Girls Gotta Eat - I'm a Survivor feat. Sexual Violence Educator & Healing Coach Brittany Piper

Episode Date: May 11, 2020

We are discussing sexual assault on this episode with Brittany Piper -- survivor, speaker, healing coach, and sexual violence expert. (*Trigger warning* for those who are sensitive to this topic.) Brittany shares her story and healing process, and educates us on the body and brain function during and after an assault. We cover consent, reporting (and not reporting) an assault, dating as a survivor, talking to your partner about your past, precautions, and more. Prior to the interview, we catch up on lighter topics like Rayna's nude confession, Ashley's tequila week, and of course, tv and movie recs. We hope you find this episode impactful, and sending love to all survivors of sexual assault. Follow Brittany on Instagram @TheBrittPiper and learn more on her website. Follow us @GirlsGottaEatPodcast, Ashley @AshHess, and Rayna @Rayna.Greenberg. Check our website for tour dates and merchandise. Thank you to our partners for this episode: Thrive Market: Get up to $20 in shopping credit toward your first order when you join today at thrivemarket.com/gge. The Pill Club: Go to thepillclub.com/gge to get your first birth control care package. Ritual: Get 10% off during your first 3 months at ritual.com/gge. Buffy: For $20 off all Buffy bedding, visit buffy.co and enter code GGE. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You did this awful thing to me, and you might have broken me for a little bit, but like, I'm going to get my life back together and I'm going to move on and you're not going to hold power over me. Nice. Welcome back to another episode of Girls Got to Eat. Wait, is it two months? What? Is it week eight?

No. Is it week eight? No. Yes, it is. No. Time doesn't mean anything anymore. Ashley is on a farm where dad is outside mowing the lawn. What is happening?

Literally before we hit record, I had to go outside in my crocs and be like, Dad, can you take a break on Mo in the back lawn? Because we have to record. Just give me 40 minutes. You know, like, that's my life. Yeah, because you live with your parents now and no one has sexually touched me in months. Also you either because you live with your parents. What is our lives?

I didn't tell you this. I got this DM from this girl. It was really sweet. She said two things. One was like, I forget. The first thing she said was like a compliment. I should be able to remember because I love compliments. But the second thing she said was she's totally straight, but she gets turned on when we say dot com.

Do you think it's like an ASMR thing the way that like our voice tracks out? Both of us are just you? She's no, both of us. Really? Okay. Listen, whatever you masturbate to is free rage. I heard this girl yesterday. I think we both really like Ali Colbert.

She's so funny. And she said if people knew what her porn searches were when she masturbated to, she would be arrested. and like, girl, same, okay? So whatever it turns you on, do it. Yeah. Like, I thought that was such a funny thing to say. If she was a man, I'd be like, okay, how much for me to record sane.com over and over? You can pay me.

How much? What do you think the going rate for that is? Like, per nut. I feel like every time I make you come, you pay me like $4.99. And I need documentation. Okay. Well, speaking of come. There's a perfect segue.

There's a perfect segue. Coronavirus is it. It's not a seaman now, okay? We're just busting nuts full of COVID. Like 50% of my hobbies anymore. I cannot live. Also, someone posted the article that COVID is now found and come. I mean, the article said semen.

But basically, I'm going to say, COVID's income. Someone posted in our Facebook group and someone reported it. And whoever reported it is lucky I didn't kick you out because that is so fucking funny. It's just like going out of it with somebody and they pull on. They just spray their COVID. come just all over you. You just get hit in the face with Corona come. No, okay.

You might have taken it too far, but we'll leave it. It's funny because I remember early on in the early COVID days two months ago, or even before that when everybody was talking about how you can get it. And it was like, it's when you sneeze or cough, you know, when it's in droplets of your saliva. And then I remember seeing like Q&As and stuff with doctors. And they were like, can it be found in your bodily fluid? and I was like, oh my God, what fucking idiot asks that? No, it's not going to be in your cum.

And here we are. Two months later, it's in your cum. Is it in my come? Am I wet and I'm having COVID come out of me? I don't know. I think in my mind it was just men, but you're right. It could be inside of women also when you come. Like, okay, I feel like now that we come too.

Hello. I want like a new word for it. Like when you like Corona come, like I'm going to Rona. Like that'll be my. you journey talk. Corona come. I can't like.

Oh, no. I know. I saw that headline. I was like, oh, Raina's going to be so upset.

Literally, Jeremy text me yesterday. He goes, are you watching the news? And I was like, I can't handle this right now. And he goes, there's coronavirus in semen.

And I was like, I can't handle this right now. I just, I can't. It's like, all I want this to do is to end. So I go start having sex with every person walking down the street.

Now I just like, what? I just can't. You know what I'm going to do. Don't tell anybody, okay? I'm going to start investing in condom companies. That's my new stock market grab. Don't tell anybody.

Millions of girls that are listening. Here's your insider trading tip for the week. I'll tell anyone, okay? I'm going to invest in Trojan. Condoms, I'll tell you. Guess what, guys, week eight, it's the condom portion of the pandemic. Forget your surgical masks. You better wrap it up.

I would be the first time of my life. I use a condom since, like, the, day I lost, since the day I lost my virginity. Oh my God. Okay. Well, we'll talk about where we are in the pandemic. You went back a couple weeks. You got naked.

I just tried to mix a bunch of different themes together. Right, right. Am I going to wear like a tie-dice sweatsuit and baked banana bread? Like, I was trying to figure out like, should I be growing? You did the opposite of that. Yeah. So I just took all my clothes off. And I bought a banana bread.

red from the grocery store. You didn't bake that, bitch? No. I didn't know. Don't tell anyone. Miss Rayne, I went to culinary school. I for sure thought you baked that shit, bitch. No, I don't fuck with pastries.

I can't do it, okay? Tell you another secret. I. It's going to go fludge your comments. What a fucking lie. Was that even your body? From Westside Market. Oh, my God.

And listen, a lot of the stuff in that photo is fake. Okay, some of those. Listen, some of those plants are fake. My hair is fake. You didn't have your ex. Your hair was natural in that one. Yeah, listen, but a lot of stuff is fake in that, you know, my personality. Now the, oh, my God.

I did not see the zucchini bread coming. I tried to. That took a turn. I tried to find banana bread. It was sold out everywhere. I went to two stores. Like, Westside Market has the largest bakery department ever. They have every kind of shit that no one needs.

They have 75 kinds of soup. They have 16 kinds of chicken salad. I couldn't find Benet food. banana bread, so I bought zucchini bread. What is that, what is that meme? It's like dating me is like, you think you get a chocolate chip cookie, but then it's really an oatmeal cookie and then it's really an edible. Like, I feel like that's what just happened.

Like that picture, it's like, okay, maybe it was store bought. Oh my God, it was not even banana bread. Like it was like so many twists and turns. I bought the thing that were the most closely resembled banana bread. I was wondering if I should tell anybody, but you know. Well, I'm not editing this out. I don't care what you say. You can't show up on my doorstep.

So even if you change your mind tomorrow and you're like, I don't want to deal with the comments, you're going to have to disable comments. I do. I'm ready for the comments. I'm here for it. Listen, the engagement. This was your plan the whole time.

Sorry. Now you know. Well, I had kind of a milestone in my quarantine on Cinco de Mayo was the first time I had tequila in all of quarantine. I just, you know, I drink margaritas all the time. drink so much tequila. That's my drink of choice when I go out and like party or even like after our shows. That's what I would always get. But it's just been wine this whole time. I haven't gone to liquor store and gotten stuff to make margaritas. So I was like Cinco de Mayo. We're doing it.

Matt sent me his famous recipe. So we made it. And I was like lit. Because I haven't had tequila touch my lips in, you know, seven weeks. Same. Like one. And margaritas are all alcohol besides a little fresh squeeze juice and a splash like club soda. And so I was like, I am kind of drunk. I was like so loose at dinner just like cutting up. And then I woke up. I was a little hungover. And then the next night was my friend Alexis's Zoom birthday party. And we wanted her birthday is the sixth.

We wanted to keep it Cinco de Mayo theme. And I drank again. And I sat for this hour long zoom and I made a full shaker of tequila of margarita. And I'm just pouring into my glass. I've stumbled out of the back room. Two nights in a row, I just got tequila drunk. Like I just went in. I'm really impressed that you say.

wait into the tequila part of the pandemic because I have not. I mean, you're like, you're harder than I am. I can't do it yet. Well, I've always loved Cinco de Mayo and I was just like, I miss it margarita. I was just like missing the taste. Like I was like, I can't drink any more fucking Sauvignon Blanc. Like I need to mix it up. So it hit me hard though. I mean, it's funny when you don't drink hard liquor for, that's the longest I probably ever gone without drinking hard liquor in my life, honestly. But it's what you and I always order is tequila. It's the longest me too. And it's so much. And it's so much better for you than a whole, the wine I'm crushing. I'm like, why am I gaining all this weight?

It's like I'm drinking a half a bottle of wine a day. That's why. So that was mine this week. You slept till noon the next day. Straight through. Shout out to my Helix mattress. I can run through what I've been watching really quick and then I know you have some things to go off about.

No, I love these content wrap-ups. So tell me what you've been watching. First of all, I need a new rating system for TV shows. and that is can you watch them with your father on a scale of 1 to 10? Because I've had so many awkward moments. And, but I'll tell you what we watched. We watched, well, first of all, last night, we started Dead to Me season two. So it's back.

Oh, I saw that. Yeah, I'm obsessed with Dead to me. I cannot recommend enough. I watched all of season. It's on Netflix. I watched all of season one in one day. So it's back. We watched a few episodes last night.

Can't recommend that enough. Mrs. America, which is about the Equal Rights Amendment, women's rights, basically like the conservative women and one lady in particular, Phyllis, Phyllis, fuck, I can't remember last time. I'm so sorry. And what she kind of did for that movement and then like Gloria Steinem and all the women on the other side. I love it so much. We've started that. That's on Hulu. And thirdly, this is older. We watched the sinner, which was on USA. Jessica Cable is in the first season. I think she's the producer as well. and I remember seeing previews for it.

I remember seeing, you know, she murdered somebody right out of the gate. And it's on Netflix now. And it is so good. I couldn't stop watching it. If you like True Detective, it's kind of like that. I didn't love True Detective. I like to say it's like True Detective, but better crime, mystery, drama, super twisted, super dark.

It will stay with you after you watch it. And I've always just been such a fan of hers. Desco. Summer Catch. Anyone remember that movie from 2001? Freddie Prince Jr. And Jessica Beal, her name was Tenley.

I loved that name in that movie. Anyway, guys, Matthew Lillard, Britney Murphy. Let's talk about Freddie Prins and Summer Cash. I wonder what websites are going to take that idea. You know what? Don't talk about it because all of a sudden,

you'll see it everywhere. Oh, shade. Well, those are my wrecks, dead to me and Mrs. America, safe to watch your dad and the sinner,

which is definitely not. So what about you? I spent the week crushing content. All right, let's hear about it. I feel like a more well-rounded person this week. I just this week I was like, I'm going to become a better person. So I read two books. I listened to a bunch of podcasts.

I crushed a bunch of series. I got into new series. Yeah. So for books, I started, I've started this book a couple times. I'll read like a chapter here and there. It's called, um, she, it's called, um, come as you are. Are you familiar with that? Um, it's, it's about your body and how it works and sex and things.

It's a great book. And so I read that. And then I got a new book about Instagram, which is called No Filter by a girl named Sarah Fryer, who is a technology reporter for Bloomberg News. And she is so great. She's like a young girl. So she's like the perfect age, I think, to write about Instagram.

She's a female who grew up with Instagram. And it's some text. I mean, I love all this like Silicon Valley tech shit. But it talks about how the company was founded, but it also talks a lot about just like the rise of the Instagram influencer and what things like filters and photo editing has done to society, how people started to monetize stuff like that. I think it really speaks to you and me because we built our businesses on Instagram.

So that was really great. If you guys are interested in any kind of like Silicon Valley like nerdy founder books, I'll give you guys a list on Instagram. But then I started crushing all these shows. So I finished normal people, which I am going to wait to talk about until you watch it. It's very like sad and thought provoking and heavy. It's shot really beautifully. the sex scenes are great. Definitely on the list of cannot watch with your parents under any

circumstances. A few of people message me that after I like tweeted that. And we've, this is the most we've gotten DMs about that we should watch is normal people. Does it, does it leave you feeling sad? Like I don't get down with that. Like Manchester by the sea, fuck that movie. I can never get those two hours back. Like, I don't need to watch something that's zero percent uplifting. I just don't. No shade, but it's not my preference. It's 12 episodes of zero percent uplifting. It's two people. Bitches, why do you want me to watch it so bad? Last night, I called my, I was sitting on the floor, drinking wine, crying, and going

through old photographs right after I finished the 12th episode. I called my dad and he goes, are you drunk and crying? Why do our listeners want us to watch it so bad? I think it's just like a really beautiful love story of two people that are like really fucked up and like need each other and like emotionally like really have a hard time with other people, but really uplift each other. And I read a couple articles about it that this sort of nods to the fact that the book is a little bit better, which, like, it usually is.

And there's, like, different better character development. So I think if you watch it and you like it, I would recommend the book. But it's a lot of story about two, like, pretty imperfect people. Yes, it does not leave you feeling uplifted. If you're in a dark place, I wouldn't watch it. I felt sad the whole time. But it's shot beautifully, I will say. It's, it's, it's, it's, there are, all the actors are Irish.

So I understood, like, every third word. but I got through it. Is there subtitles? You could subtitle it if you want to. I mean, it's in English. It's just, you know, Irish people English is harder to understand for me. Okay. But what I really, okay, also I started high fidelity.

I just wanted to tell you that. So I started up watching shows. What I really want to talk about is Outer Banks. Okay. I have a lot of feelings about this. It's another show that like, you opening scenes like a bunch of kids partying on the beach. And you're like, cool.

This is going to be like, I don't know, gossip girl with like less money. Or Dawson's. It looked like Dawson's Creek on like the promo photo. I'm like, oh, Dawson's Creek in 2020, I'm here for it. Yes, it's like gossip girl with less money at the beach. That's what I was like, cool. It's going to be like a rivalry between like the hot poor kids and like the hot rich kids.

And like it spirals into this crazy thing. There is so much violence and mur and like all these wild chase scenes. There is so much blood and violence in the show. Oh, no. And it's all these high school kids that just like what they just all woke up and got guns. they all just knew how to be violent with each other. Like, it's so crazy. It's so much crime and violence.

And the whole time you're like, can we just get back to that first scene? But, okay, there are a lot of plot holes in this show and I want to talk about them because I'm upset. First of all, the main character's name is John B. His last name does not begin with a B. There's no other characters with another last name named John. They never explain why his name's John B. They call him John B the whole show.

Never explain it once. They never explain it. There's no other John. He's not a rapper. It's just, that's what it is. No, he's not the Outer Banks rapper. There is no explanation as to why his name is John B. Okay.

The most egregious offense of Outer Banks is that it's clearly not filmed in the outer fucking banks. Okay, I knew that from the first scene. Okay, I used to spend a lot of time in the Outer Banks. The Outer Banks is like the Keys. It's one street. It's like one straight road down the Outer Banks. Yes.

No, it's smaller than Doey Beach. There's no neighborhoods. It's just, it's like the Florida Keys. It's one road straight down. And all of these like chase scenes happen in neighborhoods. There's tons of big neighborhoods throughout the whole show. And it's just like at plantation homes and these long docks. And it's like, bitch, that's Charleston.

Okay. I know it's Charleston. You can't come from me on my Charleston knowledge. I knew it was Charleston. I knew for the first minute I watched it. Also, there's a, there's a restaurant on it that's in Shem Creek in South Carolina. They didn't even change the name of the restaurant. Wait, I feel like is it on the marsh?

It's called the wreck. and yes, it's on the marsh. I'm like, I've been there. Yes. You watch the show for five minutes. You're like, it's your plantation homes. This is Charleston. This is crazy.

That would make me so mad. What if there was a show called Dewey Beach? And it was just like filmed in Ocean City. I'd be like, fuck you guys. Fuck you. That's what I'm saying. It just ruined the whole show for me. You can't call a show Outer Banks and then film it in South Carolina.

I actually read something interesting about why they chose to not film it in the Outer Banks. And you can correct me if I'm wrong. people you could like DM me or whatever. I mean, don't DM me. But something about the laws in North Carolina about the bathrooms and, but then why would they just not call it like Palmetto City or something? You know, like call it something and make it about Charleston. Just call it anything else. I just, it doesn't make any, I understand like the legality of why they didn't film in North Carolina, but I don't understand when they called it Outer Banks. It wasn't integral in any way to the show. like it actually probably would have been more interesting to see a crime drama based on

basically an island of one road. Yeah. It made no sense. It was very heavy. It's too much violence. All of a sudden they're like, they're searching for like a shipwreck. And now they're trying to like find $400 million. Just stupid.

The whole thing was fucking stupid. I only watched it because the main character is so hot. He is crazy hot. Oh, who plays him? He's some like random actor. I forget his name. He is single. His Instagram is very.

weird. He talks about how he likes to talk to an anterman objects and that's his hobby because they're his friends. He's an interesting guy, but he is smoke. John B? Smoke a dope. Yep. Love him. All right. Well, those are

our entertainment wrecks. We don't really have any announcements. I mean, we love that you guys are buying tickets to the two, I literally don't care shows. They've been rescheduled. GirlsGottypodcast.com. You can see all those new dates. We are hoping and praying that we're going to make all those merch too.

We have new merch coming soon. We are so excited about it. It'll probably be a couple weeks. So save your money or don't. We got new stuff coming. And then I do, I mean, this might change time, time. But you guys, again, it flooded the merchandise store. You're buying so much stuff.

Thank you. We are experiencing a little bit longer than normal shipping time because of the coronavirus. So just have to have patience with us. It's been about 14 business days to ship. But our customer support has let us know. There's been some emails about it. So we're just letting you guys know up front. It takes a little bit longer, of course, because everything is.

is custom made. But if you've been buying, thank you. And we have cute stuff coming for you. Yeah. And we have an incredible guest today, a little bit more serious topic than probably what we're used to. So I'm glad we got some laughs in in the intro here. But we are talking about sexual assault today with Brittany Piper.

We'll talk more about her shortly. But yeah, so I want to give a trigger warning up top. We are talking about rape. and some violence. And if that is something you are not able to hear, then this episode might not be for you. So I want to make it more clear than ever.

We're going to have an episode description and everything too. So got to give that trigger warning. So, but we hope you guys that don't feel too triggered by it can listen. And even if you don't relate to being sexually assaulted, there's just a lot of really good information. We obviously already did the interview with her. And we adore her and what she had to say.

And she's so smart and she's so accomplished. and her story is really something else, which you guys will hear. So that's the intro for her. I do want to say, like, I mean, obviously we already recorded with her. I found it as someone who's not a sexual assault survivor, who's never experienced it. I found the message to be really uplifting in terms of survival and healing and even just what you can do to support people that you know that have been through that.

So even if you're not someone who's experienced something like that, I think that you can get a lot out of this episode. And I thought Ashley and I got a tremendous amount out of the advice she had to say. And I think that her advice and you guys will listen to it really just speaks volumes in terms of just like giving yourself time to heal after anything. So if this doesn't, if you don't think this applies to you, it applies to everybody. So I thought it was great. It is empowering. And one thing I wanted to say too, I noticed throughout the talk with her, I said women all the time pretty much in terms of we're talking about survivors.

I said women. We know that men are victims of assault too. We know it's heavy in the LGBTQ community. So I don't want to take that away. You know, we speak to women. It is our primary listener base. You know, the message was geared towards women, but anybody that's been a victim of this. So I just want to make that clear. I don't want to trigger anybody. We tried our hardest to speak about every single thing we said very sensitively and not upset anybody. So that was something that I noticed listening back and editing was just I just always said women. I just don't want to take that away from men or whatever gender you identify with if you are a survivor. So I want to say that up top. And we wanted to just talk about our experience. Like Raina said, she has not been sexually assaulted. Neither have I. But, you know, I think we have both had experiences that were uncomfortable and we were able to get out of that potentially could have progressed further. and had, I've had a situation where I felt pressured into having sex and I regret it later.

You know, I think we've all dealt with that. And so we were just going to share ours because we didn't discuss them with Brittany. So we're, we feel like you guys might want to know that. So we are going to talk about our experience with that. Yeah. Do you want to share yours? Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't want to claim to have any experience with it because I don't really. You know, I've certainly been in situations that I wasn't comfortable in. Nobody has ever forced themselves on me. Thank God. But, you know, that is by the grace of God. I certainly. put myself in a lot of situations that were really not safe. And I've removed myself from situations that weren't safe as well, but I think alcohol can play a factor. And I think we talked a lot in the

episode about being in college. But, you know, there's definitely situations after college as well, where I had a few too many and I ended up in probably somebody's home I didn't want to be in and things like that. And I'm glad that nothing ever happened. But, you know, what I took from this episode was that I do have friends that have admitted to me that they've been assaulted. And I could have handled it better. I could have asked different questions. I don't think I ever handed it in a non-empathetic way. But I think that there's ways looking back that I could have asked better questions or push them to get help or just been a better sounding board in general.

But, yeah, I don't have a ton to say about it. I'm very grateful, but it's really just luck that nothing terrible has ever happened to me. And I'm grateful for that. Well, and she's going to talk about, you know, there's not an out of me that ever, in any way, has ever heard about an assault, whether it's somebody I knew or somebody I didn't, and thought to even put an ounce of blame on the victim. It is, or the survivor. It is always the perpetrator's fault wholeheartedly.

There's, you know, you should be able to do whatever the fuck you want. No one should assault you and rape you want to be clear. But she talks a lot about, Brittany will talk about like intuition and being aware and things like that. And I think that women have such a strong intuition. And, you know, I had two incidents in my life where I literally left a situation probably pretty uncomfortable for the guy. But one was I met up with this guy. and I don't need to tell a little story, but I met up with him.

I wasn't really into it. We ended up at somebody's house and he was just like his hands were on me and I just felt very uncomfortable and I just fucking left. I think I said I'm going to the bathroom and just left the premises. And another time I went home with a guy after a bar, after the bar, drunk. But I remember, you know, we went back to his house and I would always do this. I'd always get drunk and go home with somebody or bring somebody back to my place. And I just remember making out and just in my head being like this, something is too aggressive,

something feels off. And this was a guy that like, you know, at least in my drunken state, I remember thinking was hot and was like somebody I was attracted to. And he got up. I think you went to the bathroom. Maybe he went to get a condom.

I don't know. And I ran. I ran into a neighborhood. I ran out of his house. Like I physically was like in my mind, I feel like something bad is going to happen. And I know it's crazy to just run out of someone's home and run into the street.

there wasn't even Uber at this time. I think I just got a cab somehow. But like I think a lot of women are like, that seems crazy, but it doesn't. You know, like just fucking go. I don't care what you have to do. Just go, you know? And the only third thing I wanted to say,

because we talk about this a little bit is there, I think if you were to ask me what was your most regretful, worst sexual experience, it was with somebody that I, in college, that I went, brought him home to my apartment. We had sex. and then the next morning he was there still and he fully pressured me

to having sex with him. And it wasn't like, if I told him to leave, he would have left. It was daylight, my roommates were there. You know, like it wasn't. It was just like him saying things like we already did this, you know, me being not excited, not enthusiastic, not into it.

And knowing in my head I didn't want to have sex with them again, but not understanding how to vocalize to somebody that I just had sex with the night before that I don't want to do this again. And I hated it so much because I was sober, clearheaded. person, it makes me sick to think about was like penetrating me and I didn't want it to happen. And I didn't know how to articulate to him that I didn't want to have sex to them because I

already chose to the night before. And it's like still to this day, like, it makes me my skin crawl. And I just felt like so dirty the rest of the day. And that's not an assault. It's just, you know, it just wasn't. I still, I still consented. You know, it wasn't enthusiastically. But I think about that sometimes of like, I'm so glad that we send this message and we will continue throughout this episode that like, it doesn't matter if you've had We'll get into it. Anyway, I also don't think, look, there's a sliding scale for what assault is, but if somebody made you feel like you're not using your body the way that you want to use it,

it's not fair. You know, it wasn't violent to you, but it also wasn't fair. And no one should be convincing another person to have sex. It's, like, pretty clear when another person wants to have sex with you. So, you know, I like that you said that you, like, I don't like that you said that you felt dirty, but I like the way you describe it because, like, anybody that touches your body in a way that makes you feel like that all day long, has. doesn't done a nice thing for you. And I think there's probably some people that are like,

well, I wasn't sexually assaulted, but, you know, I went through this thing. And like, that's in that bucket. You know, it doesn't take away your right to feel horrible about it. Yeah. And again, this wasn't, I don't feel a lot of, I don't, I didn't feel traumatized, really. You know, I just felt like gross. I think I probably hold up in my room for the rest of the day. I don't really think I told my roommates. I just felt really bad. And like, if you were to be like, what's the worst sexual experience you've ever had, I know it immediately. You know what I mean? And it was because I didn't want to fucking do it. Yep. So you can always say no. we'll dive into it more.

Yeah. And I love this episode. We really tried to do it justice. So much of our audience is female. They're young. Everybody has gone through stuff like this or knows a person who has. So I'm really proud of this episode. I'm excited to release it for you guys.

We are really excited to introduce our guest today. She is a speaker, a sexual violence prevention expert. She's a healing coach. Most importantly, a survivor of sexual assault. She has been involved in over 300 trauma and prevention programs is banding nine years and three continents. Please welcome to the show, Brittany Piper. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for being here. Yeah, I'm really excited to be here. Yeah, we wanted to do this episode. It's hard to talk about it because it's like we're excited but not really because it's such a darker topic. But we're excited that we found you because we wanted to tackle this and our listeners have asked and we it was this thing of like we need to treat this with the respect it deserves and find the right person that is a survivor but B can speak on it in a professional way you know so

rena found you and we're we're getting you before you pop a baby out like right before i pop a baby out yeah i was like rena book her i i know how this goes she's going to have this baby early and we're never going to talk to her. I was like, actually, she's going to get birth tomorrow. Yeah. And I'd still be able to talk about it then when it was when it was, probably not. But I'm excited to be here. It's funny when I first got the email, I was like, oh, this is a comedy show. How's this? Wait, what? Comedy podcast. And I read more into it. And I was like, okay. So, like, we're going to go into like the deep stuff. So, but I don't, I don't think that there's any wrong platform to talk about this. You know, I mean, to be honest with you. And I'm glad. that you all kind of had an awareness or we're just kind of like we want someone who's like a survivor,

but also someone who can like really speak on the topic. Because I think everyone's perspective is so important, whether you're just like an educator or, you know, an advocate in the space or you're just a survivor. But one of the things that I have heard over the years, I think that resonates more with people about my message is that I am a survivor, but I also have a background in women's studies and I've worked within the trauma and prevention space. So a lot of my programs are like the live events that I do. I share a lot of my story, but I also back it up with research.

And I think sometimes when you just have like, you know, like educational programs, like on college campuses, it's like, you know, some white guy coming up. I mean, to be honest with you, it's like, it's like a faculty member who's like, okay, we're going to talk about X, Y, and Z today. And like people just change girls when he's the gym teacher's like don't have sex or you'll get AIDS and die. Exactly. Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's unfortunately what a lot of our sex education system looks like is you have people that are just like kind of doing these mandated programs. But they're so, they lack that personal like presence, you know, and it really falls short. And so I'm just a really big proponent of bringing people, bringing faces into the mix. And that's why I work with like. a lot of other survivors and I share their stories because every story is so different. But yeah, I'm really excited to share with you all today.

And thank you so much for welcoming me into your fun little community. Yeah, they're amazing. And we have such a huge female audience, mostly female. And I think that everybody's life on a different level has probably been touched by assault, whether it's you or a friend or Ashley and I were talking about just situations in college that we had been in. And, you know, full transparency, we'll talk about, we, Ashley and I have not been assaulted, really.

So I'm sure everybody's life has been affected by this in some way. So it's just important to us to, I'm beating a dead horse. We're excited to have you. Anyways. So I think a great place to start is just to talk about you and how you got into this line of work and what drew you to this and what your story is. If that's cool. Yeah, absolutely.

So my story is, to be honest with you, a little bit different than most people. stories when it comes to sexual assault. I think when we talk about sexual assault kind of in this big picture view, like we kind of envision what they show in the movies and TV shows by this really violent assault that happens by a stranger down a dark alley, right? That's kind of like the glamorized or sensationalized version that we see. But the reality is, is that that's not often the case. Usually 80 to 90% of sexual assault victims. And I say victims a lot just because I work a lot with sex crimes detectives and the military. So that's the lingo that they use. I'll try and use survivors more here. But most of survivors actually know their perpetrator. And in my case,

I didn't. So I was about 20 years old. At the time, I was 20 years old, not about 20 years old. At the age of 20, I was out with friends one night. We were drinking. dancing, having fun, and at the end of the night, I realized that my phone was in a friend's purse. And so when we parted ways at the end of the evening, I decided to go retrieve my phone from her. And on the way there, I hit a pothole, ended up with a flat tire, and pulled into a gas station, and didn't have a phone, didn't really know where I was. There was a man there. He helped me change my flat tire.

and as a way of saying thank you, I repeatedly offered him money. And he kept insisting that I just let him into my car. So after a while, I reluctantly let him into my car. And what happened after that is that I was brutally raped and beaten. At the time, I thought that that was kind of like the end for me. At one point, he told me to get out of the car. He told me to put my face down in the grass and to open the trunk. And I heard rattling like metal in the back of the car.

that he had the tire iron. And so at that point, I just kind of came to the realization that my life was probably, you know, going to come to an end. And the only thing I remember asking him was to not take another child from my parents because we had just, I had just lost my brother in a car accident a few years prior. So he didn't kill me, even though I know he had every intention of doing so. But instead, he brutally beat me. And so I was a bloodied mess. jaw dislocated, cartilage torn in my jaw, bruising, lacerations all over my face and body. And he simply let me go, like, even gave me directions how to get home. And so I pulled into home at the time, which at the time I was living with a roommate.

And my best friend was sleeping on the couch. She had been out with me that night. And again, I was, I mean, physically, you could tell just by looking at me that something serious had happened. and kind of screaming and crying in the same breath. You know, I told her what had happened. And her response was to go to bed, sleep it off, and that maybe we could talk in the morning. And so I carried myself upstairs, put myself into bed.

And as I was sleeping, my roommate heard me crying in my bedroom. And she came across the hallway and she saw me. And she didn't have to ask any questions or analyze the situation. She just simply picked me up. put me or carried me down the stairs. She put me in her car. She drove me to the hospital and she called my parents on the way. And if it weren't for her, I honestly don't know that I would have ever reported what had happened. And I also don't know that I would really be alive today because you know, at the time he had stolen my wallet, which had my ID and my address in it. And that for me

was really hard to live with for the first three to four days that they hadn't apprehended him. That was the assault. Now, fast forward two years later, we went through a horrific. It was pretty awful. It was a two-year trial ordeal. He had been in and out of the prison system his entire life, so he knew how to work the system. And so our case was continued or postponed nine times. And every time a case is continued, that means that everyone who's going to be on the witness stand has to go back in, go through depositions, listen to tape statements, practice being on the witness stand. And that was kind of, not my first taste, but that was, that was retramatization and re-victimization, like, at its finest. It was, I mean, that meant that, you know, nine times I had to

relive every graphic detail of that night over a two-year period. And so we finally ended up going to trial, and he was sentenced to 60 years behind bars. And after the trial came to an end, I remember there was a news clip. And at all of my live events, I always show this like two and a half minute news clip. And the news anchors are talking about how strong and how brave I was. They referred to me as the survivor who refused to be broken. And I remember one statement they said, one news anchor said, 20 years of covering court trials. And we've never seen a rape victim who was this strong, this composed, was able to look her rapist in the eye and said, you did this and you're going to pay.

And they closed that video by saying, wow, that's a really powerful story. And what people didn't realize is that although, like, it seemed like on the surface I had my shit together that I was really strong, that I was really healing, and I was in this place of like, we're going to seek justice behind the scenes. And below that mask, I was seriously struggling with eating disorders, suicidality, alcohol addiction, mental health issues. I was in a very toxic relationship. And less than six months after that trial came to an end, I actually. ended up in a jail cell myself. And so that's a lot of what I talk about is not just, you know, sexual assault prevention and awareness and education, but I also talk a lot about the aftermath of sexual assault. And I think any survivor you talk to, they'll say that there's the assault and then there's the aftermath. And almost any survivor, I think, would probably say that the aftermath is just as bad,

if not more debilitating than the assault itself. And there's a lot that played into that from the way that the police handled my case and the comments that they made in the news article saying that, you know, this was a lesson learned and that I should have trusted my judgment, not let him into my car, to the people in the community commenting on those articles saying, didn't her mother teach her not to talk to strangers, to my friend's initial response telling me to go to bed and sleep it off, some of my family members saying you were drinking that night, you know, like what did you expect?

We taught you better. And it was just kind of this cascade of events that just really put me into this place of deep shame and isolation. And that's kind of just the inherent culture that we have. But that's my story up until kind of the trial. Did you want to say something though, Ashley? Well, thank you for sharing. I mean, you're, you've told this story plenty of times, I understand. I imagine it doesn't ever get easy.

But I mean, of course, just thank you for sharing that with us. And I know it's not easy and it's probably retramatizing every time. So, and, you know, to speak to what you just said, like, oh, the way that people react is like, could be a whole other episode, but it would probably just be like, you screaming and yelling with anger. So that's just a whole other thing of. not even just people on the internet, but your family and friends. And the response alone is just so angering and traumatizing. But, I mean, you know, Raina, do you want to say the thing.

I just, I think that everybody always has a million things to say about how other people live their lives and, you know, why did you make this decision and how could you have made it? And it's really nobody's business. Like you were in a survival mode, you made the decision that you had to make. And everybody's opinion about how you handled it, how you could have handled it, how you could handled it better. It doesn't matter. And so I'm sure that you'll talk more on that, but

it's infuriating that anybody would levy any kind of negative opinion about what you did because it's not of their business. Right. Well, it's just, it's anything but compassion is a banana's response. So anyway, again, sorry.

I'm like getting, like, my anger is getting the best of me. I don't want to focus on that today and those people. But, but, but I mean, I think that's a really large part of the conversation. I mean, I think that is one of the most crucial parts of the conversation, because when you think about it, it's not just, you know, we say things like, I think a lot of the prevention programs that I've seen out there is teaching people how to not get raped, you know, and a lot of the responsibility falls on the shoulders of survivors. And when we talk to perpetrator populations,

hard for them to kind of take in. It's like a lot of people kind of come with this finger pointing attitude and so they immediately check out. But I don't think that people realize that people realize that it's really up to everyone. And that includes allies of survivors to change the entire culture and change the entire conversation. And so the more that a survivor feels like they're in an environment or a culture where they would be supported, say something did happen or they do have someone to talk to, who can come to them with a compassionate and empathetic response rather than analyzing. I always say empathize, don't analyze. If they can empathize with them first, then survivors are going to be more prone to reporting what happened. And the more that we get

people reporting, then the more that people are put behind bars, the more that this cycle stops. And so that's actually a really big part of the conversation. But it's a very loaded conversation for sure. Yeah. There's no other side. It's like that's what drives me crazy. It's just there's good and bad. It doesn't matter.

You should be able to be blackout drunk, half naked, doing whatever people say you do to ask for it. And you shouldn't get assaulted. I mean, it's just what you're saying is like, duh. Any other response is so enraging to me. But I understand why people don't report it because I remember my first day of college. I remember orientation and we had that talk about like don't go to a frat house basement. Don't be blacked out in a frat house. And I was on the phone with a girlfriend last night and she was like, yeah, I was like assaulted by this guy.

I fell asleep at like the frat house. And I woke up and he was like fingering me or something. And it's like that girl didn't do anything wrong. But the narrative is that like she was told not to do this. She was told not to be there. So then, like, there's all this inherent shame that's like, well, did I bring this upon myself? We are. There's nothing wrong with having programs like that.

I think it's great. I think it's great on the first day of college. I was told boys are going to get you drug and try to take advantage of you. But the narrative that this was anybody's fault is crazy. And I understand why girls wouldn't report it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the culture, the system, the environment, everything is kind of set up to work against them.

You know, but a lot of it, for us, it's kind of like, like you said, Ashley, it's like a no-brainer. It's like, I mean, hello, duh. It's like night and day, right and wrong. How can people not know this? But the problem is that there's, when we look at consent, especially, you know, which I don't want to completely talk about just college campuses, but when we look at consent when it comes to things like, you know, when alcohol is involved, when drugs are involved, when we're looking at people who are already in a relationship when we talk about consent. that's where there's a lot of gray areas, a lot of nuanced areas,

that people just don't really understand what consent is. And so, you know, like I said, 80 to 90% of people who are assaulted, they're assaulted by someone that they already know, whether it's a friend, maybe a family member, someone that they're dating, or someone that they're in a relationship with. And so that again kind of leans into the like, well, but you already knew them or you already hooked up with them or you're in a relationship with them, you know.

And so that's why I think that sex education has to start at a much, much younger age. We have to be talking about body autonomy and consent and just setting boundaries in general and at a much younger age. And when you look at countries like the Netherlands and Sweden, they have taken on that model. It's called comprehensive sex education where they talk to kids as young as like six years old, not about, you know, like sex, but they're talking to them about like, this is what boundaries look like. This is how to communicate your boundaries. This is what, you know, feeling good in your body feels like. This is what not feeling good feels like. This is how you follow your gut and

your intuition. This is what a healthy relationship looks like. And they've noticed that the earlier that you're actually talking to children about boundaries and consent and healthy relationships and sex, the longer they actually wait to engage in sex, the fewer sexual partners they have and the last instances of sexual assault. But here in the United States, it's like parents are so scared just of the word sex. And so for me to kind of finish and loop back around to where how I ended up here, I don't think I ever got there. But essentially after the trial came to an end, I went to jail. I had this aha moment and I'm like, holy shit, I'm behind bars at the same time as my rapist. In that moment, I was like, I need to get my life together. You know, we were both

offered like the same opportunity to allow some of the stuff that we went through to make us better or make us bitter. And they talked a lot in the trial about the fact that he had faced great adversity throughout his entire life. I mean, he was dealt a really shitty hand. And I don't say that as an excuse at all, but I tell people that, you know, especially now as a healing coach, it explains why he did the things that he did or how he turned out the way that he turned out. But I was turning out the exact same way as him. And I was like, okay, I got to turn my life around. And I remember.

Do you say, do you mind us asking what you did or is it irrelevant? Oh, yeah. No, I never got to that. Yeah, I never explained that. So I was out one night with a friend who was drinking and driving. And that should, you know, give you a good indication of like where I was at at the time. in my life. And he got pulled over, arrested. And as the police officers just went to pull me out of the car, just to give me a ride home, like just being kind. In my drunken mind, I had a flashback or a flooding of

the night of my assault of men touching me violently in a car, like forcefully, you know, because I didn't want to get out of the car. And so I snapped and I ended up with two counts of battery on an officer with injury, one count of resisting arrest and one count of intimidation. And I remember calling my dad, you know, from jail and I had never been arrested. And I just remember like being there and being like, holy shit, I don't belong here. You know, like how. Yeah. It's just one of those moments in your life. We're like, how did I end up here?

Like, I don't belong here. I called my dad begging for them to bail me out. He was like, we're not going to bail you out. And if you don't learn how to stop running from all the hard stuff in your life, you're literally going to kill yourself. You know, you're going down a really bad path. So I had to stay. jail for a couple of days. I went in front of the judge and she said, I know who you are. You're the

survivor from that sexual assault case. My case was really publicized, over publicized, to be honest with you by the media. And I said, yes, that's, that's me. You caught me. She was like, you know, we're going to give you a second chance. We're going to drop the charges, but you have to learn to live with your pain better. And that was kind of like my aha moment, you know, because she say you need to learn to get over your pain or past your pain. She said you need to learn to live with your pain. And for years, I had been trying to numb it, run away from it, act like it wasn't there. And I realized then that, you know, this was an imprint on my life forever. It was an experience that I had that I couldn't deny. And I had to learn how to peacefully coexist with it

and live with it. You know, I wasn't just going to get over it one day. I wasn't just going to wake up one day and it was going to be gone. And so I kind of made it a mission after then to just like really start caring for myself. And after that, you know, after some time of like just really deep reflection and self-care and self-love and really just kind of cutting the cord with a lot of the toxicity that was in my life. And that was enabling kind of those destructive behaviors. I then change majors to women's studies and photojournalism. after I graduated, I traveled and worked overseas as a photojournalist in conflict countries, typically embedded within trauma centers and rape crisis centers.

And so I did that on and off for about three to four years. And then when I came home, kind of got into the speaking, and it's just kind of from there. So yeah, I talked to college students. I talked to high school students when I can because again, there's a lot of red tape. Middle school, that's only happened twice. I wish it happened more. And then I also work with sex crimes detectives. So I teach them on, or I educate them on the neurobiology of trauma because a lot of them, most of them are not trauma-informed.

Like they don't understand what happens within the body, within the brain when trauma happens. And that's really crucial, especially in these cases. Yeah. And then I also work with the U.S. military, both home and abroad. to train soldiers and civilians on sexual assault prevention, response, and recovery. That's amazing. And I have a question. I want to back up a little bit and ask you what happened in those two years, two, three

years between the assault and the you going to jail. Like, what did those look like? What was your immediate response? Was it trying to push it out of your brain? Or did you have support? Like, did you have support? Like, did you have those close friends and family that were unconditionally giving you empathy and love and compassion? Like, I mean, I just, I want to know for, you know, other people's benefit, but for my own curiosity.

Like, did you, was it like blacking this memory out or what did it look like? Sure. So that's a really good question. So I think one thing to touch on before I answer that, just kind of give you some context. So like when we experience, you know, any kind of threat of danger. you know, to our safety, our autonomic nervous system goes into either, you know, fight, flight, or freeze. Freeze, another fancy word for it, is tonic immobility.

So it's like we literally become paralyzed and we play dead. It's a normal thing that happens out in the wild. If you could just go watch any National Geographic, you know, episode like in the Serengeti. It's a natural response that we can't control. The thing that's interesting about the freeze response, is that 70% of survivors of sexual assault actually enter into freeze mode. So that means that they do not fight back. They do not say no.

And they literally just lie there as a form of survival, as a form of saying, I just need to get through this so that I can come out alive on the other side. So what happened during my assault is initially I tried to fight back. That immediately was shut down. I was overpowered by this man. And as soon as he said, you know, stop the car. I'll kill you.

I slammed on the brakes. And so I went into freeze mode. And that was actually something that they brought up during the trial as well. Because there was one point where, you know, he had assaulted me, got out of the car and went around the front of the car to finish assaulting me. I was in the driver's seat. And as he came around the front of the car, I sped the car. I sped the car up. I put it in drive and I started to drive. He came up onto the windshield,

but his driver's side window is open. And so he was able to reach his hand in. He put his hand around the collar of my hoodie and he said, stop the car. I'll kill you. And again, I slammed on the brakes. And that was something they said during the trial. You know, that doesn't make sense. You're behind the wheel of a car. He's on foot. Why would you stop the car unless you wanted it to have? Because not of have ever been in a situation where somebody is trying to train critically. Driving a car. No one trained me on this.

Yeah, sorry. Why didn't you do this? I don't know. What would you have done? It's just crazy. I'm sure you'll handle it better when it happens to you next time. Okay. You know, and I mean, I,

those are a lot of the things that I, kind of had, like, I mean, a very snippy attitude with the defense lawyers, of course. But it's like, I mean, and if you talk to anyone who's actually made it through the process, to where they actually go to trial because there's one thing about reporting

a crime, reporting an assault, and then the percentage of them that actually make it to trial is very, very, very slim. It's only 2%. Is that because it's hard to prove it? Why only 2%. So not that it's hard to prove it.

The problem is that case attrition, which is where, again, someone reports a crime, they prosecute, but then they never make it all the way to trial. Case attrition, is so high in this country when it comes to sexual assault because of the re-victimization and the retramization that happens during court proceedings or during trial proceedings. So it starts from the minute that the first responders show up and they're asking, I'm going to take a

breathalyzer for you, how much were you drinking, what were you doing tonight? And the problem is, is that first responders, police officers, they're not exactly trained to investigate. and interrogate survivors differently than they would anyone else. So they come in with the same kind of interrogation methods, which immediately shuts a victim off because they're like, it's my fault. They're acting like it's my fault. It's my fault. A lot of it is because survivors can't or don't want to go through the entire process. It is incredibly retramatizing.

Okay. But, okay, so what I was saying was, you know, I entered into freeze mode. And that was something that I became ashamed about. And at the time, I didn't know about, you know, I didn't do all this science and all this studying. You know, obviously today I'm over 10 years removed. I'm a healing coach. I work with survivors of trauma.

So I know a lot about why my body and my brain responded the way that it did. It was a way of protecting me. But during that two-year period, I was more so ashamed about it. And so my friends and, you know, I think the initial response, I got was, you know, I think people, it's like they were kind of tiptoeing around me. Because at the time, I actually was considered, I was supposed to be sober. I was actually living, the roommate that I was living with was my AA sponsor. And so I was out that night drinking and I had a lot of shame about that too. You know, like, you were drinking. What do you expect? You let them in your car. What do you expect? Like,

you stop the car. What do you expect? Just all of these things. that I inherently just placed on myself. And so I don't know that it was more so that my community or the people around me were not supportive. I think it's that I was actually reaching out to people that I knew were not good for me. And so between the time that the assault happened and then the trial happened, my friend group looked very different. I was dating people or I was dating someone that, like I said, it was a very toxic relationship. that was the person who actually got arrested for the DUI. He was kind of...

Hey, we're not all bad. Okay. I'm not kidding. I've had a few DUI. Yes. He, but he enabled my bad behavior, though. You know?

I'm making a joke. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I just... Yeah, my friend group looked very different. A lot of very codependent relationships, people that never held me accountable, people who didn't want to see me get better. People that, you know, if I'm having a hard day, they're like, let's go drink a ton of alcohol.

Let's get blacked out drunk. You know, whereas my, I think my real friends, the friends that really cared about me were like, you're better than this. This isn't good for you. You know, they had seen the way that alcohol had really impacted my life before the assault happened. I had some experiences there. And so I think it was more so my own doing.

I think that I was living in a lot of shame. And I really genuinely wanted to numb out. out. So I did everything in my power that I could to make sure that the people around me enabled that that behavior. And part of it could it even have been like that you just, those are the people you thought you deserved at that time with all the shame. I have a question. Just about like fault and blame and like what's really common because you're talking about, you know, that you blamed yourself. And I mean, in this instance, nothing could be further from your fault. You know, you were attacked by a stranger. But I, I'm curious.

you know, so many people are, like you said, are attacked by somebody they know. And I think that's even easier to accept the blame for that because you're like, well, this was my fault. I was dating this person or I put myself in the situation. Like, no one could have put themselves in a situation less than you and you still felt like shame and like it was your fault. So I'm curious, like, is this a very common feeling that this is my fault and how does that usually play out in other people? Like when this was your boyfriend or this was a date or something like that. You find that it's very common, the reaction to it across the board, as guess is my question. Absolutely.

Yeah. You kind of hit the nail on the head there. And I say that often, I'm like, you know, my case was a very black and white, clear sexual assault happened, but I still blamed myself. Can you imagine what people who are in the vast majority of other sexual assault cases? Yeah. All those great situations, they definitely are blaming themselves. And then you have everyone else who's kind of chiming in and blaming them too at the same time. So yeah, I think that that's very much so the case.

The problem that we have is that people just don't understand consent because they're not being taught about consent. And I'll talk about it. Yeah. So I'll give you like one example. So an example that I can share is or that I often share when I talk about consent is, you know, I've been talking to college students since 2012 around that time about sexual assault. And a few years ago I was speaking at the University of Tennessee, and a student came up to me afterwards, and she said, I just realized after your program that I'm a survivor of sexual assault, and it happened about three years ago.

And she proceeded to tell me that at the time she was about 16 and a half, she was with her high school sweetheart. They had been together for over a year at that time. They were in his room engaging in sex, and they had had sex multiple times before. but she said that he wanted to do, you know, something more extreme. He wanted to do anal. And she was not comfortable with it. She kept saying, no, I'm not comfortable.

And of course, if someone should have to talk you into sex or talk you into any kind of position, that's just kind of like a clear indicator for me that like consent isn't really mutual. And so, but she was persistent. Like she wasn't even like talked into it. She was very much so like, no, this isn't happening. I'm not okay with it. and he wasn't getting the hint. And so it got to the point where he had to,

she was yelling no so loud that he had to muffle her voice with a pillow. And his mother walked in as this was happening. She looked at them and then she walked out and never said anything. And her response to me when I said, you know, what was kind of the enlightened moment that you had? And she said, I realized that because I had given, him consent in the beginning. And because we had been having sex, but then he wanted to do something

further, I didn't know that I was allowed to change my mind or, like, set boundaries after I had already given consent. And so that's just, like, one basic example is that people don't understand that consent is revocable and you can change your mind at any time. Right. I'm so glad that you said that. Yeah. Like, when the, when the penis is out touching your vagina, you can change your mind. Like, it's, yeah. You can always get up and leave. And we, Ashley, more so, I shared this message and I co-sign it, you know, that it's never too late to get up and leave. And we've done episodes about like when to have sex to somebody for the first time. And like if you're at somebody's house and you're drinking and you're in bed and you guys are like getting hot and heavy and he's hard, you can still get up and walk out the door.

And like, if somebody is going to be mad at you for that, then fuck that person. Exactly. Yes. So I'm glad that you told that story. I amen to all of that. So some other things that people don't. Okay. So let's just talk about consent.

for a second. No, we wanted to. This is cool. This is great. This is the flow we were hoping for. Because like now that I'm on a roll, I'm like, let's talk all about consent. No, no, no. We want to dive in to consent. So some other examples of consent or I call them essentially like Consent 101 when I talk to people about these are the things of consent. So number one,

consent is verbal. It should be talked about. It should never be assumed because people will be like, well, but they didn't say, say no. You know, like, well, but they didn't say no. And my response is, but did they say yes? Because again, if someone enters into freeze mode, say before even the clothes are off, like they already feel uncomfortable, they're not going to be able to say no.

And so there should be some type of communication that, you know, this is, this is good for both of us. And I also think that comes with just getting more comfortable talking about sex. Like, we're so, it's interesting because we're getting to a place where we can talk about sex and sexuality so openly. But in a lot of ways, it's also, you know, kind of look down on, you know, I think in culture. So it's like we have these two like very polarizing opposite views. So some other tips about consent is past consent does not mean current or future consent. And again, that is kind of also the case with, you know, the girl I was just talking about.

But also like I use my husband and I as an example. Like we've been together for, many, many years, going on nine years. We've had lots of sex, obviously, but just because we've had sex doesn't mean that every single time we engage in any kind of sexual activity that that consent doesn't have to be given. And so I think that's especially important for people to know who are in relationships. You know, we hear about, you know, rape that happens within marriages, rape that happens within partnerships, partnerships. And we talk about intimate partner violence. And I think that especially older generations, they don't understand that like rape is a thing that happens within relationships. You know, just because you are tied to someone, just because

you are in a partnership does not automatically mean that consent is just like, all right, you can take advantage of me anytime you want. Or any hole that you want. Or any hole that you want. I love that story that you told because she was willing to have sex. It's like we're allowed to have boundaries about our bodies and say no. And that's really like a first. And that's really like a frightening thing to hear. Yep. I also think that, so I think, you know, the definition of rape is sexual acts performed without consent. And again, that's kind of cut and dry, but then consent is like that gray area. But one of the biggest gray areas, I think, with consent is when we do involve, like alcohol, substances, drugs. And I always tell people that the best advice that I can give you,

because again, all I can give you is advice on this particular topic because every situation is going to be different. So I'll use myself as an example. I haven't had alcohol since my wedding day when I was super wastey face it. So it's been like, that's like a whole other story. But it's been like almost four years. So if I took a shot of vodka right now, like I probably wouldn't be able to have complete sentence conversations with you. but y'all might be like girl i can throw back 10 and i'm good and but that's that that's the thing when it comes to like substances and consent is that everyone has a different tolerance you know so

when we talk about like blackout sex or anything like that um essentially what they say is that consent cannot be given when someone is under the influence of drugs or alcohol but again that looks different for everyone so the best advice i can give is if at any point you feel like the person that you're about to engage in any kind of sexual activity with or consensual activity with is past the point of intoxication, then simply save it for another time. And then people will respond and they'll be like, well, what about affirmative consent? Which is, again, when you have those conversations and you're like, does this feel good? Are you sure this is okay?

But if they're blackout drunk and they're saying yes, consent isn't really being given. So, again, that's kind of like those sticky situations is going to be different with every time. And there's just like, I think I got, I know I was in those type of situations with good guys in college. Right. That didn't have sex with me because my eyes were rolled back in my head, you know, and like I could function in a blackout. And I was like, let's do it. And they were like, you're a corpse almost. You know, so it's like, we know what drunk people look like. Yes. You know, like I get it. I know that again, I could function in a blackout, but you look at you know someone's drunk.

Like, you're right. Just save it. Yeah. And that's the hard part because you never know how the person on the receiving end is going to look back on that or receive that experience. So for you, you might be like, that's drunk sex and I've had drunk sex. But for some people, they might be like, wait a second, that was rape. You know, and so, and in both cases, they're both valid. You're allowed to explain that situation or hold that situation.

in whatever regard you want. But going in, the person on the other end who's doing the action and like about to engage in the situation, they need to understand that there's a risk there, you know, if that makes sense. So another thing that I say is that I'm like, I'm actually going through my slides in my head right now. I'm like, what else do I say? Let me, I want to jump in too because we've had, I want to just, I don't know what this. I don't want to, I want to approach this the right way.

I think some people on the verbal consent side don't know how that looks or think it takes away from any sort of like natural romantic progression. And we've gotten some messages from girls that kind of dealt with a guy that was over the top, which is better to be safe than sorry. But they were like, what was this guy doing? and we're like, he's scared of having non-consensual sex. He's asking you, is this okay? Can I touch you this way? Can I do this? And I don't know.

I have never had what I would consider non-consensual sex, maybe, you know, some past drunken spirits aside, but nothing that I woke up and felt violated. But I also haven't had so many situations where a guy is like, okay, so we're going to have sex now? Is this okay with you? You know, like, but a lot of times, you know, I don't know. It's tricky. So I want to talk about it.

Like overly cautious to the point that it like ruins the mood or something or that it becomes uncomfortable. Yeah, which I think people might wonder what this looks like because they're like, wait a minute, I'm in a relationship. You know, sometimes I'm just going to, you know, grab my partner's dick and put it in me. That's consent for me. Right. Everybody's sober. You're hooking up. Everybody's in good mood.

You're clear minded. I mean, I think a lot of people would say, including myself, that at least for me, that's been consent. I'm with my partner. I'm sober. I'm having a good time. Everybody's on the up and up, you know, but that's not everybody's experience. Yeah. And this isn't playing devil's advocate. I want to be very clear. I just want to talk about how it looks and sounds to somebody that might be confused, I guess. I think there is a lot of confusion, and this gives, you know, some clarity. So I think that it again comes back to kind of what we were

saying about like the alcohol is that, you know, if you decide to use nonverbal cues is what we call them, you know, by kissing, by moaning, by saying that feels good or, you know, things like that. If you decide to use... Taking your clothes off. Yeah, taking your clothes off. If you decide to use nonverbal cues and the person that you're... I'm sorry, if the person that you're about to engage in any kind of, you know, activity with is using nonverbal cues, which it's like, no one wants to think about that in the back of their mind, like, well, there's a potential here that they could not mean this.

And again, when we say that it is verbal, that they also say that consent has to be enthusiastically given, like this is just kind of what's stated within the law, you know? And so this is what people can use if it's not verbal, if it's not enthusiastically given, this is what people can use as a means of saying, like, I felt like my boundaries were crossed or I felt like I was not considered or I felt like this did happen because we. you know, it wasn't talked about. And, you know, for some people, like I said, they can't say no, or they do take their clothes off because they feel like they're in a state of manipulation or coercion, which is another form of sexual assault too. So they say that like consent cannot be given when there is manipulation, coercion. And again, that's not forcibly doing something.

But it's like the best example I can give is if someone's like targeting someone. You know, we hear the term targeting. And they're giving someone drink after drink after drink with the intention of taking them home and taking advantage of them. That's manipulation. That's coercion. But, you know, I think it's hard because a lot of it is also about intuition, you know, and following your gut. And I think that if you're comfortable having those conversations, I think that it's wise to have those conversations during before, after sex, maybe even saying like, hey, what positions do feel? feel good for you. Like, what do you like within, you know, intimate moments? What don't you like?

What are some boundaries that you don't like? And maybe that could kind of alleviate some of the pressure of having to have those conversations in the moment. Like, my husband very much knows, like, I don't like these positions, but I do like these positions. But like when I think about it, I mean, anytime we want to have sex, it's like yesterday morning we're like, hey, let's have sex tonight. You know, like it's kind of like, let's just check it off the list. We haven't mentioned that you're, we haven't mentioned that you were like pretty pregnant. You guys are still having sex. Congratulations. Yes. Yes. They say to have lots of sex, man. Lots of sex up until baby comes. Yes. It helps. Your boobs are huge. Yeah, they're getting there. I have a feeling you had

larger breasts beforehand because if I got pregnant, I wouldn't look like that. Well, congratulations on them looking like that. Thank you. So I have a question because I want to talk about this step happens and then the fallout emotionally, internally, and then how to manage that. You talked a little bit about what happened to you afterwards, and I think a lot of people are like, I went through this. Is it normal that I'm reacting like X? And I think, you know, of course, drug and alcohol abuse comes up to me, but I'm curious, you know, is this quote unquote normal?

Like, do a lot of people go back to their abuse? Do they let it keep happening? You know, do they, like, what happens after this? Sure. So a lot of the survivors that I work with, they do find themselves. in cycles where they do go back to their abusers. So the people that they're in a relationship with that's been abusing them. We call this a form of, again, retramatization or re-victimization, but it's done on their part.

And a lot of this is essentially their way of trying to take back control. So they might go back to that relationship or they might continue that relationship with the hopes that it'll change. or that they can change it the next time around. You also find, and I think it's kind of like, you know, the old story that we hear of, you know, so-and-so ends up being with this partner who is neglectful, who abandons her, who treats her like crap, who beats her. And this is kind of a cycle because her dad did the same thing to her mom or her dad did the same thing to her. And so, again, this is another form of, I think,

survivors of domestic and sexual violence trying to reassert that control or change the outcome later on as a way of like taking back power because sexual and domestic violence, it all comes down to power more than anything, more than pleasure, you know, more than more than sex itself. The root of it is power and control. And that is one of the ways that survivors feel like they can take back their power. A lot of the survivors that I work with, they say that they go through, this promiscuous phase where they just sleep with anyone as a way, again, of just regaining control also of their body. Like, my body was taking control of.

My body was taken advantage of. I'm now going to control my body and I'm going to give it to whoever I want to on my own terms. And I think that that is a natural thing to do. But I will also say that, like, there's no shame in it. You know, I was really ashamed for many years. years of the way that I acted after my assault happened. And we use the phrase, you know, self-destruction all the time, like self-destructive behavior or self-sabotaging. But what I really think it is is it's more so a form

of self-protection because we had to do what we had to do to not feel that pain for some amount of time because it was so overwhelming. And so for anyone who's struggling with alcohol abuse or abusive relationships or eating disorders or whatever it is, just know that your life does not have to be like that forever. But if you went through a period of that, don't be ashamed of it. Like, that was your way of protecting yourself. And I essentially call them survival patterns. Like, that's just what we had to do. But if you keep compounding the shame that you're already carrying, it's going to make it a lot harder to move on to a place of healing and recovery. Well, that is beautiful advice for anything that happens in your life that you have shame surrounding. So I'm so glad

you said all that. We want to talk about something we know our listeners do have questions about and that's if you've been assaulted, you know, what does dating again look like? You know, like where do I go from here? And we have plenty of girls that have emailed us that have been assaulted and, you know, one girl I remember wrote that her ex-boyfriend used to just think he had control over her body. And she said, pardon me, it's a little graphic, but she said that he would just like always do her from behind and just like grab her and penetrate her. And she didn't really, that was her boyfriend. So there was, she didn't understand that like, you can have non-consensual sex with your partner. And she said that she's, that position is terrifying to her now and dating

somebody new. She, they had broken up. But that if any guy, wants to basically, you know, do her doggy style. She's, like, traumatized it from this partner that just thought he had autonomy over her body and things like that. So I don't know if she in her head categorizes that as rape, but regardless, situations like that, like, I think we, we want to speak to girls. Like, how am I, now I'm broken, you know, I'm a victim. Like, how do I date again and live a normal life and get married and have a kid and

that type of thing? Yeah. So I think it's a really good point to bring up. I think that first of all, it's going to look different for everyone. So there's not like one kind of linear answer here. But the best advice that I give to people is to first learn how to walk with your own pain and explore your triggers on your own. Like, you know, whether that's exploring your body, learning to live within your body again.

I think what happens when we experience sexual assault, especially for people who enter into a state of freeze, is that they are scared to be within their bodies because their nervous system is triggered by sensory things, whether it's a smell, a sound, a touch, you know, like basic example, someone who's been in war, a loud bang, you know, sends them into a bit of a panic attack. And so learning to be within your body again and realize that like you're safe within your body, I think is kind of the first step. I think what I did is, you know, I went through a phase where toxic relationships, people who don't care about me because I don't care about myself, re-victimization. And then I went through a phase where I just wanted to completely bury myself and find myself in other people.

And so I, for instance, when my husband and I first started dating, I made him my world. Like, I made him everything. and he was the first relationship that I had where he was like, you're not going to find yourself and me. You need to learn to love yourself more than you love me. And I think by doing that, it enabled me to set boundaries for myself rather than be so dependent on someone else. And so, you know, there's a fine line.

I think I always tell people you have to learn to walk with your own pain. You know, like I said earlier, like coexist with your own. pain first before you can walk with other people in that pain because you have to teach people how to treat you. You have to teach people how to support you. And that means that you have to have an understanding of like what your triggers are, what your boundaries are. And that that is like some of the hardest work, you know, because I think that a lot of people find comfort in relationships which we're supposed to. You know, we are social creatures. But if that person leaves your life one day, want to feel like you just lost everything. You know, you have to be able to rely on yourself.

And so that would probably be my first form of advice. And that's kind of what I said, you know, like after the trial happened, I really went into this deep state of reflection and self-love and self-care. And I learned how to, I learned how to walk with myself first and to walk with that pain. And then I kind of welcomed someone else into my life once I knew like what those boundaries were and then I could express them to that, to that person. I love that you talk about like living with it and managing it and versus like forgetting about it. And we've used this sort of metaphor about other things in the podcast, but I think that we're all sort of looking for this thing that's going to like make the pain go away and make us forget

about something. And I like that you said that this is sort of like, this is in you forever. So I have to figure out how to manage this. And like a person, another person is not a bandaid on it. Exactly. So I mean, I probably should have started, backed up a little to what do you do post-assault because I'm sure, however, it's handled, affects you beyond belief. So, I mean, you're, you had a very unique case and that guy's behind bars. And that's not most people's story in any way.

So if you just, if someone assaults you when they just go free, you know, the anger is one, is one part of it, aside from all the other trauma, is just this like anger and violation. And I want to talk about that too. I mean, we have so many people. I've seen girls post in our Facebook group. I got raped last night. I mean, it's not frequent, but I saw a post one time of a girl went on a dating

app date and she was assaulted. And she didn't know what else to do. And, you know, it was like, do we even keep this post up? This is like, we don't, I don't know what to tell her. And so I hate to say. but we're going to have women listen to this podcast and they have been assaulted and they haven't reported and they don't know what to do. And I know, again, every situation is different. But what can you tell them hour one, day one post assault?

Well, the first thing that I tell people and when I talk about reporting, I feel like I'm actually usually talking about reporting to not survivors, but people who are like, hey, my friend was assaulted and I really want. them to report. He or she to report what happened. So you find more commonly somebody has told a friend? Yes. And that the friend is like, we need to put this person, like, you know, justice needs to be served. Why isn't this person like, you know, I really want them to report. I feel like it would be beneficial for them. And my response is always that the survivor needs to feel emotionally ready to report on their own.

because, again, it is a very retramatizing experience, and not everyone wants to report. And that's something that we have to remember, too. When I talk about reporting, you know, I do talk about the fact that, like, the average rapist, the average rapist in the United States rapes 12 times before ever being reported on. Yeah, and then on a college campus, it's six times. I, just in this vein, like, why wouldn't somebody report? Like why would somebody tell a girlfriend and my mom raised me like if anybody touches you, you go to the police. So like why, what are the reasons somebody wouldn't tell somebody?

Well, I think that people are very aware that that perpetrators or rapists are not held accountable in the justice system. Yeah. And so they go into it with that mentality. And women are shamed. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The survivor is shame. So they go into it with that mentality of like, is this something that I really want to do where number one, I'm going to have to

face this person again. Like, I'm going to have to see this person. And for some people, that is a debilitating thought. And again, if it were up to me, my hand was kind of forced. Like my roommate took me to the hospital. And then my parents were there when we showed up and they were like, you need to report. By that point, there was already a rape, you know, nurse examiner. Yeah. So it's, I mean, of course, I had a choice, but I don't know. That's just, I felt like my hand was kind of forced. Now, I'm glad that I did, and I think because I went through that process and I had to go through like the nine times of going through these tape statements, that's why I can talk about it today in such an open way because I don't want to say that I

became numb to it because I cry every time I'm on stage. And those are like authentic tears. It's like it is still hard to talk about. But it gave me a lot of emotional resilience. So I think Ashley, back to your question. If someone's experienced assault, The first thing that they need to know within like the first hour is that like if you are not comfortable reporting, you do not have to report. And again, I think this goes back to us putting everything on the survivors. Like it's up to them to seek justice. It's up to them to take that person off the streets. It's up to them to stop the cycle.

So whether or not they report, they should not feel shame about it either way. Another. But is there like a window of like, this is going to sound so. amateur, but like of a rape kit situation? I mean, is there physically an immediacy to, if you want to brush charges down the road, you need to go to the hospital and get this done? Yeah, so it's going to be different state by state. But for the most part, like, it's much more difficult to do a rape kit test when you have already showered and disposed of like your underwear or wash them or things like that. So like if you can keep the underwear, like maybe if there's, you know,

something on the clothing. And again, this is not to go like too graphic into this because I don't want to, you know, upset anyone. But, you know, if there's anything that you have that you were wearing or anything of evidence, like for me in my car, there was semen in the car, anything like that, like keep that stuff contained. If you need to shower, sometimes people just feel like it happened and I just need to shower right now. Like, it is what it is. But I think that if, you know, you want to report and you want to have a rape kit done, like, it's better to do. Like, you kind of have to do that now.

But that there are other ways around it, you know, if you have evidence any other way. And there are, I mean, just educate me again. Like, there are other options because I'm, yeah, like, you know, just because somebody's mom raised them and said, go to the hospital or go to a police officer. It doesn't mean anybody wants to do that because, of course, they're ashamed or scared or whatever. And I wasn't trying to shame anybody before either by saying that my mom told me. My mom's a therapist. She's worked in this for her whole life.

That's how I was raised. But I don't think anybody wakes up and knows how to deal with this. So like what are the other options? You're like a month has gone by and now I'm ready. Yeah. Yeah. Because I definitely, I certainly don't want to send a message of like, don't do report it.

I mean, I love what you're saying. Don't do anything you don't feel comfortable with. But what would get me would be like this person's going to do this again. And it's, you know. Well, and I think that's, that's a lot. lot of the, so like I said, I mean, most cases go unreported. And so the majority of people I hear from is so-and-so didn't report it. They're my friend. I really wish they would. What can I do? Or I hear, I never reported it. It's been a year and a half and I've heard that he's assaulted or she's

assaulted someone else again. And now I feel a lot of shame. And that for them is like, that's the hardest kind of shame because then they feel like they are to blame for not just their assault, but someone else is assault to. Right. And there's no right answer. I don't think that we get assaulted and that like we all know what to do in that moment. I think that you're self-preserving and not everybody's self-preservation is go to a hospital. Yes, exactly.

And that's, and I think that this part of the conversation is just a good illustration of like, there's no right way to do it. You know, like we can give kind of like our own perspective or like what we feel like might work best in our situation or our beliefs, but at the end of the day, it's going to look different for, for every person. And no answer is right and no answer is wrong. So what are like other options, I guess? I mean, there's the vigilant, I'm not showering. I'm going to take this motherfucker down and I'm thinking clearly, which is probably not the norm. But what, what is the other, is it go to the police station? I mean, what are, what are options for women? Sure. So, I mean, I mean,

I think it looks, it kind of depends also like the environment that you're in. So for instance, like if you have people who are on a college campus that are listening to this, for them, there are many resources that they can go to. So like they can go to their Title IX office, which is like, you know, a reporter, someone that they can go report it to. They can go to like the person who is in charge of their residence, like their RA person, right, in charge of their dorm, like the floor on the, their dorm and that's something that maybe they're comfortable talking to, someone they're

comfortable talking to, they can go talk to them. And again, on each, it's hard because because each campus has different mandatory reporters. So kind of like a counselor, like if you go and tell them something that like, my life is in jeopardy, like they're mandated to report that to the police. So like, if you go to someone on a certain college campus, their RA, their counselor, their Title IX, they either have mandatory or non-mandatory reporters. So if you're going to go talk to anyone on your college campus, you also need to know, like, whether or not they are a mandatory reporter. Because if you go and tell them about the incident, they might have to report it to the police, even though you don't want them to. So that's for college campuses. But outside

of that, I mean, you can definitely go to a, you can call a domestic violence or sexual violence resource number. So the NSRVC, the national sexual, I'm sorry, the NSVRC, the National Sexual Violence, violence resource center. They have 24-hour hotlines that you can call into or that you can, they also have chat lines online and text lines. The Domestic Violence Resource Center, Rain, which is another good one. These are all hotlines and you can call and talk to an advocate or a counselor and just talk about your options, but also just talk to someone who's like an empathetic witness, you know, who has a lot of compassion and who will give you like these are your options. This is what you can do. This is what the benefit will be and this is what

the potential, you know, risk will be. This is what you might face during this process. That's another good resource. And then also just looking up your local shelters or your local women's organizations, you can go in and talk with an advocate there. You know, you can go to a hospital, get a rape kit, and then decide to not report or not prosecute. So that is something. you can do. You can go to the hospital, gather that evidence, and then decide later on, I don't want to continue to press charges. Yeah. I think that... I just feel frustrated. I'm just like, I'm just feeling so frustrated by this conversation. Like, I, it's just like, I don't even know what I would do. Like, it's just, there's, it just sucks. All of it. It's like, it's, the women are silenced and it's

like, this conversation isn't, there's no good answer. And like, most women don't report. And then these guys just go free and they do it again. It's like, it's like, it's like, it's, and I'm just feeling frustrated. I'm sure people listening to her as well. It's just like there is no ultimate good answer. And even if you do like catch this guy, you could get shamed. And you see things like Christine Blasey Ford who came out only when her perpetrator was about to get elected to the Supreme Court and she just couldn't see it happen. You know, like sometimes it takes those moments of like, wait a minute, this guy's about to be the president or something.

or a public official and now I'm going to speak out and then you get shamed because nobody believes you. And it just, I don't know. I don't know what to say. I feel frustrated. Yeah, me too. I can see the narrative in your head also being, and I'm sure this is probably what a lot of people experience, it's like, what do I want out of this? It's been a year and I do have a responsibility, I guess, to other women to report this.

But like, I don't want to go to trial and I don't have any evidence. Maybe somebody just forced you to give them a. a blow job. There is no evidence, you know, other than maybe like semen on your clothing, but we're talking about a year from now, you know, I can understand that the narrative is like, what's the point of this? And that's really frustrating and sad. And, you know, to me, even if that means that person's name is on some national register for assault to you, like some sort of justice, right? I couldn't live without it. I mean, that's just me and everybody's different. But then I'm also like, what? You go talk to your RA? What the fuck are they going to do? That kids,

just like a senior, you know, like it's, it depresses me. The thought of like this woman who has been assaulted and feeling like there's no, there's no answer and there's no help, you know, and you might tell somebody and they might not care or they, then what does that do for you? Right. You know? I'm just curious if like, if the answer isn't, let's report this day one, then I'm assuming, you know, the answer is let me try to self-heal from this. And I'm curious like what that road looks like if you never report it or if you do report it. I mean, I'd love to just get into it. Asht a few or nothing else to like grab this up with. Okay. What does it take to get somebody on a sex offender list? You know, if that's kind of like if I can just get this person on this

list that's like a watch list, like is that a trial situation, do you know? You know, like I'm just trying to think what the outcome is. Yeah, they have to be criminally charged and prosecuted, sentenced, all that, all that stuff. Yeah. Which seems like a lot to handle. I picture this scenario. if you get assaulted by this fucking guy at college and then you just have to see him. Yeah. Like what, what are you supposed to do? Like, how are you supposed to live your life? Well, so then I think that goes back to a lot of like the healing stuff.

You know, so a lot of people find justice in literal, like the literal justice system, right? Like, that's how they define justice, even though they might not actually find it. I don't mean that. But like, that's how they define justice. is like putting this person, you know, getting them expelled from campus or getting them in jailed or, you know, getting them thrown out of a fraternity, whatever it is. And I also do just want to say, too, that, you know, sexual assault definitely happens among men. You know, it happens among women.

It happens among men. But it's also, the rates are more prevalent among, you know, the LGBTQ community members as well. So I just, I do want to preface that. But some people I find justice in the fact that, like, you did this awful thing to me and you might have broken me for a little bit, but like I'm going to get my life back together and I'm going to move on and you're not going to hold power over me. And for them, that's justice, you know.

So it doesn't have to come through reporting. It doesn't have to come through, you know, getting someone reprimanded in some kind of way. It will say that when it comes to the healing process, my first form of advice, my first form of advice for people is, again, to find a way to be within your body that feels safe. So when we experience, especially that kind of trauma, we are in like survival mode, like the most extreme form of survival, right? Because we either go into fight, flight, or freeze. But what happens, especially when we enter into freeze, is we enter into a state of

disassociation. So essentially what happens is like, you know, we experience this thing. Our body tells us to freeze, but the cortisol or the stress hormone that we have, just to get sciencey with you for a quick second here, what happens is it first overwhelms the front of your brain or your limbic system, which is your prefrontal cortex. And this is going to go back to Christine Blasey Ford, by the way. This will explain some things.

And I'm like, you fuckers, I'm just debunking everything you said. So what happens is the cortisol overwhelms the prefrontal cortex. And I always say that like this part of the brain is like the parent of the brain, right? Like this is wrong. This is right. Don't do this. Don't do that. It's like your executive function, your reasoning, your rationale.

It overwhelms that. So like every rationale that you have goes completely out the window. Right. So no matter what you're thinking, it's gone. Then the cortisol goes to your hippocampus, which is on the side of your limbic system, the side of your brain. And that is where your memories are stored. So that's where your memory function.

is. So it overwhelms your memory function. And that's why most survivors only remember flashbacks or small instances of their assault, but it's usually, again, in sensory fragments. So whether it's a smell, a touch, a sound, a taste, a color, whatever it is. And then, lastly, the cortisol ends in your amygdala, which is the back of your brain. And this is your brain's fear response center. So this is a thing that triggers or, I'm sorry, not triggers, but tells us that there is a threat. So this is where like fear and anger and, you know, all of kind of those messy emotions kind of rest. So what happens is we're dissociated from our prefrontal cortex. We don't have any rationale. We don't have any inhibition. We're blocked off from our memory function. All of our memories

have gone out the window. And really that's just our brain's beautiful way of protecting us. Like if you think about people to get bit by sharks, they say that they black out or like their body doesn't feel it. They've literally become dissociated from their bodies. But what happens is we become stuck. When we enter into freeze, we become stuck in our freeze mode back in the amygdala. And so what we have to do to bring ourselves or to re-bridge ourselves back to our memory and our executive function is we have to process that danger and bring ourselves, bring our nervous. system back to rest and digest or what I like to call rest and recover. But for people who experience trauma in this form of threat, if they don't process kind of that

threat and then bring themselves back down to like a grounded calm place, they'll essentially walk around in the world thinking that this thing is going to happen again at any moment. That's why they don't trust people. That's why they don't trust environments. That's why they don't trust themselves. And that's a lot of the reason why they drink so much. every study you look at survivors of sexual assault, but also just trauma in general, much, much higher rates of alcohol abuse, drug abuse, toxic relationships, mental health disorders,

suicide. And a lot of that is because they're stuck in this state of like threat. We call it neuroception. Like their body has become a threat detecting machine. And so that would kind of be the first step is to like bring yourself back into. to your body and remind yourself that like you're safe and the threat is over. I love that you talked about what physically happens in your brain because I think that like that's an answer for all these people that are like, why didn't you report it?

Why did you react like this? Why did you stay there? I can't you remember? There's no rationale. All the people that are saying like why did you do this and X? It's like what you weren't, you weren't experiencing this. I was and I don't even understand why I experienced it like this. So, like, it's very easy to rationalize situations that other people were in when you're not in it.

And I love that you talk about, like, what physically happens in a brain. It's like, yeah, I was fucked up. Yeah. That's why. Well, and that's why it's so important to, you know, with the Christine Blasey Ford thing, they talked a lot about the fact that, like, there were holes in her story or she didn't remember the whole thing. And it's like, no shit, Sherlock. She experienced trauma.

Or they talk about the fact that, like, it was out of order. Or that she didn't fight back or didn't say no. And again, when you enter into freeze, there's no inhibition, there's no rationale, you're not going to fight back, you're not going to say no, you're not going to remember things. And it's just, I am dumbfounded at the fact that sex crimes detectives do not know anything. I'm not saying all of them don't. But the majority of detectives that I work with, they're not trauma informed. They don't know about the physiology and what happens within, I essentially what I teach them is the neuroborative. biology of forensics, like, or forensic neurobiology, telling them what happens within a

survivor's body, because what they do is they will go into an interrogation and they'll say, tell me what happened from point A to point B. That's how they've always been trained. Tell me the timeline of events. And that's how they use evidence. But the problem is, is that a survivor's, like, their remembrance of what happened will come back very slowly in pieces. and it will not be in sequential order. Which could sound like lies. Exactly. And so then that's why they say things.

Like in my case, like, well, that doesn't make sense. Or there's a hole in your story. But you said it was this way. And really, a lot of the holes, and it's just what makes it so difficult is like a lot of those memory lapses, a lot of those things are just further evidence that trauma, in fact, took place within the body and within the brain. Right. And it's like, I feel like when people are like, you know,

why don't you respond, why don't you report this? It's like, it's not a dream to report this stuff, you know? Like I, like, I'm sure that there are people that make up being assaulted. I'm sure that that happens. But I don't think that like the average person is walking down the street hoping to like deal with this shit and the legal system. Yeah. You know?

And I was wondering like, I just, I can't let this go. Like, if you, if you were assaulted and you're like, I am not. capable emotionally or mentally or physically or whatever of going through a trial and trying to put this person in jail. But I can't live with myself if I don't let an authority know in case he gets in case he murders somebody. You know what I mean? Like I think that is there a way of reporting like if you go to the police or if you go to the authorities? Like is there a way to be like, here's my account. Keep it on file? I mean, I know that sounds crazy. No, I'm curious about it too. Like not every person wants to go through a whole trial.

I love that question. Well, yeah, I think that kind of like, I think that kind of comes back to like the sex offender question you had. Like, can they be put on a list or something? And, you know, again, it's going to be different by each state's jurisdiction, by the protocols that they follow. There's no national way of doing it. But for, I have never heard of any instances where you can just kind of be like, hey, can we just like put this person on a list? Again, I think that you can report, and I think that maybe what the best thing that could happen is that then they're on the radar. Because I will say that like the, you know, the guy who assaulted me, they knew a lot about him.

Again, because he had been in and out of the prison system, you know, his entire life. But they also had a lot of records of claims of sexual assault. reports of sexual assault that were never followed through. So they were on record. So you can make a claim. You can make a claim on record. Yeah. So it was on record.

And, you know, what they did is they went and they followed up with, when they were trying to find him for like four days, they went and they followed up with those people that he had essentially assaulted. It was to other people just saying, like, have you heard from him? Do you know where he is? Why they never went to trial? I'm not sure. But, I mean, thinking back now, it's like, well, but they did at least have that on record.

You know what I mean? It was not brought up during trial, though. I will say that they were not allowed to bring it up during trial to work against him, but they, you know. Well, then fuck it. No, I, it's just, it would, I would need to have it like documented in some, for my advice to anybody and I should not be giving advice because I haven't been through this. But I guess just for your future self is to have somebody have an account of this.

Yeah. So it's out there because I feel like that could be a regret of somebody where, down the road, you know, Tyler gets in trouble for someone comes forward and is trying to take him to trial for raping her, raping other women. And you're like, well, Tyler raped me. And nobody knows about it. And you wish you would have at least told the RA or at least told somebody that puts it in some sort of formal documentation. You know, I was thinking I listened to the, we're not going to get into this, but I'd listen to the daily podcast about Tara who was Joe Biden's accuser.

And there's mixed things there. She did tell people and they were saying they don't have it. And it's like, okay, I would need to be in an office with somebody that is transcribing this, documenting it and putting it somewhere. And I want the confirmation number. You know what I mean? Like I think there's just like there's got to be a middle ground there of you not wanting to be the whistleblower on this rapist, but needing someone to know that it happened to you.

Yeah. Does that sound crazy? Yeah. It's kind of almost like insurance, you know, like if you feel like you need it later on, you know. But again, it doesn't sound crazy to me. I'm what you went through for a two-year trial and nine times having to recount this. I don't want to do that. I'm not saying other people should.

And I think people should do whatever makes them feel comfortable. But I don't know that I'd want to do that. That sounds really fucking hard. Yeah. Well, I mean, I will say that my case, it was, by the time it went to court, It was the longest waiting case in Indianapolis or like the county that I was in. So I don't know. And a lot of defense attorneys will use that strategy of postponing and postponing and postponing a trial because they know that it wears down the victim.

So they do that intentionally. They do that on purpose. But not all of them will last two years. Mine, I think, was just, yeah, mine was kind of an extreme case. They do last longer. but I don't want everyone to be like, okay, I'm going to have to like map out the next two years of my life.

So like I think in the Ford case, there was written record of like her telling people that it had happened. You know, so like even though I can't remember it was a while ago. So I can't remember who it was, whether it was a family member or she actually reported it to someone.

But there was some record that she had told someone that something had happened to her. And that can be used as evidence. So I want to talk about how to manage this then. This happens and maybe you don't want to tell somebody day one, but I'm sure that it's a hugely loaded conversation. You could write the encyclopedia about how to handle, you know, a healing from sexual assault.

But I don't know how. You tell us how you handle this kind of conversation. Because, you know, if you're not going to report it day one, like what are people doing to try to heal? Yeah. I'd say a lot of it would just be to try and find whatever makes you feel safe. Like whether that's going home and staying with, mom and dad going to a friend's house, like, whether that's going to work and finding normalcy,

like whatever makes people feel safe and calm, it's going to look different for everyone. Maybe it is a therapist. Maybe it's going to a survivor support group and talking with people that, like, you don't even know, but it's being around other people who've experienced something similar to you. Yeah. Whether it's spending time outside, whether it's going and taking a two-week vacation by yourself. I mean, I personally went to Washington State and stayed in Seattle with my aunt for like a week and a half right after the assault happened because I just needed to get away.

Like I needed to get out of the environment. But for some people, they're like, no, I want to stay put and like I need to just pretend like my life is normal. Again, it's different because we're all, we are all wired differently. Like, you know, we all have different neural pathways, different emotions. We all have different ways that we find calm. For some people, it's being around people. don't be able to being entirely alone. So I think ultimately what it comes down to is just trying to

figure out what makes you feel safe in your life because that's what it's ultimately coming down to is reminding your nervous system, reminding your body, reminding your emotions and your brain that the threat is over and that you are safe. I'd love that you mention a support group because whether how that looks, there's things online. There's, you know, even just listening this podcast and knowing that so many women go through this. I think it can just be such an isolating experience. Even though you know deep down this happens to so many women,

it feels like you're the only person dealing with your specific pain, you know, and talking to people with a similar story, I think, helps with a death in the family, or, you know, which this can feel like for somebody in terms of grief and losing your control over your own body, your innocence, whatever it may be.

So I think there's obviously the grief involved. And one, I think there's a, there's a sense of community too. You know, I think that we find that with collective pain, there's oftentimes collective power. And, you know, I see it like, so a few years ago, like the best example I can give, I was working at, I was living and working in South Africa. I was on assignment with the rape crisis center of South Africa, excuse me, at the time.

And we had an event. It was the Mandela Day event. And so in South Africa every year, people take 67 minutes to do like an active service. And so our active service that year was to do a care pack drive. And people from the community came in. They made care packs for survivors for the rape crisis center, which is, you know, essentially when a survivor comes in, it's like a pair of underwear, maybe, you know, toothbrush, things like that, just something that makes them feel normal, supported, whatever.

And during the event, one of the survivors, she got up on stage and she shared her story. There was like 300 people in the audience. And as she shared her story at the end, she offered the microphone. And she said, I want to offer this microphone to anyone who wants to get up here and break through their shame and own their story. And that day, 27 people, many of whom had never shared their stories before, got up on that stage and they shared their experiences of being survivors. Wow. And like, it was in, I always say like, it was in that moment that I, like, I looked out and I saw, you know, and of course, the whole. audience is crying. I'm crying. She's crying. We're crying for just like, you know, two hours.

But I realized that like if they weren't tears of like so much sadness, but tears of like, we got this, you know. And if it weren't for my experience and like the pain that I face and all the shit that I went through. And honestly, if it weren't for like the pain that Nelson Mandela face, I know that's kind of like, okay, you're getting a little out there. But like, you know, He was imprisoned and tortured for 27 years. He faced atrocious pain. People came together to honor him. People came together to honor the pain of survivors,

to honor the pain of the woman on the stage. And it was like all of our pain, like all of our collective pain that in that moment became like a collective power. And I think that that is probably the most healing part of being a survivor. Is that when you can find community with other survivors or people who've gone through what you've gone through, it makes it feel so much more lonely and isolating.

And it gives you a sense of purpose. And that's kind of why a lot of, like, my healing program is focused on, like, turning our pain into purpose for those, you know. And I think that's, like, the most sustainable way to walk in pain is to figure out, like, how was this pain meant for me? You know, like, how can I help other people get through this stuff? Yeah.

And I like that you talked about that it took you a couple years to get there and I don't have to harp on it, but time is interesting to me. And I don't, I don't, you tell me, but I don't think that people have to wake up the day after they're assaulted and start going to Survivor's meetings, right? You know, you're allowed to feel it for a while. Yeah. And that's what I tell people too. I say it's a process, you know, and I, that's always, what kind of breaks my heart is when

people compare, like, themselves to me or they're like, I want to be, or they'll say things, like, you're so inspiring. Like, as a survivor, I want to be like you. I want to do what you're doing. And I have to tell people, like, it took me over 10 years to get here. And I still have really fucking awful shitty days. You know, like my life is by no means perfect. I still struggle every day with what I went through.

But it is a process and it does take time. And again, a lot of that is just learning to walk with your own pain first before you can walk with other people's pain. Because there was a time where when I was traveling, I don't think that I was ready to be there. Like I, I think I jumped into it too soon. And I think it got to a place where then I was like, you know, coming home from like work in India and I'm like chugging a bottle of wine.

And at that time, I'm supposed to be sober, you know. And so you really got to be gentle with yourself and just do it in your own time. You know, it is a process. I think, I think therapy can be such a, I would need to go to, deal with the anger of like this person taking something for me. Yeah. You know, I think everybody deals with, has a different leading emotion. And I think a lot of people probably just need a professional to work that out within

their own brain and like even explaining how their brain is working. Like what you said is probably really going to strike a chord with some people listening to this, understanding their own brain. Right. You know, and why it did the things that it did. that moment because people don't know that. We're not neurologists. It's actually, that's been like the most therapeutic part, I think, of like my entire healing journey has been learning about what happened within my body. And I'm like, oh, it was

normal. Oh, this is the why. This is the, this is the, this is the reason why I am the way that I am, you know, and there's nothing wrong with that. So I want to talk about. prevention if you have things that might be a little different than like, don't walk the straight tonight and watch your drinks, you know, but I also want to discuss talking to a partner or a potential partner about going through an assault because I know that's a question people have is shame being part of it, but how do you bring it up to somebody that you have slept with, are going to sleep with, are dating, see as a potential long-term part-term. partner. So I think when it comes to relationships and continuing on with, you know,

relationships after you've experienced assault, I always tell people, I think that people correlate setting boundaries with owing someone my story or having to divulge information and they can very much be separate. So what I mean by that is that if you want to set boundaries with someone, say that you know what the positions in bed are that like make you uncomfortable. Like for me, like I don't like any touch, nothing around my neck. Don't touch me around my neck. Of course. Right.

Well, yeah, I mean, some people are into that and that's totally fine. But for me, I'm like, no neck, no this, no that. There's a couple of things like, no, no boundaries that I have. But just because I express those boundaries doesn't mean that I have to divulge my story or my experience. And again, they can be separate. So maybe one way that you could word that is, hey, listen, I want to just set some really loving boundaries because I really want to have like a great intimate relationship with you. And in order to do that, I wanted to be open with you about some boundaries that, you know, I was hoping that you could respect. Here are some positions that make me feel just really uncomfortable. Boom. Leave it at that. And you don't have to say, and you can say something like, you know, I've experienced things in my past.

that maybe one day I'll tell you about, but right now I'm really, I just, I don't feel comfortable. Can you respect these boundaries? And if they're like, sure, then good. And if they're like, well, why? Yeah, you don't owe them anything. I don't like it. I don't like doggy style sex. And that can be the end of the conversation. You don't owe somebody any explanation. It's beautiful if you're with somebody that you feel like you can discuss that with, but you don't owe anybody anything. I don't like this. This is the end of the conversation. I was in a relationship where I was in a serious loving relationship where someone had something pretty dark to tell me about his past. And we've been dating for a few months. We'd said, I love you. We were committed. And it was just a day

that we were having a happy day hanging out. And he said, there's something I feel like I haven't told you from my past. And I wanted to tell you. And he told me. And it was this like, thank you so much. I love you. Of course, there's tears, the whole thing. But it was just when for whatever reason in that moment, he felt safe and comfortable and that there was a piece of him I didn't know yet. And he just told me. And there was nothing, there was nowhere to go from there. It was just, this is part of me. It's who I am. I want you to know. And so I don't know if that speaks to anybody in any way. But I, you know, that was what happened in my situation. It didn't have to be surrounding anything. It was just a moment that he wanted to share. So.

whether it has to disperse as far as this all goes, of course, the boundaries in terms of what you're doing in the bedroom is one part of it. But another part is just, I love this person. I want them to know this thing about me. And I'm going to share it when I feel comfortable. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that's a great way to do it. Okay. Well, good. Glad you agree. We don't have a lot of time left with you. But again, like we mentioned, we do want to talk about some prevention stuff. If you have anything to say, So when it comes to prevention and safety, a lot of it is, it's hard because I think a lot of the prevention conversation is talked about like, this is how you keep yourself safe rather than like this is how we just like stop, you know, putting people in unsafe positions. But I think that some things that you can do, of course, is just have more awareness of your environment.

I always tell people that I actually felt more safe when I was working in third world countries than I did here in the United States because my head was constantly on a swivel. I was aware of the fact that I was in a vulnerable position. I was a female on my own working in these countries. And I think that that has really blended well into my life here in America. I just, I walk around with my head on a swivel. And that's not saying that like it's up to you to protect. yourself at all times. It's just being realistic with the fact that there are shitty people out there who do really shitty things. And even though that shouldn't be your responsibility to take on, it's wise to just make sure that you're prepared for that. Another thing you can do is I know they

have certain apps that you can put on your phone where they can track where you are. They can let your friends know where you are. Like if you're going on a date or something, they'll know, like where you are at all times. There are other ways that you can kind of like lean on your support system. Like if you go on a date and you're like, hey, just want to let you know, like if I text you like turkey, will you call me? You know, like call me and just be like, hey, there's an emergency. You know, like that's an easy way out.

You know, it's hard for me to tell people to like don't drink too much. But because again, I think that goes into the whole mentality of like, you know, protect yourself and it's up to you. But again, we say in general, just girls, there's no, it's blacking out doesn't serve you coming from girls that have done it a lot. Yes. We say it regardless of us all in life. And also just, just follow your intuition.

Like there's nothing wrong with, if you feel like the person you're on a date with is if you feel like something is off, you're allowed to excuse yourself from the situation. You know, you're allowed to leave. And so that's a way. awareness, boundaries, communicating your boundaries. And if you have to deflect or defend yourself, then deflect and defend yourself. So, yeah, those are kind of like the ABCDs of prevention. Okay.

Well, we know you have to go. But we have appreciated this so much. And you sharing your story and all the valuable knowledge you have and everything. Yeah. Of course. Just thank you so much. It's funny. I feel like we could talk for like an hour more.

I'm like, there's so much. I still want to say. Well, I think that people would love to hear from you more. So if you could tell people where your website is and your Instagram, I'm sure you're going to get a million emails after this from our audience because they're so great. But tell people where they can find you. Yeah. So you can find me online at brittany piper.com.

I don't spell my name like Brittany Spears. It's beer I. Thank God. Thank God. Bear I, T, T, A, and Y, like Brittany. Brittany Piper.com. And then they can follow me on Instagram at the. Brit Piper. I'm not special. I just had to put the because Brit Piper was taken. Okay.

And but yeah, I'm, I'm really, I'm really active on Instagram. I love engaging with people and I have really honest, raw conversations on Instagram. So definitely, definitely come follow me. Let's connect. And if anyone wants to know more about some of the healing work that I offer, they can, they can see that on my website too. So. Okay. Yeah. It's a great website. Thank you so much for everything. This was amazing. You're so welcome. And thank you. And again, if there's anyone in your community or in your audience, survivors who just need someone to talk to, I offer that support. So, you know, they don't have to sign up for any services. But I am ready and available to talk kind of 24-7, just slide into my DMs if you need support in any way.

I know that sometimes it's hard to have these conversations with people who are close to you. So I always make sure that I am ready and available if anyone needs, just need someone to chat with. That is so generous you to offer that. Thank you so much again. And guys, you know where to find us. Girls Gotta Eat Podcast.com. Girls Got to Eat Podcast on Instagram. Ash Hess, rana.

com, got to eat on Instagram, Girls underscore Got to Eat on Twitter and YouTube.com slash Girls Got to Eat. And thanks again for listening. We'll see you next week.