Underneath Her Story

The abuse is in her past.
The impact doesn't have to be in her future.

Our Mission

Underneath every woman carrying the weight of what happened to her, there is still her — the person she was before, and the person she's becoming.

Her Story

I did tell. But I was silenced.

I was sexually abused throughout my childhood and into my teenage years. And for a long time, I thought once the abuse ended, it was in my past.

What I didn't understand was that the abuse could end and the impact of it could keep living in you.

I learned how to survive. I learned how to smile, laugh, work, take care of people, and look completely fine from the outside. But internally, I was numb. I had become so disconnected from myself that I didn't even realize how much of my life was being shaped by what had happened to me.

I learned that my voice didn't matter. I told once — I was taken to an organization that helps abused children, and what happened to me was reported. But then my family came back and made me recant my story. So I took my words back. I learned that telling didn't protect me — it just meant learning how to take it back convincingly enough that everyone could move on.

After that, I learned I had to protect myself. That I had to handle things on my own. I became a people pleaser. I struggled to make decisions for myself. I learned to read the room, figure out what everyone else needed, and become whatever version of me felt safest in that moment.

Those beliefs didn't stay in childhood.

They grew up with me.

For years, I thought that was just who I was. I didn't realize how many of my behaviors, relationships, decisions, and beliefs about myself were connected to things I had learned while trying to survive.

And then I started doing coaching and heart healing with Susan.

For the first time, I began to understand that healing wasn't just about talking about what happened to me. It was about discovering what I had come to believe about myself because of it.

Slowly, things started changing.

I started realizing that I was worth healing.

I started realizing that my voice had a purpose.

I started realizing that I mattered.

And there was this moment of realizing… wait a second.

Maybe the woman I had always believed I was wasn't actually who I was.

Maybe she was who I had learned to become to survive.

That realization changed so much for me.

Healing hasn't meant erasing my story or pretending it didn't happen. It has meant finally being able to separate what happened to me from who I am.

Today, my story is still part of me. But it doesn't get to define me.

Nearly 1 in 2 women will experience sexual abuse in their lifetime. Researchers believe the real number is higher — because so many carry it in silence, or are silenced, the way I was.

I know I'm not the only one.

Because there are women everywhere who survived sexual abuse years, even decades, ago. Women who have built lives, raised children, had careers, taken care of everyone around them, and learned how to look completely okay.

But underneath all of that, they may still be living from beliefs they formed while surviving something they never should have had to survive.

I know because I was one of them.

And I also know that it doesn't have to stay that way.

The abuse may be in her past.

The impact doesn't have to be.

April

The Reality

You are not alone —not even close.

~1 in 2

women will experience sexual abuse in their lifetime — and researchers believe the real number is higher.

20–23 years

is the average time it takes survivors of childhood sexual abuse to disclose what happened to them.

Sources: CDC National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey; CHILD USA, 2024

Why This Work

I know what it looks like from the outside.

I'll never forget the first time April and I met in person.

We'd been meeting over Zoom for a couple of months by then — real, hard sessions, the kind that ask a lot of someone who's still learning to trust the person on the other side of the screen. Then she took a chance and showed up at an in-person event. I didn't know she was coming. When I saw her, I was so surprised — so excited — because I knew what it meant for her to take that risk.

She jumped up out of her chair and hugged me, and through the tears, she said, "I love you."

I knew what that cost her to say. I knew what it meant that she said it at all.

Since that day, I've watched April go from hiding — from barely surviving — to building a business, leading at her job, becoming someone other people seek out for healing and wisdom. She didn't become a different person. She became the person who was underneath the whole time.

That's why we built Underneath Her Story — so other women could do the same, together. April knows this from the inside, in ways I never will. I know what it looks like from the outside, watching a woman come back to herself one session at a time. We started this because both of those things matter, and because we've seen, up close, what's possible when a woman finally has somewhere to bring what she's been carrying alone.

Susan

Our Mission

Not fixing. Uncovering.

Every woman who comes to us is already whole underneath. Our work is helping her find what's already there.

Who We Serve

Decades later, not just crisis.

For women who survived years or decades ago and are only now realizing the impact never actually left.

How We Started

One woman. Then another.

Built from a real relationship, a real story, and the belief that no one should carry this alone.

Give Today

Help her go underneath the story she's told herself for years.

Your gift helps a woman find what's still there, underneath everything she's carried alone.

Partner With Us