Kimberly shares her story of survival, saying she made it out of a living nightmare thanks to the Selah Freedom TYLA Court program (Turn Your Life Around). “I want to be clear that it wasn’t an addiction. It was the childhood sexual abuse that started this root that grew into this big, ugly monster,” Kimberly emphasizes. Kimberly explains that it was first her childhood abuse, when her boundaries were violated that she began to change and act out.
Kimberly says there was no one there to intervene and in her search for validation, she sought male attention. This led her to encounter many wrong individuals who saw her as broken and preyed upon her vulnerabilities. A series of knee injuries led her to an addiction to prescription pain medication, and in order to feed her addiction, she says she justified letting men continue to take advantage of her and use her body. “I entered into sex work as a means of survival until I met a man who became my trafficker,” she said. For two and a half years, she was trafficked in her hometown of Sarasota. “I was on North 41, within two blocks of the high school that I graduated from with honors,” Kimberly said.
Kimberly wanted to break the cycle of addiction and even entered into detox 18 times. But treating the addiction would not be enough. She needed healing from the root of her childhood trauma. Ironically, it was an arrest and felony charge of prostitution that led Kimberly to Selah Freedom’s TYLA program that would change her life for the better. The program gave Kimberly real trauma resolution, therapy and recovery. After years of feeling lost and unsupported, Selah Freedom gave her the guidance she had craved as a little girl. Upon graduation, TYLA cleared Kimberly’s criminal charges, allowing her the chance at a fresh start. “To know that I’m not a convicted felon anymore is kind of just reaffirming that good part of me that’s inside there, that never would have chosen to do those things if I hadn’t been living in my trauma.” Today Kimberly is married, has opened her own nail salon in Sarasota and speaks to community groups about her experiences as a survivor. “I am not what happened to me. I get to choose who I am and what I get to do today,” she said.
Kimberly now shares her story on her own Survivor-Led Podcast on BuzzSprout and Facebook.