Can you heal from abuse?  What do I do after leaving my narcissist? What does a healthy relationship look like? These concerns cross the minds of over 20 people every minute; over 28,800 people every day.  And the sad fact is, we still don’t talk about it enough.  Healing from Emotional Abuse isn’t a bandaid situation.  But it doesn’t have to be a five year process either. Millions of other survivors around the worlds entires lives have been impacted by their narcissist.  Yours doesn’t have to.  To show you how to live a free, confident and peaceful life, your host and Founder of the Healing From Emotional Abuse Philosophy, Marissa F. Cohen.

Marissa:

Today we’re joined with Dr. Leonie Madison. She’s an organizational and talent development practitioner, Author of the books The Thread: The perfect Steps for a God Ordained Purpose, and Beside Still Waters: 21 Days to Developmental, as well as the creator of Threads: 6-Step System to Help Survivors Free Themselves from Past Trauma and Live An Abundant Life.  She earned a doctorate in organizational leaders from Argosy University, A Masters in Business Administration from Georgian Court University, and A Christian Life Coach Certificate from Light University.  She’s a recipient of 2018 8th Annual Pacific Coast Business Times 40 Under 40 Award - Recognizing the 40 best and brightest transformational leaders on the central coast under the age of 40.  Thank you so much for joining us today.  I’m so excited to chat with you.

Dr. Leonie Mattison:

I am so excited about our conversation today as well.  Thanks for having me.

Marissa:

Of course! So lets get started.  Would you mind telling me a little about your story and what brought you to where you are today?

Dr. Mattison:

Sure! Thank you for asking! So, My name is Dr Leonie H. Madison.  I like to consider myself an impact storyteller.  I’m a trauma survivor, and I was chosen to be able to do this work of pioneering what we’re calling The Thread.  It’s a project, it’s a book, it’s a devotional, it’s a 6-step system; all in the spirit of helping survivors to achieve intentional transformation.  Helping survivors to rise from the trauma that they’ve experienced and to do some work.  Take the steps forward to really force your life forward. 

I am a single mom.  I have three beautiful daughters and a dog.  And they are all the highlights of my life, and I love them dearly.  I love my job.  It’s part of my calling;  I am an organizational and development practitioner, where I get to really help organizations to shift strategy, improve performance and grow revenue.  I always say that’s how I use my superpower in the marketplace.

And beyond all of those things, I am just one grateful girl speaking to another survivor, saying, “Hey, I survived.”  Also speaking to your listeners saying, “I survived.  And after survival, I had to do some work to survive.  To thrive beyond the trauma.”  So that’s a little bit about who I am and why I got here. 

I have a background about my experience being a victim of abuse.  I’m not sure if you hear my accent, but I was born on the beautiful island of Jamaica.  The west indies.  I suffered quite a number of years of abuse as a child.  Sexual abuse, spiritual abuse, emotional abuse, and physical abuse.  I immigrated to the US when I was about 15 years old.  I am also the product of parents who, my father abandoned us.  My mom had to leave the island to get work and so we grew up being bounced around from one city to the next in Jamaica.  And that’s where a lot of the abuse started.  And then when I came to the US, it didn’t stop.  I thought it would, but it didn’t.  I unfortunately suffered abuse in the faith-based community.  I was abuse by a priest minister, sexually and spiritually.  And so I have that traumatic background, and I didn’t allow the background to keep my back on the ground.  I listened to quite a number of your podcasts and it was really using the power of my voice and my words to elevate myself from out of those situations.   It’s one thing to get up, but it’s another to create a new mindset and to adapt new behaviors to truly live this abundant life that we were created to live.  So, that’s in a nutshell who you’re speaking with today.

Marissa:

You gave a lot of really good information, so thank you for sharing. So, your book is called Thread: A 6-step System to Help Survivors Free Themselves From Their Past Trauma.  If you wouldn’t mind maybe giving us a little taste of the six steps, or what you learned while writing the book.

Dr. Leonie:

I love that question.  So, the 6-step system was developed as a result of my experience while I was on my healing journey.  And I remember particularly, in addition to the abuses that I’ve gone through, endured, suffered, whatever word you want to use there, I am also a survivor of Delspalsy and a stroke.  I had finally made the decision, it was almost like my awakening journey, I finally made the decision after hitting rock bottom that I was ready for change. 

There was a dissonance between the girl I was living or the woman I was living, versus the woman that I deeply down in my soul thought I should become.  And so I started questioning a lot of theories, philosophies, and just life on a whole.  And my big question was to God.  I wanted to know why I had gone through what I was going through (Why am I going through what I’m going through). I wanted to know why he abandoned me.  I wanted to know why God chose this path for me. I had a lot of questions and I just felt like, books were great, and I would read and gain new knowledge, but I felt like I wanted to challenge God to give me the answers to the questions I was asking. 

And so, I’m on this journey, and I felt so many times while I was on this journey, there were times where my back was literally on the ground.  And somebody had to come pull me up, because I just couldn’t get up on my own. While on this journey I was bitter.  I was angry.  I was lost.  I had no courage or energy to live at one point.  And I remember distinctly.  I was on, what I call, one of my excursions.  And I remember I was sad, and I was crying.  The sun was hot.  And I had a radio, and I turned the radio on. When I turned the radio on, there was a minister on there, and I distinctly remember him talking and he said, “The prodigal son come home.”  And I turned it off because I didn’t want to hear anything religious.

Then I went inside the living room and I remember turning the television on.  And on came this woman.  Her name is Juanita Bynum.  She’s a female minister.  And she started the whole, “Prodigal son come home.” again, thing.  And i knew exactly the story in the bible.  And at that point she got my attention.  And I listened.  And at the time, you have to understand, I had just gone through a physical abuse by a partner with someone I was dating.  They had abused me physically, kicked me, I fell on the ground, knocked my head.  There was an iron and the ground, and I burned a part of my leg.  So, I was in a very bad situation, and I was self-blaming as well.  So when she said that, I knew I needed help, but I didn’t trust anyone around me to help me.  And I definitely didn’t trust God because I was blaming him.  And so when she started speaking and she said, “There’s a woman watching and the Lord said to tell you, if you turn to Him, He will turn your life around.”  And I turned the television off and said, “I don’t believe that.”  I just don’t believe it.  And I remember I just started crying and screaming and I got to the point where my mind felt sick and tormented.  I took all of this glassware and I just smashed the house.  I couldn’t hit him because he wasn’t there.  And I took the television off of the wall and I smashed it.  I was just so angry, I felt so alone.  I screamed.  I cried to the point that my neighbors called the cops because they thought something was wrong. Like I was being abuse.  And when they came, they couldn’t believe how I had trashed the home.

And it was at that point I realized that I really needed help.  And it was at that point that I started sharing my story.  I actually got up and went and got help from a therapist.  And I started sharing my story.  I didn’t know, I had forgotten some of what I had been through.  At this time, I was in my 20s, and I had forgotten some of what I’d been through, but she was asking the right questions, that triggered the memory.  And i started connecting the dots of what happened to me in my past as a little girl, and being molested.  From being inappropriately touched.  From being raped when I was sick in bed. I started connecting the dots and I realized that these were patterns in my life. These were things that were happening to me every 5-10 years.  I would go through a huge traumatic injury.  And so i started documenting everything that I could remember. And the first thing I remember doing was, when the therapist asked me what is it that I want.  “What do you want your life to look like?”  I didn’t know what I wanted, because I was never given