The Process of Processing
Welcome to the Solidarity podcast,
where we share stories to connect with one another, find comfort in life’s challenges & to celebrate the solidarity that is..
being a woman.
Today I am very honored to introduce to you a dear friend of mine, Cassie.
She and I connected in 2019, a few months after I moved to Tennessee. She was one of my first new friends down here but it wasn’t until this last year that we really grew closer and started sharing our life stories, getting deep in the struggle & encouraging each other to dig deeper with God. It’s been beautiful to watch God connect us as we have many similarities from our upbringing and it’s nice to have someone down in Tennessee who didn’t grow up with me, but who still understands my life and how and why I look at things the way I do. I couldn’t have asked for God to connect me with anyone better.
I asked Cassie a few months back if she would be willing to share her story on the podcast and after some back and forth God gave her the words in His divine timing- per usual- and here we are.
Today Cassie is sharing her testimony of how God has led her through processing traumatic experiences- peeling back layer by layer until she got to the core of herself, her relationship with God and her relationship with the experiences that shaped her. As redundant as it sounds, there is a whole process to processing and it looks slightly different for every person, but when you have Jesus to walk with you through it, it’s a bit of a different story. I’m inspired by how she has committed to the work of rebuilding her foundation even in light of the spiritual warfare has been raging in her household as she breaks free form the bondage of her trauma. This is a story that hasn’t been completed, but I think it’s really beautiful when we show up in the storm and share what we’re going through. That’s what this podcast is all about, finding solidarity within each other’s experiences and knowing that we’re not alone in the late nights, the tears, the frustrations and the growing pains that we all have to deal with at some point or another.
I did want to give a trigger warning,
which Cassie also mentions, but she will be mentioning childhood sexual abuse- zero details or graphic descriptions but she does mention it and if you’re not able to handle even the mention of it as it relates to her story, I encourage you to step away and come back another day.
I will let her introduce herself and I hope you find solidarity and know that you're not alone if you've experienced anything that Cassie shares today.
♡ ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡
My name is Cassie Lelis
My instagram handle is @Our_Sacred_Haven. I’m a mom to Luca (5), Elias (3), and Valour (soon to be 9 months). First off I wanted to give a disclaimer that what I will be sharing on has to do with sexual abuse. I don’t go into any details, but wanted to put a disclaimer just in case. I’m so honored to be able to share a little snapshot of my journey in learning to overcome certain areas in my life that have been affected by trauma.
Sexual abuse is one of those areas in my life that I don’t really care who knows about it.
I’ve had people ask me why I feel the need to openly share and put it out there. But it’s not a “need”. I don’t need anything from sharing about my experiences. I’ve already experienced them. I’ve already taken what I can from them. And openly sharing about these things needs to be more common in my opinion. If it’s out in the open, the enemy can no longer hold it over me. It doesn’t weigh down on me, and it can’t be used against me.
Openly sharing that something happened to me that wasn’t ok, and left a tremendous scar on my life that I’ve been working on undoing for the last 4 years isn’t because I benefit from it. It’s not for attention, because I’ve gotten to a place where things that happened that were out of my control don’t define who I am as a person. Sure, there’s a lot of crap I’ve had to deal with in my marriage and personal relationships because of trauma I didn’t really know I had or I didn’t know how to process at the time. But I’m never going to give up on healing, because I’ve seen such a huge difference just in my state of mind. I could never go back.
I share in hopes that if someone has gone through some form of sexual abuse, that somehow my words and my experiences, and my healing (although not yet complete) will bring them hope.
If you have followed me on Instagram for awhile, you may have seen my blog series from a year or so ago where I shared quite a bit of a personal abusive relationship I had gone through in my young teens.
Something I have never shared before was that I had experienced sexual abuse at a very young age, before that relationship had taken place. (Which since processing I realized that’s why I fell into a sexually abusive relationship in the first place, and didn’t know how to get out of it for awhile.) I’m not going to go into details with that abuse, but when I asked God to rebuild my foundation with my husband this past year, I didn’t realize I’d go back to my foundation of my identity to do that.
It’s been a long and emotional process. The process of processing. And I haven’t seen any sort of counselor or anything to work through it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong in seeking help from a professional. But I just haven’t felt the need for it. As I’ve gotten more connected with the Holy Spirit, he has highlighted certain traumatic events in my life to me that I’ve needed to process.
I didn’t realize that so much of my foundation was cracked, and flawed. I didn’t realize my house has been standing on such a precarious platform. And it’s all being torn down and rebuilt. It’s been ugly, and hard, and exhausting. But I know that it will be worth it when I’m done.
Not only has it changed my relationship with my husband, when I started praying that God would pull up my old foundation and relay a new one, It changed my perception of myself, and most importantly my perception of God.
I’ve prayed for years telling God that I seek his face. But I truthfully didn’t know what that meant, I just knew that people in the Bible prayed it and I desperately wanted a connection with my creator.
I haven’t physically seen God’s face, but I have started to get glimpses of his true character. And it’s been so utterly life changing for me. I talked all the time growing up about how I didn’t have a testimony because I always knew Jesus, But I didn’t really know God or his true character. (I didn’t really know Jesus as well as I thought I did either.)
I have done absolutely nothing to change my life, except learn to pray from the Holy Spirit. I’ve asked God to show me what he intended for us, in the very beginning, when he envisioned a relationship with his children. And I believe he is showing me just that.
My story isn’t over yet, truthfully it feels like it’s finally beginning. But I’m not going to pretend I haven’t been really struggling.
These past few months have been some of the hardest I’ve endured mentally. I’ve felt so berated and beat down by the enemy lately, I’m not sure how I keep functioning.
My children haven’t slept well in months, and I’ve been praying and doing all the things I know to do to make it better. And nothing has worked. In fact, it’s all gotten worse. These past 3 weeks have been so stressful from the lack of sleep, and the amount of time I spend trying to get little people to sleep and to stay in their beds or not be thrashing around in mine. It has been exhausting. As much as I’d love to have them all bed share with me, it’s just not practical. Elias would probably hurt Valour, and I’m such a light sleeper that with his thrashing I just can’t sleep with him on the same bed because he shakes it so much.
I’ve laid countless hands on my kids praying for protection over their bodies, minds, and spirits, for angels to stand guard around them, for the enemy to be bound up, I’ve changed their diets, I’ve changed their sleep schedules, I’ve changed their accessibility to electronics and screen time. And nothing really seems to be helping.
I honestly shouldn’t even be awake writing this out, because I really need to be catching up on sleep... but I’ve learned that when God presses something on my heart. I better sit down and write it out, no matter how inconvenient the timing feels. Because I probably won’t remember, or find more time for it.
So, this is what I’m doing. And this is why I share. I hope it helps someone. And I hope whoever you are, you know that you’re loved. And you can make it. Don’t give up.
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A big thank you to Cassie for sharing her story.
Although I am proponent for counseling for those who want it, I do believe that God is our ultimate counselor- and that He can guide us through pain and heal us in ways that no human could. The verse that is brought to mind is Isaiah 9:6 where the prophecy of Jesus is so clearly laid out with just a few of His wonderful names -
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
While human counselors can be great and so helpful at walking us through trauma and healing, to know that I have the ultimate counselor and the creator of peace at my side at all times comes at a great comfort. Although I’m not dealing with the same kind of spiritual warfare that she is with the whole sleep debacle, I am also fighting my own battles right now and it’s honestly comforting knowing that I’m not alone in that. I would assume most of ya’ll could probably agree. It’s when I’m tearing down those layers, figuring out how to process and letting God heal me from the inside out that I deal with the worst of it. Evil will do whatever it can to keep us from healing and growing closer to God. Be so aware of that and make sure that you arm yourself with prayer, scripture and a community who can help walk with you as you heal and battle whatever is thrown at you in the process.
Again, thank you to Cassie for sharing her testimony, I hope that you were encouraged in some way- even if it was just to know that you’re not alone in the hardship that is healing yourself while raising young children.
Thank you for listening in this week, I encourage you to keep coming back for more encouragement and to find solidarity in our shared experiences. If you’d like to share your own story, I would love to have you on. Just shoot me a message on Instagram - @riley_quin or send me an email- riley@rileyq.com and we’ll talk!
Don’t forget to share this with a woman who you want to encourage today, share this on Facebook @solidaritypodcast or Instagram @riley_quin and tag me so we can get the word out on social media and if you’re feeling it, subscribe and leave a review to help get it out to others on the algorithm who need to be shown some solidarity! Thanks again for listening and be sure to check back next Wednesday for a new episode!
As always, I’m so glad you’re here.
You’re wanted, needed and loved.
I see you, I hear you and you my love, by the grace of God, you are enough.