“. . .ultimately helping other people became my path out of hell.”
I had chills at that point in the Girl Boner Radio interview you’re about to experience, both because of how far Cheryl had come, and all she had been through, and the moving ways the people she volunteered to help ended up changing her life for the better. Throughout our chat, we delved into some dark, heavy and painful circumstances (kidnapping, rape, beatings…), and also a lot of light—including lessons for anyone who’s longing for life as it used to be or feeling pretty isolated because of difficult events.
Cheryl Hunter is a bestselling author and resilience expert who provides expert commentary for news sources including CNN, Dr. Phil, NBC News, Dr. Oz and PBS. Cheryl never set out to be an expert in resilience, but while traveling abroad as a teenager, she was kidnapped by two criminals who eventually left her for dead. Cheryl survived this life-changing trauma and used her experience to create an educational framework that empowers people to flourish through adversity.
Stream the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or below! Read on for lightly edited interview transcripts.
Surviving Kidnapping and Rape, Healing by Helping with Cheryl Hunter
August
So, you grew up on a horse ranch in rural Colorado. I wonder if you could share a bit about what you loved about that life.
Cheryl
It was a dream in so many ways. I mean, it’s funny. “Rural” almost doesn’t even apply. In some regard, it could have been any century. There were no signs of civilization. I had to sort of crane my head and if you if you got up on top of the tree, you could sort of see part of the freeway. Sort of, you know, a two-lane “freeway” but way off in the distance, and you can only see it at night because occasionally you see lights, but there were no signs of civilization, like a lot of the flyover states, to speak, are and that made it heavenly, in that we were so far away from people. My mom wanted my brother, sister, and I to become close.
Now, at the time, that’s what she said. And I sort of in retrospect wondered, did she really? Now, I do believe she did but also, could you imagine like driving an hour, an hour and a half each way to go play with friends? No. Who wants to do that? But she also did want the three of us to become close. So, we stayed on the ranch during the summer all the time. I remember lying down in the meadow—I’d just go out there—cows are quite gentle, and I was on a horse ranch. We had cattle as well, not for farming or anything, just because they’re nice.
August
They are. I love cows.
Cheryl
They’re so friendly and docile. I would go lie out there in the meadows and look up at the sky and see planes occasionally and think, with the mind of a kid, you know, if I stare hard enough at that plane, I could get sucked up inside of it and then I’d be the one in that plane looking down at this girl lying among the cow patties on the rough grass of the meadow. And I just used to imagine that someday I would be the one in the plane looking at a girl in the meadow, who had dreams of getting out and going some place where there were people that I wasn’t related to by blood, that I didn’t know.
There’s something simultaneously magical and challenging about being in a small town where everybody knows you. As a teen, our model of the world, as a teen, is very different. Everybody thinks about you and they’re judging you and all this stuff that when you get older, you’re like did they even know I existed. I was fixated upon people’s judgement of me or whatever. That sort of kept me stifled and living a particular life rather than the ability to spread my wings and expand and fly and become whoever I chose. And I thought that the anonymity of a city would allow that. I don’t know where I concocted the idea but I became hell bent on getting to some city where I could invent myself in any way.
August
I can imagine that. I grew up in not a small town but in Minnesota, and when I moved to New York City, I did feel like I had privacy for the first time, really, because no one knew me. No one knew who I had been. No one knew who my family was. And when you’re surrounded by so many people, you can be like anonymous, which is tricky.
Cheryl
Isn’t it funny? It’s the paradox of being alone in a crowd.
August
Yes. And so you ended up deciding that modeling could be your vehicle to more, to something more, that you have been longing for.
Cheryl
I don’t know that it was particularly thought through, outside of the basics. And I’d played hooky one day and gone to the local store, which was about, I don’t know, an hour away or something like that on my minibike, got myself a root beer and a Glamour magazine and a pickle, you know, favorite foods? And yes, I was going to look for career advice. And it was talking about how they were always looking for models.
I was on the boys’ basketball team at the time, and I was like, I’m tall enough. You know, what other kind of prerequisite could there be? Can you smile? Okay, I smile for long periods of time, often times, even unbidden. I seemed to have all the qualifications. So, I thought if I chose some other career, profession, vocation of some kind, my family could object. Well, you could go do that here. But that modeling—what the heck—that was going to be my ticket.
August
Which also comes, I think, with that youthful naivety sometimes. We just think I’m just gonna go do it. I’m just going to fly away, which is essentially what you did. Did you do any sort of research into finding contacts before you traveled?
Cheryl
Oh, no. Like I said, I was hell bent. I don’t know how better to phrase it. But that was what I was going to do. I was going to go to Europe. . . A friend wanted to go to Europe, and I was like, yeah, I think they need models over there. The logic is slightly flawed.
Now she was perfectly content with coming home afterward. I, on the other hand, no. I had the world to see, you know, anonymity to meet, people to simultaneously meet and have ignore me so I could create myself to be whomever I chose. I had big plans. I didn’t tell anybody about these plans because I didn’t want to be shut down or humiliated for having them. I was going to find a way once we got there.
August
So your family only knew that you were going on a trip. That’s all they knew.
Cheryl
Well, my mom realized that there was no shutting me down. I had said I was going to do it and I was going to, and she was either going to let me go with her blessing and then advise me, come up with some provisions inside of which I could take the trip, which she did. Or I was just going to go do something even more stupid, like go on my own, and she came up with the provision you can go provided you do two things: one, you never split up from your friend, and two, you stay in regular communication with me. It’s not that they didn’t pan out. I, who had always been truthful, always honored my word to my parents, my mother, it was sacred, but I didn’t. I had something, you know, I was on a mission. I was going to figure out a way to stay in the city if it killed me.
August
Those words feel very profound, considering all that happened. Would you share? What did happen? I know, shortly after you arrived, your life changed dramatically.
Cheryl
Well, we got to France and there was a man with a camera around his neck, you know, a fancy, nice looking camera. And he approached me, asked me if I was a model, told me that he could make me one. I was like, this is it? This is how easy it is to become a model? He said, “All you need to do is come with me and my friend.” And there was this big man standing over to the side alone.
Now, my friend said, “Oh, no, you don’t. There’s no way.” But look, she didn’t have the same dream as I did. Plus, we’d been traveling through Europe already a little bit. And she had met some guys who were going to follow us there. I didn’t like them. I didn’t want anything to do with them. So, she went out with them. I ditched her, went off with the man with the camera and his friend. My thought was we were going to go shoot photos. When are we going to go shoot the photos?
And so they met me in this cafe. And the interesting thing was, it was all dark. It was in the middle of the day, but it was dark. Now at the end of it, we were down in the south of France and there was a beach and it was light, very light at that end, but the café, the restaurant, was dark in and of itself. Nobody else was there but me and the man with the camera and the big man.
And they asked me if I wanted wine, Sauvignon Blanc. It sounded all fancy. And I was like, “No, I wanted to be sober, you know, for the photos.” And they were like, “Oh, you American.” And I didn’t want to be the “ugly American.” So fine. I had some Sauvignon Blanc.
The next thing I know I come to and I’m in a car, in the passenger seat, with my head kind of hanging out the window like a dog. My mouth is open. I’m drooling. My tongue is out. And I see us driving. Curvy, windy roads going this and that around these bends, and I’m like Oh, no, and that’s that. I’m out again.
And at the same time, I have to say throughout this whole ordeal, which lasted some time, they took me to a construction site—again, nobody was there—just abandoned on the cement floor. It was dark, it was like flapping, the sound of flapping plastic. And I kept thinking the whole time, when are we going to shoot the photos? When are you going to take the pictures? When?
And for whatever reason they—I mean, for whatever reason, the whole thing, you know; there’s no bringing reason to this—but they beat me. They tortured me. They raped me. Why all of it? Why torture somebody? And I had this impulse. It was not thought through. It was not anything. Maybe it was that I was drugged. I don’t know. But I started talking. And one of them just used to kick me, I mean kicking me when I wouldn’t stop talking, but I just kept talking.
My little brother was having problems in school. And I was talking about how he’s very smart. He was always inventing things. And he used to say, “I’ve got an invention,” you know, like, you couldn’t get all the ketchup out of the ketchup bottle. He goes, “I’ve got an invention that would fix this.” But he had an invention for everything. You know, “you don’t want to unsaddle the horses at the end of the ride? Well, I’ve got an invention.” He’s very smart.
It’s just school wasn’t doing it for him, which is not an anomaly. The normal K-12 just doesn’t do it for everybody. He was failing and being held back a grade, but he was brilliant. I know from all of his inventions—as much as I would go, “shut up, not another invention,” you know, just obnoxiousness to a little brother. But he was good. They were good. And I knew it. But for some reason, I just started talking about it. And I was talking about everybody in the family.
I was having this moment to myself, where it was impossible that I would ever leave. I mean I’d seen TV movies, you know, why would they? Why would they let me go? I saw their faces. This doesn’t end well, no matter how I thought it through, but I just kept talking. . . You know that saying your life flashes before your eyes? Literally. I was thinking of all the things I had done wrong.
I used to go to the mall with my grandma. Like this little small-ass town mall. And not in my little town. There was no mall there, for God’s sakes, but Pueblo, Colorado, an hour and a half to Pueblo. And I’d go with my grandmother to the mall and she would want to hold my hand.
And I’d be like, eww, you know, again, back to how you were as a teenager: Everyone’s looking at me. Oh my God, older girls, they’re looking at me, and I’m holding hands like I’m a five-year-old. I can’t hold your hand. And she would try to hold my hand, and I would always drop it and let it go, and pretend like I was pointing at some damn thing or doing something. But I was embarrassed of that and of her. And I was saying if, “I could ever have her hold my hand again, I will hold her hand as long as she ever wants.”
And I was just saying all these things and the big one would just come and kick me in the head and just like stab me and shit like, you know, burning me, but I just wouldn’t stop talking. And I didn’t have the time go to law enforcement, ultimately. They let me go. They dumped me in a park, like a heap of garbage. But later in talking to some people in law enforcement, they were like, “Well, it was sex trafficking and some handoff went awry or something. But you know, talk me through what you did,” and, “Oh, well, you humanized yourself to them.”
And I gotta say, despite the things I’m telling you, I am a smart person, despite my lapse in judgment as a teenager on a mission, but I did not think through oh, you must humanize yourself to the captors. None of that happened. It was just an impulse that I couldn’t control, no matter how much they punished me for it.
August
It sounds like your instincts were saving you. I mean, literally saving you.
Cheryl
Literally. You are 100% right.
August
Wow. I’m so glad that you were able to get out of that situation. Did you get support? Did anyone ask you what happened? Why do you have these wounds?
Cheryl
Frankly, a lot of the wounds were in places where you don’t see them, your most sensitive places on the body. There’s scarring there, but it’s not like I show anybody. One thing I wanted to say was when they finally dumped me off, pushed me out of the car onto the ground, the guy goes, “Darling,” of all words, darling, and I turn my head back, and he snaps my photo. Finally, we’ve shot the photos.
August
Wow. The layers of cruelty. From there, were you able to find your friend again?
Cheryl
Well, I did, and we laughed, and she was furious. I mean I disappeared, and I had a promise that I would not split up with her and all that. So, we ran and got on a train. I don’t know if everybody does this as a teenager but we had this ridiculous amount of junk we had brought with us. Our suitcases were obscene. We nicknamed them “the elephants.” And it was they were obscene. They were huge. And I left most of my stuff in that hotel room. It’s like, who cares? You know, hotel, some crappy pension.
August
Like what matters after that? And did you tell your friend anything about what had happened?
Cheryl
No, no. I didn’t literally tell anyone, and I mean anyone for more than a decade. Now what I did do is after the park, I didn’t know what to do. I laid there and played dead. Now, I had just turned my head back and had my photo snap, but I laid there and played dead until the car was gone. I heard nothing. I heard nobody and I got up. And I ran into the heart of town. And back in the day, you didn’t have a cell phone. You didn’t have WhatsApp. You couldn’t just call America from the crappy pension. No, you had to go to a post office or an AMEX Office, of all places, and have them place a call for you and that’s exactly what I did.
August
And who did you call?
Cheryl
My mom. And it was like two in the morning or something like that. And all I say is I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay. And I literally got nothing else out. And imagine if you’re the mom how freak the heck out you would be hearing that…
August
Because there’s a reason.
Cheryl
…the words say, I’m okay. Everything else says, I’m not okay. I’m not okay. I’m not okay. Now, most of these places where you had to go make phone calls because remember I was promised to be in regular communication. You got your own little phone booth. Not here. There was a bank of phones on the wall like, like three feet apart, maybe two and a half feet, like not far, and they were just exposed along the wall.
August
No privacy.
Cheryl
None.
I’m talking to my mom and the guy with the camera walks up. He’s followed me there. And he leans against the wall nonchalant, like we’re buds, and goes, “Who are you calling.” And I literally just hung up after, “I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.” Click. Nothing. That’s it. I say nothing else.
And I go, “Oh, couldn’t get through.” And he says, “Let’s go for a drink.” Oh, because you’re my friend or something. And I said, “Sure. I just need to go to the bathroom.” I walked out the door. Now, it was like this sliding, open door, this huge opening there. And I walked out and fucking ran for my life.
August
Thank goodness.
Cheryl
I ran so fast my feet were kicking my butt. I had so much kick. I was on the track team and ran cross country. I’d never ran so fast in my entire life and ran to this crappy little pension and went upstairs. My friend started shouting, and I literally laid on her and held my hand over her mouth said, “Don’t say anything. Get your stuff. We have to go, now. Now. Now.” And we got on the first train.
August
Wow. And literally also, at that time—well, I guess maybe this is figuratively—but it’s like you were on a train away from yourself. You said it took 10 years to talk about this. Throughout that decade of not telling anyone—obviously, the impact of trauma, it can affect so many areas of our lives—was it something that you tried to distance yourself from? Was it something you thought about all the time but hid from people? How did how did you navigate that time?
Cheryl
The best I could come up with is pretend it didn’t happen. That was the best I had.
August
That’s appealing when you’ve gone through something awful, right? Well, maybe if I could just pretend it didn’t happen. I see the reason there.
Cheryl
And I mean today here we are in this world post COVID-19 with all the unrest going on, and I mean the civil unrest. There’s collective unrest and individual unrest as well. But I hear people in this world saying the things that I would say to myself, Well, when it gets back to normal again. I hate to be the bearer of bad news and have this, this foreshadowing of what’s to come but there is no getting back to like it was.
When something happens that we didn’t want, that we didn’t choose, it irrevocably changes life and there is no getting back. And it blows. It really does. Particularly when we want things the way they were. Or maybe they weren’t great but they were certainly more tolerable than the current reality with which we’re faced. And, and we just we say I want to get back to like it was before. But that’s a myth. It’s a fallacy.
And that may sound cruel to say, but we have to embrace the new and then create from there something we can hang our hats on. It seems implausible that you could find something good out of the horror that’s occurred. But until you can, I’ve learned, there is no moving forward boldly into the new era in which we’re living. And I didn’t do that for so long. I just pretended it didn’t happen.
Now, here we are in the microcosm. I’m sitting there in the train with my friend. They had cut my hair off. And it’s like wacky, chopped off short. . . It just looks like hell, like I’ve gone through a thing that they slice meat on in a deli. It’s crazy. We don’t mention it. We’re at that age where we don’t say anything. I’ve got bruises the hell all over me. I’ve been gone for days. We literally step over it. We’re at that age.
August
Wow, that’s really intense. That’s a heavy burden to, to carry. And I really appreciate what you said about not being able to go back and how much that sucks and then also how much embracing that. I can see that bringing a sense of healing right there because I know that when I’ve gone through really difficult things or something that’s traumatic, when we grieve what we can’t have any more with this idea that we’re going to get it again, it is so self- defeating, because you’re stuck in this trap of I need to go back, I need to go back when really it’s, I need to go forward and what does that look like?
Cheryl
So, so well said. If somehow we can benefit from the past—again, as implausible as that sounds—and somehow incorporate it in who we’re becoming, for the future, we stand a chance. In some regard, I lost a decade because I pretended that it never happened. And it distanced me from the people I loved. There was this elephant in the room, now—not my suitcase—this elephant in the room that, that was between us. I had a falling out with my father and didn’t talk to him for a long time. Hated him for not protecting me. Again, there’s no logic to it. He never even knew what occurred, let alone was he in the same continent, but it was there, nonetheless. Now, we have a beautiful relationship today.
But part of what I ultimately did was I knew I wasn’t the first one to have been dealt a hand like that. I know I wasn’t the first one to have faced a situation, a situation that I didn’t want, didn’t choose, wanted to go backward from, but that was an impossibility. And so I started getting very curious about people who had also done that. One of the things I had done, I told my mom, “I’m depressed, I’m depressed” but I didn’t ever say why. And she had no context for it. So she told me years later she thought that I meant I was bored. And she goes, “Well, if you really are feeling that way, maybe you can help somebody. Find somebody who’s worse off than you in some regard and help them.”
I started volunteering at old age homes and you know, boarding care facilities and residential facilities of whatever kind, but there were a lot of people at the time who had survived the Holocaust. I got fascinated with their stories, because there were some who had done beautifully with their lives. But there were some who, understandably, were bitter and hard and resentful. And again, nobody could ever blame them. And I started getting fascinated with their stories and asking them about them, and they were so thrilled to speak. And I spent all my time there.
I started finding out, you know, those who had been war survivors, Holocaust survivors, what had they done that worked, and, again, what had those who had not recovered done, and I codified their journey, as well as the things I was doing that was working. And ultimately, I started helping people who were dealing with—not in the throes of current trauma—but dealing with today’s impact of yesterday’s trauma, the contortion, the compensation, the trying to get back to like it was. But it was, ultimately, helping other people became my path out of hell.
August
That is so beautiful. I’m sure that they were seeing you as the person who’s coming to help and support them, which you did. And at the same time, many of them probably didn’t know that you were, you were finding your own kind of therapy there in a way.
Cheryl
Yes. And finally, I started telling my story. I was leading a seminar. I thought I’m loving what I’m doing. And I was taking some personal development programs at the time, and I felt better when I was there. Not so great when I wasn’t. It was okay when I was listening to the old people—I say that fondly, the old people—but not so great when I wasn’t but when I was throwing myself into something, I felt better.
And so once I finished the entire curriculum and everything you could possibly take in these personal development programs, I didn’t want to leave. I started speaking to the people there. Well, what could I do? Well, you could be trained to lead the programs and then you’d be at the source of it, really. If you, if you have to learn something, to be at that place till you can give it away. So, I was like, ooh that’s the ticket. And it trained me how to provide things, how to teach things for other people.
Now, it was inside of their curriculum but the work that I was learning from, those who had recovered from extreme trauma, it played into it beautifully. And one night, I was leading one of those seminars, and we were doing an exercise on forgiveness. And there’s, you know, a couple, few hundred people in the room. And I was doing this exercise on forgiveness, and it was kind of hypothetical. Forgiveness, good. Not forgiveness, not so good. It was distance, it was removed,
August
Because you hadn’t yet explored that concept for yourself?
Cheryl
I had explored the heck out of it, but I never told anybody about it. So me talking hypothetically about, you know, if one has experienced bad things, one can forgive. You know, it’s like all in theory. But it’s not practical, what does it look like on the court.
There was this interaction going on. This woman raised her hand and stood up and said, “Certain things can’t be forgiven.” And people started siding with her. And then she started to give more evidence of what she had been through and what her children had suffered. And it was all understandable. I mean, reprehensible. The darkest of, most vile stuff of humanity.
And in one regard, I could have agreed with her, and yet what I was learning, not only what was in the manual, but what I was learning in my own journey as well as, like I said, speaking with the survivors, from them was that forgiveness makes every bit of difference. And so I just kept standing there, “No, forgiveness makes a difference.” And the room was starting to turn, somebody stood up and slammed their stuff down and they’re like, “Oh, you just don’t get it,” and people are leaving the room, and this woman is sobbing and everybody’s siding with her.
And I thought, I’m actually going to lose the room, if I don’t do something. And I had this moment with myself like, You are no longer a teenager who is afraid of being hunted down and killed and tortured again or whatever. You are not a child any longer. You are a grown woman. How long are you going to hold this inside?
And all that just flashed through my mind quickly, and I said, “Let me make this real.” It was the first time I’d ever said anything. Now, these people had been with me for a while. And you could have heard a pin drop. All the milling around stopped. People standing at the back of the room getting ready to walk out—all that stopped. But more importantly, this woman actually recognized that it was true. That forgiveness wasn’t about setting those bastards free. It was about setting you free.
August
Wow. I think we can embrace the concept of that. And sometimes when you hear that, it’s like, well, how do I do it? Was it all that mental shift that did it when you started to focus on oh, it’s about freedom for me? Or did you actually have to take certain steps because I feel like a lot of people want to forgive, and they feel almost like they can’t.
Cheryl
I think you’re right. I think we so often have forgiveness collapsed with condoning what occurred. And it doesn’t mean that. A lot of my fundamental understandings of forgiveness came from these war vets, these Holocaust survivors, those who had forgiven and have moved on with their lives and have these rich, fruitful lives, and I could see, clear as day, it was the end of the line for them, the ones who hadn’t forgiven versus the ones who had. It was unmistakable, August. It was, it was night and day, the trajectory of a life where there’s peace and the one where there is not. There is still resentment and holding onto and trying to punish the bad guys. But invariably, we get punished, and I was them.
I used to silently plot my revenge against those men, those beasts. I would spend all my time trying to figure out how I would get back there. What I would do to them when I did; who I was going to bring with me.
And I heard this talk. There was this woman, Anna, who was a sculptor, and she had the most beautiful way of speaking. And she would talk about the chains that bind. And those were the chains that tethered us to the past and tethered us to our pain and tethered us to those people. And that if we looked, we were the jailer; we were the ones with the keys. And opening those up and letting go of the chains didn’t mean that it was okay but it meant that I’m no longer willing to suffer.
And I also learned from another one of them, why did they do what they did? The opportunity that created the construct of standing in their shoes. Well, why would they do this? Okay, so money, probably. But what the hell happened to someone who does this? What has somebody gone through who takes a lit cigarette and burns somebody, who cuts somebody, who rapes somebody while they’re lying in a pool of their own urine? Who does something that reprehensible?
What on earth were they subjected to? And that bit right there gave me enough objectivity to go oh…something, they went through something, and I don’t condone what they did. I don’t think it’s acceptable. It is unacceptable. It’s like you’re in it, and then suddenly you step back in that witness state where you can go, Okay. That happened to me, I am not that. Forever, I thought, I am ruined. I am filthy. I am disfigured— internally, externally, whatever that means. But that objectivity that the forgiveness provided afforded me the opportunity to see I had those experiences. I am not those experiences.
August
Yes, that’s such an important distinction because the opposite of that fosters shame. If there’s something wrong with me, if I caused this, that’s really huge, and that you were able to have some level of empathy for the attackers and again, not to condone it, but to say that people are not born that way, people are not born to do that to somebody. I think that’s really important, because otherwise we also don’t break the cycle, if we don’t ask those questions and try to prevent these traumas.
Would you share a bit about your advocacy that you do now? I know you also have a podcast. You do a lot of speaking. You’re going to be appearing on Dr. Phil. Would you share a little bit about…you were talking about turning what happened to you into something that’s purposeful, and you do that in so many ways. Which pieces would you like to share about?
Cheryl
Thank you so much. I took the things I learned from working with survivors. And then, like I said, codified my own journey, and I taught that for a time. I had helped people overcome trauma for a time. But after quite some time, it had ultimately become traumatizing for me, to a certain extent. I mean, it was a triumph always at the end, but it was too much. And once I started sharing my story I realized that it was my duty to do that, because I could see the transformation that occurred in that room in that seminar that night. And I knew that was possible for people on a larger scale.
So, I got asked not long after that to do a documentary film and tell my story and then a TED talk, and I’ve done several of them since but each time people would come up afterward—I started doing a lot of public speaking and the news and things like this—but each time people would speak to me afterward and say, you know, I’ve never told anyone this but…. Invariably their stories would start with that. I’ve never said a word to anybody. And here’s what happened. And now I feel like I can say something.
I’ve recognized, along the line, that there are a lot of people like me who have a story on their heart that they want to share. And so I first started telling those stories. I created a docu-series and later a podcast called RISE. And it’s about people rising up and overcoming and I was just deeply grateful CNN Headline News, Michaela Pereira, I don’t know if you know her, she featured it. These beautiful stories of people going through real adversity, real huge challenges, and we did it years ago, and this was the first start of RISE, people going through massive adversity and emerging brighter on the other side and going on to pay it forward in some way. And I’m just so blessed to share those stories with people.
But I’ve recognized that there are so many people who also have a message deep in their heart that they want to use to change life on this planet. And so now I’ve put together a team and that’s exactly what we do. Publicists that people would never normally get unless they were famous and a Hollywood producer, and we help people get their stories out to the world. And I tell you, there is nothing more rewarding. For me, when I started finally telling my story and heard people saying that it had helped them in some way, it made me feel as though everything I’d been through was worth it. And it is, because I get to help now.
I finally went from this little girl lying amongst the cow patties in the meadow, wanting to meet people, wanting to somehow help and be a contribution in this world and get to know people I wasn’t related to by blood. Here I am and I get to do this. I just had to endure the fire first. Well, I’m not alone. We’ve all had to endure the fire in some way. And I find that sharing our stories liberates us. But it also liberates the gift that we have to give away, if we can just learn to articulate it in that way. We are set free and the gift just keeps giving.

August
That’s so, so beautiful. And I really believe that stories change the world. So, I know for a fact, and I’m sure that you feel in your own soul, how helpful and meaningful and world-shifting the work is that you’re doing and with this collective. That sense of “not-alone-ness” is so big and so healing for so many people.
I wonder if you would leave us with a message for someone who’s feeling alone right now, whether they’ve been through a sexual assault or maybe they’re grieving the changes in their lives because of the pandemic. Because I know one of your big messages is that we all go through hardship and we’re united in that.
Cheryl
I think one of the most common experiences for human beings is the experience that I’m alone in this, whatever the “this” is. You can fill in the blank. And when we have that experience, we suffer in silence. And when we suffer in silence, it perpetuates the suffering. Dr. Phil said, when the two of us met, he said, monsters live in the dark. And I was like, wow, that’s so deep. They do. Those monsters that perpetuate, those monsters that are characterized by the negativity inside of our own head. That lives in the dark.
Once we share, even if it’s just to a beloved friend or family member or counselor or whomever and say, I feel like this I’ve experienced this, this happened to me, we’re no longer alone. And if the people you originally tell don’t listen, move on. They’re the wrong people. It’s not you, that’s them. Keep talking until you get the relief.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that authentically sharing—not trauma sharing, but sharing our hearts and souls and stories—unites us in a way that nothing else can. And it’s important to listen to other stories as well. I tell you, August, in listening to your stories I’ve thought, Oh, I thought it was the only one who’s dealt with that. Things about periods and stuff like that. Oh, my God, I thought that was my own private hell. Wait, it’s not? It’s funny. I’m a grown ass woman and I didn’t know that some of the things I’ve learned from listening to you.
We have to listen to stories and share stories. It’s what connects us. Since time immemorial, we’ve sat around the proverbial campfire, painted on cave walls. Stories are how we learn. They’re how we cope. They’re how we heal. And if we can turn to one another and share what we’re dealing with, what we’re grieving, what we’re challenged by, and not share it to drive up the trauma: Well, you think that’s bad? Let me tell you how bad mine is. No, listen. Provide that grace. We can all cumulatively rise.
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Stream the full Girl Boner Radio episode up above or on your favorite podcast app! It also includes wonderful thoughts from dating empowerment coach, Erin Tillman, on ways to get back into dating after a long hiatus.
This episode was hosted and produced by me, August McLaughlin, with audio management by Makenzie Mizell, the founder and organizer of Period. KM Huber provided transcript support. Thanks so much for listening (or reading!) and have a beautiful, Girl Boner-embracing week.
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