From Castlewood Treatment Center Victim to Survivor and Now a True Warrior

Words of Wisdom and Courage from TheJoyWarrior on Instagram

There is a big piece of me that harbors a hurt I have never been able to fully put into words. I struggle to try. At 3 times I went away to residential treatment & left my kids. I did the hardest thing I could do to give my self a better chance. The thing is though, the place I researched & ultimately chose, used their good for evil. Going in I was at such a desperate place in my anorexia & my mind was a mess from starvation. I was so lost but knew somewhere inside I wanted recovery & freedom. My treatment team used my desire to heal to their advantage. They manipulated my mind & memories to their breaking point. Turned me into a person I no longer knew. And in the process, made me so afraid of speaking up bc doing so showed non compliance & I could lose my kids. Years removed from there, I know I was never at risk for losing my kids- in it, I believed them. It is so hard to fathom that a place that promised so much good could inflict so much evil. It took years to get to the point where shame moved over just enough so I could utter out loud that they abused me. It took other very brave women, who were friends & roommates, coming forward & bringing lawsuits against them to validate my truth. I lived for so long terrified of them. Always afraid that any mistake I made would result in losing my kids. Still afraid that advocating for my self would show non compliance & I will lose my kids. I stopped drinking the koolaid but at times I still feel the weight of them crushing my desire to heal. I am still recovering my own memories, my real life. Finding my real self has been so vital bc they made me believe I was not a real person but instead one of 34 alters they created were. I am just one person. There is only me. There are parts of me I cannot get to & rescue bc I still feel so much fear. I have locked those parts of me away, made those parts of my self off limits. But I fear it is in those parts of me that real healing must take place. That if I can't deal with those memories & truths, I will never last in recovery. I think bargaining that piece of me again is the only way I will ever be truly free.

More proof that things come in God's perfect timing. My mind has felt full all day with thoughts of the treatment center that took so much from me in the during of my time there & for so many years still. A group I belong to of Victims united, posted a story on twitter & it had the testimonials of other victims who came forward. My heart sank. I felt an aching inside along with a swirl of anxiety & fear. The threat of them taking my kids was very real. The stories I read today were of women who lost there children because of the way the treatment center manipulated their minds & their life. My mind kept replaying those days & those threats over & over today. And I thought that I was so blessed that I never lost my children. That I got out when I did. And at the same time I feel so much fear still because parts of me have never gotten out. I feel this overwhelming grief of so much of my life being taken from me without any chance of recovery. I think how they instead made me too afraid to ever ask for or need help. I turned my life upside down hiding from them. And I sank further & further info addiction. And yet, even though I could not bare to ask for help, I made it out on my own. I pushed & crawled & fell & got back up & fell again so many times. As much as they took from me & tried to break me, I found my way back. It's been such a long road & it will be longer still. I think of these women & I think we made it this far because we were & are Warriors. They broke us for a time but we put our pieces back together differently. We are better & we are stronger. And we are survivors. They are still fighting to get their children back. I'm holding onto mine tightly. This girl is me. I won't quit. I might rest a little but I won't quit. I can't. My recovery will be my priority for the rest of my days for my self. For time lost with my kids. For the women who lost their battle with eating disorder & the ones who lost their minds. Today has been a hard day of remembering. My heart feels heavy about it. And these words reminded me how far I have come & how strong I have been. They remind me of the battle worth fighting and to always keep going. #Joywarrior

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This is a handicap of mine, for sure. Not without good reason. I've lived quite a track record of things going wrong. I have my reasons to lack trust or reserve my hope. Sometimes I think, "But if I settle on what could go wrong, when all of it goes right- I will have so much more to be thrilled about." It doesn't really serve me so well though. And a lot of times, it keeps me stuck or it keeps me from moving forward. Fear of things going wrong and then my lack of ability to handle it holds me back. And again, I have a pretty damn good track record for handling a great deal of really fucked up shit. I don't give my self enough credit for just how well I do handle things- good, bad, ugly and indifferent. Right now I'm trying to figure out how I want to proceed with a few issues in my life that bring about a great deal of upset. I've been asked to write a piece about the treatment center that abused me and so many other families. To write about my time there & how I've been dealing with it since then. I am going to do it bc I feel like seeing so much wrong & doing nothing makes me a sharer in the guilt. The same abuse is still going on there. It fills me with grief and horror. And in dealing with this I'm meeting new road blocks in my current therapy situation. Sometimes you can only do so much work with a person & in time it stops working. And again, maybe it's just me being afraid to go any further dealing with how I'm handling or not handling the #PTSD from The Castlewood Treatment Center. This is a situation I need to focus on all that could go right if I proceed. Maybe I will finally let go of my fear of them coming after me. And maybe some other girls can be saved & their families made whole again. I'm stuck in fear today though. Overwhelmed by it. And yet, I keep going. We can do hard things.#Joywarrior #andsoichoosejoy#thisonelife #truthteller #theartofhealing#edrecovery #sober #addictionrecovery#keepgoing #depression#bebravebeyou #useyourvoice#badasswarrior