They say children are supposed to be protected, cherished, safe.

But some of us, we learn early that safety is a luxury and our worth, it's negotiable.

Welcome to, from abuse to abundance.

I'm your host, Tiffany Carter, and this is chapter four, the prop, the predator, the prey.

This isn't a story about a mother's love.

This is a story about survival, about a little girl turned human bait,

transformed into a living, breathing recruitment tool in her mother's desperate hunt

for male validation.

Imagine being small enough to understand that your entire purpose is to make someone else more desirable, to be the sparkle in her eye, the charm that turns heads, the social lubricant that might, just might, bring her the connection she's been striving for. I wasn't a daughter in those moments. I was a strategy, a prop, a wing child, and an endless

audition for love. And before we get into this episode, I do need to give a trigger warning.

This episode contains mentions of childhood sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and narcissistic

abuse. And this could be triggering for people

even unexpectedly, as it is incredibly common that if you have had trauma, you can bury it so below

the surface that you don't even have memories in your childhood or you have fragmented memories.

And sometimes when we hear someone else's story, if there's similarities, it can ping

something inside of you.

And if it does ping it, just trust that it's supposed to come up.

Our brain is a fascinating mechanism that actually protects us.

And when things come up and memory surface, they're supposed to come up because it's time and it's safe for you to process them through your system.

So if you're in the U.S., a great place for support is the Rain National Sexual Assault Hotline.

It's available 24-7 at 1-800-656-6-Hope.

You can swipe up.

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