RHW Podcast Episode 1 Beginning Our Contemplative Path of Recovery

Reaching Hurting Women

We are so excited to announce the first Episode of the Reaching Hurting Women podcast! Below you will find the audio transcript. Hi friends, welcome to Episode One of the Reaching Hurting Women podcast. My name is Tamara and I will be your host. Thanks so much for listening! You may be asking, “Who are the hurting women? How do I know if I am one?” See if you recognize yourself in this list… Millions of women walk through life with deep emotional pain. Trapped in loneliness, feeling helpless, hopeless, and worthless they act out in unhealthy behaviors. These unhealthy behaviors can take many forms: a runaway fantasy life fed by romance novels or erotica; relationship addiction; physical or sexual abuse; sexual addiction; pornography addiction; unwanted same sex attraction; drug and alcohol abuse; eating disorders; compulsive spending; gambling, self-injury, and the list goes on…etc… It can get complicated fast. I know because I have struggled most of my life with everything on this list in one form or another. Let me tell you a little bit of my story… I'm a 1950’s baby boomer from a dusty West Texas oil field town, the first daughter, an invisible middle child, between a brother four years my senior with cerebral palsy, and a sister three years younger. Ours was an average lower middle class home. My mother was a dutiful housewife caring for her family with home cooked meals and handmade clothes. My father was a typical male, at least in my mind; a highly functional alcoholic, womanizing sex addict who was rarely home and never faithful to my mother. His addiction to pornography was no secret with the current Playboy calendar always hanging above the bathroom scales in our only family bathroom. Never underestimate the power of pornography. Compared to the horrific pornography of today, being exposed to the pornography of the 1960’s seems trite to some. But these calendar images were very destructive to my little girl’s mind. They changed me into a sexual creature at an extremely young age. In fact, it was covert sexual abuse. I became obsessed with these girls. Who were they? Where did they come from? How can I be one of them? Acting out with boys on the elementary playground became full blown sexual addiction in my adolescence; drugs, alcohol, clubbing, and one night stands brought what I thought was the perfect combination to get the love and attention I desperately craved. In the middle of the free love, I stumbled upon the man who would become my husband. He swept me off my feet with romantic cards and gifts. We married after dating only six months. I was a frisky fiancé who shut down after the wedding and stayed that way for 15 years. As a young bride, I was unprepared for married sex. It was a shock to my addictive mindset and mode of operation. I no longer held the power, gone was the hunter/prey routine from my single days. At 22 I basically shut down physically. Sure we still had a physical relationship, but there was no passion because I didn’t know how to connect intimately on an emotional level. Worse than that, I didn’t know what I didn’t know; which kept me frustrated and resentful of what my husband expected from me. Life was a pendulum swinging from far left to right. To escape the oil field industry my husband returned to college. We survived on student loans as I stayed home and bore three children in four years. When my husband graduated we moved to the big city to start his career and I devoted myself to homeschooling our three children. We threw out all our secular books and music and lived a conservative Christian lifestyle. Though religious and involved in church, there was no joy or victory in my life; I was caught up in following rules and trying to be the best person I could be. In the mid 90’s my husband engaged in a venture with some professing Christian businessmen that quickly went sour and resulted in substantial financial loss for our family.