April 30, 2014

A Beyond Surviving Client Tells His Story!

Having now worked as a Sexual Abuse Recovery Coach since 2007, I can say that I have one of coolest jobs ever. Not only do I get to spend my days walking alongside amazing men and women, assisting them in their journey of recovery, but I know without a doubt that my Beyond Survivors are a very special breed of person. They are generous, loving, world-changers, fun, and brave.

So, it's with great honor that I get to introduce you today to John, who became a Beyond Survivor in 2012. He shares with you a bit about his journey and what he gained from our time working together.



"Some of us have other dark days in our lives. The first time I was sexually abused in my case ... It had been more than 50 years since I survived that sexual abuse .. Working with Rachel, I found all of the things I had been doing out of fear."

You can learn more about my Beyond Surviving program here, but more importantly, leave a comment for John letting him know what you got from his story.


April 21, 2014

A Beyond Survivor's Story: One Woman's Harrowing Journey to Healing - Part 3

This week, Jori Nunes, author of Chocolate Flowers and amazing beyond survivor concludes her story. If you have been touched or inspired by her story, be sure to leave a comment. It takes a lot to share one's story -- so let's give her the props she deserves!


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Time heals. This is something we often hear but even as I feel this to be the truth, at times I slip back to the painful memories and find it difficult to just function. Readers ask me how I could write such things that I wrote in the book and the best answer is that I learned to disassociate most of my childhood away and I allowed myself to go back to the dark place one chapter at a time to tell the story. I could not remember doing this, it was as if the words just typed themselves as I blankly stared at the screen. After several days for recovery (lying in bed unable to function) from each chapter, I would then review what I had written often adding or deleting and thinking, "Oh how did I write that, what are people going to think?" I visited my church often and would go to confession explaining to the priest and wondering if he would approve of such things. He always did. He would ask if it was for the good and if I felt it was something I had to do and my answer was always, "Yes."

I have only seen my birth father a few times during my adult life and each time I freeze up uncomfortable and afraid he will attempt to touch me especially in a sexual way. His comments have always been inappropriate and disrespectful regarding my figure which is why I think I have such a difficult time when men other than my own husband commenting about my looks. There has often been times that I too have made inappropriate comments and later realized how it could have been perceived.

Having mentally ill parents is embarrassing. I have had major anger issues growing up with unexplained mental outbreaks and breakdowns. It’s also confusing explaining something that really has no explanation, why me? Is it hereditary, will I become like them? Am I like them? I pray to God for those answers to be no but I also see the traits of depression that my mother often had as well as the things that I can often say thinking, that’s something my mother would say or do.

My favorite cousin says my father was worse than my mother, I feel a lot more anger towards my mother and feel that I got screwed from having the chance of any sort of normal childhood because she never received treatment. It was lonely growing up without either parent caring enough to talk to me, listen to me or show me any sort of positive attention. I do not feel sorry for myself but can’t explain the hurt I still hold on to, especially when I see such great parents that are so involved in their children's lives, but this has also been my motivation because I can’t change my past but I can be the mother I always wished for to my three wonderful children.

Becoming a mother for the first time at the age of 19, was difficult for me without the experience of being a loved child and without having any support from my family, my boyfriend or his family. I was truly alone. Looking back, I had made so many mistakes and how my children survived and excelled is nothing less than the strong desire of wanting to do right even though some of my ideas were not like the morning breakfast of a chocolate milk and a Flintstone vitamin. I was more like a big sister than a mother and had more fun playing on the playground with my kids than finding work or cleaning my apartment. I grew up with my children, my oldest son helped me to balance my checking account when he was 8 and is now 26 with a master’s degree in accounting. With all the instability I provided for them, they still turned out to get college degrees and are well adjusted. I would like to help young mothers
who are like I was because I understand them. It wasn’t until I married a ‘normal’ gay man with a strong desire to adopt and raise my children that I learned how to actually parent. 

I am now a real estate broker, I own my own business and my own home. I have remarried the right guy and we have a child together. Not dealing with my past issues however, has caught up to me and having my husband read the book has helped him to understand this confusing person he married and never quite felt he could understand. So when people ask how I could write such things, my answer to that is simple, I couldn’t avoid it, it was never my choice. It’s who I am and I can now close the book and move on.



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Jori was born in San Francisco, CA and raised in San Ramon. Her birth father was an alcoholic, pan handler and dumpster diver and mother suffered from dissociative personality disorder and preferred to stay in her bed researching new diseases and diagnosing people with them since she was also a physic. Jori never spoke about the sexual abuse from either parent and had lived her life raising two children then married the love of her life and had another child. Jori tried to begin over and over with both parents but could never change who they were which was difficult and confusing for her.

Jori’s dream is to teach others what she has learned by writing the book, Chocolate Flowers, in hopes that the reader will not want to put it down but will also learn to detect a pedophile or abused child in hopes to help put an end to this silent epidemic and encourage others to talk about their abuse and not hold it in. http://jorinunes.weebly.com/

April 15, 2014

A Beyond Survivor's Story: One Woman's Harrowing Journey to Healing - Part 2

This week, Jori Nunes, author of Chocolate Flowers and amazing beyond survivor continues her amazing story of survival.


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One of the things I suffered from in writing the book was whether or I not to use my own identity. In doing so, it could not only put my business in jeopardy but the few friendships I have. Recently, a client told me that I should not have the title of author on my email because people are likely to look my book up and see what I wrote. I asked her if she read my book and yes, she went on and on about how she couldn’t put it down and learned so much from it that she never thought of before. I asked her how she knew about it and obviously her answer was from my email. It’s not that I am forcing anyone to read the book but if you are meant to read it, I believe there will be a way for you to find out about it. 

Sometimes I wonder why I spent so much time and money on the book and realize I may never recoup that but I didn’t write it to get rich, I wrote it truly to bring awareness because although we all think it will never happen to our child, I guarantee you that all parents of molested children felt the same way unless it was the parents doing it which is rarely reported. As far as my relationships with friends, most of those have changed. I almost wonder if they think of me as someone other than the person they knew prior to me writing the book. I wonder, ‘Do they think I’m like that and can’t be trusted?’ I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me. I am happy and always have been most of my life except during the dark times.

Today, I went to an appointment and the person I was about to meet with was so excited yet sad to tell me that because she read my book, she realized that her own daughter had the same symptoms that my son had when he was being molested that I noticed looking back to write the story: anger, withdrawing, personality changed, lower grades. She sat with her and discovered that her daughter was being molested and immediately reported it to find out that the young man assaulting her was also being molested and this is in the process of being investigated. I feel proud that I was able to stop something that was happening right in her own home from a neighbor friend having a play date. 

As a parent, I have made plenty of mistakes. The worst was allowing a person near my son who was a master manipulator, betraying my trust and taking advantage of my innocent child sexually, threatening him that he would kill his mommy if he ever told. The second was catering to this abused son and neglecting the needs of his younger sibling thinking he didn’t need as much care because he was not sexually abused. 

Twenty years ago there other were not internet support groups and I am now
overwhelmed by the amount of people who share similar stories and appreciate their friendship.

It’s been twenty years, why can’t I just get over it? I believe the answer to that is because children are still going through what my son had gone through. There are still parents who think this doesn’t pertain to them and it doesn’t involve them but when they stop and learn about the things I and other parents and grown victims of sexual abuse have to say, they sometimes learn that it has affected them in one way or another. 

Two years ago, I looked in to foster care to get a sibling for my youngest child who is now six. In doing so, I read hundreds of files from adoptable children who were all sexually molested by their parents. I wanted to take one of these children in but was not permitted to because I had a young child and all of these available children were ones who acted out and that would put my child at risk. It broke my heart, but already going through sexual abuse with one child I knew I couldn’t risk it.

Before writing the book Chocolate Flowers, I thought I knew myself well. My mother was crazy. My father was crazy. That was just how it was. I didn’t realize as a child or adult just how those crazy parents had affected me as my anger and depression worsened. I would often go to physiologists hoping they could fix me but not one of them ever dug in to my childhood to the ‘dark’ times even though I would say my parents were crazy. What is crazy? To me when I used the word crazy looking back I now know that I meant insane. My parents were insane and because they are the ones who raised me, I am different too. I would use insane but I do suffer temporary insanity occasionally when I am overwhelmed. If I have too much to do and people are asking me to get this done now, I do get anxiety. My husband and children do not deserve my insane anxiety moments and luckily they don’t happen all too often but when they do, I tell myself that it’s okay now, you are safe and you just need to get done whatever you can and  everything will work out.

It’s hard having a mother yet not having her in my life. My most recent memory of her before she died was of Christmas when I brought my husband and three kids over to visit her and my stepfather. We were excited and proud to have brought them a stainless steel microwave and when my mother opened it she was so upset because she had not bought us anything although there were beautifully wrapped gifts under the tree for Mothers friends and neighbors. We left with an unwrapped family gift of a used bowl with holes and the ink pen price of $3.99 still written on the bottom as I forced my children away from the many gifts as they were in search of anything with their name.


I never felt like an abused child although I agree severely neglected. I always felt like the sexual abuse was always my parents’ mental illness and never had anything to do with me. It’s very easy for me to disassociate and know that the young girl in that room was not me; it was a person who had no voice.

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Jori was born in San Francisco, CA and raised in San Ramon. Her birth father was an alcoholic, pan handler and dumpster diver and mother suffered from dissociative personality disorder and preferred to stay in her bed researching new diseases and diagnosing people with them since she was also a physic. Jori never spoke about the sexual abuse from either parent and had lived her life raising two children then married the love of her life and had another child. Jori tried to begin over and over with both parents but could never change who they were which was difficult and confusing for her.

Jori’s dream is to teach others what she has learned by writing the book, Chocolate Flowers, in hopes that the reader will not want to put it down but will also learn to detect a pedophile or abused child in hopes to help put an end to this silent epidemic and encourage others to talk about their abuse and not hold it in. http://jorinunes.weebly.com/

April 9, 2014

A Beyond Survivor's Story: One Woman's Harrowing Journey to Healing - Part 1

This week, I welcome Jori Nunes, author of Chocolate Flowers and amazing beyond survivor. Jori's story is unlike any other. It is a no holds barred story of abuse, falling down, and then getting back up and fighting for one’s self and the one’s we love. I know you will be touched and inspired!

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My name is Jori Nunes, I live in Modesto and was born in San Francisco in 1968. After writing the book, Chocolate Flowers, I became aware of the fact that I was abused although I never thought I was as a child, it was just the way things were. My parents were mentally ill so they had their excuse. I don’t remember when it all started with my real father but I often think of the things he put my mother and I through like the ‘Tickle torture’ and forcing her to act sexually to me when she would give me a bath. My father was an alcoholic and would love to buy everyone in the bar drinks leaving us without
money to buy food so he would take me out to panhandle and dumpster dive so we would have things and be able to eat. I have never had any of the traditional signs that I read in other people's books but I have always felt lonely and have twitches when I see, hear or talk about my past.

As a child, I was never forced to go to school so if I heard my sister getting up and ready I would sometimes  go too but my grades were barely passable and it wasn’t until the third grade that it was discovered I couldn’t read and was put into special ed classes. I don’t blame teachers because I didn’t tell them anything was wrong, it was just how things were. I do remember a teacher asking me about my lack of cleanliness and poor hygiene. She asked if I was being hit and yelled at in my home and my answer was always, "No, not at all." No one ever questioned me any further and I continued going to school when I felt like it. I don’t remember doing homework or how I passed classes when I failed all my tests but somehow I floated by like an empty shell.

Unlike most abused children, I was never scared at night because my step father would be home and I knew when he was home, I was safe. Mother was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder and admitted to having a ‘dark’ personality but would never talk about it. I knew that personality well, the witch, when she would actually put on a plastic Halloween mask and torture me in my room. My mother was my molester. That may shock people but to me it was just the way mother was. She had experienced worse; she would remind me and tell me the stories of her abusive mother and all the men that were in her life whom would sexually abuse her while her mother watched and would approve because they would pay her so she (my grandmother) could afford new furniture. My mother hated her, I hated her too so when she died on Halloween we laughed and sang ‘The wicked witch has died’ laughing.

My sister was treated completely different. Mother adored her and called her the ‘Gorgeous’ one. Mother constantly took photos of her and ignored my little brother and I. My sister was also abused sexually but that’s her story to tell, but I can tell you that mother forced her to wear bikini’s and sexy clothing, my sister knew to keep her mouth shut but learned to laugh at things as a nervous jester and had a sense of humor that not too many people understood. Mother groomed dogs and spent every dime on my sisters modeling career.

I was forced out of our home at the age of 14 because I tried to kill my mother. My mother had neglected me and only found interest in my sexuality allowing me to become sexual with men at an early age and asking me for details if she wasn’t included. I never knew it was wrong because I was doing it since I can remember with my real father. But when mother would force me to kill kittens and tell me stories of the hospice patients that she would be allowed to kill, things just got to be too much for me and one day I just had too much and threw her on the floor attempting to kill her.

When I found out I was pregnant, I was excited to have a son. I wouldn’t have to worry about a boy being sexually abused. My son's father was tragically killed in a car accident and never met our son, so I thought it was a great idea to have a male babysitter who could be a father figure to my son.

When my son told me that this man I trusted in my home with him had been making him suck his penis, I was so angry at my son for lying that I took away his action figures and told him that ‘Tim’ would never do that. I trusted him, he helps mommy and goes to our church. A month or so passed and my son was screaming from the bathroom. He couldn’t urinate, so I rushed him to the E.R. to be told he had a STD. He was six.

It took me twenty years to write the story, Chocolate Flowers. I interviewed pedophiles from Megan’s law and victims of crimes. It was a long journey to discover who I was and why. I am not a professional writer or a professional speaker. People ask me all the time why I wrote the book and the only reason I have is because I had to. I couldn’t escape the dreams to write it. After my mother died, my step-father called me to go over to his house. I made all the arrangements to have my mother’s body picked up and cremated. My step-father also asked me to take the sheets off the bed that she had her heart attack on and in doing so, I found a letter; To my daughter. It was a suicide letter telling me what a disappointment I was to her and how I had ruined her life. My mother is in a better place, she is healthy and happy and free from mental illness. My birth father is still alive although I never speak to him he will occasionally call and leave a message letting me know he’s alive and if I ever want to make any extra cash, he would be willing to pay me instead of those Asian girls for a sexual massage.

Today, I am a business owner of a Real Estate company in Modesto where I have been extremely blessed with my second marriage and my three children. I have no ill feelings towards the people who don’t believe that my parents were capable of doing the things they did because I too didn’t believe my own son and wonder what our relationship would be like if he never had a STD. How would his life be after being denied for his claim of being sexually abused? I often thank God that we found out and my son was able to seek justice. I wrote Chocolate Flowers for everyone who thinks it never will or never can. Thank you for learning about me and reading the book. 

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Jori was born in San Francisco, CA and raised in San Ramon. Her birth father was an alcoholic, pan handler and dumpster diver and mother suffered from dissociative personality disorder and preferred to stay in her bed researching new diseases and diagnosing people with them since she was also a physic. Jori never spoke about the sexual abuse from either parent and had lived her life raising two children then married the love of her life and had another child. Jori tried to begin over and over with both parents but could never change who they were which was difficult and confusing for her.

Jori’s dream is to teach others what she has learned by writing the book, Chocolate Flowers, in hopes that the reader will not want to put it down but will also learn to detect a pedophile or abused child in hopes to help put an end to this silent epidemic and encourage others to talk about their abuse and not hold it in. http://jorinunes.weebly.com/

April 1, 2014

Proud to Support: Somebody Else's Child


I am so pleased to share with you and to support Kari Kelley's amazing story brought to life on stage this month. I believe that our healing journey's are comprised of so many different experiences, self-expression and art being one of the most beautiful. If you are in the Bay Area, I strongly encourage you to be there to witness this woman -- I know I will be!!

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ONE WOMAN SHOW HIGHLIGHTS WOMAN’S HEALING FROM CHILD ABUSE

Kari Kelley Shares Story of Foster Care Abuse, Survival in ‘Somebody Else’s Child’

Given up for adoption at birth, a toddler lost most of her eyesight when she was shaken by her first adoptive mother, who did not take her to a doctor for a week and a half afterward. As a result, the child was placed back in foster care until age four, when she was adopted for a second time. In the new home, she experienced physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of those charged with her care and protection, as well as other family members.

That child grew into a woman and, as a way to work through her own pain, depression, and anger, Kari Kelley decided to share her story with others. A year after publishing her memoir “Black, Blind and Female,” Kelley is taking to the stage to share her story of survival in the one woman show “Somebody Else’s Child,” to be performed at Sunnyvale Performing Arts Theatre (550 East Remington Drive), Friday, May 9 at 7:30 p.m.

Kelley was born into a world that tried to stripped away her humanity. Years of abuse left her legally blind, abused and spiritually crushed. Nevertheless, a desire to be greater than her circumstances burned deep within her.

“Somebody Else’s Child” brings the audience through Kelley’s very personal journey through her childhood and into her adulthood. She portrays many key characters from her life, from her pregnant mother contemplating giving up her child for adoption to the adoptive mother whose violence led to the loss of Kelley’s eyesight at fourteen months old. She also takes on the voice of the many emotions she experienced throughout her life, from anger to depression and ultimately peace.

“I invite you to join me on the journey that my soul has chosen for this life experience,” Kelley said. “This journey has not been easy but it has provided deep, profound transformation for me. This journey has made me the Gifted Messenger that I am today. As I share my message with you, I believe that your life as well as many other lives can be transformed.”

Kelley’s wish for her audiences is that they will be emboldened to express themselves if they are survivors of child abuse and that they will stand up to end the abuse of children today if they happen to find themselves as onlookers.

“I’m sending out a message that you can’t depend solely on bureaucracy to put a stop to child abuse,” she said. “I’m a product of broken, failed and overburdened bureaucracy. I was adopted not once but twice by two different abusive families…you have to protect the children if you want a healthy society for tomorrow.”

Tickets for “SomebodyElse’s Child” are available online and at the door. An early ticket price of $35 ends April 15. Following April 15, tickets are $45 in advance and $55 at the door. Seating is limited. The performance is for adults only.

About Kari Kelley
Kari Kelley is a motivational speaker who inspires others to be fabulous, regardless of their circumstances. She hopes to empower others to stop the vicious cycle of abuse and downward spiraling sense of self-worth that comes with it. She believes that every person she touches with her message can be a new creation of hopes and dreams waiting to be unleashed. Each of those people will in turn contribute their light and promise to the world to touch the lives of many for generations to come.

Kelley’s book Black, Blind, and Female: Inspiration to Overcome Obstacles was released in the spring of 2013 and is available in ebook and paperback formats at http://www.authorhouse.com.

Learn more about Kelley’s background at http://www.loveislimitless.com/index.html.

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