Welcome to COURAGEOUS AF
Being Human Takes Guts
In this episode, Kyle talks about the immediate aftermath of being returned to the family in Alabama, and about a terrifying moment when she stayed up late one night.
Warning: This episode talks about sexual assault, suicide, and parental loss, and may use strong language. Please use care while listening.
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Welcome to the courageous AF podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Hollingsworth. This podcast is not just about having courage. It's about the human spirit, creativity, resilience, and what's possible no matter what life brings in this space. I share my own journey of healing. of rediscovering my voice, my power, and my passion after four decades of living a life riddled with trauma, abuse, and pain.
In my heart, I believe we are all courageous AF. And being human takes guts. We're in this together. Hey y'all, I just wanted to hop on and give a little warning that in this podcast I do cover some very difficult subject matter, including suicide, drug use, abuse, and things of that nature. So I would ask that you take care while listening.
for listening. Okay, y'all. So hi, welcome to episode four. This one's not easy. I had the thought earlier today that maybe I should go and tell a little fun story or something before continuing on with this journey. So I will preface it by saying that we had some really nice things happen at my grandparents house in Alabama where we were living now.
I enjoyed walking in the woods by myself. We had a trampoline, which was really fun and awesome. You know, there were good times. So, I definitely want to both honor and highlight that. I don't want to just gloss over the good times. You know, my grandmother was very, very sweet. My granddad, he would sit me on the kitchen counter and I would eat watermelon out of our garden.
He had a little watermelon patch. God, we're so southern. Anyway, He would feed me watermelon and I would sit there and talk with him. And then a lot of times at night, you know, my sister and I would perform for my grandparents, ever the singer and performer, I would pretend like their fireplace stoop thing was a stage.
And I'd put my little record player on and sing along or whatever, you know, and I have some photos of me at that age, just kind of being really adorable. Actually, the photos I have, I think, are, I was earlier before mama died. After mama died, I don't really have a lot of photos now that I'm thinking about it.
So I'm kind of learning, figuring this out and remembering it live with you. But there's this one photo and it was about six months after we moved with my grandparents and I was on one knee in the front yard, which was just dirt in these handmade clothes my grandmother had made me holding their dog, their little Chihuahua.
Tiger, I remember that was just such a strange time because mama had died. I was having all these nightmares. I was feeling really confused about who I was, what was happening. And at this point, this is a kind of touchy time to say this, but I mean, I'm going to be honest and that's the whole point. I was having some weird stuff happen at night, like some different like apparitions and different things happening.
And I was just like, Oh my God, the narrative in my mind at this point began around you're crazy. Like what is going on? You're crazy. So I'll shift to, yeah, so we were taking dance classes. There was cartoons and TV and kids stuff and toys and singing, and that was all very present. And how do I say this?
So I don't want to like go too deep down the rabbit hole of describing who everyone is in the family, but I had an aunt and I liked her a lot and she had a daughter who was just a little bit older than me. I'm going to call her daughter Teresa. Again, these are not the real names. Teresa was somebody that I just thought was like the most coolest chick ever.
I thought she was just incredibly amazing. She was a teenager, I wasn't yet, and she wore these platform shoes, and she just wore these jeans with embroidery, and she was pretty, and I can remember looking at her and thinking, oh my god. God, she's fantastic. You know, she lived at home with her mom and dad, my aunt and my uncle and I and my sister, I think I'm pretty sure my sister was there.
I'm not actually certain because this is such a unique experience to me, but we went over to spend the night with them. I'm sure my grandparents needed a break or had something to do or whatever. It doesn't really matter, but my cousin Teresa had gone out. I don't know what she was doing, but she was out for a while.
My aunt was in bed and. If my sister was there, she was in bed and I stayed up late and I watched this horror film that I should not have watched because to this day I cannot even think about the title of it without getting the heebie jeebies. What was it called? It was called Trilogy of Terror with Karen Black.
It was very scary. It was about this little, crazy, like, um, voodoo doll thing that this woman buys and it takes her. terrorizes her and kills her or whatever. Anyway, it was ridiculous and I should not have been watching it. So bear in mind that this was months after my mom had died. I was nine years old.
So when, when mama died, I was eight and change. And so I had turned nine pretty certain about the age on this. So I'm sitting in their living room at night watching this movie and I would have gotten in trouble if anybody knew I was watching it. Believe me, I was absolutely sneaking and watching this movie because I knew I wasn't supposed to watch it and everybody else was in bed.
So it was just me in the house. And the front door opens and it is my uncle. What am I going to call him? Woo. I'm going to call him Steven. So Steven comes in. Now I know what was happening with him at the time. I had no idea what was happening with him, but he kind of stumbled in and he kind of staggered around the room and he sat down really heavy in this chair that was across from me.
This was a tiny room, tiny house. And I was sitting on sort of a sofa. There was a table in front of me. There was a TV to my right. And he sat in this chair opposite me and he was like, his eyes were half closed and he was sunk into the chair. And he said to me, come over here, darling. I remember it like it was yesterday in terms of what I looked like and what I was wearing.
I had this like polyester sort of nightgown on and it was pink and white. And it had almost like sleeves of like a baseball shirt. You know how that style is? So on the white front of it, there was a little girl who was standing under an umbrella. So the umbrella covered up everything except the bottom of her skirt and her boots.
And so I think I really loved that nightgown and I just had that on no panties or anything, just the nightgown. Being the good girl that I was and not knowing what was going on, I got up and walked over to him and he pulled me in front of him where I was standing right in front of him. Ooh. Um, I don't know what he said, but I know that his breath stank and I know that I recognize the smell.
I can now tell you that that was whiskey. The only thing I know was that I felt his hands sliding up the sides of my legs. And I can tell you that his fingers and hands were rough. And I felt him, oh it's so weird to talk about this, I felt him pulling the nightgown up. And I felt him sliding his hands between my legs.
And I'm pretty certain at this point I was absolutely frozen like a deer caught in headlights and I was just staring at him and trying to figure out exactly what was going on. No one had ever touched me in this way before. I knew something was wrong and I also was absolutely paralyzed. And so as I felt his fingers going into my body, um, I suddenly just, uh, something snapped and I, I don't know if it was my mom helping me.
I don't know what it was, kids, but I suddenly was overtaken with this wisdom I just suddenly knew what I needed to do to save myself and I put my hands on this guy's shoulders and I suddenly summoned, I suddenly summoned the sexiest expression I could possibly muster. I think I was absolutely embodying my mom and I looked at him and I said, Hey, just give me a minute.
I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'll be right back. Okay. And he goes, okay, darling. And he let me go and I ran as fast as I could to the bedroom. Um, And I jumped in bed with his wife, my aunt, and I thought how do I save myself? He could still come and get me. How do I save myself? And then I suddenly screamed out and grabbed my aunt as if I was having a nightmare.
And she woke up and said, are you okay, baby? And I said, I'm sorry, I had a nightmare. Can you hug me or whatever? Whatever I said. I honestly don't even fully remember that. I remember the moment standing in front of him and this otherworldly wisdom that I should never have had sinking into my being and me just getting out of there.
Whether it was me or whether it was my mom or whatever it was, I'm so fucking grateful that I did that because that could have gone so much worse. Not that it wasn't bad enough. I'm actually just having the memory of a boyfriend later in life who was like, Well, yeah, but he didn't rape you, so. Um, listen, a nine year old's body, keep your fucking hands off.
Right? So anyway, this thing occurred. I slept, I went home the next day and now I had to hold this because I was terrified to tell anybody. And so we're clear because I may or may not mention this again. I did not share this with 21 years old. Okay. So I held that all that time and it fucked me up. It definitely laid the groundwork for a belief that men could do what they wanted with my body.
even relatives. And so it really kind of twisted my perspective of, yet again, you know, my perspective around physical safety and all of that in the world. So it did a number on me. And I share that with you because, like, the morning of my mom's suicide, this moment also was incredibly defining for me.
There was a lot of these moments, but this one was also incredibly defining for me. And it was, you know, you heard me in the last episode, talk about gaining weight. It was after this event that I really started to gain weight. Shocking, right? It's kind of textbook, but yeah. I just started to eat my feelings and to eat my fear and to eat instead of talking about this.
Because as far as I was concerned, this was my uncle and he was close to my grandparents and no one would believe me or they'd be mad at me somehow. So I just took it on and let it be my fault. And I never went over there and spent the night again. So that's how I managed it. That's how I handled it.
It's a sad state to be able to say that I know so, so, so many women and so many young girls who this happens to. It's not that unique. It's not that, I don't know, I mean, it's, it happens a lot and it breaks my, breaks my heart. Because it's not so much, oh, from this man's perspective, he was drunk, he did a thing, he probably never remembered it the next day.
But it marked me for life. That's the impact that this kind of stuff has. And so, It just stacked on top of my mom dying. Was that my fault? Now this was my fault. You know, who was I defining myself to be? Who was I, who was I believing that I was? What was I believing about myself? This kind of moment on a timeline of somebody's life is so defining.
And so after that day, it was just like another layer of safety was taken away and I'm feeling stumped right now as to how to move forward from that. But I did move forward from that. I did continue my life and all the things. And those stand out as two really big things that happen really close together at a really young age.
I'll tell you, it was like, as soon as we got used to living with my grandparents and this thing happened and the yelling and screaming and the drinking and all the different things were happening, at least we had. In the strangest way hit a stride and our life made sense and we knew what to expect. We were getting our bearings.
If that translates, like we were getting our bearings like, okay, this is our house. We live in Alabama. This is what we do. This is our circumstances. These are the people who we live with and these are the rules and this is what it's like. And so we made sense of all that in our heads and it took some time I'm trying to recall exactly how long we were there with them.
And I might come back and clarify that, but at this moment in time as I'm talking to you, I'm not certain if it was a year, two years, three years. I'm not sure of the exact time frame. And quite frankly, I barely remember seeing my dad during this time. We probably did. I think maybe my grandparents would drive us and meet my dad halfway or whatever.
He was still in Georgia and he would take us back to his place on the weekends. We'll, we'll talk about that. That was a whole other, wow. During this interim time, my dad was off living his life. It was never even a question whether he would take us. He was not going to take us. He's not going to do it. He couldn't do it.
Whatever, you know, whatever the arrangement was. I never really was clear on it, except that my dad did not desire or feel equipped to handle us. And so my grandparents did and that's it. Um, so yeah, so my dad, um, would take us in for a weekend and I think it was every once in a while he would see us and he would take us in and he was by no means fit to be a full time dad.
So that worked out really well in our benefit, I'm guessing, that of the scenarios that were possible, even though the one we had was a little different. you know, screwed up, at least it was better than what we might've had, had we gone and lived with him full time. So there we are with that. As soon as we did get this rhythm with my grandparents and as soon as we did feel like, okay, I mean, I personally was like, I was still having terrible nightmares.
I was still afraid all the time. Nothing had changed, honestly. However, things had normalized, whatever that means, like things had normalized. And then all of a sudden one day, My grandparents sit us down and tell us you're going to live with your daddy. He got married. So, I will continue with that. I think it's a good time to stop there, so I'm going to because, yeah.
Thank you for following along. I just want to reiterate that this is something where Uh, these first bunch of, you know, initial episodes are really deeply about me and my story and I, I'm, I'm gonna commit to that and stay with it because hard as it might be to hear and hard as it was to live through, I feel like it's incredibly important to lay this foundation.
I feel like it's incredibly important to understand the scope of the life that I was living and the experiences. It's the experiences that I had and the circumstances that shaped me because it's an integral part of my journey and it will all come together and make a lot of sense as we go through this.
So I hope it's trackable all of that stuff and I will keep going until I feel like this, this part of the book is complete with you so that you understand. And yeah, so to that end, I'll say more about that in the next episode. I appreciate you guys so much. If you're still listening, God love you. Thank you.
And I would be super honored wherever you're listening on Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever it is, if you would leave me a rating and review. It's not for my ego, I swear. It's really honestly, because I've understood through my, my lessons and learning and coaching from people who do this kind of thing, that That is the way to make it so that it gets out to more people.
I didn't invent it. That's just the way it is. So if you would be willing to do that, it would be meaningful to me and I would be very grateful and I look forward to sharing more with you next time. Next week. Again, these are launched every Wednesday. Thank you so much. Stay courageous. Love y'all.
