I grew up in a small town called Mt. Olive, NC. I have a brother who's 5 years younger than myself. I grew up with my grandparents and great uncles living across the street from us. I grew up working on the farm with the chickens, family garden, raising pigs, or working mainly in the 9-acre peach orchard. I grew up going to my grandpa’s store in Mt. Olive to “work” with and hang out with him. My mom taught school, and my dad worked with the maintenance department for the county schools. My grandma was a retired WWII Army Nurse and retired from community health nursing for Duplin County. We would all go to the beach for summer breaks when peaches were not in season or between varieties, or when the cold would kill them with early cold springs.
What little did people know was the abuse that happened behind closed doors. I can remember very vividly at the age of 5 seeing my daddy push my mom down into an open hot oven and her being 9 months pregnant. I remember very vividly hearing a voice that said to me, “This is NOT how a man is supposed to treat a woman/wife.” After hearing this, I remembered saying to myself, "Okay," and I turned to walk away to go play. From this point on, this type of physical abuse became more frequent and severe through the years and the verbal abuse onslaught. From this time until basically I was a senior in High School, we never knew the “mood” Daddy was going to come home from work in. We always walked around on eggshells.
I remember as I was getting older, and in middle school on, I would push Mama out of Daddy’s way and get in his face screaming at him that I hated his guts and wish he’d leave, that we would be so much better off without him. I would cuddle up with my brother, and we would cry and hold each other. I would run and all the family attorney and cry and beg him to call the cops for me... Daddy would come running and find me in the upstairs part of our house. I would get in the car and drive to the pond to get away from all the screaming, yelling, and hitting. As we also got older, I noticed an adult beverage “alcohol” was in the picture and when it came into the picture things got worse, and I could see moods and tempers get worse. I came to hate this drink that had a part in destroying my family.
During the middle school years, I would spend the night at friends' houses to get away and see what a real family was supposed to be like. But I wouldn’t go very often because frankly I was afraid of what would happen to Mama and Adam while I was gone. In high school, my pain was great by my senior year, and I started not to care about what happened in life and went to parties and a place called Lake Artesia. There were parties, dancing, and drinking. I started drinking myself on the weekends. It started out once in a while and then by my senior year became an every weekend occurrence. My senior year, I was dating a guy and broke up with him. I didn’t want to date anyone. My senior year for spring break we went on our senior trip to the Bahamas. My girlfriend and I made a pact with each other that we would take turns drinking and not separate from one another. Well, that went straight out the window; we went to the first party, and they separated us, and we couldn’t find each other, and then it was on from there. The next morning, one of the guys I’d been friends with since 6th grade brought my underwear to me the next day at our door. I looked at him and said, "What’s this for?" He said, "You don’t remember?" I said, "No, if I did I wouldn’t ask you." He just turned and walked away. I closed the door sitting on my bed with my friend and cried.
I didn’t remember anything. Later found out that we had sex (I lost my virginity that way). I was so numb, mad and just felt totally violated. I’d made a promise to myself when I was younger that I would be a virgin when I got married, it was something special that I wanted to give to my husband. From this point on in the trip, I was numb and stayed with girls and tried to have a good time on the rest of the trip. On the way home, I remember going up to this guy and telling him that I forgave him and hoped that one day he wouldn’t have to experience it with his daughter. The rest of my senior year, I dove myself into my schoolwork, time with my granny, and drank on the weekends and went to parties. The night of high school graduation, I went to the beach with another couple and drank that whole weekend, crying to myself, laying on the beach at night looking up to the stars just crying out!
After that graduation weekend, I went back home and made a promise and pact to myself and God that I wouldn’t ever drink again. I rededicated my life to Christ and got re-baptized. I saw that if I didn’t stop, I would end up like my parents if not worse. I didn’t want that for my life.
On the day that I was leaving for college, my dad announced that he was leaving my mom (me being 17, not quite 18—2 weeks shy) .... I said, "Well, this is the best present I could get…too bad you waited so long instead of ruining all the years we’ve lived in hell with you." I left for college and moved on with my life. It was when the movie Edward Scissorhands came out in 1990 that I couldn’t quit crying and knew that I needed help.
I went to counseling with a counselor at Mt Olive College and saw him for several months a couple of times a week. From this point, I began to love myself and got on a growth path to improve myself. I dated and married a guy, and we were together for a total of about 20 years. From 1999 to 2010, I was in the Amway business and got on a MAJOR self-help program of reading books and listening to at that time tapes/CDs and meeting with a mentor weekly. I was HUNGRY for growth and wanted to be a better and BEST ME!!! A lot happened, and I ended up leaving my first husband.
3 months later, Clay and I got reunited and started seeing each other. I knew that Clay had an alcohol issue but wasn’t aware of pill addiction. So, from April of 2011 until Jan. 2014, I dealt with a whole new ballgame that I’d never experienced to the degree and depth that it was. I was 40 years old that year when we got together and was thrust into a world of a hurricane of addictions.
In 2012, I was 41 years old and teaching school myself and finished my MBA then we had our 1st child in 2012 and she had major health issues. I was worn out. Clay's drinking and drug issues continued to grow and worsen…. Jan. 2014 on a Friday I ended up having him locked up. When he got out, I’d had help from a girlfriend at church who helped me move out back into my momma's house. I ended up getting an emergency Ex-parte order against him to protect me and our daughter. We had court dates, and he would show up totally drunk, and the judge would put him in jail for contempt of court. In April 2014, Clay had a friend take him to a regeneration center. I would continue to stay away and have no contact with him but through friends who kept me abreast of what was going on. In May of 2014, I went to see Clay after a heaviness that came upon me to go see him. From that visit on, we started growing and working together to overcome what we’d been through. When he graduated from the place in Oct. 2014, we renewed our wedding vows before leaving the property.
From this point, he came home, and we moved into a rental home and had a lot of growing together and learning to do. So, it began our journey of recovery, growth, and overcoming. To help give other couples hope and a road map of what we’d been able to do.
At 44 I had our 2nd child and then decided to make a career change and get out of teaching and started selling life insurance. During this time, we started Epic Life Solutions and wrote books together. Now, we are embarking on I Have Victory Now and helping even more people give them a road map, stretching people to help them grow and overcome just as we have done.
