6. Transcending Domestic Violence Through Inner Strength & Intuition with Yvonne Cole

In this vulnerable and honest conversation, we dive deep into Yvonne’s journey through domestic abuse, and how this lead to her to discover and activate her own incredible inner strength and intuition.

Yvonne shares with us key turning points and realisations from her own story, and insight into where we can turn our own experiences into an incredible strength.

This is an incredibly powerful conversation, especially if you are still struggling on a similar path. Yvonne is such an inspiring and beautiful soul!

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About Yvonne
Yvonne is a gifted writer, inspirational speaker, and a Podcaster, who hosts various workshops centered around personal development-- through her company, You Are Dynamic, LLC. Yvonne's passions are to educate others about the horrific pandemic of domestic violence and to help women ctrl, alt, DELETE their negative life patterns and show them that -- God the creator of everything -- loves and cherishes them for who they are as individuals.

• Check her out on Facebook
• Books by Yvonne
• Healthy Wealthy & Wise Relationship Podcast

About Andi

Hello! I'm Andi and I'm a Voice & Expression Coach, Medium, and Actress, and I love all things spirituality, expansion and being brave. I have been on a really long journey with my body. If my journey has taught me anything it’s that as humans we are incredibly powerful self-healers. When we allow ourselves to be brave and share our stories, we embody our most transformative ally – our beautiful, empowered strength. I am here to help you reclaim your whole creative, connected and confident self so that you can become EVERYTHING that you are here in this life to be. xx

• @andi.matthies on Instagram
• Be a guest on the podcast

Transcript

Welcome to Body Diaries, the podcast that shares our real, raw and unfiltered body stories so that we can finally shake off shame, reconnect with our whole selves and ignite everything that our bodies are capable of.

 I'm your host, Andi Matthies and each week we connect with some of the world's most inspiring body-led humans and explore the energetics that changed their lives. If you've ever felt disconnected from your body, or you are craving to finally unlock your whole experience, this podcast is for you.

Andi: Today's episode is a really powerful one. 

I am chatting with the beautiful Yvonne, who is an incredibly gifted writer, speaker, and the host of the Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise Relationships podcast. 

There are so many parts of her story that I can relate to. She is a Christian domestic violence survivor, she's a teacher and a mentor, and in this episode we dive into her journey through domestic violence.

 We talk about the impact that that violence had on her body, and how important it is to connect with our intuition and our body's wisdom so that we can trust ourselves enough to finally change our circumstances. 

Her story is really inspiring and she shares some incredible insights about body wisdom and relationship red flags to help us on our own journeys.

I do want to note though that there are moments in this episode where Yvonne shares descriptions of sexual violence, suicidal ideation, and domestic abuse. So if this feels a little bit too uncomfortable right now, we do understand. But if you are ready, I really hope that you feel the power of this conversation just as much as I did.

And as always, if you're inspired by what you hear today and you're ready to share your own body story or the work that you do in this space, I'd connect with us on Instagram at Body Diaries Podcast. 

Let's dive in.

Welcome to Body Diaries, Yvonne. It is such a pleasure to have you here today.

Yvonne: Thank you, Andi, for having me. I appreciate it.

Andi: Oh, you're so welcome. We are diving into a fairly important topic today. We're diving into the world of domestic violence, surviving domestic violence, and the impact that domestic violence has on our relationships with ourselves. I guess the first place that I'd love to start today is to learn a little bit more about your journey and how that really impacted how you felt about yourself and your relationship with your body as you moved through your life.

Yvonne: Well, domestic violence is something that is taboo. People don't like to talk about it. And when you're in it, in my case, I grew up witnessing it. So it was normal for me. It was normal to hear the yelling, the screaming, watch the hitting, have the police show up at your house. This was all normal for me as a child.

And then as you grow and these different things happen in your body, you don't understand what's going on because when you are grown, growing up in an abusive situation, they're not necessarily abusing me, but each other. And so I was taught that that's the way. Male and female relationships are just by witnessing it from birth. And as I grew, I thought that was the norm. I didn't pay any close attention to why I was so standoffish, why I hid, why I didn't want people to see me, why I became just a person of solace. And it was because I was hiding. I didn't want people to see me. That, in turn, continued to grow and blossom. And what I mean by that is, as I matured into an adult, as your body matures, you don't get the attention and the affection that you need as a child.

So you don't expect it. You don't know how to take care of your body. In my case, I didn't understand what growing up meant. I didn't understand that. Women have certain body parts and men have certain body parts. I was never taught that. I saw it, but I never, I was never taught what it meant. I was never taught this is yours and it's private.

No one should harm you. Because I was left out. You know, my parents were in their own world doing their own thing. They didn't have time for me. And so as I grew older, I started to want attention. I started to gravitate in the wrong direction. I needed to be held. I needed to be loved. And instead, I ended up abused.

I walked right into what I grew up in, because that's what I knew. I gravitated toward that. And then it started showing up sideways in my body. My body started going against me. That's what I call it. And the reason I say that is because as you, as you grow and as you mature and people take advantage of you, it becomes a mental as well as a physical physical burden. You allow things that you are not supposed to allow. And so from the age of 9 to 18, I was molested. Well, nobody taught me that this is not good for an older man to feel on your body parts. But what I found out was At the age of 18, it took nine years to get it, but the age of 18, I'm like, this doesn't feel good.

This isn't right. So nobody taught me that, but my intuition began to kick in and I began to understand that. This isn't, I don't even like the feel of this. I don't even, I don't gain any pleasure from it at all. So what I started doing because it was my best friend's stepfather, I started going out the back door of the house to get to the front and go inside the house because he was inside the house in the living room.

So in order to get from like the kitchen to my best friend's room, I would have to pass him in the house. And so I noticed that what I started doing to avoid him was to go on the outside of the house, just to get away from him touching me. It didn't feel good. This was an older authority figure. And so, if you're not taught that this should not feel good, you don't know any better.

But thank God the intuition kicked in and I began to feel, and I couldn't even tell my parents because I didn't think they would believe me. Why? Because this man was an authority figure. And that's what I was taught, you trust authority figures. Is any of this making any sense? 

Andi: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.it is a topic that I, I haven't spoken to a lot in my own life, but I resonate really heavily because I had a very similar experience. And it's really interesting how you talk about authoritative figures and that fear that comes up.

Like when you were speaking about the avoidance, I would avoid at all costs because I knew, I knew it was. wrong and it felt really uncomfortable in my body but I didn't mention it to family because he's in that authoritative role and also it's a very confusing time. For me it was 16. It was a very confusing time because your body's changing and you've got all these different thoughts and feelings and then...

All this unwanted attention, so I definitely do relate. One of the things that you mentioned there was around the intelligence of the body. Both in the physical burden and the mental burden that played out. So I'd love to learn a little bit more about what was some of that physical burden and that intelligence that was coming through at the time.

And also, other than the fear and the avoidance, what was some of that mental burden that was showing up for you as well?

Yvonne: What I realized was that my dad never touched me in that way, so if my dad ever never touched me in that way, This, this wasn't right, but it still played a role in my mind because again, the authority figure. So knowing that my dad didn't touch me that way, my dad never even hugged me. So that, that's the mental play on it also because I needed that attention and affection, but I wasn't getting that at home.

But I would get it. in a different roundabout way from the man, the authoritative figure, who was molesting me. So, it was really confusing to me to have that and think about, we're talking about hindsight now. So, while I was going through it, I'm coming of age through 9 through 18, adolescence, all the changes in your body, you don't know what's going on. And then at the same time, parallel to that, was my parents divorced. So when they divorced, we moved. My mom, my sister, myself, my dad stayed. So we moved into a different neighborhood. I didn't know anybody in the neighborhood, so that's a different change. So I'm meeting all these new people, but I've learned to stand back.

I learned to be an outsider because now I don't trust anyone. I don't trust anyone. But at the same time, going, what was going on at home was my mom was so upset. She was bitter. She was angry. So she was not emotionally available either. So I have on one side. This authoritative figure, my parents just divorcing, and then...

My mom being really bitter. So she was in her own world and I didn't understand that it was okay to be an empath. I thought something was wrong with me, that I had these deep feelings, that the pain was so strong that I could feel other people's pain, that My friend who, who's stepfather molested me, I got to thinking, well, she's living with him.

So she's getting it even worse than I am. So I began to empathize with her. So all these things are going on at the same time. And I'm really confused. I'm trying to grow into adulthood. I don't have a boyfriend, but by that time, when we moved, girls, In that neighborhood, going to that new school were way more developed than me. So they were doing things that I didn't want to do. I didn't want to have anything to do with. And the boys were more aggressive. And I say boys because this was like sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade. And I became an outcast. Well, that didn't feel good in my body either. Because I began not to like myself.

Something's wrong with me. Why don't I have all these friends? Why don't people like me? I wasn't in with the in crowd, so I didn't like myself. I didn't start cutting like some people do so they can feel, but what I did start doing was trying to end my life because I didn't like myself. Because I didn't know where to go because nobody understood me. And so my, my whole thought process was my body's changing. I'm coming into adulthood. I don't understand any of this this man touched me, made me feel dirty. Now I finally got out of it and told my parents about it. And the response I got was, well, why didn't you tell me from my mom? She's very angry, but my dad was very angry at person. So, I'm going through all of this, not understanding what's happening inside of me, or the changes that are happening to my body, or now I have to wear a bra, or now I have to go through a menstrual cycle, and I was in so much pain mentally and emotionally, it showed up physically, and maybe the listeners can comment, resonate with this, but I had really horrible cramps.

The cramps were so bad that for two weeks out of each month, I was in the nurse's office at school. Two weeks out of each month for years. And I believe that had a lot to do with down the road, I had a total hysterectomy. A lot to do with Everything that was going on in my body and I believe my body was like, okay, enough, enough.

You're going to listen to me. I'm going to turn it up and it's going to be so painful. Now if we think about what happens with a total hysterectomy, all of the anatomy for me to give birth is now gone. A total hysterectomy. It's now gone. That even changes you emotionally. I didn't understand that either.

So, if we think about going back to growing up, going through these things, and I don't have to name them all, and then bring it up to today. Now, at the age of 58, I'm like, There's nothing wrong with you, Ivan. There really isn't. You are a beautiful human being. You have gone through these things. You are not stuck in them.

And the purpose that you went through these things for, and I used to always say, Oh Lord, are you serious? I have to go through this in order to help someone else 

Andi: But I get it now. I do get it now. Your body keeps the score. It really does. And if you don't pay attention, it's just going to keep knocking in different ways to get your attention. 

Yvonne: I took all of that that I just described to you into marriage. I witnessed abuse and then I married into abuse.

You don't know how to be in a relationship. You're all over the place and you take that and you match that with someone Who does not have your best interests at heart, who does not know how to be in a relationship themselves, who wants to exert power and control over you.

 you take your wounds and you match them with someone else who's wounded. And what do you expect to get?

Andi: Yep. Oh

Yvonne: It's going to happen. The abuse was something I accepted for years. I accepted it. Did it feel good in my body? No. Did it feel good to be hogtied and dragged down the hallway because I chose not to do what he wanted? Did it feel good to be sodomized by your husband? I realized why I stayed sick all the time. Because I was going through the abuse. I stayed sick. It even showed up at work. So, which is so crazy, but not. I would pass out every week at work.

Every week. And not know why. Until we finally found out. It was hypoglycemia. So, my sugar would drop. But guess what?

My sugar would drop because I was so stressed out. My body was responding to the stress. I was living in fear. My body was responding. It's so deep. I don't know if people who haven't gone through it could understand it.

Andi: There's so many things that you've just touched on there that I can really relate to and I think the thing that really hit me was when you were talking about the hysterectomy. I had a full hysterectomy as well. And there's been so many women that I've spoken to on this journey that have had similar experiences 

And it's interesting how so many of them have also gone down the path of having reproductive organ issues and hysterectomies and the body is storing the trauma, these sexual related traumas 

And when we're not listening and when we're not addressing that, the body just starts to shut down those parts of ourselves. And if we don't listen for long enough, which was my case, um, you know, I, I had extensive fibroids and all these types of reproductive issues.

I didn't listen. For all of that time and ended up having to have everything removed and the parallels that I hear with other women who have had similar experiences was just profound. 

Yvonne: Definitely. We don't look at the different things in this reproductive as you were saying. We don't look at the effects because we don't tie them together. We don't focus. on the lesson, Andi. We don't. We're focused. I was so focused on the pain because the pain was so powerful and it, it's become chronic now because it's a long term thing. It's It's amazing, and that's why I'm so happy we're having this discussion, because there's someone listening who are going through, or who is going through, very similar things. And maybe she would stop and listen sooner.

And if she stopped and listened sooner, maybe she wouldn't have to go through the extent that we've gone through. I really wrestled for 10 years with this. Should I have a hysterectomy? My doctor was like, it was the same doctor. I've had the same doctor since I, since I was 16. And so he knew my whole history, right?

He was the actual doctor. So he knew exactly what's going on. And he said, well, I want you to understand that I'm going to have to take everything. And I said, everything? He said, do you want to have more kids? And I'm like, I don't know at this point. Do I? Do I? Do I I only have one son. I only have one son.

So when he broke it down to me, he, he, him being a male, he didn't explain to me the emotional trauma that it would leave behind. Because you start thinking, okay, after this. I'm not gonna, I'm really not going to be able to bring another life into this world. Or in some cases, maybe you never had a child, and so you never give life.

Well, of course I love my son, of course. But now he doesn't have a brother or sister from me. But it took me 10 years. So I endured the blood clots. I endured being off work a whole lot. I endured the pain that 800 milligrams of Motrin didn't help. You know why it didn't help, Andi? Because that wasn't the problem.

Andi: Yes. Oh my goodness.

Yvonne: That's why. Until you stopped long enough, and I think that was my problem. I wasn't stopping to listen. It was just moving, just moving. Okay, this didn't work. I'll try this. Oh, this didn't work. But it was coming from the brokenness. It wasn't coming from a healed Yvonne. It was coming from the brokenness, the total brokenness.

And you can't function in your relationship with yourself when you're broken. So when you bring brokenness into another relationship, I can tell you unless the Lord Himself turns the two of you around in that relationship, it's not going to work. It won't work.

Andi: So true. You made a point early on, um, when you were speaking around the trials that you're going through and now seeing that as a really important piece to the work that you do now. And so going through these trials with the domestic violence, with the hysterectomy, with the, the things that your body is going through has enabled you now to be able to help other women on this journey.

And then you made the beautiful point about, you know, if there's anyone listening who is feeling these things in their body, perhaps there is something there to stop and listen. I thought they were beautiful points and it made me reflect when I was going through all of these reproductive issues. It's fascinating how I saw it as a separate medical issue to the rest of my energetics.

And I think we are moving into a beautiful time in the world where women and men are both starting to see ourselves as this beautiful combination of energetics and emotion and physical. And so the awareness of us being more than compartmentalized, physical, emotional, spiritual is changing. But I know at the time, even though I had some awareness around that, I was still compartmentalizing.

There was still a medical issue that I needed to deal with. And then there was all this emotional sexual history and sexual trauma and abuse and all of the things that would happen, I was still dealing with them separately. And so it's really interesting when you spoke before about what if we were to listen and actually look at what's going on from that 360 degree view, because often when we have that ailment pop up, it's way more than just a reproductive issue.

Yvonne: Absolutely. We are all one. So the separateness of the medical ailment and the mental capacity to link the two together. That is where I think we need to grow. We need to understand that it's not separate. We're not in any way saying in this podcast or other podcasts down the road, we're not saying that the medical issue is not a medical issue.

We're not saying that the blood clots were real. The pain was real. The 800 milligrams of Motrin was real. The doctor saying, uh, you're not going to be able to have kids again because I'm going to have to take everything out was real, but underneath that was something so much more deep, so much more confounding mentally, that if we sat down for a minute just gave ourselves some quiet time.

Stop running around so much and start focusing on what our bodies are trying to tell us. There is no way had I stopped, Andi, had I stopped a long time ago and focused, would I have gotten into another abusive, domestic, violent relationship. There is no way that I would have dated and then married a narcissist.

There's no way. I just, we have to listen. We have to, if I, especially, especially if our life is going in a direction that we're not happy with, we, we want to know what is going on. Sit down and look at the whole thing. For instance, recently for me. This is an ongoing thing. This isn't something that one and done.

Okay, I'm fixed now. My whole life is going to change and I'm never going to run into this again. There's always a lesson to learn. So the case in point, and I did not sit down and put the two and two together until the pain turned up. So recently I was diagnosed with arthritis in my knee. And I told the doctor, I said, okay, if you say so, she took the x rays and she said, it's just a little bit in each knee.

And I said, okay, but I'm not having surgery. Okay. The very next thing I did was I said, Lord, I said, Lord, take the pain away because I couldn't even lift or bend my right leg. And of course that's, that's the leg and foot you drive with. So think about that. I couldn't move. I was at work three weeks later after the diagnosis and I went down two stairs and something popped in the back of my knee. It was loud. And the pain, it was so painful. I was nauseous. My whole body felt the pain and I didn't understand. I'm like, Oh my gosh, what happened? What happened? I sat there for a minute and I got up and I walked back.

I limped. I should say I limped back to my desk and I don't know how to accurately explain this, but maybe I can't. When the pain hit, it was like a blinding pain. So it almost felt like something was fixed. I don't, I don't know how to explain it. Because the, the pain, it was so painful, but the, was like a blinding, a blinding pain, pop loud noise.

But at the same moment, I felt intrinsically, I felt something's fixed. And I'm going to tell you, move down the road a little bit. I went in for therapy and she said, and this was the orthosurgeon. So this is a surgeon and she said, you tore your meniscus. She said, or I believe it was a Baker's cyst that was behind your knee that popped.

And she explained where the fluid went, and she said, you probably fixed something when that happened. Can you believe that she said what I thought? I never said those words to her, which was confirmation. So this time, instead of asking God to totally repair the pain, I said, what lesson do I need to learn?

Andi: I love that.

Yvonne: There is a lesson. And come to find out, and I'm making this in Reader's Digest, come to find out that arthritis means that I am not giving myself permission, and in my knees, to move forward. I am afraid to move forward in a situation in my life, and that is exactly what's happening.

So I'm excited about that because I didn't... Go from, I just want to be healed. I went to, I want to learn the lesson. And think about that for your listeners again. If they stopped and said, well, this is happening in my life for a reason. What is it? That journey might be shorter, but if you don't stop and listen, it's just going to get turned up and the pain is going to get worse.

What do you think about that?

Andi: Oh, I love that. I very much love the intelligence of the body. 

 and how it is giving us these lessons and these symbols and these things that we need to do to move forward. What I've always questioned, particularly in my own life, is in the case of domestic violence, often our ability to listen to our bodies, is silenced or it's not there, or it's hidden under a layer of fear in that we're not really connecting and we're not really listening.

You touched on your intuition opening up and you were starting to question some of these incidences that were happening with your friend's father that weren't feeling good and weren't right. I'm just wondering on your journey through your childhood domestic violence and then into your marriage.

Where was your connection with your body and that internal wisdom of it telling you what was right and what was wrong and what it was needing? What was that like and did that take a little while for that to switch on?

Yvonne: It did take a while to switch on because I was taught, and I know different now, but I was taught through the church, which I have a podcast on, Church Hurt, but I was taught that the woman is supposed to please her husband. The woman is supposed to please her husband. So the woman isn't allowed, and this is, this is in Evonism, but the woman isn't allowed to have feelings. The woman isn't allowed to have a say so. Because the man is the head of the family, the man is the head of the wife. So when you are in a congregation of males who are autocratic, and I'm not saying that this is in every church, because it's not, but I was taught in an autocratic environment that the woman should please her husband. The woman has to do what the man wants her to do, which was ridiculous. It was ridiculous because I followed it. And that led to sodomy in my marriage. And I remember having a discussion with my ex. Years after we got divorced and I, I knew I could talk to him. I didn't care what he thought about me. I didn't care about what happened in the past.

I just had to get my say so out. I didn't fear him any longer. I just was able to talk and I did it. And I told him, I said, how do you think it made me feel when you forced yourself on me? When you forced me repeatedly to do things you knew I didn't want to do. And then you complained because I was sick all the time, or I had headaches all the time, or I wasn't available for what you wanted all the time. And I told him, I said, that made me feel like a W H O R E, not a W I F E, who was supposed to be loved and cherished. And without going into further detail, because that's graphic, but it happens in marriages, not just my marriage. It happens in marriages, but I was able to have this discussion with him. And he said to me, Oh, I didn't force you to do those things.

And I said, are you serious? Were you were forcing yourself on me? When you were raping me, you're saying that. You didn't? Well, you were my wife.

Andi: Oh goodness.

Yvonne: Okay. I was sitting across the table from him, but thank God I had matured in the fact that I didn't just get up and slap him across the table, because then that would have been me being him. But I was very angry, but then again I wasn't, because guess what? It opened my eyes to the fact that this man is still the same man.

He has not changed. He won't even admit to the things that he did to me. But as fate would have it, he wanted to get remarried. I don't know, it was decades after that. He called me and in his own way apologized.

Andi:

Yvonne: In his own way. So apparently he had gone through some therapy and he said to me some things that let me know that he knew he was wrong. That's why he called me all those decades later, because it had to still be on his mind. And one thing he said to me, and I can share this is that he said, I never should have gotten married to you. And I didn't take it as he was so much better.

I took it as he knew what kind of a hole he was. He understood that now. And as you know, profanity is not part of my conversation, you know that. In that instance, he knew what type of person he was. He knew it. It was shown to him. That was his way of apologizing to me, because he was in essence saying to me, I was not the right type of person to be married to anyone because he went on further to explain that. That was what I call my comeuppance because it took me a long time to get to the place where I could have this conversation with him and not feel less than or that I shouldn't be talking to him. I felt empowered after that because I knew that whatever happened in our marriage, those things he had done to me, none of that was my fault.

Abuse is never the fault of the person being abused. You know why that is? Because domestic violence is all about power and control. That person wants to exert power over you and control you at any cost. It has nothing to do with anything you did. There's nothing you did to deserve that abuse. But a lot of women believe that, Oh, I should have did what he told me to do.

Oh, I should have cooked what he wanted me to cook. Oh, I shouldn't have expressed myself. No, that's not true. The person that you are married to who is an abuser, he knows exactly what he's doing. He knows that he's withholding finances from you. He knows that he's using scripture in the Bible, taking it out of context, and whipping you with your Bible.

He knows that. And I couldn't get it in my head that someone could be that evil, that someone could purposely abuse you, tell you that nobody loves you, take advantage of you. And even though... You're married to this person. He can still rape you. He can still rape you. Just because you're married doesn't mean he can't rape you.

When you say no, regardless if it's your husband, it's called rape. I didn't understand that back then, but I do now. So I'm talking to anyone who's in an abusive relationship. When you begin to feel less than, when you begin to not listen to your intuition, when you begin to take that behavior, that is not love.

When he says, Oh, I love you. That's why I did ABC. That's not love. He told me, you don't punch the clock with me. When I go to work, my money is my money.

So what did I do? I compensated for that. Whatever we needed. I just went and did it. That's not a marriage. That's not love. Love says, let's work on this together. Love says, okay, you don't want to have sex tonight? It would be considered sex if I forced you. So I'm not going to do that because your feelings are important to me.

Love is, okay, you're having a bad day. What can I do to help? It's not, I don't care. It's about me. Get in there and do this and get in there and do that. There's a difference. Your body lets you know. When you start feeling afraid, that is a key. That's a clue. That you're not in a good situation and it's not for your best.

So pay attention. Pay attention to when you feel less than. Pay attention to when you feel, I'm never going to get out of this. Pay attention to when you start doing things that you never would have done, because it's beneath you to do those things. That's not even a part of you. Pay attention when you are in fear, and when you start to cry all the time, and when you don't want to get out of bed in the morning, and when you're afraid to say how you feel.

Pay attention to those things.

Andi: Domestic violence, sexual abuse. It is such a horrendous, all impacting experience. And... Those moments of being able to listen to yourself are so key yet sometimes so difficult to do because there's just so much going on, so much fear, so much emotion, and your body is speaking to you but you don't necessarily have the airspace to be able to listen.

So I'm really interested to ask you, for anyone who is going through that, how do they stop and listen? What do they do and how do they start to shift out of this relationship?

Yvonne: One thing that's got me to heading in the right direction to leave the relationship. In my situation is I have my son. I did not want him growing up in an abusive environment. I grew up in one. I didn't want my son to. So I had to think about that. And as we have this conversation, it brings to mind the last day I was in our apartment with my ex is the night after he dragged me down the hallway.

Paul tied me and dragged me down the hallway and I'm screaming to the top of my lungs and my son heard it.

The next day, as he left out the door to go to work, I had in mind. I called and got an appointment, got a U Haul truck. I packed up a two bedroom apartment by myself. Took my son to daycare, unpacked the truck, got it back in four hours. I was determined. And what the impetus was besides my son was that I had had enough.

And unfortunately, women stay in abusive relationships for many, many, many reasons. But until you come to yourself, I don't know if you know the story of Prodigal Son in the Bible, it says he came to himself when he was in the pig pen eating what the pigs were eating. He came to himself. So in some instances, we have to come.

to that point in our lives when the pain is so, so intense that we have to make a change. So in other words, we're forced, Andi, to make a change. But I am asking you who are listening right now in an abusive relationship, don't let it get to the point where you are forced, where you are feeling as little as an ant or where the pain is so intense. That you just cut all ties. and leave. What I'm asking you to do is think about the relationship before you get into it. What I'm asking you to do is think about this person you're planning to date or are currently dating. Look at this person's actions, not their words. Look at their act. And this is for men and women because women are abusers too. Women are abusers too. Men don't report the abuse as women do. So, for this instance, we're talking about the man who's the abuser. So, if you're heading into a relationship or if you are in a relationship, And you have fear. The person is overly jealous. You know, you can't have any male friends. They want all of your time. You can't have your own thoughts. You can't wear the clothes that you like. You're dumb and stupid. They spit on you, not at you, on you, take advantage of you, take money from you, and you deal with that. That's not love. So before you get married to this person or go further and deeper into a relationship and have your, your heart torn in pieces, stop and look at what's happening. Your body is talking to you too. You might have stomach aches. You might have headaches. You might not understand why these things keep happening. There's a reason. 

So don't underestimate what your intuition is telling you because it's your guide. If this person and you go out to dinner and they browbeat the staff, you and this person go out to dinner and they say something like, Oh, I forgot my wallet, but you can handle it, right? If you and this person go on a date and he expects you'd have sex with him because he bought you dinner. That's not who you want to spend your life with. If the person is always asking you for money, that's another clue. These are all things that we overlook. Oh, you know, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. I'll give him another chance. You know, we just got to know each other and, you know, we don't really understand each other until we've been together for a while. No, here's another trigger. The person says, Oh, I love you so much. We've been together two weeks. Let's move in together. Red flag, red, red, waving red flag, because now you're intertwined with this person. You're on a lease with this person. You put your maybe finances together. This person could be over your children. So those are some things that I'm asking you if you're in a relationship or heading toward being in a relationship to look at before you get yourself so deeply intertwined. And here's a big one, a very big, don't have sex with this person. Once you take and have sex with this person, guess what? Now your emotions, are so entwined.

You have like a soul tie with this person. You don't even know this person or this person only wants what's worst for you and best for them. Think about that before you get entangled in these relationships.

Andi: Incredibly powerful advice. Thank you so much. I guess I would love to talk a little bit about some of the resources that you have to support people in this space. I know you have some fantastic books that you have written, which are available on Amazon, and I will be dropping the link to these in the show notes.

But I'd love to just dive a little bit more into some of the work that you do in this space and some of the ways in which people could connect with you to get some further support through your resources and your books.

Yvonne: It's a very important thing to begin to value yourself, to begin to focus on how you're feeling. I know touchy feeling, some people don't want to deal with that, but pay close attention. That's very important. And that's what I write about in my books. I write about strong relationships, faithful.

Relationships. Relationships where they go through things, but they work together and they have each other's best interests at heart. I write about male role models who truly do love the woman that they're with. The one woman that they're with. They go through things together just like all people do in relationships, but they work together. I like to write about that to let my readers know that it's possible. Don't settle. for this other mess out here. You're better than that. You deserve better than it. You don't deserve someone to belittle you, take advantage of you, and treat you like trash underneath their foot. Because you, and that's the name of my company, because you are dynamic.

That's the name of the company. You are dynamic because you are, you deserve to be loved. You deserve to have a bad day and to still be loved. You deserve to give love because what you give out as the golden rule says, you reap what you sow. So as you give love, as you give grace, You should want that in return.

That's what I write about. My coloring book came about in a different way. It's when I was going through a divorce. I was sitting on the couch one night, Christmas Eve. I was so despondent. I heard the voice say, you should go kill yourself. Oh, Andi, I was miserable, but I jumped up off the couch so fast. I love to tell this.

I jumped up off the couch so fast. I ran, jumped in the shower and tried to scrub all of that off of me because I did not want to accept that. That was a change in my life. At that point, I began coloring. I would color for hours and it would soothe away pain. I would listen to music. I would listen to gospel songs.

I would just have something on TV or nothing at all. And I would color. One night I stayed up and colored all night and I saw the difference in the months and years it took from the pain. So I would color and it wouldn't be all that great. And as I began to heal, the colors would become vibrant. They weren't so dark. And then they began to blend as I began to heal. And I colored like that for years. And then I created the coloring book, Trust God, Keep Calm, Color and Journal. I was trusting God at that time. I was learning to look at what had happened. But I was also learning to accept Yvonne, and I colored my way through a book and I said, hey, I could create a coloring book myself. But I didn't just want it to be a coloring book. It's an activity book also. But the theme of it is... You are worth loving. And so I have all kinds of scriptures in there. I have all kinds of pictures in there that bring forth life because that's what I want the coloring book to be about life. And it was so therapeutic and cathartic to color.

So I created the coloring book and did an activity book for that message. I just want people to understand that your life isn't over. You're still here right now. I love to end my podcast with: despite everything you've been through, you're still here. That's why you are dynamic. The podcast, Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise Relationship Podcast.

It came about from a challenge. I'd never done a podcast. Didn't even know what a podcast was, but I knew what I wanted to say. I want people to have healthy, wealthy, and wise relationships. And that's what the episodes are about. It's not just romantic relationships because we're all in either a familial, romantic, you're in a relationship with your co workers.

And so we need to learn how to work through these relationships. And so that's what the episodes are about, teaching you different ways to navigate so you don't continue to make the same choices and sabotage your life. That's the whole purpose behind the coloring books. The nonfiction and the fiction books, and then the podcast.

I want people's lives to count for the dash that they're here. You're here for a dash. And in between that dash, I want it to count.

Andi: That is so incredible and such a powerful beautiful message to end on today that There is life after this. There is life after the domestic violence. There is a way through. There is a way to connect with our bodies and listen and things like hysterectomies and the experiences that we've been through don't have to define us and we can get into these beautiful places where our lives in this dash of time, which you've mentioned and I love, is incredibly meaningful for us, but also for everyone else that we're here to share it with. 

So thank you so very, very much for this conversation today. I have loved every minute of it, and I can't wait to continue to follow you and connect with you. 

 I know we do have a podcast episode that we're doing together on Healthy, Wealthy Wise Relationships podcast.

So I'm excited to do that, and I will hopefully see you again soon.

Yvonne: Thank you for having me. I appreciate all of your time and for giving me this platform.

Andi: This was an incredible conversation with Yvonne. 

There were so many moments when I could relate to her story, and I always find it so powerful to hear from strong, brave women who have overcome these incredible adversities to become such invaluable resources for us in this space.

Yvonne's podcast, Healthy, Wealthy and Wise Relationships is available on most podcast platforms. So I really encourage you to check it out. 

This episode did really get me thinking about the trauma and the energetics that I was storing in my own body when I went through such similar experiences. And so if this is something that you're feeling like you want to start exploring, I do encourage you to connect with me on Instagram at @andi.matthies because I am doing some work for women at the moment to help them really understand and unpack these traumas that we store in the body.

​Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you loved listening, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review because I'd love to give you a shout out. You can find us on Instagram at @bodydiariespodcast.

You can also find me, your host, at @andi.matthies. And if you're feeling ready to share your story on Body Diaries or you have some powerful insights from your own work that you know would help others on their own journeys, fill in the guest application that's in the show notes.

This podcast was recorded in Naam, the traditional lands of the Kulin Nation, to whom I pay my respects to Elders past and present, as well as any other Aboriginal Elders of other communities who may be listening.