Thanksgiving

As a survivor, the holidays weren’t the best for us.  I don’t know about you, but as for me I didn’t have my family, my last Thanksgiving before my trafficking was when I was gathered with my family.  Me and my sisters would do most of the cooking, my mom would make homemade apple pie, our aunt would come and visit as well.  That’s what I remember about Thanksgiving.  The years after that haven’t been the same.  The last Thanksgiving I had with my family since I’ve been out of my trafficking scenario was when my son was a baby, but it didn’t feel welcoming.  At that time I didn’t know what “trafficking” meant and to my family I was this prostitute and they were ashamed of me.  When we’d go to Thanksgiving Mass at the Korean church the members would ask my family where I have been and I would hear my parents lie and say I was at a school far away.  It was to keep the peace at the church, but it made me feel like a failure.  Since then I haven’t revisited my parents home for the holidays, I’ve been either spending it with friends who value and respect me.

My family wouldn’t even call to say, “Happy Thanksgiving”, they would call to see if my son was there and other times they would ask if they could keep him for the holidays and I was never invited.  If you’re wondering what type of blog this is, it’s me venting, because I am hurt.  Most girls from trafficking scenarios didn’t have a “Happy Family Home”, most would run away from an abusive parent or home and when they have come out of the abyss, they are faced with the familiar emptiness, that is what I want you to be aware of.  If you want to do something nice, invite one of them to your home for Thanksgiving it ‘ll be the best gift you could give this year.  Today, I consider my friends my new family and this year will be emotional, because since my husband is not available for Thanksgiving I was going to invite myself and my son to my family since we recently connected, but I have tried to get in contact with them and have not received a phone call yet.  My assumption is they saw the news, where I appeared sharing my story of trafficking the one thing my mother forewarned me about.  My mother knew about me doing speaking of Human Trafficking, but what she didn’t want me to do was to share my story, she said it would affect my family’s reputation.  What would the other Korean families think of them?  I use to carry guilt and shame when I was in hiding, I was too afraid to share my story afraid I would be rejected and no one would believe me, but in the years that I have spoke I saw the change and the phone calls and letters I would get from families who’s had or have a missing child, giving them some hope that their child could still be alive or that they weren’t going through the pain alone.  Holidays aren’t the easiest for me and there are times I find myself in anxiety of spending it alone.

If you are a survivor reading this, please know that you are not alone tonight and if I was there I’d invite you to my home and we could spend Thanksgiving together, enjoying all the food and company.  This year I am truly blessed with my friend, Melanie and she has invited me to a Thanksgiving gathering from one of our church members.  My son on the other hand is bummed out because he wants to stay behind and play with the neighbor’s kid.  I may not have the traditional Thanksgiving Dinner like they have in the movies, but I have my own family, my friends who love me and my home to share the celebration.  Thank you for letting me share.

Note to survivors:

(Feel free to share your Thanksgiving moments.  I’d love to hear your frustrations and joys.  You are welcome to remain anonymous.)

I’ve become a butterfly!

When I see all these helping institutions and programs that now exist, it doesn’t compare to the love and acceptance that I felt among God’s people.  I’m not one to knock down helping institutions or programs, but nothing compares to the human essence of touch, love and grace.  I’ve been in shelters, you name it I’ve been there from Domestic Violence to Transitional Shelters, but what makes human contact so powerful, is when it’s driven through love of God.  I will never forget the group of people that changed my life and saw something greater in me that even I couldn’t see at the time.  I was so low in self-esteem I had lost hope.  When you are so use to seeing treachery day after day and the only thing that seems to exist is death, you begin to lose focus of the fight.  My journey in my recovery was never easy and of course it was definitely a trial and error for those who saw me struggle.  Therapist banging their heads against the wall trying to figure out what was wrong with me.  Being prescribed by every drug to sedate the nightmares and flashbacks, which only fueled the triggers of the forced narcotics that I had to use to sedate my body.  I remember growing up in church and I remember the pastor would describe God as the Wizard of OZ.  I thought God was mean and loud.  It’s like going to the principal’s office, you are hesitant to meet the big guy.  After years of emotional and verbal abuse and being constantly told that God doesn’t love you and you’ll go to hell, you begin to give up hope all together.

But when I got out of my trafficking, the pain was too much for me to describe and I had no idea how I was going to even rise from it.  I had different churches turn me away because I was a beggar.  Every man that pulled over didn’t want to help me all they wanted was to bargain my body in exchange for food and a free ride.  Why not accept the hand that feeds you when they were the only ones around.  I was outcast by society, churches turned me away and the only people available to my vulnerability were the vultures waiting to take every inch of my being away.  If I was raped, I never reported it because I thought I deserved that too, but when one man welcomed me in his life, he didn’t bargain me for sex, he didn’t assist me temporarily until he got tired of me or to cast me out to institutions, he literally opened his heart and told me that God loves me.  I will never forget such kindness that was so unfamiliar and foreign to what I was use to that I couldn’t believe it.  I willingly took his offer for help because I was desperate, but inside my heart I was hesitant.  I always thought love had to do with sex.  He later introduced me to his group of friends, who were nothing more than college students.

Through their strong pact of friendship and devotion to God’s love, they stood by my side and helped me through whatever it was I was going through.  There were moments of defiance and rebellious that was because I was unsure.  I was not use to God’s love which was pure and filled with hope and grace.  I was waiting for the other shoe to fall off, embracing the pain I suppressed inside that I pushed them away.  I started sneaking out, running away and even when I did run away from them they always welcomed me back.  I knew I was exhausting them, they did everything they could to show me a life with God.  To show me God’s love and his humbleness and I felt the only way for me to grow is for me to figure it out myself.  Even though I separated myself from the group, God was still by my side.

When you heal, it’s not like a physical wound, there’s no heal date at least in my experience, you continue to heal as you grow.  Life is about growing and learning about who you are and what your calling is in life.  Even in my recovery, I had relapsed to drug, prostitution and self-pity, I kept pushing God’s love away from me because I just couldn’t believe that someone like me could be loved.  The echo sounds of my teachers, pastors and members of the church echoing in my ear when I was a child that God will never love me consumed in my conscious mind.  When I look back, God had touched my heart in so many ways, have given me big signs to show me his love and I didn’t show my appreciation.  It took me many years to realize those signs were for me and that God was serious when he kept me alive from attempting suicide, car accidents and keeping me safe in the darkest of night.  He watched over me when I thought no one else did.  Because of him, I am able to live and love the life I’m in.

“If you allow anger to consume you, how will your wings fly?” -C. Kim

“When we think about our lives, we don’t think about being kidnapped and how we should run away, there are certain emotions that come with that : shock, fear, numbness and submission. I can’t say how many times I’ve wondered about trying, but you feel like your body is stuck, you can’t move but you want to. That’s what I felt like in my experience and then afterward I would beat myself for not trying. Through my journey of healing the hard part is forgiving yourself. You play back the horrid memories and wish you would’ve done something different and you blame yourself for the trouble it caused for the other victims. I have moments where I find myself still blaming myself and wishing it would be different. There were moments I had lost faith in God I also felt angry and couldn’t understand how God could sit and allow children being raped and tortured in unimaginable ways. I started to believe that the fires of hell are no worse then watching children being raped and sodomized in front of you. That type of torture is beyond explanation and I was afraid my soul had died.” -C. Kim

I’m writing to tell you my story, what I’m doing now and how I spread my wings.  Survival is never easy, but is it worth it?  Yes, it is, especially if you want to be free.  Free from anger, bitterness, hate and being a prisoner of your own enslavement.  Words above are from my book, that I wrote and what I felt when I was held in captivity.  Welcome to my world and if you like just stay awhile and I will show you my battle wounds and my purple hearts.  A Marine once said to me, “Survivors are war heroes too.”  I agree with him, we are, we been through so much and we’ve come so far to come home.  The only difference between a Soldier and a Survivor; is the lack of training.  We don’t get training on how to protect ourselves from harm and how to hide from the enemy.  I decided to create a page for my fellow survivors who are out there, letting them know that they are not alone in this battle and that fighting for our freedom is very much worth the risk we take every day.

On this site I will be sharing my poetry, my thoughts and as well as my point of view about various topics, please be welcome to share your thoughts as well.  I want to hear from you.  Your voice is just as important, whether you’re a survivor of all types of abuse.  You are welcome here.

How I survived?

Human Trafficking wasn’t made public until the early 2000′s, but even today most are still shocked that Modern Day slavery even happens.  During my escape in the mid to late 90′s, helping institutions weren’t available to me, because no one saw me as a victim of trafficking, I was either a prostitute or a run away, which didn’t help in my recovery.  I did things I couldn’t understand, I fell for the same abusive men/women and didn’t know why?  I felt lost and isolated in my journey of recovery.  Even through the trauma I endured, I was still an outgoing person with no boundaries of what I was or wasn’t allowed to talk about.  A year after my escape I befriended a christian man and I wasn’t aware of how to introduce myself or to keep my personal problems to me.  I was just pleased that he was nice to me and I wanted to be accepted by anyone.  We had met at church and he offered to take me to a shelter where I stayed temporarily and on our way home, I told him I use to be a prostitute and I felt like he was Jesus because he was nice to me.  Little did I understand that he was shocked by my answer.  I had expected for him to take me to his place and take advantage of me, because that’s what I was use to.  Instead, the gentleman took me back to the shelter and said to me that if I needed a ride to church again, he would be happy to take me.

To this day, we are friends and have lost touch for awhile and reunited on facebook.  He still recalls that first night he took me home, but he told me that there was an innocence that was lost in me that made him continue to be my friend, to show me God’s love and that was what he did to the best of his ability.  I was not an easy person to handle.  I still had addictions and receiving help from anyone that came with rules was not my idea of fun.  I felt in my mind that I deserve to break all the rules because I was held bondage for so long, so I would justify my behavior.  I was busy burning bridges left and right to where I was also losing help, friends and a security blanket.  During this journey, I was still clueless about my behaviors and didn’t understand why no one would help me even the ones I burned, I was getting frustrated with myself and thought of suicide.  I felt like a failure many times and thought God was angry with me.  Whenever I was homeless, I would sleep in gas station bathrooms and lock the door from the inside, if I wanted food I’d dig through the dumpsters of nice restaurants that were throwing away tons of uneaten food.  When I was bored and needed to feel important in some way, I would go to churches, Narcotics/Alcohol Anonymous groups.  Most of the churches that I knocked on, the person that was in charge of outreach weren’t available so the secretary couldn’t help me.  I remember when church would start so I’d walk in during church and ask for meals or a place to stay.  I had made friends along the way that was very kind in assisting me, but it was temporary.  It was always temporary, there were times I wish I was a child so that someone could adopt me and keep me in their homes.

I remember as I was walking down the street near an old shopping center there were lights in a old store with people and chairs.  I stood outside and heard the man speak, “When you get SICK and TIRED of being SICK and TIRED, that’s when things will change.”  I never forgot those words, but he was right.  I wasn’t sick and tired at that moment, because I was comfortable begging, not having to pay rent, to lower my dignity by trading my body to be somebody’s slave.  It was survival, but I was comfortable in it.  My survival this way continued for a very long time and it was hard to seek change.  I assumed my life would end up being in poverty and homeless.  I could roam around wherever I wanted to I didn’t have to follow anybody’s rules, but if you ask me today, would I ever relapse?  No and I’ll tell you why.  When I had my son, I couldn’t bare to place another child for adoption, the emotional roller coaster that I was on was too much to do again, but I have no regrets.  My daughter would’ve been homeless with me and the end result would be foster care and I didn’t want that to happen.  I wanted to give her something I never had, a real home without violence.  By the time I gave birth to my son, I realized I had to change in order to give him something better.  In 2000, I made new friends and started a new beginning for myself.  From the help of my friends, I was able to get a job, an apartment and my own car.  I learned what responsibility felt like.  The moment my depression and flashback had hit me, my work performance started to go down and I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me.  I have been given every type of medication, but it didn’t help me at the time.  I was very defiant when it came to taking medication.  Then in the fall of 2000, I moved to St. Paul, MN.  I moved because one of my traffickers had found out that I was back in TX and I was afraid they would come after me.  When I became a resident in MN, I realized that my depression was too much and sought out for help, I pleaded on bended knees when I visited the Mental Health center and a doctor approached me and introduced me to DBT (Dialectic Behavioral Therapy) that was started by Marsha Lanahan.  I started attending the groups and it was a life skill group for people who’ve gone through trauma.  In my journey, I had gone through 12 steps model, NA/AA principles, regular support groups and one on one therapy and nothing worked, but when I found DBT, it helped me understand my actions, why I was doing them and how to COPE with my flashbacks.  My favorite is the Core Mindfulness, I do my 3 minute meditation every morning before I do anything else and just relax in my guest room, listening to life escape music and focus on what I want to focus on.  Taking control of my thoughts and my flashbacks.  About three years ago, I returned to TX and wanted to continue with DBT here and have yet to find a doctor that practices that model, but I still have my materials and I practice them on a regular basis and that is how I continue to heal.  I’m going to stop here for now, but I will share more shortly, but thank you for listening or reading.