Meet Your Editor

I have been told many times that I have a sob story, I don't. I have a hope story. That doesn't mean it was simple, or easy and it didn't always feel hopeful. Infact for a long time it felt as though there was no hope, no light, and no future. My story started when I was 14, when my childhood was taken from me. I was coming out of swim pratice and got sexually abused by one of the employees at that rec center. After that my life was never the same. I got into drugs, and devolped an eating disorder. I was soon abused again and this time by an old childhood friend. Not many people know that once you are abused once your likelihood of being abused again highly increases. These abuses were just the first.
The worst night of my life was still ahead of me, when my best friend would be abused and we were both too drugged to do anything about it. After that experice I would wake up screaming everynight, drenched in sweat from nigthmares. I would go from a day of trying to escape the flashbacks and depression to nights of nightmares where I relived the worst moments of my life.
On september 26, 2019 I came home high and my parents caught on. They told me that I could never see my friends again and I would never use drugs. I decided that my pain and regret was too hard to live with if I didn't have drugs. That night I took over 80 opiood in an attempt to end my life. When people hear about abuse they think that once the event is over you should be fine. People don't know that the event is just the beginning and that the after part is when the true pain begins. I was lifeflighted to the hospital where my heart would stop and I would die for 2 minutes.
From this experince I learned that I had a purpose. I was admitted into an inpatient rehab program where I was able to finally tell the truth about my abuse, and be given the resources to heal. It has been a long road but I am now almost 4 years clean.
For so long I thought that I was completely alone in my abuse but through my healing journey I found out that there was billions of people around the world with stories similar to my own. After I became aware of this my eyes were opened to the life of human trafficking, where victims are abused several times a day. I could not imgaine this reality and could no longer stay silent. I wished more than anything that I was completely alone and that no one else understood abuse. I vowed that I would fight in anyway until no one else has a story similar to mine and that the millions of stories that were much worse would stop.
I started volunteering for nonprofit organizations that fought human trafficking and sexual exploiation. Around 8 months after volunteering I kept thinking of ways that I could make a bigger impact. One night I said a prayer and asked God how I could make a bigger impact in this fight. That night I had a dream that I started my own nonprofit organization called Giving A Voice. The next day I jumped into researching and learning where I would even begin. I started filling out paperwork and beginning the process of getting my 501c3.
Four years ago I was having dreams of being abused and now I have dreams of fighting abusers. My goal in life is to make an impact and save as many children, and people as I can from human trafficking, sexual abuse, and sexual exploiation.