Survivor Story

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As a survivor of childhood abuse growing up in an alcoholic violent single parent home in Wisconsin, she started drinking it age 11 and smoking pot around 15. After graduating from high school, Kelley was able to escape to Miami / Ft. Lauderdale. The boyfriend she was with was violent and she ended up homeless, domestic violence, sexual assaults sex trafficking, drug and alcohol addiction, and living the stripper lifestyle to prevent herself from having domestic violence relationships and gaining independence. Miami had a different lifestyle than Wisconsin. It was fast, furious and fun for a 20-year-old perspective in the 80s with no boundaries and did not know her value, worth. All she knew was that she was out from under the family violence and the beatings.

A miracle she quit the drugs and alcohol and started being a nutrition fitness trainer on the side and have trained with some of the best. Her life was going on a good path and getting better and better even going to John Casablanca modeling School in fort Lauderdale. But since her last relationship in Florida was starting to get violent and recognizing the signs she decided to get away from the fast lane and regroup so June 26th, 1991, she arrived in Madison Wisconsin, a place where she said she would never go again. When she came up to the Madison area, she was thinking she was just going to regroup for a few months but what turned out to be a few decades and worse for wear.

Unfortunately, some people she trusted as she used to babysit their kids and they had influence in her life but since she didn't know the difference between Jesus and religion, she ended up in a cult that those people were in and who they advised to get mentored from.

During that dark time, she received a lot of judgment criticism shaming condemnation treatment from the cultish for being a survivor and believing that God wanted to reach the survivors. Not recognizing emotional and spiritual abuse and since they were quoting the Bible and using God's name, she thought who she was to argue besides they were not knocking her out or f bombing her or physical and verbal abuse which was the only kind that she had recognized at the time. So she swallowed and followed and she gave up everything and moved in with crazy Church folk who was actually like Dr Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde and it was very unstable environments but because she was being taught that enjoying her animals was a sin and having her own place was a sin and that the only way to please God was to move in with those people that they recommended and that it was her duty to go back into violent family of origin and her duty to stay in the Madison area because enjoying life was considered selfish and to live a sacrificial life of giving away all her money and turning the other cheek putting up with violence was God.

Many people do things thinking it is God even though it's very sad that they are deceived. And unfortunately, people behind pulpits and with bunch of letters behind their names and those that can quote the Bible does not mean that they know God does not mean that they know Jesus. She ended up worse than before, religion is the opposite of God, and it will make you broke, busted and disgusting. She ended up enduring more homelessness, more sexual assaults, more violent relationships and some drinking again to try to cope with a dissonance, not knowing what had happened but there was no support system in place.

She told a few leaders in the early 90s that she had a dream about creating a safe space for the women with holistic housing and the different things that she needed that she herself did not get but that idea was considered crazy and was met with much laughter and even more shaming and invalidation for having such wild ideas and being told that it couldn't be God because it's never been done before and not to worry about those women and so she was treated as a less than which didn't do her any good coming out of a lifetime of abuse, that is the last kind of treatment that she needed.

But because she did not recognize emotional and spiritual abuse and was being told that it was God and because she didn't know the truth about how God felt about her and what all Jesus had done for her in his death burial and Resurrection and like so many people do not know what actually happened on the cross, she fell victim to the nasty treatment for over 25 years she kept in touch and around them due to trauma bonding or because she was just such in a confused disabled state and therefore had to rely on toxic people in order to survive.

Also, there was a lot of asceticism desolation in that dark confusing place and jumping through all the religious hoops and heavy burdens and wearing herself out beyond burned out from age 28 until 55. Taking on the shame of what they were doing to her kept her in the loop of confusion for a long time.

She is currently living in stable apartment where she had a dream about when one of her homeless from all the effects of the cult and lifetime of abuse and having to be on sub housing that had a lot of mold and health issues and so she is a survivor of many things because there were a lot of people getting sick and actually dying from the condition of the apartments that they were living in but that was also met with an attitude from the owner that those people were on disability anyway. So, after giving up everything that the cult said was sin, her self-worth that was anything left over from all the years of abuse was really tanked.

And that my friends is why it is so important for people to know the real Jesus…not the Jesus that people have made him up to be Once she started getting the true gospel and was able to connect with the healing that Jesus had provided and connect with people from outside the region. She has heard from many across the country, but Dane county has really been a dangerous place and a crazy making place for her and many who was able to escape but people will do anything if they think it's God. But now she is in an apartment had a stable housing and able to unpack all the trauma not only from the cult but also from child abuse. It is tough going through all those things alone and without support it's a miracle that she survived.

She heard recently that the same people that had mistreated her for her “wild ideas of helping those women” were now using her sketches for holistic housing and had a meeting with some of the ladies from the cult who choked/ stuttered on their words as they ate them 28 years later.

Because back in 2018/2019 she had started to learn the gospel and the healing started manifesting from not hanging around them but because of her compassion for them because she started to realize how this deceived, they were so she met with some people from the cult and wanted to help them still stuck in The matrix. But they were gas- lighting and she had realized they hadn't changed and even the 28 years

Kelley thought it would be an act of love to bring salt and pepper if she traveled around the Dane county area so that if more people from the cult crossed her path that the salt and pepper might help them not to choke on their words so much as they ate them.