Dawn Eich: Human Trafficking Survivor

Dawn Eich Human Trafficking Survivor

Interviewers:  Brandy Von Holten, Dawn Eich, transcribed by Rhiannon Niemeier

 00:09

Today's interview is with Dawn Eich. Not only is she an instrumental person in helping human and sex trafficking victims, but she is also a survivor. Dawn has taken the energy from an unthinkable tragedy and funneled it to become a ray of hope for others. Dawn works with an organization called the
Survival House that has tirelessly worked with men, women, and children, all of whom have been victims of some sort of human trafficking. Knowledge is power. I hope this interview will shed light on a topic that is closer to home than what most realize. Welcome back to Big Boss Mare with Brandy Von Holten. Today's episode is with a lady named Dawn Eich. it sounds like I K E. But it's actually spelled E I C H. I actually met Dawn not quite a year ago, but around this time. It was close to a year ago. She had brought a horse to me to train, and it was a little bit small. I got on it for the first couple of rides but then I had to get the help of a couple of people that are smaller than myself, but I oversaw the training. That's not what she's here for today, but I'd like to talk about how sometimes these people come into our lives, and we never know their backstory. It actually took a year of Dawn being in my life. I saw a Facebook post, and I was like what is that? It brought on a whole different private conversation, and here we are. We’re going to go back and talk about Bella. Just to let you know what this podcast is going to be, Dawn is actually a survivor of human trafficking. We are going to get into that topic. It always feels like it's so far away from us, but it was right here in front of me, a survivor of it. I didn't know until I until I started asking questions, because I didn't understand what she was saying on Facebook where she was. She's went and done some public speaking, and this is helping others that are going through the same thing that she did. So, Dawn, tell us about that horse Bella, because I want you to realize what kind of woman Dawn is okay. Not only does she help people, but she also helped this horse named Bella.

02:49

Thank you for having me Brandy. I really appreciate it. Bella came into my life in 2012 as a three-year-old little filly she popped up on Facebook. Facebook is sometimes amazing for connecting parts of your life that you didn't know needed connecting, and this beautiful bay filly pops up. I called the lady on it, and she had told me the story of Bella. Bella had been born on Columbus Day in 2011 to a rescue mare who the Sheriff's Department found tied to a tree. The mare was severely emaciated. Her mama was an Arabian, a flea bitten Arabian, and Daddy was who knew what. The Sheriff’s department brought Bella's mom to my friend Teresa's house, and Teresa started taking care of mom and next thing she knew, here she drops this filly. She calls the vet, and the vet is like, “Look, you can't save this filly. You know. you're struggling to save this mare.” So, she decided to bottle feed Bella and try to save her life. I'm thankful that she did. Bella is more of a people type horse than she is a horse type horse because she would love to be with people more than she loves to be with other horses.

04:29

I have a mule like that. He will actually drink beer with us. It has to be Coors Light, it has to be cold, and it has to be in a bottle. He has standards. So, you brought Bella home and she bottle fed her and then you fell in love with Bella. You all will all probably look Dawn up after you hear this story, she has some before and after pictures. Bella is a bit of a handful. She is the fire of the firecracker. [Dawn: Oh, absolutely.] Whenever we got her, she had not been ridden for a little bit. I actually had our old intern Gunner, rider her. She put Gunner on the ground a couple of times. One time she was afraid of this soccer ball, but she's been around those soccer balls since she was a baby. Well, this one must have just scared her. He didn't have his legs in the stirrups and it literally looked like when Wiley Coyote runs out across the cliff right before he starts to fall, that's what Gunner looked like. She came out from underneath him. I met Dawn when she brought Bella here and Bella had help from myself, David, Megan Acklin, a girl that's been around the ranch for a while. We had an intern named Shea, Shea helped out with Bella, and then Gunner. You gave each one of us like a sparkle hairbrush.

06:14

That would that was Bella. She told me to do that. She wanted to thank you all for the great care she received.

06:23

We loved Bella, she's a fun little horse. It is really nice to see those horses, I mean, she wasn't even supposed to survive, right? Well, not only does she survive, but she put Gummer on the ground. I love that. So Dawn is married to her husband, Randy, how long have you been married?

06:44

We got married in 2010. But we've been together 20 years.

06:48

Okay, so it just took him a minute. Took y'all a minute to get married.

06:52

It took me a minute.

06:54

Oh, okay. You own a pet store called Country Pets and Ponds in Warrensburg, Missouri. Now, how long have you owned that?

07:06

We started building it in 2002 and we opened in 2003.

07:12

2003 is when I moved to the state of Missouri, I tried to go to the Olympics as a heavyweight fighter. We had big things going on in our life, and we didn't even know each other existed. Dawn is here, and you know how you're not supposed to ever ask somebody age, weight, religion, politics? We are going to go ahead and bust out some stuff. Dawn is 53, I like to have people know a little bit. She might be five foot tall.

07:48

I'm 4’ 11” and three quarters.

07:50

Three quarters. You were just short a quarter. She's a tiny lady. Dawn had posted on social media that has us here talking today. It was that she had went and done a speech at Survival House. I think that's correct. Is that where you gave your speech?

08:18

No, I am on the board for Survival House, and I did a discussion with the noonday rotary in Warrensburg about our organization.

08:30

Okay. That was what made me think, what's that? Then she sent me a link, and we started talking. Now here we are. First of all, tell us what Survival House is.

08:43

Survival House is a domestic and sexual assault emergency shelter. We take in men, women, and children. Survival House was started in 1983 when citizens in Warrensburg, Missouri, came together because they saw a need. It was an unspoken need because we didn't have the social media awareness about domestic violence that we have now. It has grown into helping sexual assault victims, sex trafficking victims, domestic assault victims, and all of our services have been free of charge for our clients since 1983.

09:30

Okay, so how does survival house get funding?

09:35

A large portion of our funding is through grants, through state and federal grants, and then we do fundraising. We’ll throw a party, or we'll have an event with guest speakers. Sometimes we'll do smaller events, whether it's a walk, we get funding from our community. We have people that are very passionate about what we do, and they want to support us. We're getting ready to start a monthly donation where for the cost of a cup of coffee, somebody can donate, say $5 a month or, and you can get our newsletter and hear what's going on with Survival House. We do a lot of community outreach, and we are blessed because our community has supported us for over 38 years.

10:35

People do not know the past that someone has went through. I am not prepared to share my story yet, but there is a reason that I learned how to be an Olympic level fighter. There's a reason that I have plates and screws in my face. This is near and dear to my heart. But I don't want to discuss it today, we'll discuss that at a later date. Whenever I do, I think people will view me differently. But there's a reason why I am a go, fight, win kind of person because, I've had to be okay in the past. Dawn the first thing you had told me you were a human trafficking survivor, I said, “Well, is human trafficking the same as sex trafficking?” These are terminologies that don't come up in my normal everyday vocabulary. So human trafficking people can become drug mules. They can be put into work force for, basically, slavery. We also have] the sex side where people have to perform sexual acts. Sex trafficking is just a subcategory of human trafficking. [Dawn: That's correct.] I'm trying to make sure I've got the terminology right. Okay, I'm ready. I want to hear your story.

12:24

Well, thank you. When Survival House was being started in 1983, I was just finishing up the seventh grade, about to turn 14 years old. My father, who was a raging alcoholic and liked to gamble, actually gambled my life away to a violent pedophile. On my 14th birthday, he gave me to him to pay his debts. From that point, I wanted to escape in any way. I never saw it coming. I was locked in this man's trailer. It was everything you imagine that could happen to a young teenager, happened. I managed to run away.

13:31

How long were you with this gentleman? Well, not gentleman, with this dirt bag, this piece of crap.

13:43

Unfortunately for 10 days, and my father and the authorities started to get an idea of what was going on. My father and this man feared that they would go to jail. Their next plan was that I would become a child bride and I would marry him. Then he could do whatever he really wanted to me. I managed to escape. I contacted my godmother in New York. When you were talking about human trafficking in Texas, it was the sex trafficking. In New York, it was more of a combination of sex trafficking and human trafficking. When I arrived in New York, I had no idea my godmother was such a monster. She was actually a mule for a pedophile, and she would find girls like me, she would groom us. She would drug us if necessary. She would hold girls down to be raped by her boyfriend.

14:55

So you had your father and your godmother. [Dawn: Yes.] These are not friendly people. Usually with bad seeds in a family you wouldn't think that there would be a whole forest of them. You would think there'd be one bad seed, and I'm going to call your father a bad seed. Because we have to keep it clean on here, or as clean as you can. Right now, I feel the hair stand up on the back of my neck because I want to go do a bully beat down on your dad. He is now deceased.  [Dawn: yes]. Okay, your father's deceased. The first question that comes to my mind is did he end up in trouble for this? [Dawn: No, no.] Let’s go back. So, you were in Texas when that was happening? [Dawn: It was in Texas.] Then you went to New York whenever you escaped, and you escaped to another super villain.

15:54

I went from the frying pan into the fire. I had no idea.

16:00

You went to her for like refuge? You were like, “Help me.” She's like, “Yes. Oh, look, what I've got.”

16:08

Her abuse, in many ways, I feel was 10 times worse than my father because she was setting out to abuse girls. I would clean her house. What a lot of people don't understand is having no resources. My mother had died when I was 11, she fell asleep smoking in bed. There was no one to turn to. I had to cook and clean for her. I had to work in her boyfriend's restaurant, take care of my younger cousin. She would keep almost all of my financial resources. That’s what they rely on, the product.

Brandy

The dependency, absolutely dependent. She was working you, and you weren't gaining a way out of this?

17:12

No, no. What a lot of people don't understand is when it comes to human trafficking, there's three ways that someone becomes a victim of human trafficking. The first is a stranger grabs you off the street, and forces you into the lifestyle. The second is through, usually, a trusted family member. The third way is what I call mules. My godmother was a mule, and a mule’s job is to find the victim, groom the victim, and then traffic the victim to the main abuser. Now, mules will sometimes also be abusers, my godmother raped me. It has taken me 38 years to admit that. The worst part about a mule is they will do anything to protect the secret of the abuser. So, then they start doing the wet work. They make the threats; they assure you that no one will believe you that you wanted the abuse. I'm going to tell you that there's no child out there who begs to be abused. There's no young woman or young man who says, “I want this to happen to me.”

18:42

For human trafficking, of the three ways, I think a lot of people think that it's going to be the random person that doesn't know you. I know whenever I was a schoolteacher, we had to study abuse and we had to understand poverty. A lot of times whenever people were being raped, it's by family members. The mule, that seems like someone who is like a collector of people that are victims of unfortunate events. The fact that your father was the one that first got you into this at 14, and your mother died in a fire accident from smoking while in bed when you were 11. It is hard whenever I meet people that have went through these like traumatic events. Then here you are, a professional businesswoman. [Dawn: Thank you] You’re in a successful marriage with a man that loves you, he's overcome bladder cancer, and I've met your granddaughter, and then you have been nothing but nice to me. You met me as a horse trainer, there's a whole bunch of us. You feel very mama bearish. [Dawn: Thank you.] You're a mama bear even though you're the size of a cub. [Dawn: Well, I appreciate that.] Dynamite comes in small packages too. [Dawn: Absolutely.] So, how did you get out of it? First of all, how many years did that go on with the evil godmother?

20:41

Actually, thank you, Lord, I was only with her for nine months. It was a stranger who changed my life. She had told me I was worthless, I was going to drop out of school, I was never going to be in anybody. {Brandy: That was the godmother, not the stranger?] Yes, thank you for clarifying that. She told me that I would have to stay and work for her, and work for Ben, and work in the pizzeria in Soho. My way out, was I was going to overdose. I was going to take all the pills that she would keep in her cabinet that she would slip into girl’s drinks. I was just going to overdose

Brandy

That’s what she told you?

21:32

that's what I was going do. I didn't want to work for her. I didn't want to stay with her. I was terrified of baring my abuser’s child,

Brandy

Because then you're connected to them.

21:45

There was just no way out for me. My only thought was, okay, if I'm dead, then I can't be hurt, free. But it was a stranger who came into my life, and just basically helped me see that there was more to life than just depth and helped me find the courage to escape and get away from her. I was able to, thankfully, get away from her and go stay with family in Pennsylvania and live a life that I never thought possible. I got to graduate from high school, go to the Governor's School for the Performing Arts, I joined the military, I was in the Air Force, which is why I'm here in Missouri. I got stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base. I used to work out in the missile field.

Brandy

Did you ever disclose to the family in Pennsylvania?

22:56

Yes, I did. My family members decided to contact my father. Of course, my father denied everything and said, “Oh, no, no, no, she wanted to marry him. She wanted to be with this man. I was always pulling her off of other men.” That’s the problem with this type of abuse, is the burden of proof falls to the victim. We tend to believe the abuser, and we tend to validate the abuser.

Brandy

If I was faced with two different stories, I would never ever want to think that a person's capable of this heinous crime. Then looking at your age 14- to 15-year-old girl, a lot of girls get lost at that time in their life. We have a lot of stuff going on, and sex, a lot of times, happens because it like makes you feel pretty, and it makes you feel grown up. Whenever somebody tells you that something's bad going on, something bad is going on. As schoolteachers, we are forced to report. Your family unfortunately went with the easier side to swallow than the harder story.

24:35

I think I think the other flip side of that is, it's hard to imagine that someone would do that to their child.

Brandy

Yeah, it always feels like this far distant person in another state, not the person that's right in front of me that's talking to me.

24:54

Exactly. My reasoning on that was, if I really wanted to be with this man, why didn't I stay in Texas and marry him? Why did I run away?

25:09

The obvious loophole right there in their story.

25:13

I always say what people really need most, especially children, is they need a good listening to. They need to be heard without judgment. I'm not saying necessarily without reaction, because sometimes you hear things that are so heartbreaking, you can't help but react. The most important thing we could do is, if someone comes to us, man, woman, child, and they say, “This happened to me,” the first thing I would say is, believe them, validate them. Give them at least an opening where they can share their story, because that's what's so healing about it. When you said earlier, Brandy, that you weren't ready to share your story, I think when people hear your story, when you're finally ready, what they're going to see is strength behind who you are. I think that's going to be a beautiful and a powerful thing. It's going to allow other women to feel that “Wow, that was courageous. I can share my story.” That’s where the healing starts. Right.

26:43

So, here you are, what is the flip? How did the flip happen from, here's this heinous crime that's happened to you, and then the, “Oh, heck, no, I'm going to be somebody, I'm going to be this positive person.” How did you gain that?

27:08

Well, I always say, I never wanted to live up to the expectations that people set for me. When somebody told me I was going to be a failure, and I was going to drop out of school, and I was going to be the teenage pregnancy story, it kind of made me feel good not to live up to their expectations. My personal expectations were more than that.

27:34

Some people can be broken down and they build themselves back up and be like, “Oh, no, I'm going to prove them wrong.” I'm not that person. If somebody breaks me down, I don't rebuild stronger. I have to stay up all the time. If I get down, it's not good. It’s hard for me to dig back out of something. Well, you were military. They break you all the way down, and then they reform you to be stronger on the other side. Well, some people when they get broken down, they stay broken. I have to go off and do my own thing. You know what I mean? Whenever something is broken, it's easier to give birth than to raise the dead. If something goes wrong on one road, then I've got to get away from that. I've always admired people that could be broken down and to chew on that same thing, and then rise up. Like relationships. If I am hurt by someone, I wash my hands. I'm like, we're done. David and I are happily married. People will ask, what would you do if he cheated? I'm like, I would divorce him. They're like, you wouldn't beat him up and the girl? No, they wouldn't be worth my time. I would wash my hands. That has always surprised people, like other people would be like, I'm going to kick your butt and I'm going to kick your butt and I'm going to tell everybody. However, for me, you would not exist to me. I see. I'm cold whenever it comes to ending things. Other people want to stay there and fight and chew it up. I'm not that person.

29:55

I have a little bit of that, but I would decorate him up in a real pretty bow and deliver him to her. Here you go. He's yours now. Then I'd go on vacation.

Brandy

And make him pay for it. [Dawn: Absolutely.] What did you have to mentally do to survive in that 10 days and then nine months? I could see the nine months being rougher, because that was on so many different levels. The hopelessness, hopelessness is whenever suicide comes in, and you had touched on that. If you've ever found yourself in this hopeless moment in your life, you then understand it for other people that get to that point. The fact that you had gotten there makes you a wonderful asset to people that are there because you have risen from that. What is something mentally that you had to do to survive during that time?

31:14

I think you just reach a point where failing is not an option. In many ways, I would compare different things that I had gone through. I had been through something that was worse, but I know there's something better. I did that a few times, but I really think I was just simply in survival mode. Kind of like when you're drowning, you just keep kicking, trying to reach the surface. I think that's where I was, I was just wanting to survive.

Brandy

There is a country song that says, if you're going through hell just keep going. Music always comes to me and that is the song lyric that I have in my head. I noticed that there's a little inflection in your voice. I think that's right, whenever you say that there's men at the house now. I know from schoolteacher days, that boys are raped just as women are. A lot of times they want us to stay quiet. They're afraid of being judged as not manly. The fact that you've started taking men, I'm really happy about that, to be able to help those men heal. Did they just start taking me in in the last couple of years?

32:59

In the last couple of years, it's become slightly more socially acceptable, I think, for men to say this happened. I think that the support is there for them, and they're being made aware of it. I think we're starting to realize that telling a young man, “hey, suck it up and be a man, take it, boys don't cry.” I think [Brandy: There is no future in that.] No, there isn't. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter if you're male. Men, women, children, this happens to everyone, and everyone has the right to feel validated and to feel safe, and be shown a way to find resources to get out of it.

Brandy

This happened whenever you were 14-15, and now you're 53. PTSD, long term? [Dawn: Yes. Okay.] So talk about that, because I know that you're probably less trusting of people.

34:18

Absolutely. We had talked about that before the program. When you've been abused, you see people through the filter of your abuse. I always wonder, okay, who is this person and what hell are you going to bring into my life, and then I tend to keep them at arm's length. I don't invite people into my life very openly and readily. I like to keep my circle kind of small, which is why my husband of 20 years had no idea. Well, we’ve only been married 10 our relationship is 20 years. He had no idea that I had been sex trafficked. He knew something happened. He knew that when I would wake up in the middle of the night kicking and screaming and fighting for my life that something happened to her. But he didn't know.

Brandy

How long has it been since he found out?

35:22

He found out in February of 2020. 2020 has been kind of rough for him. [Brandy: 2020 has been rough for a lot of people.] Yes, it has unfortunately.

Brandy

So, he just found out and. Here's this man that you love, but you have compartmentalized this away from him because you had thought that there'd maybe be a reaction on his side. You just wanted to keep him from that. If there was this big, huge thing that I kept from my husband and I told him, I think I would feel lighter. I would feel this huge cloak of weight off of me. Is that how you felt?

36:10

Well, at first, I chose to let my husband know what happened to me in a very public arena. It was during our Survival House “A Second Chance Prom” annual fundraiser for Survival Sight Out. I was standing on a stage, there were several hundred people, he was sitting there with neighbors and people he knew. He had no idea that I was about to rip off the band aid of a horrible secret that I had held for decades.

Brandy

That's probably huge for him. I know that I love I love David, and if he kept something like that from me, I would feel so sorry for him for having to keep that from me or feel the need that he thought that he had to. But then part of me would also be ticked off because he didn't tell me.

37:20

Let me tell you a little backstory about my husband, my husband is a retired police officer. He had over 38 years of law enforcement experience. He was the lieutenant of the Detective Division in the Warrensburg Police Department. For years, I would see him deal with women and men and children that had gone through many of the same things I had gone through. I think what gave me the courage to come out to him so publicly, and to my community, the way I did was I saw the compassion. And I saw the validation that he would give victims. And he showed me that love. Also, he validated me and validated what happened to me and made himself very available to discuss it at any length that I wanted to discuss it. My rejection that I feared, never materialized. Yeah. And that was a blessing.

Brandy

Oh, yeah. This fear that so many people have about all of these different events is this fabricated future that doesn't exist, and you feel so good whenever you get to the future and realize that it didn't happen that way. I don't know why we couldn't fabricate like this wonderful, loving, supportive thing. No, we had to fabricate rejection and unacceptance. Our minds are evil. If we can ever shut our head up, the world will be a lot better, and we'd be a lot happier.

39:12

You got that right, absolutely right.

Brandy

How many beds are you able to help with a Survival House, or how many people at one time?

39:25

Well, right now we have two shelters. We have shelter one which is over 100 years old, which was one of the reasons that I had gone to discuss our shelter situation with the Noonday Optimist. We have shelter two. We have 27 beds between the two facilities. We also have an outreach office. We offer everything from counseling services to relocation services. We are a 24/7 manned operation. We even have a hotline for people to call in.

Brandy

What's that number? Or do you know it?

40:09

You can call our outreach office at 660-429-1080, and we have a great partnership with local law enforcement. What a lot of people don't understand is survival house in Johnson County, Missouri, also serves Henry County. A few years ago, Henry County shelter had to close due to non-financing. They just couldn't get the money and the resources to keep it open. So, we picked up Henry County also. We have reached out to law enforcement and local authorities, and they bring us a lot of our residents. We also work within children's services. We also work with some of our other local organizations through either the local shelters, the homeless shelter, or we have a standing in the gap ministries. We try to help other organizations that may need resources, or not help them but help their clients, if we can provide resources for them.

Brandy

 So that telephone number again, was 660-429-1080. You said during the time whenever all this was happening, that you were bad, you were acting out. That makes me think, I had a student before that her mother had put her into prostitution. I'm choking up a little bit. That student was so hard to love. It took everything I had to love her because she was mean, she was so mean to me. I had nothing to do with that. I had to learn as a teacher to not take this stuff personally. But good lord, she was difficult. If you have these children in your lives, or these people in your lives, they are just hard to love. Yeah. You don't know what the backstory is. I disliked her. I did not like her. She was so mean to kids. She was mean to adults. She was loud. It was really hard to love her.

43:04

You're describing me. Now you sympathize with my husband.

Brandy

He got the older version of you, the one that's learned how to mend, he got a great person. A lot of great people do not come from great beginnings. No, survivors and a lot of people that you love in your life and that you meet, and these achievers, that's not built on rainbows and unicorns. It’s built on hard times, extremely hard times, and difficult situations and things that people don't want to talk about. That's how some of the greatest people in the world are made, they are not made on some nice path. They're made on a path that nobody wants to go down. [Dawn: Very true.] I should probably reach out to some of the students that I know, some of my previous students, that have been sexually abused. A lot of them have made great decisions as adults because they never want to put somebody through what they went through. Absolutely. Some of them are the best parents. They're the sweetest people in the world, and it's just because they know what it's like to go through horrible events. That’s where I put you. You're this ray of sunshine in my life that is super supportive, and it's because you know what it's like to go through things. Whenever you were bad, was it getting into fights, cussing people, punching them, running away, stealing?

45:00

I can't say it wasn't stealing because I was a starving child. If you left a hamburger around, it would disappear. I'd lie to you and tell you the dog took it. I was a child who would get into fights. First, I would try to stay in the background, but if you targeted me, I would come at you with both barrels. I refused to be a victim, especially in school. I really have to attribute a lot of my success to teachers who saw through what I was, and they decided to make an active and conscious choice to love me through it. Now, it was not all teachers, because there were some teachers that just simply hated my guts. I didn't blame them. I hated my guts, too. But my principal, when we were homeless, my principal would send me home every Friday with a bag of sandwiches. My librarian would let me take home extra books to read.

Brandy

They knew it was an escape for you. When I used to be a teacher, my hands were tied. They were so tied, I couldn't do things. I had this poor boy that I knew that had been raped before, and he was trying to stay awake at nighttime to make sure that his little brother didn't get raped. I was his first class in the morning, and he was so tired. I let him sleep sometimes, and I got in so much trouble. They would be like, he's asleep back there. And I'm all like, Mm hmm. I had reported it, but he didn't want to be removed from the house because he wanted to protect his younger brother. I'm over here, like, oh, my gosh, my science class does not matter. What matters is that that boy can get a little bit of sleep, then the rest of his classes, he could be awake for. He was bad at school, but he made sure he never got kicked out because he didn't want to go home. He was a difficult kid, but I loved him, and I know that he loves me because I made sure to give him Christmas gifts and stuff. The only thing that I was able to do was to let him sleep. We had block scheduling, so it wasn't every night, it wasn't every day. But a teacher's hands are tied, sometimes, you know, like they're majorly tied. The fact that you had this librarian, her hands were probably tied, and she's trying to do anything that she can

48:01

That's what's so beautiful about education, because I tell you what teachers do not get into it for the money. They get into it for the heart and to make a difference. That’s what's amazing. You gave that little boy everything that he needed, and it had nothing to do with his textbook.

Brandy

Whenever you first came here, you gave me a lantern. Share the story behind your collection of lanterns.

48:39

I collect lanterns, I love lanterns. The older, the dirtier, the nastier, the better. When I was living in Houston, Texas, we were homeless living in the state park off of Hampstead Highway. We couldn't afford the campsite with electricity. We could barely afford the campsite that had no electricity camping in the rough. We kept getting evicted off of that because my father was an alcoholic, and all of his money went to beer and cigarettes. My librarian would let me check out books, and I would read every night, I would read these books by the lantern. We developed this amazing relationship because she knew that say for instance, when she introduced me to Jack London, I wasn’t in the middle of poverty and homelessness. I was taken to Alaska and the tundra. It's amazing when somebody sees a need in your life, and they go above and beyond. It’s a type of love to love you through it.

Brandy

She was doing what she could do at that time, and now you're doing what you're able to do with the support of the Survival House. Those people need a way out, and it's immediate help. The fact that you are servicing two counties and working with all these different areas, it's like your arms are open saying, “Come and we will help you.” The fact that you're a survivor, makes it so much easier for them to talk to. Nothing's easy about this at all, that was the wrong word. But I'm just saying I know you are an example, you are what they can become later, after some healing happens, and they can get out of their current situation, and someone takes the time to listen to them. They have lot of healing, and people have got to heal, because whenever they go through these huge traumatic events, and they don't heal, they're going to do the same thing to someone else. They're going to do some heinous crime, they're going to not be able to take care of themselves, they're going to commit suicide. Healing is not an option for somebody, they have to heal, or this is going to be projected onto another generation.

51:27

Right, or even projected onto themselves. What a lot of people don't understand about overcoming abuse is that it's easier to feel like you deserve the abuse, and then you start abusing yourself. For instance, take drug addiction. I don't want to see someone who's trying to overcome sexual abuse turn to sticking a needle in their arm so that they can mentally escape what happened to them or what they are going through. I would rather give them resources to realize that Survival House can provide a group therapy where they can get together with other survivors, or they can even speak to our counselor, or they can go into some of our volunteer programs. Maybe they just need somebody to stand beside them. When they go into court and they're facing their abuser, we provide court advocacy. It’s not just about what happened to you, it's how can we help you get past what happened to you, so that they can live the dream that they really want.

Brandy

Right, like you needed money. You needed money to get out, you needed food. Some people might not need money and food, but they might need someone right there beside them to go to a court date, and then here's someone that has forced themselves on them. That makes my heart come up into my throat with this amount of fear that would be involved with that. People need different things. So that's good that you're that Survival House is able to say, “What can we do to help you?” Talking about books, I write children's books. My third book coming out is about a horse named Chalkboard. My goal with these children's books is to do character development. I just want to get them into schools, because I know that there's children out there that need to connect with these. I'm going to read just the first part of Chalkboards book. So, chapter one. “Repeat after me. I am enough. I am loved. I deserve the love given to me. Now, don't let my name fool you into thinking I am only a child's horse. I am as tough as nails and not one cow will ever get past me or touch my cowboy. My name is Chalkboard.” [Dawn: I love that] There are a lot of things going on with a lot of people that nobody has a clue about. All right, pay attention. You might be the stranger, just like Dawn had a complete stranger that helped her okay. She is on this podcast and we're reaching countries and different states. Maybe people needed to hear Dawns story to help them get started with them. They might be in the same situation right now, and they're like, “Am I ever going to make it out of this?” You might be a person that has some kind of horrible thing you've went through, and you haven't told your spouse, and you're worried. You might be thinking, I am small, I can't get out of these things. You can get out of anything; you are never stuck. You can be unstuck within one second. Sometimes you just need help. All you have to do is reach out. If somebody was right now going through this, could they just call the police or just show up at a police department?

55:50

Yes. And that's the that's the beauty of law enforcement. Most law enforcement has been trained to not only spot abuse and recognize it, but how to make proper responses and how to get the client in touch with resources. Say a young woman has been raped, then law enforcement now can reach out to us and we will show up at the hospital, we will help that victim with whatever they need to put them on a path to recover from that. What a lot of people don't understand is that if a man or a woman is raped, or a child is abused and they go to the police, the police take them to the hospital. Well, they have no clothing because then their items or their outfit become evidence. It's important that they have somebody there who understands that this is an immediate need, and we're going to take care of it. But there's going to be a future need, and we're still here to help you take care of it. That’s what's great about Survival House.

Brandy

A lot of people don't think about future help. I have a friend, she had a spouse that has passed away. Everybody wants to help. Well, it's been a little bit of time since then and I check on her. People might think about right then, but then what about in a week? What about 14 days? What about a month from now? There are still needs there. Dawn owns this pet store, Country Pets and Ponds in Warrensburg, Missouri. If you're on any of my Facebook pages, and you look through the likes, you'll see her, she's sharing my stuff. She's loving me, she's liking, commenting. She’s all over social media, and you can look up her business if you want to support her, then go to a pet store. What do you all have there?

58:11

We have a little bit of everything from reptiles to fish to small animals. If you really do like my story, and you want to support please consider supporting Survival House or an organization like Survival House because you may not see your help, it may be $5 that you donate, but that $5 may go to somebody who's on the other end of the phone, reaching out to a victim and saying, “Hey, come in, we'll help you. We have a resource here for you.”

Brandy

You’ve also written some books.

58:53

I have.

Brandy

How many books have you written?

58:56

I've written four. Two are currently published and available. I pulled one back, but I'm about to finish The Mule. The Meal is sex traffic to survival. In one of your previous podcasts, you had talked about editing, I find editing to be the worst. I don't know if it's just going back through it again, but it is one of it's my biggest struggles. My book is about to go to a friend of mine who's going to edit it for me, thank you, Lord. I've written The Other Female, which is about my husband's horse who helped us get through his bladder cancer. Then Places is about the dogs in my life who helped me get through different stages in my life. I love animals, I really think that they're an earthly angel to help us deal with everything that being human inflicts on us.

Brandy

I know my dog loves me every day, no matter if the world is against me, my dog still loves. [ Dawn: And it's unconditional.] I can be stinky, I can be ugly, I can be anything, and she's just so happy to see me. [Dawn: And that's how it should be.] The two books that you already have out right now, if they wanted to get a copy of those, what are the other woman, [Dawn: The Other Female, she’s not a woman. She’s a horse. They’re available on Amazon.] Okay, do you have them underneath your name?

1:00:46

Yes, they're under my D.M. Eich.

Brandy

It was about your husband's journey through bladder cancer, then the other one is Places. It’s about the different dogs in your life and how they are now. So that book sounds like it could be a tearjerker.

1:01:15

Oh, you're going to bawl. I’m going to warn you, both of them can really pull on your heartstrings. I am very blessed because it's not how your life starts. It's not even how everything you go through. It's how you finish it, and the choices that you make. I'm blessed that I have people around me that have really helped me make choices that helped me prosper in life and afford me the opportunity to help others being the current president of the board of Survival. I know that the little things that we're doing in life is really making a difference. They say it takes a village to raise a child, I say it takes a village to save each other.

Brandy

I was thinking about that same quote, it takes a village just to raise people. People that are already grown need help. I'm 41 right now and I feel like the amount of growth that I've went through in the last couple of years, is exponential. Here you are helping people that are all different ages, and we can always get better.

1:02:43

 I can never repay the folks who have helped me in my life, I can only pay it forward. I think that they don't expect repayment. I think choosing to help somebody else. I think that's more important in our lives, and it helps give our life meaning.

Brandy

It is kind of like a ripple. If you help that one person, you never know. That's kind of like horseback riding lessons where I've learned from an instructor, but now there is a wave of people that I have come into contact. This podcast, I think this podcast helps me just as much as I think it helps other people. Thank you for tuning in to Big Boss Mare with Brandy Von Holten . You know, your tribe equals your vibe and my vibe is pretty good to today because I've got Dawn in our tribe with Big Boss Mare. Okay, until next time, thank you all very much.