have been abusers and are really
trying, really working hard to overcome that or have cheated, and we can
slap these labels on us that keep us shackled, keep us locked up, and when
we can start talking and start sharing in Brene Brown’s work around shame,
she says that shame thrives in secrecy. And when we start talking about it,
shame can’t hang out. It can’t stay. And so talking, sharing, hearing other
people’s stories, you now know I’m sure that your story sadly, is not
unique. Unique. It is unique, right? We don’t want to hear these stories a
lot, but do you know what I mean by that? That there are way too many
people, so many people that can share the same story. And I’m so grateful
that you had the gumption and the courage and the support that you had the
support to get out. There are some who don’t have that support and who are
kind of doing this alone. And just hearing that there’s a way out for you
too, listeners who might feel stuck or trapped, there’s a way out for you
too. So before we go, would you please share how people can learn more from
you? Where can they find your book, learn more about you, your story? How
can they learn more? Go ahead.

Alysha
(42:20):

Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. My book, everything I might have missed, you
can find it wherever books are sold, Amazon, Barnes and Noble. And if you
want to know more about my just journey with writing and where I’m at, I’m
at Instagram at Roses and Reading.

Andrea
(42:39):

Okay, perfect. Perfect. So listeners will have that all linked up. Go grab
a book. Go follow on Instagram. There’s so much strength and courage here.
And wisdom that has been a hard won. Right? So wonderful to have you. Thank
you so much. Anything else you’d like to say before we go?

Alysha
(42:59):

No. This has been so wonderful, Andrea. Thank you so much for holding space
for me and my story, and thank you again for all the work that you do.

Andrea
(43:08):

Thank you. And thank you. Thank you so much for being here and courageously
sharing your story. Thank you for listening to the Heal from Infidelity
podcast. If you would like to be kept in the know about upcoming free
classes, new podcast episodes, and other ways of working with me, go
subscribe to my weekly email. You can subscribe@andreagiles.com slash lies
about dash infidelity slash. Again, it’s andrea giles.com/lies about dash
infidelity slash I will see you next time.