In this episode of Breaking the Cycle, I sit down with my brother for a project he created for one of his MBA assignments, and we talk about something we don't spend enough time on: education. We talk about what it was like to start school as a teenage mother, and what it actually took, years later, to finish as an adult while carrying everything that came before it. This one isn't about crisis or abuse. It's about the after, and about what it means when education becomes the thing that finally gives you your life back.

If you or someone you know needs support, please reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788.

⚠️ Content note: this episode contains descriptions of domestic violence and physical altercation.⚠️

In this episode, Alana Moore, a UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare graduate and survivor of fifteen years of intimate partner violence, shares the night of December 23rd, 2014, in full detail for the first time. She walks through the parking lot, a confrontation that ended her marriage and changed the course of her life, and connects her experience to research on coercive control and the cycle of violence. A

⚠️Content note: This episode includes descriptions of physical violence and is not intended to condone any of the actions described.⚠️

He told me I was dumb, worthless, and that I would end up living off the government. This episode is what I said on the day I graduated from the number one public university in the world. I was shaking. But I spoke anyway. This is the commencement speech I gave to the UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare Class of 2026 , for every woman who has ever been told she would never amount to anything. Look at us now.

Emergency shelters save lives. But saving someone from immediate danger is not the same as helping them build one. In this debut episode, I share why I created this podcast, what fifteen years of abuse taught me about the failures of crisis-only intervention, and what Judith Herman's three-stage trauma recovery framework tells us survivors actually need. You will also hear from Diane Fleet of Greenhouse17 in Kentucky, whose therapeutic farm program is giving survivors something a traditional shelter cannot: a lived experience of growth, capability, and belonging. And you will meet Brittney, a survivor who opens up about what it is really like to navigate housing, legal systems, and employment while trying to heal at the same time. If you have ever wondered why survivors go back, this episode will answer that question, and it has nothing to do with weakness.