Courage Conversations

This Week's Topic: Child Marriage in the US, Donna's Story  

This Week's Guests are: Donna Pollard and Casey Carter Swegman  

Tune in as Donna shares her story of surviving child marriage (which is legal in most states within the USA). Listen as she tells what it was like getting married at just 16 and about the policies and laws that allowed it to happen.  Donna has partnered up with Casey from Tahirih Justice Center to combat the horrors of child marriage in the USA.   Learn about what YOU can do to help RIGHT NOW as we work to ban child marriage in North Carolina.  

Follow: Survivors' Corner and Tahirih Justice Center  

Tahirih Justice Center  Tahirih.org/ChildMarriage for research and updates on the campaign to end child marriage in the U.S.  and PreventForcedMarriage.org for resource and support services for survivors and individuals at risk of forced and child marriage. 

[email protected]  571-282-6187  

*Correction: The couple who traveled from out of state to be married in North Carolina were from Kentucky, not Tennessee as stated in the video.

This Week's Topic: "Cuties" & Sexualization of Children 

This Week’s Guest is: Maureen Farrell Garcia  

Maureen Farrell Garcia is a captivating speaker and workshop facilitator who combines research with personal experience to empower her audience. With empathy and wit, Maureen connects with her audience offering her knowledge of abuse dynamics and insights for creating safe spaces and healing from abuse.  Her writings have appeared on various websites including Christianity Today, CBE International, Converge, Christ and Pop Culture, and The Institute for Collective Trauma and Growth.  

Twitter: @mfarrellgarcia 

Website: https://www.maureenfgarcia.com/

This Week's Topic: Abuse Survivors in Court, What to Expect  

This Week’s Guest is: Katie Trout  

Katie Trout was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, but now lives in the Raleigh area. She was sexually abused by an employee of a prominent megachurch from ages 15-19. She now works to support other survivors in their journey to heal and be heard.  Passionate about seeing sexual assault laws change to better support survivors, she helped get the Safe Child Act passed in North Carolina last year. Survivors now have more time to bring a civil suit against their abuser or an organization.  Katie’s #churchtoo story was featured in the April 2020 issue of Woman’s Day magazine.  

Follow Katie: https://twitter.com/KatieSTrout

Instagram.com/ktrout9433

This Week's Topic: Abuse and Disillusionment With Evangelicalism  

This Week’s Guest is: Asha Dahya  Asha Dahya is a TEDx Speaker, author and producer. Asha released her first book 'Today's Wonder Women: Everyday Superheroes Who Are Changing The World' in March 2020, featuring inspiring, heroic stories of 50 women and girls from around the world. Asha is passionate about reproductive justice, religion and the representation of women. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and 2 kids.  

Websites: 

This Week's Topic: How To Tell Your Partner About Past Abuse 

This Week’s Guest is: Ask Alexis  

Alexis Douglas specializes in empowering couples and individuals to become and embody their authentic selves. She is an Educator, Transformation Catalyst, Couples Communication Coach, and conversation facilitator. She empowers personal transformation through teaching compassionate listening skills and authentic emotional expression. She has a personal life mission to restore love to those who have been oppressed. As an expression of that mission, She spent three years as an adult literacy instructor and authored motivational messages that were added to the curriculum. Since 2017, She hasI co-facilitated monthly 18-hour workshops with the Alternatives to Violence Project for incarcerated citizens. These workshops include teaching active listening, self-reflection and awareness, communication, cooperation, and affirmation skills. She was nominated and selected as a 2020 Peace Fellow for her work with the Alternatives to Violence Project.  

Alexis' Website: https://www.askalexis111.com/

This Week's Topic: An Ex Jehovah's witnesses Story 

This Week’s Guest is: Lloyd Evans  

Lloyd Evans is an ex-Jehovah’s Witness author, activist and filmmaker. He has authored two books on former religion, namely "How to Escape From Jehovah's Witnesses," and "The Reluctant Apostate: Leaving Jehovah's Witnesses Comes at a Price." Lloyd's "John Cedars" YouTube channel has nearly 70,000 subscribers and features a range of videos exposing some of the more dangerous and abusive elements of Jehovah's Witness policies and ideology. 

Links Mentioned:  

Mary Hyatt is a life and business mindset coach who specializes in helping high achieving female entrepreneurs move from living a life of burnout to a life where they are connected to their emotions, their body, and their spirit. 

She helps bring her 1 on 1 and group coaching clients back to their enoughness, wholeness, and femininity.  Mary is the host of the Living Fully Alive podcast that airs weekly where she dives deeper into mindset and helps her listeners learn to embody a life fully lived. As a trained Hypnotherapist and Kundalini Yoga Instructor, Mary brings a level of consciousness and soul focused inner work to everything she does.  

Visit: www.maryhyatt.com 

Free Gift: Visit: www.maryhyatt.com/recoverykit

This Week's Topic: Faith Leaders + Double Standards (special focus on Jerry Falwell Jr recent inappropriate pictures).  

This Week's Guest: Amy Smith of Watchkeep  

Amy Smith is an abuse survivor advocate and blogger since 2010 exposing abuse in churches. She has personal experience of exposing abuse covered up in my former Baptist megachurch in Dallas. Amy holds degrees in both psychology and nursing from Baylor University. She is married to her husband Matt for 25 years and mom to 4 daughters. Amy is the owner of a home bakery, The Cookie Corner in TX.  

Visit: http://watchkeep.blogspot.com/

This Week's Topic: How Conspiracy Theories Hurt Trafficking Survivors  

This Week’s Guest is: BilliJoy Carson of Kick at Darkness  

BilliJoy is a survivor of child sex trafficking and rape as an adult. She founded and is president of Kick at Darkness, a nonprofit to help survivors in their healing journey and bring training to the community.  BilliJoy is currently recovering from a traumatic brain injury (TBI) after a spinal cord injury from a fall. She has relearned how to walk, talk, feed herself, and so much more. The badass fight continues.  

www.BilliJoy.com 

Twitter: @vashtigirl36 

If you think you see Human Trafficking Text: 233733 https://humantraffickinghotline.org/report-trafficking 

BilliJoy's Adult Coloring Book: https://www.amazon.com/…/1949563154/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_nG…  #ConspiracyTheories #Wayfair #humantrafficking #getyourfactsstraight

This Week's Topic: History Of the Survivor Movement  

This Week’s Guest is: Tim Lennon  

Tim Lennon is the President of the Board of Directors of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). He is a survivor of rape and sexual abuse when he was twelve. Memories of that abuse remained buried for decades.  In 2010 Tim became a volunteer local SNAP leader in the San Francisco Bay Area. He retired at that time and did full-time volunteer peer support correspondence for SNAP. He joined the SNAP Board in 2011 and became President in 2018.  Tim has twin daughters who are twenty-one. He lives in Tucson. And enjoys yoga, cooking, reading, dancing, theater, and movies.  

SNAPNetwork.org 

StandUpSpeakUp.org