The following episode contains sensitive material including firsthand accounts of sexual abuse and domestic violence.

Listener discretion is advised.

What's your secret? Welcome back to another week of Beyond the Secret.

My name is Ace Fanning.

I know that I left you guys hanging last week so I won't take up too much of your time

but I just want to say that if by chance you are listening to this episode because you have

someone in your life who is struggling with addiction, I want you to hear two things.

First, I am sorry.

I found myself getting frustrated with this girl that I have never met, telling me a story from her past.

So I can't even begin to imagine what you go through every single day. And I know that like sorry is kind of a lame thing to say.

But I am. I'm very sorry.

And second, what I want to say is that as cliche or lame as this sounds,

I just want to encourage you to not give up hope because the journey that you're

currently on is not an easy one and I think that hope is

it's sometimes it's the only thing that gets us through these hard times.

And I'm not saying that it's going to be easy to hold on to hope.

Because I feel like situations like the one that this girl's in, if we're looking at it through

the eyes of someone who loves her, this shit just breaks you down until you have nothing left to give and then

they steamroll right over the top of you and somehow through all of that

you're expected to just keep going with your life. And I don't know how you do that.

I think it has a lot to do with love and it's frustrating because assholes like myself we come in and we say shit like you're enabling them like can't you see what's going on here

But we don't get it

...