Break the Chains: Heal Emotional Wounds & Rebuild Confidence

Welcome to our first lesson.

Here we are talking about what abuse really looks like.

Let me set something out upfront – something very important.

Abuse is not always loud.

Most of the time, it is quiet… subtle… disguised as love, protection, culture, or responsibility.

Bruises heal. However, words, conditioning, and emotional wounds often do not — unless we consciously do the necessary work to heal them.

I was intensely abused as a child. And it started right at the bed I was delivered on.

My mom said she had screamed and screamed for help knowing that her baby was already coming through. But nobody came to her rescue. The nurses and midwives had all gone off to sleep or to hangout with their lovers. She was on her own. So, she kept doing everything she could to keep her baby in her body. To slow down the rapid downward journey to earth her baby had embarked upon. Mom was afraid not only for herself, but also for her baby because she knew things could go wrong very quickly if she made the wrong move or timed her actions wrongly.

Mom said she got tired of waiting for help to come, so she braced herself and began the process of delivering herself of her baby all by herself. She said it was the worst torture ever. She said she was doing her best to get me out of her body whilst also taking care not to suffocate me in the process.

So, when she pushed and pushed and I wouldn’t pop out, she pulled me back to allow both of us to catch our breaths. Then she would go again. She said she eventually took a crazy position where she was trying as a last resort to pushing me out whilst pulling me by the head simultaneously when the midwife walked into the labor room.

Mom said that rather than jump in with praise and help her birth her baby, the woman began to scold and beat her up for being so impatient and for trying to kill her baby by pulling her out by the head all by herself. Mom said she was in a daze. She was confused and hurt by the attack, but too exhausted from the numerous attempts to get me out of her body all by herself to focus any attention on the screaming midwife or any of the others who had by then gathered to jeer at her for being so crazy.

Mom said she kept her mind on her prayers to God. She kept begging God to keep her baby alive and healthy. Mom said she heard directly from God that day that her baby would be fine. That her baby would go on to do great things for humanity.

Mom said she birthed a baby girl who weighed 4.5kg amidst serious scolding and screaming and shouting at her for doing what she considered best for herself and her baby in the strange circumstances she found herself. To top it all, mom’s baby girl arrived earth smiling instead of crying. Mom said the lead midwife and other nurses who eventually gathered to help the crazy woman who was attempting to pull her baby by the head out of her body were mortified when they cut the baby’s umbilical cord, but she would not cry. Instead, she seemed like she was smiling or maybe even sneering at them.

Mom said the head midwife was so infuriated she pinched and beat me up so hard, I belched the loudest scream any baby had possibly ever let out on her first day on earth. But that scream was all she needed to finally let herself fall into one of the deepest sleeps she had ever known till date. She was so relieved and so grateful because the quality of my howling assured her that we had both survived that ordeal. Her baby girl was fine. So, she drifted into a very long and well-deserved sleep.

In this course, I will go really deep with you. I will be raw and real. I will let you see the deep scars I carry, and I will show you how you can conquer too. I will teach you every technique I know or used to get me through a life filled to the utmost with good people who behaved very badly. Traumatic experiences that left wounds and deep scars. Attempts to find justice that were turned against me. Broken justice systems that favor people who do really bad things to helpless people and how to navigate these experiences.

I will show you how I turned a lot of the traumatic experiences that came my way to gifts. Gifts I eventually used to create a life of bliss, love, and peace. I guarantee that you can do the same for yourself too provided you are open to learning how. You will go on to create your own life of bliss and freedom following this course.

So, stay with me.

Abuse is not just the slaps, the strike from the Koboko (this is a whip made of cow or horse hide most commonly used for discipline and punishment in Africa), the screaming, threats, or physical violence.

Abuse can be silent. It can be invisible. It can be polite. And it can even look like love.

Abuse could take the form of the parent who withholds affection to enforce obedience.

The partner who controls all the money with the excuse that it is to keep you safe.

The friend or spouse who gaslights you until you doubt your own reality.

Abuse is not necessarily defined all the time by violence — it is actually defined more by control. So, where there is control, fear, disrespect, power imbalance, and manipulation — there is abuse.

To my mind, and please take the things I share in this course as stemming predominantly from my personal experiences – there are 6 Major Types of Abuse

1. Emotional Abuse – this would usually take the form of doing or saying things to undermine your confidence. Could come as name-calling, humiliation, or sarcasm that is meant to wound.

2. Psychological Abuse - this is the manipulation of your perception. Can take the form of gaslighting you, taunting you, and blame-shifting.

3. Physical Abuse – this is actual harm or threat of harm to your body. Can take the form of hitting you, beating you up, stabbing you, dragging you, pushing you, blocking exits, or throwing things at you.

4. Financial Abuse – this happens when your abuser takes or uses the money in your relationship to control you. They limit your access to money – making you ask for basics as a means of controlling you.

5. Sexual Abuse - this is the violation of your body or taking away your bodily autonomy by engaging in any form of sexual activity with you without your consent. It could take the form of coercion into sex, using sex as punishment, or forced intimacy.

6. Spiritual or Cultural Abuse – this happens when someone uses faith or tradition to justify the harm they do to you. For example; you could be told that God hates divorce to keep you in your marriage, or that A woman must submit to normalise the abuse you’re enduring in your relationships, or that you must endure for family’s sake to make it okay to deprive you of your rights and dignity.

We will mainly unpack emotional and psychological abuse in this quest because these are the most common form of abuse and the hardest to see.

Why?

There are: No scars. No police report. No evidence. But the damage to the soul is profound. These kinds of abuse come in the strangest ways.

For example, they can take the form of:

Silent treatment

Withholding love as punishment

Dismissal of feelings

Making you feel like you are being too sensitive. Telling you things like, i didn’t mean it like that, you’re overreacting, or you are too emotional, or calm down, you’re taking it too seriously etc.

This happened in my most recent dating experience. I had known James for more than 10 years, but we weren’t lovers. But I vaguely remember an encounter with him after a night out at one of the night clubs he managed at the time. I wasn’t interested in sex with him at the time mainly because he was working for my friend’s family. Plus, he was married to one of my biggest admirers, so I did not want to get involved with him.

I however vaguely remember feeling so sorry for leading him on that night he had followed me home that I tried to make it good by helping him reach orgasm without going as far as engaging in penetrative sex with him. I can’t remember the full details as my mind clearly blocked most of the experience from my consciousness, but something definitely happened between us that night that infuriated me enough to walk him out of my apartment. I also remember holding grudges against him for many years but till this very moment, I am unclear about what led to all that.

Fast forward to today, he reaches out to me, divorced more than 7 years and looking to hangout. We started talking and it felt like he had matured a lot over the 10 years or so years that I last saw or spoke to him. I agreed to see him and eventually agreed to a relationship.

Lo an behold, within a few days of agreeing to date him, he started to push back in ways that almost felt like I was begging to be his woman. He knew I was big on keeping in touch and carrying each other along as we navigate our days. Yet, he would refuse to keep in touch. He would even promise to call but not call or take my calls. He would borrow money from me and not pay it back at the due date or even in full. He would invite me to meet his family, but change his mind the minute I got to their house he’d even tell me to drive back the entire 4 hours without a care about how it made me feel. He would get overly sensitive when I asked questions around dating powerful and successful women for money or other material benefits and when I asked questions that bothered on his true identity.

My high-level questions didn’t get me the simple and straight forward answers I expected or deserved. Rather, James would criticize me for being too sensitive, too emotional, too clingy and the likes.

And things progressively got worse.

To the point where he refused to call or react to my messages for several days only to tell me when he eventually got back in touch that he had been travelling and didn’t feel like talking to me during his trip.

I suddenly realised he was grooming me. And I thought, AGAIN? Of course, I ended the relationship immediately.

We had been less than a month together, so James came in at very high velocity, and I was already going in very deep from without initially realising it.

Fortunately, I have had years of experience with abusive men, so I know the signs. And these days, I am not afraid to take immediate action. And I hope you will be equipped to do same by the end of this program.

James applied high level psychological, emotional and financial abuse from the moment he felt he had me where he wanted me. I didn’t put things together quickly, however once I did, I got out of the entanglement fast.

Why? Because I know the signs.

And I am here to teach you the signs so you can recognise them quicker and act a lot sooner. Nipping the abuse in the bud at the grooming phase significantly reduces the period of suffering – if at all there is any.

Let me share some of the what I call the core weapons of emotional and psychological abusers.

The first one is Gaslighting – this is when someone makes you doubt your own reality, memory, or sanity. They will tell you things like i never said that., even when you have a clear recording of their voice saying that thing to you. They tell you You’re imagining things., they ask rhetorical questions like Why are you so dramatic? and say things like Everyone knows you’re the problem. To you just to make you question your own mind. James did a lot of this to me in the one month old relationship.

They create confusion in your mind which in turn creates dependence and that dependence keeps you trapped. James had me in no time. I believed I was being overly sensitive and irrational, and I started craving his calls. I would literally jump for joy at the ring of the special ringtone I installed on my phone to alert me of his calls – even as call after call, I felt more and more like he was an alien to me. It didn’t matter. He had me where he wanted me.

The other thing to note is that your abusers disguise control as care. James repeatedly told me that my success did not make me the boss at home. He made sure to always remind me that I could be Madam President to the rest of the world, but in our home, he was in charge and I just had to obey him. He would then go ahead to give me to do lists and instructions to carry out, and crazy as it sounds today, I was usually quite happy to go ahead and do exactly as I was told.

This strange relationship reminded me of events in my childhood and previous marriages – especially the one with my first ex-husband Frank. He had a mantra he had me learn and repeat to him ever so often which was “Trust is Good, but Control is Better”.

And reflecting on that mantra as I set this down for you, I realised a few key factors:

1. Control lives in the same room with love.

2. Affection could be withheld by your abusers to punish you.

3. Your abusers would make you do the impossible to earn attention.

4. Your abusers would convince you that you must perform to be seen.

And those ideas would shaped how you love and the types of partners you attract until you break the chains.

My point is, your abusers often don’t break you — however, they train you to break yourself.

Your abusers are not out of control. They are very much in control — of you.

So, they choose when to be gentle. When to be loving. When to hurt you.

And they make you think it was anger or hurt from something you did or said. But that is the big lie. Because if it was anger, they would treat everyone that way. But they don’t. They save it for you.

Why?

Because they know you will stay.

I stayed – and I stayed a very long time with one of my biggest abusers ever – my second ex-husband – Ebele. I will delve into some of those experiences in the coming chapters.

For now, just remember that abuse is like a slow erosion. It doesn’t usually start with violence – not in my experience or the experiences of many others I have coached or helped out of abusive relationships.

Abuse often starts with love, admiration, attention, praise, and intensity.

Then slowly but steadily, isolation begins, self-doubt is embedded in your nervous system, control begins, and by the time the abuse is visible, you are already emotionally trapped.

And to end this first lesson I would like to leave you with one thought – it is not all in your head.

And I tell you – No one falls in love with an abuser.

We all fall in love with the mask they wear.

Wait a moment for your soul task and I will see you in the next lesson.

Soul task 1:

I want to ask you something. And I want you to answer with complete honesty.

When was the first time you noticed that something didn’t feel right?

I am not asking you for when it became unbearable.

The first time.

Yeah

Your body always knew.

This course is about helping your mind catch up to what your soul has been whispering all along.

So my darling,

There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing weak about you. You didn’t deserve the pain. But you do deserve the healing.

And now — we begin.

Your first soul task is to do a dump.

I want you to pick up a plain sheet of paper use multiple pages if you need to.

I want you to begin to pour your heart out in that sheet of paper. Be raw, be real. Write out everything that hurts and everyone who contributed to the events gave you the bad feelings. Write out all the warning signs you ignored. Beat yourself up if you must. Just let it all out. No filters.

And when you are all done emptying yourself, tell yourself  I forgive myself for allowing this to be my story 5 times, then tear and burn the entire write up.

See you in the next lesson

In this lesson, I will show you that abuse is never about love. Instead, it is always about power.

My father didn’t want me because I came out a baby girl. He had wished for and expected a baby boy. So, from day one, he did everything within his power to show me that I was worthless. He made me feel like he absolutely detested me, and nothing I did was ever good enough.

I simply could not impress him.

I could not convince him that I was worthy of his love. And God help me, I tried.

I was the best in class, the best dancer, the best in debate, I came first at the end of each school year. I made money, paid his bills, and took care of his responsibilities from age 14 – but I was still not good enough. It was so bad that he threw me out of his house at age 14. Yet, I continued to look for ways to please and impress him. I continued to check in on him regularly, pay his bills, look after his responsibilities to my siblings and others. Skipped multiple forms and went to University whilst my elder sister, mates, and seniors were still in secondary school – yet, dad wouldn’t notice or care – I was born a girl.

He starved me, beat me up until he burst my skin and sometimes even my head. Then he’d sit around and watch me bleed until I lost consciousness. And he would make sure the blood remained nearby so I could see how much blood I lost whenever I regained consciousness. It was a vicious circle which continued until he threw me out.

I never understood why my dad did the absurd things he did to me – and till this very day, I still don’t get it. Yet, I know from my childhood experiences and subsequent experiences with my spouses, lovers, friends, clients, and many others I have so far interacted with, that abuse is not always loud – in fact, outside of Africa and maybe other developing countries, abuse is not usually anything like what I had to deal with growing up. Abuse in the more advance countries is mostly subtle – very nuanced.

Yet, abusers across the continents and cultures have something in common. They don’t control your body first — they control your mind and emotions first. And once they have that, everything else naturally follows.

Most abusers don’t start off abusive.

They start off charming. Attentive. Loving. Present.

They study you.

Not to love you — but to learn your needs, your wounds, and your hopes. This was definitely how my second husband got me and got me good.

I had lost all my life’s earnings in a transaction that went really badly in the UAE. I returned to Nigeria a broken soul. Desperate. Wounded. Confused. And even somewhat ready to give up on life completely. I felt like a total failure. I knew I should have known better because the signs were there that the transactions were shady, and they were glaring. But I ignored the warning signs and went in headfirst.

Anyway, I met Ebele that period and he quickly learned my love language. And he spoke it distinctly. It was a psychological warfare that I had no inkling began on day one.

He was strategic and very intentional.

He watched me, he paid attention, he learned very quickly about what makes me smile. What makes me soften. What makes me afraid. What would make me stay. And he used these downloads mercilessly.

Not all at once of course, but slowly. So, slowly that I was already married and expecting my first baby with him before I realised what was happening. And by then, I felt like I couldn’t leave him. I felt like I had to stay. For my and my baby’s sake. I had to stay because I couldn’t fail in marriage a second time. Because I couldn’t raise my kids all alone…I found many excuses to justify staying, so I stayed. I stayed until it was no longer one but four babies who each contributed to making my universe unbelievably peaceful. The babies contributed to fuelling me to endure many more extreme traumatic experiences with Ebele until it was clear that I had to choose between living well and dying slowly. And only then, could I summon up the courage to eventually pack it up for good. More of those stories later.

The main point here is that your abusers create emotional dependency. They make you feel like they understand you better than anyone.

Like you are safe with them. Like you have finally found real love.

So, your nervous system relaxes. Your heart opens. You commit, and you attach.

This attachment is the psychological glue. It is an attachment that forms because you care. And because you care, they know you’ll try to make it work. They have gained power over you. They have bonded with you. This is called a trauma bond – a type of emotional attachment that forms under high stress situations entwined with what looks like affection.

Most abuse doesn’t start with pain. It starts with love. With attention, affection, promises, and intensity. You feel seen. Chosen. Special. Then slowly… the shift begins. Not all at once. Just little things. A tone. A comment. A look. Something in your body says, This doesn’t feel right. But the mind goes, Maybe I’m overreacting. They love me. They didn’t mean it that way.

Your abusers don’t take your power by force. They take it slowly — piece by piece. Until one day, you look up… and you can’t recognize yourself anymore.

And when they have power over you, they slowly introduce control. Not necessarily by yelling at you as we are used to in Africa, but by questioning your decisions. They make you explain yourself all the time. They make you feel guilty for wanting your own life. They use your love for them against you.

They don’t want love with you, they want control. Because if it was love they were after, they would care about your joy. They would listen to you. They would make sure that you feel safe with them.

But what they want is to control you. They want to have you walking on eggshells; explaining yourself over and over; shrinking so they can shine or so they don’t get upset; losing your voice so peace can reign.

There’s a reason it feels hard to explain what happened to you. And part of it is that abuse is confusing. Abusers are sweet, then cold. Kind, then cruel. Loving, then distant. So, your heart keeps waiting for the nice version to return. And that is how they keep you. Not with force. Instead, they keep you with hope.

They know that love expands you and that control shrinks you. So, they choose control over you.

Remember one thing though, they know that they don’t need to break you. They just need to make you doubt yourself. And they focus mainly on that. This is because once you doubt yourself, you stop trusting your own mind.

And once you stop trusting your mind, you start trusting theirs.

That is the psychology. The power play.

Finally, the fear factor comes in. And it comes last for a reason.

Many people think abuse starts with fear, but in truth, introducing fear is the final stage.

Fear comes after they have introduced the confusion, self-doubt, loneliness, and after emotional exhaustion has set it. This is why at this stage, you hope that things will go back to how they were at the beginning or even get better.

Fear is what keeps you in place and love is what kept you there long enough for fear to grow.

Ebele introduced fear by becoming extremely violent. When he couldn’t beat me up to pulp, he would pull a long sharp knife and threaten to cut my bulging pregnant tummy open in the middle of the night. I would literally get so scared that I would be willing to do anything. I would promise and sign any amount he writes on a cheque and asked my signature for. Fear becomes the chain.

And fear is not always loud. Sometimes it is quiet. These are when your are afraid of making them angry, of being alone, of starting all over, of them not believing you. When you’re afraid of being judged, when you fear the feeling that you failed. So you stay.

Not because you are weak…

But because you are human.

Because you were trying to love.

Trying to make it work.

Trying to be “good enough.

But guess what, You were already enough and you have always been.

You were enough before they touched you.

Before they spoke your name.

Before any of it began.

And the heartbreaking truth is that you didn’t stay because you are weak. Like me, you stayed because you’re loving. Because you believed in the good you saw at the start.

And that’s what makes you powerful —not foolish.

You were not chosen because you were weak. You were chosen because you were strong…

Because you have a big heart.

Because you know how to love deeply.

Because you are very generous.

Your abuser used your best qualities against you.

But that ends here!

Now that you are beginning to see the pattern, you can choose to break that pattern.

And I will walk with you as you do.

In the next lesson, we’ll talk about the cycle —

why it feels so hard to leave,

why you go back,

and how they keep pulling you in.

This is where everything starts to make sense. So stay tuned.

Soul Task 2:

First of all, I want you to take three deep breaths.

Good.

I want you to know that:

You’re not stupid.

You’re not weak.

You didn’t allow any of it.

You were emotionally invested.

And that is not a flaw — it is your capacity to love.

And we are not here to kill that.

We are here to protect it.

So, smile and repeat after me:

I am not alone.

I am not trapped.

I don’t need to figure everything out today.

I just need to recognize what’s happening.

And now that I can see the pattern, I have the power to break the pattern.

Take 3 deep breaths.

Good.

We’re just getting started.

We will talk about how to get your power back. And I’ll walk with you, step by step.

See you at the next lesson

You didn’t stay because you were weak.

You stayed because the relationship was designed to hook your heart and confuse your mind.

Let’s talk about the cycle.

Because if you understand this, everything finally makes sense.

The guilt goes, the shame goes, and the why did I stay? finally releases.

So, I have been through so many abusive relationships that I can say from experience that abuse follows the same pattern in romantic relationships almost every time. There are similarities in parental and other forms of relationships, but things are fairly constant when it comes to abusive romantic or intimate unions. And it is not because we are predictable. Rather, it is because the strategy is predictable.

So, let’s dive in.

The first stage in what I would call the love bomb. This is usually the beginning. Here there is magic. Connection. There’s passion. So, you feel seen, cherished, wanted, chosen.

The abuser studies you. They don’t love you — but they work on and learn how to attach you to them. This stage is real for you, but it is a bait for them.

In my relationship with Ebele, these were the times soon after we met that he would call me up and talk with me from midnight until the next morning. He would send me recharge cards so I had credit to call people I need to reorganise my business and personal life. He’s meet me up wherever I set in an instant – provided I handed in the necessary funding for the trip as he couldn’t afford to pay his way to see me outside of his town i.e. Awka in Anambra State, Nigeria. He wrote and spoke words to me which made me feel seen, heard, cherished, loved, wanted, chosen. I felt like life without him would be miserable.

The second stage is where the shift happens. They change something small. They become rude or make dismissive comments. There’s a moment of coldness of a tiny withdrawal of affection.

You feel it. Your belly tightens. Your heart sinks. But it’s so small, you make excuses on their behalf. You tell yourself: Maybe it’s just stress. Maybe I’m overthinking.

But no my friend. Your body was telling you the truth. But you were too deep to ponder those pangs deeply enough to begin the journey back to yourself.

I quickly noticed when James moved up this ladder with me. He made rude comments about my spiritual preferences. He became cold and distant. He wouldn’t answer my questions anymore – no matter how innocuous. He was suddenly always busy and when he travelled, he blamed it on the stress he was facing in the new location. Yet, I initially thought I was indeed being irrational and overthinking things.

Today, I am so grateful that I noticed the danger in that relationship rather quickly and broke away from it. And I hope to help you sharpen your skills at detecting abusers so you will be able to put things together quickly and take speedy action.

Then comes the 3rd stage, the confusion

This is psychological.

At this stage they are sweet, then distant. Kind, then sharp. Loving, then cold. One day you are everything to them. The next day you feel invisible. This inconsistency is the hook. Your nervous system keeps waiting for the love from the beginning to return. And every time you get even a little bit of that love back…it feels like relief.

This is the emotional addiction. Not to the person — but to the relief after the pain.

This was the experience for me in the 5 week stint I had with Bayo in May 2025. He had been exceptionally sweet to me at first. In fact, had he asked my hand in marriage within the first 2 weeks of our relationship, it would have been a resounding YES because he was simple awesome at first. He spent all his spare time with me. Called me frequently, went everywhere with me, introduced me to all his friends, confided his deepest fears and secrets to me, let me into every nook and cranny of his space both physically and emotionally. The connection felt so real.

So, when he turned and started inviting random girls and chasing me away each time they called, inviting his ex-girlfriend and making her the boss over me, asking me to go speak to other women he wanted to have sexual relations with, and getting cold and distant when I refused. Holding back on intimate activities that had become quite the norm for both of us – I realised that I had become addicted to the infrequent signs of affection. His withdrawals became more frequent and things eventually escalated when he took my money. At that point, I knew this was bad for me, and I began the extremely difficult journey back to myself.

The next stage is the apology or excuse stage. At this point, you may have gotten fed up and left. They come after you and they convince you that they’re still in love with you. You however don’t notice that in all the things they said and did to get you back, they did not take responsibility at all.

They allowed everything to be your fault – they may even gaslight you as they say things they say whilst you select to hear the ones that fit your interest. So when they say, You know I love you, you miss the fact that they have actually not said I love you they simply read your mind to you – they put you in a trance. And when they say, You misunderstood me, you don’t seek clarifications, you just take the blame that you did misunderstand them. When they tell you You’re too sensitive, you take it as fact. When they say I didn’t mean it like that you don’t ask how they meant it. You just soak it all up and make them mean whatever feels good so you can go back to the bits of the affair that initially felt good.

You do not notice that they never take responsibility. They just reset the cycle. And because you are loving…you forgive. You hope. You try again - and again.

You say to yourself: Maybe this time things will be different. You go back to them. And the cycle restarts.

And the final stage is the hook – the most powerful part of the game.

Now, understand that the hook is not the abuse. It is the memory of how good it was at the beginning. That is what keeps you returning. So, you’re not holding onto the relationship you have now, instead, you’re holding onto the relationship you were promised.

This was how come my first ex-husband Frank could hold 21 years old me unto a five years marriage where I wasn’t allowed to study, work, or have kids. I held on with all of me because that wasn’t the promise at the time we started our love journey online. And it wasn’t the agreement we entered before I said I Do!!! But that was what he was demanding and he was not budging. And when I chose to do things differently, he threw me out of his house in the middle of the night. The shocking thing was that, I didn’t leave. I couldn't leave. Though he came back begging shortly after, he actually threw me out of his house. And this was very similar to how the end started with my second husband Ebele – he packed up his bags and left. Went back to my village and collected back his dowry from my father – then turned around and came begging to return to the relationship.

In both cases, they expected me to come begging. They assumed that their hook was a lasting spell on me, so I couldn’t live without them. Well, fortunately, I wasn’t financially dependent on any of them – on the contrary – Ebele was fully dependent on me, so there was nothing to go back to. It sure took some doing, but I finally cut the cords with all these men for good. And by now, you can see that you can do it too if you still haven’t.

By now, you know that the promise is the chain.

So, you didn’t stay because you were weak. You stayed because you loved. Because you believed that the good moments you shared were the truth. But in reality, the good moments were the lies. The mask. And the pain was the truth.

And now that you can see it…you’re already breaking free from it.

In our next lesson, we’re going to talk about the first step of leaving an abusive dynamic — even if you’re not ready to walk away yet.

The process starts inside you. And I’ll guide you gently through the process of finding and defining your situation properly.

Soul task 3:

So, your soul task today is to do some journaling.

Pick up your journal, and ask yourself:

Where do I still feel chained?

And write out everything that comes to mind about your current and past abusive relationships. Write about how significant events you remember made you feel. No suppression, no judgement – just dump it all in your journal.

We will talk about how to break away from the chains in the next lesson.

See you soon.

There is a lie society loves to tell — that people who stay in abusive relationships are weak. That they lack courage. That they don’t know better. That they chose it.

But the truth is this:

Strong people stay. Loyal people stay. People who know how to love with their whole body and soul stay.

And they stay, not because they enjoy pain and not because they are blind. They stay because they remember the beginning.

They stay because the beginning was where the bond was formed — the warmth, the tenderness, the attention, the feeling of being chosen.

Today’s abuser does not start with harm. They start with care, with fascination, with promises, with intensity. They learn you — your hopes, your insecurities, your wounds, your softness. They learn what you have wanted all your life.

And they become it.

Not because it is who they are, but because it is what will open the door to your soul.

This is why the bond feels so unbreakable — you are not attached to who they are after the abuse started. You are attached to the version of them that held you like home. The version you believed was real. The version you promised to love forever.

Your heart is not foolish for holding onto that memory. Your heart was simply reaching for love the way all hearts do. What makes this bond even stronger is what happens next. The love does not vanish all at once….not even with abusers who use extreme physical violence like I endured with Ebele. The love fades and returns, fades and returns. You keep telling yourself it is over, but your actions show that it is not really over.

This is how the nervous system learns to fear and hope at the same time. And when love and fear exist in the same space, the body becomes confused. It begins to crave the return of the “good moment” — the relief after the tension.

This relief becomes the addiction.

This is why it feels like you cannot leave. Moreso if you are legally married, doing business together or have biological children together. You stay, not because you do not see the harm to you and your children if you have any, but because your soul is waiting for the moment where everything feels okay again.

You are not addicted to the person. You are addicted to the feeling of not hurting anymore.

So, how do you break a bond like this?

You do not tear it apart.

You do not shame yourself out of it.

You do not demand instant strength.

You break it by seeing clearly. By learning to tell the difference between love and attachment. By learning the difference between safety and relief. By learning to differentiate between consistency and hope.

Breaking the bond begins with telling yourself the truth. And some of these truths are:

Love does not ask you to shrink.

Love does not make you disappear.

Love does not twist your voice into silence.

Love feels effortless.

One of my clients Isabelle once shared her experience of abuse with her long term lover who had been married all through their relationship, but kept promising her that he was on the verge of divorcing his wife. She loved him so much because when they set out, he spoiled her. He took her to exclusive restaurants to eat and the best night clubs to dance. He rented a penthouse apartment for her, showered her with expensive gifts and took her on mind-blowing holidays. He even supported her in rising at her corporate job. Made calls that had her on leadership trainings that eventually led to higher promotions for her. She was in heaven.

This was her perspective for more than three years. Isabelle believed the story that her boyfriend was in a divorce proceeding even as she had discovered that her man was expecting a new baby with the same wife. Her man didn’t tell her, one of his close friends did. But Isabelle was far too attached to disconnect and move on with her life. She had become so dependent that when her man makes her carry his food on her back for him to eat from her back, she called it romantic role play. When he put a leash on her neck and made her crawl around the house on all fours behind him, she said it was just couple’s fun. When he cut her, clamped her nipples so right that they were sore for weeks, and spanked her that her skin tore, she said it was a normal occurrence in BDSM sessions. Isabelle hated all of it, yet she was hopelessly attached to the man he was in the beginning and the hope that that man would miraculously come back to life, marry her, and escape with her to wonderland.

We started slowly but steadily unpacking her story, and how her experiences made her feel. We worked on her worldview until she saw that no amount of material benefits equated with her self-worth. Yet, Isabelle was scared and that fear kept her hung unto the promises, the high maintenance lifestyle, the immense support to her career and welfare.

But she eventually got there. She eventually faced her truth. She was no longer happy to give up herself for the illusion of comfort she had with this man. She was no longer accepting to be a living corpse when she had a choice to live a life of liberation.

And fortunately for Isabelle, she had taken my advice and began to gather detailed evidence of the inhumane treatment she endured with this man. With the evidence to hand and a detailed report on the man’s financial standing, I was able to negotiate a healthy settlement for Isabelle. So, she got out of the relationship deeply wounded, but fully liberated. And today she is helping other women find they way back to themselves like she did.

So, breaking the bond begins with remembering who you were before you began to bend yourself into different shapes and sizes to be loved.

And you don’t have to do it all at once. There is no rush. Be gentle on yourself.

The bond loosens the moment your mind stops negotiating your pain.

Your healing begins the moment you whisper to yourself, this is not love. Not the kind of love I was born to receive.

From there, your body will begin to follow.

Slowly.

Softly.

Naturally.

Not through force — but through awakening.

So, if despite the evidence before you, you are still attached to your abuser…

If you still miss them when they leave…

And if you still feel pulled back by them

Don’t worry, you are not weak.

You are simply in the middle of the untangling.

And the untangling is a process.

Take one breath at a time.

Tell yourself one truth at a time.

Do one remembering at a time.

Because freedom does not begin with leaving. Rather, freedom begins with seeing.

And you are seeing now. And that’s enough.

That is the first step.

And it is already happening.

Soul Task 4

For your soul task today, I want you to do the attached quiz

Let us together unpack if this relation of yours in Abuse or Love.

Silence has a weight, not the quiet peaceful kind, but the heavy kind that lives in the throat and presses on the chest. Silence is what so many of us were taught to carry. We were told not to talk about family issues, not to embarrass the family, to endure, to forgive, and to move on because that's what good women do. We were raised into this. We were shaped into this, not because our mothers and grandmothers were weak, but because no one ever taught them to think another way. They survived what they could not speak, and they taught us to do exactly the same.

So when harm came, we went quiet. Not because we didn't feel it. Not because we didn't know it was wrong. But because we were raised to believe speaking the truth could destroy everything: the relationship, the family, the home, the reputation, the peace. So we protected everyone except ourselves.

I remember waking up in the middle of the night to Uncle Leo's fingers fondling my private parts and his heavy breath panting all over my face as he touched himself. I was shocked to the marrow. I screamed and got up from the floor where I had been lying next to his pot belly. My lap was wet with slippery, slimy matter, but that wasn't of concern to me at that time. I just needed to get away, but there was nowhere to go. It was 3 AM in the morning, so I couldn't go out of the house.

My siblings and cousins were scattered all over my parents' living room: on the chairs, the floors, the sofas. Everywhere was cramped and everyone was fast asleep. It was a tiny one-bedroom bungalow which housed twelve to fifteen people at each point in time, with the bedroom reserved only for my parents and sometimes them and their immediate siblings. But Uncle Leo visited quite frequently, even as he had to join us kids to sleep on the floor of the living room.

Uncle Leo just sat there in the dark, hands still fondling his penis as he glared at me. I stood by the door and said nothing. I wasn't scared, but I was angry. I couldn't fall back asleep for fear of Uncle Leo continuing from where he had stopped, so I stayed up, sat by the door until morning, and did not leave.

I tried to tell Mum before leaving for school that morning, but I couldn't find my voice. Plus, she was inattentive as it was usually quite busy at her restaurant pub early mornings. I kept quiet for a very long time and did a good job of avoiding being anywhere near Uncle Leo for as long as I could remember. Then he attempted to do it a bit more forcefully when I was about eleven years old. I fought him off. I told Dad about it in the morning.

Lo and behold, I ended up getting one of the craziest beatings of my life for lying against Uncle Leo,  a most dignified friend who has become a member of the family, said Dad. He mercilessly flogged me with his koboko. I was mortified. My parents believed a pedophile over me, so they were not going to confront him with my accusation. My parents chose to protect a pedophile's reputation over my well-being. It hurt so badly.

Years later, my sisters confirmed that they had undergone the same experience with that man. In fact, one of my sisters opened up to tell me recently that she had endured so much assault under our parents noses that it was no wonder she had troubles in her relationships at that time.

I was pained. I relived the years of silently suffering while running away from further assaults from that man, then the guilt and the shame I felt due to the crazy beatings I received from my father when I eventually told him what had happened to me.

My pain was different from those of my sisters. They had kept quiet because they didn't want the shame of being the little girls who had been assaulted by their dad's friend. They didn't think my parents would believe them, and they had been right. Our parents were surely more invested in protecting the pot-bellied pedophile than they had been in protecting us, their children. So my sisters suffered in silence, and I carried the shame, the pain, and the guilt of the one who spoke up, who got beaten for lying.

The impact for one of my sisters went far deeper than it did for the rest of us. For her, getting assaulted in that way became normal. It became a normal way of expressing affection in her view, so she permitted it and even looked forward to it whenever she helped Mum serve customers in her restaurant pub. The men who flooded the corner shop came also because there was a little girl there who did not mind being touched in her genitals.

That was the cost of my sister's silence: years of abuse with no opportunity for succor. I don't know which experience was worse: my sisters who kept quiet because of what society dictated, or me who spoke up but got beaten for doing so.

But I do know something for sure: silence does something dangerous. Silence protects the abuser and isolates the victim. When you cannot speak what is happening to you, you begin to think you are the problem. You begin to believe you are too emotional, too sensitive, too dramatic, hard to love. And you begin to explain the behavior of your abuser and apologize for yours.

This is how silence becomes a cage. You start defending what is destroying you. Silence is the oxygen that allows abuse to breathe and grow. Abusers count on secrecy. They count on your shame. They count on the fact that you don't want people to think badly of you. They count on the fear of judgment. They count on the cultural conditioning that taught you to endure. Their power is not in what they do. Their power is in what you are afraid to say.

Please hear this: speaking your truth is not betrayal. It is liberation. You do not have to tell everyone. You do not have to make an announcement. You do not have to justify anything.

Breaking your silence is not about exposing them to the world. Breaking your silence is first about telling yourself the truth. Just tell yourself what happened and tell yourself how it hurt you, and then remind yourself that you did not deserve it. That is the first voice of freedom. That is when the shame cracks, the fog clears, the confusion loosens, because shame cannot survive when it is spoken. It dissolves in light.

So breaking your silence is healing, and you could start by simply writing it in your journal, saying one sentence to a trusted friend, talking to a therapist, or simply whispering the truth to yourself in the mirror. The volume doesn't matter, but the courage does. Silence is the cage, and your voice is the key. You were never meant to suffer quietly, so your pain is not something to hide. It is something to heal, and the healing begins when you breathe life into the truth.

You do not owe anyone your silence, at least not anymore. So let it out. Speak out. Clear your throat and speak up. When you speak, even just a little, your voice returns, your identity returns, and your power begins to rise again.

Soul Task

For your soul task today, I want you to journal about every time you kept quiet. Tell yourself everything you wish you had told someone. No holding back. Pour it all out, and I'll see you in the next lesson.

There are some pains that do not have language at first. They live inside our body: in the tightness of the chest, in the shaking of the hands, and the way your smile doesn't quite reach your eyes anymore. When we don't have words for what happened to us, the pain becomes shapeless. And when pain has no name, it becomes everything.

It leaks into our destiny. It sits in our bones. It becomes who we are. This lesson is about undoing all of that. In this lesson, we will give shape to what happened to us so that it can finally leave our bodies.

Why does naming the pain matter? The thing is, the moment you give your pain language, it stops being a fog and becomes something you can see clearly and release. And what you can see, you can understand. What you understand, you can heal. And what you heal no longer controls you. Naming the pain is not to relive it. It is to release it.

So many of us carry shame that does not belong to us: shame that was passed down, shame that was taught, shame that was projected onto us by someone who did not know how to love us. Shame says, Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I could have prevented it. Maybe I should have left sooner. Maybe I should have been stronger. But shame is a liar. Shame is not truth. Shame is the voice of the abuser living inside of you. And today we begin the eviction.

We begin the eviction by naming the pain. We will not label people here. We will label behaviors. So when we say that was manipulation, that was disrespect, that was neglect, that was cruelty, that was abuse, we are not attacking anyone. We are just naming what happened to us. We are acknowledging. We are telling the truth without drama, without exaggeration, without performance. Just the plain truth.

Because truth is dignity. Truth is clarity. Truth is self-respect measured in language. Truth is when you say to yourself, Something happened to me. It affected me. I have a right to name it. And you go on and you name it. Truth is when you say to yourself, I am not ashamed of my story. I am not responsible for their behavior. What I feel is real. What I remember is valid. I do not need permission to tell my truth.

Language is freedom. There is no healing without honesty. And honesty does not always need to be loud or public. Sometimes, honesty is simply writing down what happened to you. Speaking to a mirror and telling the person in the mirror how you feel. Honesty is whispering the truth under your breath. Admitting to yourself that you were hurting and you hid it. This is where liberation begins: in the privacy of your own awareness. You don't have to tell the whole world. You just have to stop lying to yourself.

Your story does not make you weak. In fact, that you survived makes you powerful. The fact that you can name what happened to you makes you wise. The fact that you are still here makes you unstoppable.

I once had a client who sought to divorce his wife barely one month after they got married. They had enjoyed a very expensive destination wedding, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to celebrate their union. So it made no sense that he couldn't keep up after just a month of being married. Then he showed me the bruises all over his back, hands, shoulders, neck, even his face. But he covered up with long-sleeved halter-neck shirts and makeup: a new habit. Adam was constantly in deep pain.

His new wife was not the person he thought he knew. But his friends were always there. He just explained them away. And once he stopped explaining, clarity set in. And from there, he just knew he had to leave the marriage.

My message to you out there is: you are not broken. You are becoming. This is not the end of your story. This is the chapter where the truth returns to your mouth and shame finally learns it is no longer welcome.

So place your hand on your chest, feel your breath, and say softly, even if only in your mind: My truth is not a burden. My truth is my freedom. I am allowed to speak. I am allowed to heal. I am allowed to begin again.

Soul Task

Today, I want you to reframe the narrative. I want you to reset your nervous system through journaling. So take a full page of your journal and write This happened to me, not because of me as many times as you need to fill up the space. Please fill it up.

There comes a moment in every healing journey when the truth wants to be spoken. Not shouted, not broadcasted, just spoken: softly, heartily, honestly, and without performance. But speaking up is not about telling everyone. It is about telling the right person, in the right way, at the right time, so your truth is met with care, not harm. Your story is precious. It is not for careless hands. So let's talk about how to protect your heart while freeing your voice.

Who to Tell?

Much of this depends on your core nature. Some of us are so extroverted, we are happy to tell the whole world our story and how we handle the mess in our lives. I belong in this category, as you can tell. I used my mess in my life and how I navigated them and conquered them to teach or guide others through their own challenges. So as much as I may initially start with speaking with just one person, I tend to speak to a large crowd in the process of reconnecting with myself after a traumatic experience.

For example, I realized barely five weeks into the relationship that Bayo was abusing me and that I didn't want the abusive relationship with him anymore. I was also certain that I wanted the money he had taken from me back, even as he was adamant about not paying it back.

I was quite ashamed and highly disappointed in myself at first. So I was quite self-conscious about the whole experience. Initially, I could only talk to my coach, Teresa, about the experience. Then I worked on myself and released the shame from my nervous system. After that, I invited the entire community of friends and acquaintances at the local joint where Bayo and I had met, and I told them my story.

They brainstormed with me, and some of them became my thinking partners. The ones I had deeper friendships with became my emotional backbones, my venting lampposts to whom I could say it all the way it felt. Together, that community helped me figure out how to get my monies back from Bayo. I applied the strategies we set down, I took the steps we agreed, and within days, I had my money back from Bayo's account. Not because he paid it back willingly, no, but because the strategy the group came up with on how to approach the bank and what documentation to present to them worked. The bank drew the funds back from Bayo's account, and I could close the chapter with a huge sigh of relief.

So while some of us may be comfortable finding solace talking to the whole world, some of you may prefer to speak only to one person who can hold space for you, someone who can hold your confidence, and that is absolutely okay.

For the more introverted and shy ones amongst us, please be careful. Not everyone earns the right to hear your truth. Choose the persons you talk to consciously. The people you can talk to about your experience of abuse fall into three main categories:

Category 1: Safe People

These are people who listen without judging, who believe what you say or at least give you the benefit of the doubt. These people don't rush you. They don't tell you what you should or shouldn't do. They simply sit with you in your truth and let you vent. Safe people are rare in our intimate circles, but they exist. They could be family members or people in our social circles. So pay attention to uncover the safe people in your life. One safe person in your life is more than enough.

My favorite safe person is one of my coaches, Teresa. Our friendship is so sacred that I know I am always going to be safe with her. I tell her everything as it is brewing, knowing that she would listen without judgment. I spoke with her about my experiences with Bayo even before I took it to the communities around me for strategic advice and action steps. So figure out who the safe person is in your life, or who they are, and talk to him, her, or them.

Category 2: Neutral People

These are people who mean well but cannot hold the depth of your story like your safe people could. These people are not vested in you. However, they will not harm you or look on when someone else does. Yet, they will not go to war for you. Some of the people in my wider community count as my safe people, while others are in the neutral people space. The neutral people are not usually the people you open your heart to, but you can have them in your space for when their level of support could help you move from point A to point B.

My neutral people were very helpful when I tabled my frustration over Bayo's refusal to refund my money to the group.

Category 3: Unsafe People

These are people who minimize your pain, people who blame you, who defend the abuser, who ask you questions that confuse you when you confide your experiences in them. They ask you questions like "Are you sure? Could that be true?" They make it about themselves. You sometimes find these people among your family, social circles, or your workspace. With these types of people, your silence is wisdom. You already have enough confusion to handle, so you don't need these people near you as you navigate your path to liberation.

How to Tell

How you tell depends on the state you're at in the cycle of abuse and the degree of violence you're exposed to. It also depends on your personality: whether you choose to speak to one person, a group of people, a coach, a therapist, the police, a friend, a parent, or a sibling. Your voice does not need to be perfect. You do not need to be eloquent. You only need to be true to yourself.

Tell the person you choose to talk to what you need: to be heard, no judgment, no bias, no advice (at least in the beginning). All you need at first is for someone to just listen, and you can do this even if it's the police you choose to talk to because there is no safe person in your circle. Go to the police and have them assign someone to you that you can tell your story to.

In my experience of the police in the UK, Central Europe, USA, Canada, and a lot of these Western countries, you can actually have a domestic violence specialist accompany you through your experience and guide you on how to collect the evidence you need to bring your abuser to book, should you choose to do that.

When to Tell

You know you're ready when silence feels heavier than fear. When your heart whispers, I cannot hold this alone anymore. When you feel tired of blaming yourself. When you start wanting peace more than you want to make it look fine.

If you are not ready yet, that is okay too. There is no timeline for truth. Your voice will rise when your heart is safe. And if you realize that you don't want to talk to another person just yet, then talk to yourself. You can speak up in private, and you can do this by journaling too.

This is why I keep sending you back to the blank sheet of paper and to the journal. With your journal to hand, you can speak as loudly as you like, be as visible as you can be. You can write without editing, write without making sense, write like you're exhaling, and you can write until you feel empty. This teaches your body that it is safe to tell your truth.

One last thing: speaking up is not about confrontation. It is about coming out of hiding. It is saying, "I will not fade away to protect someone who harms me." Your story does not lose power when you speak. It gains shape. It gains structure. It becomes something you can work with instead of something working inside of you. You're not telling your story to break your world apart. You're telling your story so you can finally build a world worthy of you.

So please tell yourself: I do not have to hold this alone anymore. My voice is coming home to me, one truth at a time.

And when you do start to speak to people, please never, ever, ever teach from a wounded place. Do your healing first so you can teach from your scars. You cannot teach to save yourself. You teach to walk with others as they save themselves, just as I am here to walk with you as you save yourself.

Soul Task

Today, I want you to do mirror work. Just stand in front of your mirror, hold your right hand to your heart area, and say the following words to yourself: My voice is allowed here. My truth is welcome here. I am coming back to myself, one breath at a time, one word at a time, one truth at a time.

See you at the next lesson.