Why didn’t you just leave?
As a survivor of human trafficking, I hear this question often. And honestly, I have come to learn that this is a normal question for a healthy adult brain to ask when they hear my story. I also think many people have a hard time wrapping their brains around it because the first part of my story hits a little too close to home.
I grew up in a small lumber town in Southern Oregon. My parents went through a messy divorce when I was 9, and it left me with a lot of vulnerabilities in my heart. I felt unwanted, alone, and unimportant, even though I know my mom was doing her best to navigate life as a single parent. I was an average teenager who had never been put in an “at-risk” youth category. I played varsity sports. I was on the honor roll, and after I graduated a year early, I was accepted into Oregon State University. That’s when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. As I faced life as a single mom, those old vulnerabilities resurfaced, and I felt like I was floundering. Until I met a guy.
After a whirlwind 6-month relationship, I thought I was in love and ready to move with him to Las Vegas to build a life together. However, I realized within 24 hours of arriving in Vegas, he was not the man he said he was. He was a trafficker. Over the next six years, I was sold between three different traffickers. I was branded twice, having two men tattoo their names on my back like a piece of cattle. My face was broken in five places, and I was hospitalized for dehydration and over exhaustion. I went to jail several times. But I was never kidnapped. Or duct-taped. Or locked in a room with a dirty mattress. My “boyfriend” often said he was sorry. I thought he loved me. He promised life would not be this way forever, so I didn’t leave.
I now know that I was living my life with the young, traumatized brain of someone who was abused and vulnerable and feeling ashamed and alone. I couldn’t see a way out for me or my daughter. For years I identified as someone in a domestic violence situation, not a survivor of human trafficking. Like many women in my situation, I was terrified and brainwashed, and so I stayed.
Eventually, I was able to escape. I began the long journey back to health, and I began to see that shame and trauma don’t define who I am. As a survivor, I am not defined by the worst thing that ever happened to me. Early in my journey, it would have been easy for me to let shame overwhelm me when someone asked why I didn’t leave. Now, I see it as an opportunity to educate and equip others.
I don’t know your story, but I know that every one of us has been through the fire in some way. Don’t ever let shame tell you that you should hide or that you aren’t enough. Don’t let the worst things that happened in your life define you. And most of all - please hear me - your story matters. In fact, your story may be the very thing that helps someone else overcome shame and live their best life.
Share your story.
Join a single mom support group today!
MEET THE AUTHOR
Relentless in her mission to help others find their purpose, Rebecca Bender is CEO of the Rebecca Bender Initiative and founder of Elevate Academy, the largest online school for survivors of trafficking in the world. An award-winning thought leader, advocate, author, and consultant, she educates on many human trafficking-related topics and serves the U.S. National Advisory Council, state department of Justice Advisory Council, and advises a variety of nonprofits.
WHO WE ARE
The Life of a Single Mom is a national, faith-based, nonprofit that exists to see that no single mom walks alone. To date, the organization has worked with hundreds of churches to start a single mom’s support group in cities throughout the U.S. and beyond, as well as having served hundreds of thousands of single mothers with a variety of programs. Offering a large array of books, curriculum, training materials, online instructional videos, podcasts, newsletters, life skills education, and more, TLSM is one of the largest single mom organizations in the U.S. The robust selection of single mom programs focus on empowering single moms to grow spiritually, emotionally, financially, and parentally through Single Mom University, Single Moms Across America, the National TLSM Single Moms Conference, boot camps, and a variety of other programs. For more information, visit www.thelifeofasinglemom.com.
