When Everything Changed: Reclaiming Your Voice After Divorce and Emotional Abuse with Wendy Babcock

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to another episode of Bent Not Broken. Heartbreak and trauma may feel like the end of your story, but here it's the beginning of a bold new chapter. I'm your host, Coach Deborah Griffiths, and this is the space where women rise, rebuild, and rediscover their purpose. Remember this truth. You are bent, not broken. Welcome to another episode of Bent Not Broken. I am issuing a trigger warning because this episode discusses topics such as emotional abuse, narcissistic relationships, trauma, and recovery. These conversations may be difficult or triggering for some listeners. Please take care of your emotional well-being, pause or step away if needed. And if you or someone you know is in crisis or needs support, please reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text start S-T-A-R-T-2-88788. You are not alone, and help is available. Today I am honored to welcome Wendy Babcock, the powerhouse behind Wednes stories of movement helping women transform life-changing moments into talks, books, and movements that leave lasting impact. Wendy's story is one of courage, creativity, and freedom. She's an award-winning songwriter, speaker, and creator of the legendary Women in Business, where she empowers women to unmute their stories, own their voices, and rise into the most unforgettable selves. Wendy, welcome to Bent Not Broken. I'm thrilled to have you here today.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Thank you. I'm honored to be a guest on your show.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Great. So let's get started. When you begin your win talk describing a powerful moment standing in an empty trailer, just you and your children, what was going through your mind in that moment? And why do you call it the moment when everything changed?

SPEAKER_00 2:33

That moment, I just kept thinking, don't cry. Because in rehearsal the day before, I couldn't get the words out of my mouth. I've been a speaker for quite a few years now, and I had never had that type of response, but I had never shared that much of my story. Standing on stage, getting out those first sentences, all I could think was hold it together, get the words out. That's how people are going to hear you and relate to the story. It's the moment that changed everything. Everything in my life changed. Walking out the door, this time I knew it was different. I don't know what it was, but something just clicked in my head, my heart. I knew that this time was it. I was done.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

So you left an abusive relationship, an abusive marriage. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Um, I was with him at a very young age. I was 16. There was 13 years age difference between us. He was 29. So how how did I meet a 29-year-old? My mom owned a tavern. And so I was always around people that were, you know, much older than me. And yeah, we we ended up dating. And looking back now, I'm like, oh my gosh, red flag, red flag, red flag. But when you're 16, I was pretty naive. I I thought I was so much more mature than other girls my age. Yeah, it just kind of, I feel like it seeped into the relationship slowly. It wasn't like he was abusive from the get-go. It was always like small things, mainly around control, who I could talk to, who I was hanging out with, where I was going. We got married when I was 18 years old. And um, we had our first child when I was 21, second one at 23. And there was a lot going on even then, you know, again, around control, a lot of jealousy. And hindsight, I can see, you know, him being older than me. I think he wanted me to be the same age as him or something. No, I would, I wasn't really allowed to have friends back then. I only hung out with my sister and my family. Um, for example, uh my my grandmother had a mobile home out in the country, and my family was from Illinois, would come up, and we we were in Wisconsin, and all the aunts and uncles would come up to visit, and I'd want to go out there and visit. And he'd give me a hard time about it. Eventually I'd I'd get to go and he would always have excuses why he couldn't come up. As soon as I'd walk in the door, my grandma's phone would start ringing. And it'd be him. When are you coming home? How long are you gonna be there? And I could just see it on my family's faces. They would just, every time they would just like again. I'd be like, I want to visit for just a couple hours. The girls just got settled. I'm just gonna visit for a couple hours. Then it'd be an hour and a half later, the phone would ring again, and it'd be him. You know, he would call my work almost every day. I worked at a hospital in transcription, and every day he would call on the phone set up on my boss's desk. If you can imagine the classroom setting for transcription where the boss's desk was kind of at the front, and then there was like, I think eight of us. And so then, of course, her phone would ring and I could see her her face kind of like, Wendy, it's for you. And my boss had to pull me aside a few times, like he has got to call you at work. Like, I know, I know. I've tried to tell him and he just would not. So it was those type of things, very controlling, you know.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Did anybody, your family or your coworkers say anything to you, thinking they were too he was too controlling, and that you might be, you might need to think about this relationship?

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Coworkers, no. Um, family hinted around it. They would make some comments, just express their frustration. My sister and my mom mostly were in that boat. Um, you know, my grandma was my best friend. So I talked to her literally every single day. And of course, that was okay because she was my grandmother. We talked several times, sometimes a day, and she knew everything that was going on. I confided a lot in her, and she never pushed. That was so refreshing because I didn't have that shame spiral. And when I talked to my mom, my sister, it'd be like, Oh my God, we're just so sick of his crap one, just tired of all of this. And then I'd feel like I'd have to defend the situation. Well, it was just that one time I got the girls, we owned a house, had two kids. I thought I was in it for the long haul. In my mind, marriage was forever. I'm gonna stick it out, do what I can, I'm gonna make this, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make it work, where my mindset was. I was in my young 20s at the time.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

You also shared in your talk that fear was something you learned early on from your stepfather. How did that shape your sense of identity and the way you showed up in the world later?

SPEAKER_00 7:07

My stepdad, especially growing up, it was always um, I was the one that got under his skin between my sister and I. He was our stepdad. And no matter what I did, it was wrong. You know, I couldn't do anything right. Um, my sister was the smart one, she listened more. Um, and I just always was pegged as the trouble child. And so, you know, he would beat us with a belt and yell and curse at us. And some of the names he called us, I won't even repeat because they were just so derogatory. And you grew up with that as a very young age. And I just learned if I could just be quiet and shrink enough where he doesn't notice me in a room, then I felt safe. That carried out in that first marriage. No, I became an empath very young, and they say a lot of times with trauma, you become an empath, you read the room really well. And I learned how to do that, and I can tell when his tension level went up, even and I would shrink back. Okay, don't move, don't make any sudden moves, don't talk to anybody, look at the floor, don't make eye contact with anybody around you because if I did, it would be a fight later. Um, for example, my mom went to a bar and we lived in the apartment below the bar for quite a while, and he was a bar and he was an alcoholic. I mean, he never identified as an alcoholic, but he was an alcoholic. So we'd be up in the bar quite often. And if any other men even looked my way, it was my fault. What did I do? You know, did I look at them first? You know, somehow I was bringing it on myself. And so I learned to look at the floor, not talk, and just really shrink back. I was basically a shell of who I actually was, you know, what was going on in my mind. I was just a shell of myself. So I just learned to stay quiet. I just felt I walked through life silent for the longest time. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

You mentioned that as a child, you began writing poetry and songs as a way to be heard on paper. How did those early creative expressions help you process and later reclaim your story?

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Oh, I remember opening, I can actually picture myself. I was pretty young. I remember sitting on the floor next to my bed and I had a notebook and I just started writing. At first, it began as just journaling. Music was always an outlet from a young age, but I grew up. My mom always had music going on Sundays. If she'd clean the house, she always had on, you know, um the Dixie Cups, or I think that was the name, not the Dixie Cups. Is that the name of the band? Like Mr. Postman and all of those songs, like 50 and 60. So I grew up a lot with that and ABBA. And so my sister and I were always surrounded by music. And I had a little record player in my room and I'd listen to Air Supply, you know, you know, at 10 years old, like I was acting out my own divorce at 10. Music was escape. I could put music on and not think about anything else. But as I was journaling, I started to rhyme things and and and write in a way that made sense to me, using metaphors before I knew what metaphors were, just from listening to the music. Um, you know, as I got older, I developed it more because for the internet. I would take my cassette player, play songs, and I would start and stop, start and stop, and and writing down all the lyrics. I wanted to figure out the structure of a song. And so I learned to figure out, like, okay, here's the here's the chorus, the verses. I could see where it repeated and I could see the patterns in it. I would sit in my journals and either be writing lyrics from other artists that I liked. Um, and then I started trying to mirror it with my own writing, you know, and see what I could rhyme and what I could put down. It was obviously not the best when you're 11, 12, 13 years old. But, you know, I I increasingly felt like I got better, but also my writing as I got older got much darker. You know, I have a whole notebook of some of the stuff I wrote in my late teens, early twenties. And it it could almost send me back into a depression just reading it, remembering where I was back then when I wrote that stuff. Hopefully it reassures you how far you've come. It it really does. It makes me sad in a way that I was stuck there for so long, not knowing how to. It's like being held underwater, and like even if someone goes to your feet, you're still underwater and you don't know that you can kind of come to the surface. But it makes me a little bit sad, but yeah, I'm glad that I've come a very long way from that point where I don't think I could write anything that depressing if I tried.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

You once hesitated to label your experience as domestic abuse because it didn't fit the physic physical stereotype. What helped you finally see it clearly, and how did that realization change your healing journey?

SPEAKER_00 11:36

So it was a lot of control, a lot of manipulation, looking back, there's a lot, there's a lot of narcissism, but it wasn't punching or hitting. He kicked me once, but other than that, it was more like physical restraining me, holding me against the wall, slamming me into walls by holding my arms, um, holding me down on the floor. But you know, I thought of abuse, I thought of hitting, kicking, punching, you know, and the only bruises I ever had really was one time when he held my arms so tight there was actually bruise marks around my forearms in the shape of his hands because he held me and he was literally just slamming me down the walls. And I left. Um, there was that was a whole episode. Um, but then I went back like three weeks later. But I think it was more of learning what domestic violence looked like. And that's of course the age of internet. I think it was called No More. This was even after I left when I started to look at what the no more platform was and reading about what domestic violence was. I thought, holy crap, that does define what I experienced. Like, you know, speaking about it was hard because there was a lot of people in our lives jointly, and they knew it, but they didn't want to define it either. You know, they wanted to say, oh, he didn't abuse her. It wasn't that bad. And so it was hard to even talk about it and hear that feedback back to me. So I just kind of shied away from calling it that or speaking about it for the longest time.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

How many times did you try to leave before you ended up in that trailer with your two children?

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Honestly, I don't know if I can count. It started when we were just dating, you know, having fights, breaking up. When I look back to who I became and learned it was reactive abuse, I would throw things, scream. I was a whole different person. I don't even recognize who she was back then. When he would hold me down, it's like boiling over and just become a lunatic, screaming, running from him. And it's like I it's just wild what that type of situation will do to you mentally. Yeah. No, because on average, it takes a woman seven times before they leave. The worst time though was the time with the bruises on my arms because he actually grabbed me by my throat and he literally carried me by my neck from Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

That one's a hard one.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Okay, we can go to the next question.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Anyhow, that was the worst time, and I did leave, and I actually went to therapy after that. And he swore he was gonna go to therapy and we're gonna work it all out and figure it out. I still had the fear. He never laid another hand on me after that, but I was always in fear. The energy levels that he would bring in, he didn't understand when I would try and tell him I'm still afraid.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

When you stood in that trailer for the first time on your own, you described an unfamiliar feeling that turned out to be freedom. What does freedom look for you for you today?

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Let me go let me go back. That was May 26, 2006. Um, and this so it's been a lot of years later. Freedom now is not worrying about if I run to the store, how long is taking me? If I dawdle a little bit. I don't feel like I have to text my current husband, like, hey, I have to quick stop and get gas. Like he he doesn't care. He's not clocking me, he's not timing me. Um, if I want to get up and have a snack, if I want to watch a TV show a little longer, you know, if he falls asleep on the couch, it's not a problem. Where those things seem so simple to some people. But I remember my show way back when I love Raymond. They always played two episodes. I remember after the first episode, he'd be like, Well, that let's go to bed. Well, I kind of want to watch the next one. And fine, he'd storm off. And then two minutes later he'd come back. You're still watching TV. So then I would have to be like, okay, well, I guess I'll just go to bed. You know, so it's those things that we take for granted, those little freedoms that now I'm like, I can do what I want.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

What did reclaiming that authorship mean for your life and for your sense of self?

SPEAKER_00 15:37

It was interesting to rewrite who I was because it was almost like digging through and actually finding yourself again at the core. It's like finding that invisible cord that was attached to you to who you used to be. By rewriting that, therapy obviously helped. Um, personal development helped a lot. Um, what year was that 2007? I had met a co-writer who lived in Sedona. He was very woo-wooed at me, and I had didn't understand what any of it was. Laws of attraction, I had never even heard of that. And so he introduced me to a lot of those things. And I was awakened. Somehow I I knew some of these principles, but I didn't have a label for them. I didn't know why they happened, you know. Um, yeah, but it when I thought of things, visualized and dreamt of what my life could look like when I was going through the abuse, some of it actually came to fruition after I left him. You know, it's it's it's so interesting to learn those things and then just feel more of yourself. It was just a lot of learning. I was still isolated for quite a while after I left him or felt isolated. Um, you know, and I I probably wasn't the best mom back then because I felt like I was digging myself out of depression. And so I wasn't as present as I wish I could have been.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Did you enter into any therapy or like group support to help you?

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Not for a while. Um, I did therapy, it was quite a few years after I left. There was a little bit of therapy um the time before I left for good, you know, with the big episode, you know, but even that, it just wasn't the right therapist, is all that was. You know, she just let me talk and didn't give me much feedback. Then I went to a new therapist and he was phenomenal. He called me out on so much of my own crap in the best possible way because I thought I was there to work through my stepdad's trauma. He passed away in 1999. And I thought I was there because I really struggled with his death. I thought, well, I wouldn't be who I was if he wouldn't have been who he was. And there was a lot to unpack there. I was with my ex at the time, and my therapist told me straight out because he was seeing what was going on without me telling him. I was very defensive of my ex-husband. And he said, I'm just gonna warn you now, a lot of women who go through therapy with me do end up getting divorced. And that scared me because I didn't think that that was the problem. But he was really good at reading the signs. I would, I would go through an old story and he'd be like, Okay, let's stop a second. Your shoulders went up and your foot is shaking. What's going on internally? You're telling me the words are coming out, but something's happening internally right now as you're telling me this story. He was very like clued into body language, and that was so helpful. But what happened then was I started to heal a little bit, and my ex-husband saw it and used it as um fuel against me that I had to basically go to the funny farm, see a therapist or take my happy pills because they put me on antidepressants. So eventually I quit going. Um, so it wasn't until quite a few years later that I got back into therapy, and that was very helpful. It was a different therapist, and she was she was really good too.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Good, good to hear. You've turned your personal healing into a platform for helping other women share their stories. What inspired you to take that step from surviving to leading?

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Well, it's interesting because from being a speaker and then coaching speakers, everyone had these incredible stories. And I felt like I just wanted to create a platform for them to tell their stories because I still hadn't yet told my story without realizing it. I was creating a platform for myself too to do this. Um, but I had because I had felt silenced even 18, 19 years later. Um, and I'd meet these incredible people, like NFL players and a woman who had been in the Ms. America pageants in 1971, just phenomenal people with these incredible stories. And they all wanted to get on the TEDx stage, which is great. I've done a TEDx. He said, that's a great platform. What's your idea worth sharing? And they would say, I just, you know, I have this story. I'm like, well, TEDx is about ideas worth sharing, not your personal journey. And I thought, I wish somebody would just create that stage, like a TEDx stage that would be great for speakers, but can be promotional, all the things that TEDx wasn't in my mind, right? They no one should use it for promotion, even though it becomes promotional. And I love hosting events. So one day I just sat there, I'm like, well, why don't I create this? I love walking people through stories. I can coach story. I think being a songwriter also helps me find the story within people. And I found as a coach, I wasn't asking people what their why was, like, you know, why you do what you do. I found I would always when they wanted to create a story in their talk, I would say, okay, well, tell me when did everything change for you? I would use that that question, when? When did everything change? And that would lead them to a story. Well, well, okay, I had surgery, I got divorced, I got married, I left this. So when became the theme that I was already asking. So when I wanted to create this platform, I'm like, okay, what would it look like? I'm like, well, it's it's about the moments. It's when everything changed. Like, well, that's gotta be the gotta be it. It's the one stories. So that's just kind of how that came to fruition.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

You described yourself as once being a wallflower. What was the biggest shift mentally or emotionally that allowed you to step fully into your visibility?

SPEAKER_00 20:54

So becoming a speaker, I always say it was kind of a fluke, but I think it was just meant to be. Um, I worked at a hospital for 20 years and I would listen to audiobooks while I worked. It was a book by Pam Grout uh called E Squared, and she mentioned this movement called The Complain Free World with Will Bowen. Um, I just remember being fascinated by the movement. I went to Facebook that day and looked up Will Bowen, the author, and he had posted, I want to teach or train 10 people to do what I do. I had never had aspirations to be a speaker. I didn't like to be out in the forefront of anything, which I can see where that ties in with songwriting, because I get to get my words out there without being the singer. Because I'm not a singer, right? But I like kind of being behind the curtain. So I thought, I don't know why I'm drawn to this. I'll apply. There's gonna be thousands of people applying. I saw all the comments, they won't pick me. Well, lo and behold, a few months later, I was chosen. And so it was kind of that big nud, not even a nudge, it was a shove to get me on stages. And once I hit the stage of realize I can affect change in people and help them reduce the negativity in their lives by the words they're speaking. Speaking, something turned on in my brain. I went, wow, this is amazing. I can stand up here and teach something, and people are just fascinated with it and they love it. I hear comments later, like this changed my life. Um I always call it like having my my warrior unchained. That was my first name of my first event I ever held was warrior unchained. It's almost like I had this little warrior inside of me that had been chained down for years. It just all of a sudden was unchained and I got to show up even more like myself.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

You said stories are what connects us. They build the bridges of understanding. Can you share a moment when you witness that connection happen through storytelling?

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Yes. And actually, the first time I did share a part of my story, that very first event I ever hosted, Warrior Unchained, um, I thought, I'll tell I'll tell some of my personal stories. The one I can usually not say because I get choked up. Um, it's rough to do, but I thought, I'm gonna tell my story. And so I did. I I led with the moment, and it was the one I couldn't even talk about earlier with him choking me, but like running down our driveway and down the street and just get away that day. You know, I I rolled it into becoming a warrior unchained. When I got off the stage, it was so interesting because there was a woman in the audience who was a pain in my butt the entire time. From the moment she bought her ticket through the whole process, she complained about everything the price of the tickets, where she had to sit, she couldn't hear this speaker. It was just all complaints. I was just like, oh gosh, this woman's just gotta like stop. But in the back of my mind, I kept thinking, but she's here. She bought a ticket, she came alone. So in the back of my mind, I'm like, okay, but she's here for a reason. Got off stage after I told my story. She came up to me in tears and she says, That's exactly what I needed to hear. I'm going through that right now. She was just in the process of trying to leave. And I thought, holy crap. And it it just all made sense. Like, that's why she's here. And I thought she needed to hear there was eight of us speaking that day. And I thought, she needs to be here with one of these speakers. I didn't know it was me. You know, so that I got to have a side conversation with her. She asked, like, well, how did you leave? What did you do? That sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Powerful, powerful. Yeah. For the women listening who still feel small, silenced, or unseen, what would you tell her today?

SPEAKER_00 24:11

Well, so much life on the other side of it. And I think that's what I couldn't see when I was in it. I couldn't see what my life would be like outside of what I was living in because I had a mortgage and I had kids. I didn't have money saved. I didn't have anywhere to go. And it never occurred to me to call the police or ask for help. I just did not see it. And then the day that I decided I needed to leave, it just kind of hit me. My mom was trying to sell her trailer, that trailer that was empty that we moved into. And I just was like, oh my, and I've been sitting empty for I bet you a year. Because she was trying to sell it. And so I called her up. I said, can the girls and I go there? Well, of course, of course. You know, and so that was my out. It was almost having to visualize that morning sitting down. If I could go somewhere, where would I go? What what were my options? If I could have told myself back then where I am now, I don't think I would have believed it. But I think it would have planted enough of a seed that maybe I would have tried sooner to leave.

unknown 25:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Let's wrap up with a few quick and fun questions. And first thing that comes to your mind, one word that describes your journey today. Amplified. A song that instantly lifts your spirits. Oh boy, let's see.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Um, I love it. Okay. A mantra or quote you live by. Um every minute you spend, uh unhappy or sad, is um 67 60 seconds of happiness you'll never get back.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

A woman who inspires you and why.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

There's so many. Um I'm not just gonna go with Shaleen Johnson because I listen to her podcast almost every day.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

If every listener took one bold step after this episode, what would you want it to be?

SPEAKER_00 26:04

One bold step. I would say listen. Listen closer to people. Most of us are running under this facade of who we're trying to show the world, but there's a deeper story underneath. If you just listen a little harder and ask more questions, you know, and dig a little deeper, you're gonna get to of who they truly are. And I think that's what we're missing right now. We're not listening to know somebody, we're listening to either argue or respond. So listen for the story, listen to what's underneath.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

Great advice. Wendy, thank you for sharing your truth, your courage, and your light with us today. Your story is such a reminder that no matter how broken we feel, healing is possible and that our voices matter. So, to my listeners, remember your story matters. Don't let it fade. Thank you, Wendy.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Thank you, Deborah. I appreciated you having me on.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Thank you for listening to today's episode of Bent Not Broken. I hope that this episode reminded you that even through life's toughest moments, you are bent, not broken. If this message inspired you, please share, rate, review, and subscribe, as it helps us reach more women who are ready to rise and rebuild. And until next time, keep living bold and walking in your purpose.