Survivor Story: Married by Myself [240]
Flying Free
Natalie Hoffman
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 September 2023
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today’s guest is Laurie Sullivan, a survivor of emotional abuse and sexual infidelity at the hands of her husband, a prominent leader in several churches they attended. Laurie outlines her story from getting married at age nineteen to a man she loathed in childhood to eventually finding freedom years later.
Christ is at the center of Laurie’s story, showing Himself to her throughout her custody battle for her children and her third marriage to a good man. Listen in to this eventful story of Laurie’s journey out from abuse.
Key Points From This Episode:
- Why Laurie married a man she was originally disgusted with.
- How a pencil and a taco can demonstrate the concept of gaslighting.
- Why dating someone for a long time doesn’t necessarily keep you safe from emotional abuse. Laurie’s second marriage is proof.
Read the show notes and/or ask Natalie a question here
Related Resources:
- Check out Laurie’s full story in her book, Married by Myself: Living a Parallel Life with a Man Hiding Behind the Cloth.
- Connect with Laurie on her website and on Facebook.
- My newest book, All the Scary Little Gods, is a spiritual memoir about healing from religious trauma and toxic programming.
- Are you wondering what is happening inside your own painful and confusing marriage? I wrote another book just for you called Is It Me? Making Sense of Your Confusing Marriage: A Christian Woman’s Guide to Hidden Emotional and Spiritual Abuse.
- Flying Free is my online membership program designed for Christian women in emotionally abusive marriages. Whether you want to stay well in your marriage or leave, we want to equip and support you through this program.
- Flying Higher is my online membership program for divorced Christian women. Come rebuild your life after divorce with women just like you!
- Support the Flying Free podcast AND get in on monthly deep-dive discussions with podcast guests by joining the Flying Free Podcast Club for a $5 monthly donation HERE. (Members of Flying Free and Flying Higher can join these discussions FREE. Just reach out to me, natalie@flyingfreenow.com, and we'll get you set up!)
Born to two ministers, Laurie Sullivan was raised in faith that she embraced wholeheartedly at age four. Growing up with Jesus provided her a consciousness of God through every stage of development. She graduated from high school a year early and college with her B.S. degree in English Education to teach in her own classroom at 21. Nothing prepared her for the devastation ten months into her marriage to a youth minister, the man whose words and ambitions for Christ made her eyes shine with pride. Enter pornography, lies, deceit, young girls, and the murky waters of gaslighting. Now married and mother to eight, Nana to thirteen, she is a vibrant public speaker with a message of encouragement and hope to women who find themselves living a life they never dreamed of.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Natalie Hoffman of Flying Free Now.com and you're listening to the |
| 0:09.3 | Flying Free Podcast, a support resource for Women of faith, looking for hope and healing from hidden |
| 0:16.4 | emotional and spiritual abuse. Welcome to episode 240 of the Flying Free Podcast. Today we are going to visit with |
| 0:29.2 | Lori Sullivan. She's a fellow survivor who was married to a minister and she is now out of |
| 0:36.2 | her abusive relationship and remarried. She has eight children in total and 13 grandchildren and we are going to hear her survivor story today. |
| 0:47.0 | So welcome Lori. |
| 0:48.6 | Your situation was especially problematic because you were married to a pastor, someone who was likely, I'm guessing he was well respected in the community and at your church, and behind the scenes doing things that were problematic. |
| 1:06.8 | So that's a very complicated situation. |
| 1:08.6 | So if we could start at the beginning, |
| 1:10.9 | maybe you could tell us a little bit about your background, what kind of primed and |
| 1:14.3 | prepped you to marry someone like this. And also I'm curious to know if you noticed anything, |
| 1:21.7 | even before you got married, that might have raised some red flags for you. |
| 1:27.0 | And if you did, did you ignore them? I kind of want to know a little bit about that. |
| 1:30.0 | My background is that I was born going to church. I was in church before I was |
| 1:38.1 | born. Both of my parents were ministers. So pregnant mom, you know, they prayed me into being she couldn't have any children. |
| 1:45.8 | She went there to have a fellow minister pray for her and he said, |
| 1:51.7 | sister, are you healed and she said I will let you know in nine months and I was born |
| 1:58.7 | nine months so I mean all of my conscious memories include Christ. I was actually four when I asked Jesus Christ to be my Lord and Savior and I write about that in my book so that's a story |
| 2:20.8 | because a lot of people kind of look at me or want to pat me on the head about that and think, oh, how adorable, but what did you know? |
| 2:28.0 | So I do talk about that, but I always tell people that Jesus and I grew up together. |
| 2:33.7 | So I'm aware of Christ and growing in my relationship |
| 2:38.0 | with him when I'm five and six and seven |
... |
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