How Ready To Exhale Was Born

​Women Are Amazing
​This is what I started noticing when I began my journey to healing from child sexual abuse.  I met women with stories that made you wonder how they were still able to smile, never mind raise a family while working a full time job - often on her own.
​https://www.janedoenomore.org/blog/my-name-is-deb

One person - every 98 seconds  is sexually assaulted in the United States every single day.   
I am one.
​My abuse happened as a little girl, and continued until I was 19.  But my story isn't my abuse.   My story is about the brave men and women who live with triggers, flashbacks, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,  and many, many more symptoms of  this kind of abuse, (sometimes occurring daily). My story is also about struggling with the SHAME, BLAME, AND FEAR that comes with sexual assault.  My story is about Empowering Women.  Lastly, my story is how this business was born.
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​Burying my abuse for decades, I felt I had dealt with my abuse, and I was pretty proud of that.
I would see other survivors struggling with depression, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, suicidal tendencies, and patted myself on the shoulder, because that wasn't me.  Until in my mid 40's, the stress in my life grew, and then I started enduring nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety.  I didn't want to go out, I had very low self-esteem, and I was often confused over the smallest things, that never gave me a second thought before.  For example, one night I went to the same grocery store that I had gone to for years, and as I started to turn into the plaza, I could see cars flashing their lights, and hear horns beeping like crazy!   WHAT?!  I was so confused as to what was going on.  Until I noticed that I was trying to drive into the exiting traffic side of the parking lot.
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​I think that was a turning point for me.  Then I began to think about so many smaller things, like taking forever to find which direction the faucet turned for the hot water, going down the same isles in a grocery store.  Feeling panicked trying to find my way back to my table from the bathroom in a restaurant.  So, I decided to share with my doctor (finally) that I had been abused as a child, just incase that had something to do with it all.  I then was sent to a Neurologist for a series of testing, and was diagnosed with PTSD.  

​Of course there is a whole lot more to this personal story, but here, right now, I want you to know that in the course of healing from my abuse, I began to meet other survivors, (where as I had NEVER met anyone else like me).
After 2 years of attending a support group at Susan B. Anthony Project in Torrington, Ct., I took classes on Crisis Intervention through Safe Haven of Greater Waterbury.   I was asked what I would want to do after the training.   It was clear to me, that I wanted to offer a support group in my area, for victims of sexual assault.   The group became very well attended, and my passion for helping others grew.  (Although men were not a part of our group, I did receive many emails and messages via an online Meetup group, and also engaged with many conversations with them.  My heart goes out to those men survivors who are in need  of a support group.  For men, they are very hard to find).

​One day, I received an email from someone thinking I might be interested in a new non-profit.   This non-profit was looking for survivors willing to speak their story  to help create awareness and education to the public.   Their mission:  "making the prevention of sexual violence and re-victimization personal through education, awareness, advocacy, and support".
​I was very interested!  I have been a part of the Jane Doe No More family now since 2012.  Because of this organization, I have been in contact with so many survivors, many of them only disclosing their trauma after hearing my own story.

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I began noticing the needs of women in group.  I saw low self-esteem, depression, very little self-care.  I saw women who had lost their families because they had become estranged.  I saw women who desperately needed validation for what they had been through.     I relate it to a soldier, who has risked his life, over and over again to protect and save his fellow soldiers.  When that soldier comes home, and his uniform is off, no one knows what he has been through.  Even though it envelops his mind for most of his days and creeps into his sleep at night. 
It changes him.  But no one knows.  Without the visible uniform, everyone forgets he is/was a soldier.  No one says, "I'm proud of you!, or "you've been through a lot..., let me help you" anymore.  Most people don't know this soldier at all.

​It wasn't just survivors that were putting everyone and every thing in their life ahead of themselves,  I started noticing all kinds of women, who seemed to be struggling.  So many women were lonely, rarely did anything for themselves, and many felt unappreciated and invisible.  If they were amazing, everyone else could see it, except for them.   These were women I met on a daily basis.  Professional women,   young women, grandmothers, athletes, writers, every day, "ordinary" women.  Not survivors.  I saw needs that were not the same as survivors needs were, but they could be helped in the same ways.

​​After facilitating for many years, I had researched, found, developed, and shared many projects, articles, and valuable materials that seemed to make a difference for anyone who needed  to focus on themselves and to learn how wonderful and valued they were.  

​I found myself reaching out to so many people, offering them suggestions to help solve problems that they often confided me with.  Soon after,
Ready To Exhale became a seed, ...a small little thought, ...a possibility.
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Then, in 2016, I had a major change in my life.  I met a wonderful man, became engaged, quit  my job as a paraprofessional in the public schools and moved for the first time in over 30 years.   He encouraged me to turn this seed into a reality.  ...and so it began.

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