Lindsey’s story is one of rediscovering hope and reclaiming her life.
Growing up in a loving family, she faced unexpected challenges that led her into addiction and exploitation. Despite these hardships, Lindsey’s resilience and determination shone through. With the unwavering support of Re-fined and a reliable, restorative relationship, she embarked on a journey of healing and transformation, finding strength in faith and community.
Her journey from darkness to light is a powerful reminder of the incredible impact that love, support, and faith can have on someone’s life.
Hello, my name is Lindsey. I’m going to tell you a little about myself, some of my story, and how things are different now.
I grew up pretty normally, my dad was an e.r. doctor and my mom was a stay at home mom. I have siblings and had pets, I wasn’t abused in any way, I had slumber parties and got mad at my parents. I was homeschooled until high school so I got mad at my parents a lot but my family loved me and I them. I wanted people outside of my family to like me but was never very good at that. I’ve always been pretty awkward and love books, sweeping sagas and epic tales were what I built my concepts of the world on.
Making the leap from homeschooled book nerd to high school hormones was rocky at best, I was missing a lot of the social graces that kids my age had. I wanted people to like me. I discovered early on than alcohol, and later drugs, made up for those missing social skills. Or so I thought. I’m sure most of you here have heard at least one similar story, awkward kid wants friends, starts partying to get friends, and goes downhill. I wound up without any real goals in life, I drank and did drugs through the rest of high school, hung out with people much older than older than me, and thought I was pretty cool. I flunked out of junior college because I was too messed up to go to class and wound up moving to California, back to Texas, Wyoming, did a stint in rehab in Colorado, worked in restaurants but refused to do any actual changing.
By the time I was 26 I was still working in restaurants, drinking myself silly and in a relationship with a younger guy, I decided to stop drinking by going back to drugs. That decision broke the tentative grasp I had on being a functioning human being rather quickly. I lost my job, my relationship, and was losing my grip on reality. I went to Colorado Springs to visit a dealer I knew and that was the decision that changed my the course of my life.
When I went to Colorado Springs I was kidnapped, raped, and terrorized.
This man had a gun and spent his spare time telling me what he had done to other girls who ran. I had been without sleep for a long time, so my mind was in bad shape as it was, he and his associates spent several days trying to decide how to get the most amount of money out of me. Apparently, this was a common occurrence when they found out of towners looking to score drugs, unfortunately for them I was there after decimating my life back home so there was no money that way. They discussed whether to just pimp me out themselves or whether to sell me off wholesale.
Eventually the man with the gun decided on the later and had worked out a deal to sell me to a Hispanic gang in the area and it was at this time that I knew I had to run or would probably die. Or at least wish I was dead. I managed to escape largely due to the fact that men thought they had scared me into submission and spent the next 4 years running. I found out that a price was put on my head so my mother helped me get on a bus to Dallas Texas with the hopes that I would start over. I managed to get a job, but the nightmares were constant, and I turned back to drugs.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I was traumatized and strung out and saw drugs as my escape from reality. It wasn’t long until I wasn’t able to hold down the job and wound truly homeless. I still had a phone and I was contacted by 2 women who asked if I’d like to make some money. I was so far down the whole that I figured I should see if I could feel anything anymore, I didn’t.
The only thing I felt for a long time was fear, the fear that what happened in Colorado Springs would happen again but this time I wouldn’t escape. I ran from pretty much everyone after a while, I did what I thought I needed to do to survive but everyone I came in contact with wanted something from me. They wanted control, or sex, or many times robbed or raped me to get what they wanted. A lot of people I was around weren’t drug users or dealers they were just predators. Pimps or random people who stopped to give me rides didn’t matter. For some clarification I wasn’t a street walker, I dressed like a boy mostly because I lived outside and in bad parts of major cities you don’t want to look like a girl.
I did most of my business online, when I had to, and spent the rest on the streets. Bad parts of town or good I could name on 1 hand the times someone was just being nice and offered to give me ride. It was all the other times that degraded my opinion of people as whole. For some reason every time I hoped someone was just kind, eventually I decided it must be me, I must not deserve kindness. For 3 years I lived this, I was awake for most of it so it seems like longer, until my mind snapped. The culmination of severe trauma, sleep deprivation, and drugs resulted in severe psychosis until I couldn’t even do the drugs anymore. I couldn’t do what I did to get the drugs or food. I had finally reached my bottom.
I consider myself one of the luckiest people on the planet. Statistically I should be dead several times over. What I’ve shared with you tonight is the broadest version of my story covering most of my life and I still kind of want to throw up. Living aside, when I hit my bottom, I called my mom. I begged her to save me and I honestly don’t know that if our places had been reversed if I would’ve saved me. During my insanity my father had been diagnosed with dementia but was still in the earliest stages, that was at least a year before I made that call. They got in the car and they drove to Dallas, I had been clean a week. I had no identification, was mentally unsound, and none of us knew what to do with me.
My sister found a program for me to start rebuilding my life, I got put on medications to help with my hallucinations and panic attacks, more importantly I got into therapy. I still felt like a bad person, I brought all this on myself, I deserved what happened to me, I didn’t trust anyone.
Then I met Jessi and found out about Re-fined. I asked her to be my mentor when I had been clean for about 6 months, everything I owned was from donations, I cut my own hair, didn’t own any make up, and couldn’t fathom what this very well put together woman and I would have to talk to about. But there was something I wanted to get to know about her, I dared to hope for kindness one more time, and was not disappointed. She gave me my first hair cut in years and just listened to what I had to say, there was no judgement or guile, more importantly I didn’t feel the need to run away. Through her and Re-fined I received my first pair of brand-new shoes in several years, learned to style my hair, got clothes for a job when I went home as well as learned how to style myself like a lady. We also have lunch.
Just two women having lunch and talking and that to me means more than anything else could. Having this kind of relationship gave me the ability to think of myself as a person again, the ability realize that world isn’t filled terrible people. We’ve been having lunch for 4 years now, I’m half-way through my teaching degree, I got married last week, and have the best relationships with my family I’ve ever had.
Having refined help me bring out the positive and self appreciative side of myself has been a gift I didn’t think was possible and I’m grateful everyday.
