Gina Gardiner & Friends with Madeline Black

0:00It's time now for Gina Gardner and Friends, the show that shares stories from inspiring people from a wide range of expert guests, all focused on helping you live a happier, more successful, and fulfilling life. Gina Gardner is a multiple number one international best-selling author, motivational speaker, business coach, and trainer. She's the founder of Genuinely You, it has over 30 years experience of helping people step into their genuine, authentic power, personally, and professionally. Matthew. Oh, sorry. It's okay. I just need you to listen to me. I know that a lot of times mom, it might not seem like I'm listening to you, but I am. I hear you, and what you say really does matter to me. I mean, let's be honest, no kid likes rules, but I get why we have them. I hear you, and I know it's because you care. All the talks we've had over the years, including what you've told me about not using alcohol and other drugs, they stick with me.

1:02And believe it or not, they really do make a difference, especially at times that matter most. Hey, want a drink? No, thanks. I'm good. So thank you dad, for talking, and preparing me for what's ahead. Thanks mom, for never giving up, and always being my biggest fan. Thank you for letting me know what you expect, so I can try to meet your expectations. Thank you for talking. For more information about talking with your kids about underage use of alcohol and other drugs, visit underagedrinking.samsa.gov. And now, here's your host, Gina Gardner. Hello, and a huge welcome to this week's episode of Gina Gardner and Friends. Today, I am joined by Madeline Black, and she's a lady I've known, well sometimes she's quite incredible, as you'll see from her story. She's a speaker, an author, she's the host of the podcast Unbroken Healing Through Stories. She has written a book called Unbroken, which shares her story, and our theme today is

2:08going to be about forgiveness. But this is a lady who won the Amazing Strength Award in 2018, and she is someone who has shown huge resilience. Welcome Madeline, so please to see you. Oh, thank you, Gina. I love you to be back here with you again. Thank you. Please share a bit of your story, because I think that puts so much into context when we're talking about forgiveness. Yeah, I mean, my story to the honest is not another story. It is one of pain and violence and trauma, but it is one of overcoming, and as you said, one of resilience. And so to cut a very long story short, I was just 13 when I went out on a night out, which went disastrously wrong, and I was gang raped by two men. Just to put it a horrendous thing to happen to anyone, but to happen to someone who's that young, I can't imagine what that must have been like.

3:12You know, it had a huge impact on me, obviously. I was terrified of any comeback from them, because they threatened to me. So I didn't speak about it for many years. But in that time, you know, I used every method I could to numb out, to disconnect, to forget, to push it far away from my head. And I ended up with an eating disorder, depression, using drugs, alcohol, tempted suicide. I had six months in a psychiatric ward. So I wasn't in, obviously, a very good place for a long, long time. What was it, do you think, that you made the difference? Was it, was there a particular moment, or was it a combination of things, where you move from trying to anesthetize yourself, which so many people do when they're hurting, to actually taking the power back, taking control? I think it is, like you say, it is multi-layered.

4:14There's many, many things that happened, but I think meeting my now husband, maybe 40 years ago, was a huge turning point, because I couldn't believe it's only wanted to love this person, me that had so much self-loathing and worthlessness. All these thoughts around my always to space, and really through love, I saw that I was loveable, and it showed me that love is always going to win at the end of the day, whether that's love from someone else, love of yourself, which is very important, or just give love back and return. So that made a difference, reversing my decision on not becoming a mum, made a huge difference. I had three girls, and then my persistence in always wanting to live my best life, just refusing to be identified, becoming a mum, but always wanting to clean up this trauma, because I studied psychotherapy as well, I was a psychotherapist for many years, and I, funny, thought I was healed when I went to my course, and it didn't take me long

5:15for more trauma to reappear, and I thought, oh, goodness, I thought I'd worked all of this, so it was very multi-layered, so I don't know if it was one thing in particular, I think everything really played a part in my recovery or my healing. You know, I've worked with many people who have suffered a whole range of abuse, and one of the common denominators, I think, is how the impact is that people then believe that they are unlovable, that the impact on their sense of who they are, when in reality, it's not you who is happy, you've been damaged, but the fault lies with the perpetrator, and yet it's the person who's on the receiving end, who often feels that self-loathing, and certainly some of the client's type of work, but they feel guilt about the fact that it's happened. I've personally identified that, and now looking back, you know, I've had many, many years

6:15to process this, and it was my shame, my shame that really kept me quiet for years, it lighted me, and it took my voice away, it kind of robbed me of my voice, it kept silent, and also the pressure that we get from society, you know, where you were out drinking, what did you expect? She was asking for all these messages, the victim bleeding is such an intimate crime that it is so common to just take it on board and think, well, I could have prevented this, and we say, I was raped, rather than she was raped, so we kind of make it very personal as well. Yeah, no, I lived with guilt and shame for years, it took me a long, long, long time to realise that 100% of all rapes are caused by rapists, nothing else. It wasn't my clothes, it wasn't the alcohol, it hanged down to the fact these two men chose to rape me, and nothing else, and the shame, I held on to inappropriate shame for years, and I know as well that so many people

7:15hold on to a shame and guilt that doesn't belong to them, it always belongs to the perpetrators, always. I'm reminded, you know, as you know, I was the head teacher of Principal of a large school and soon after I took over, and this was in the early eighties, and I invited somebody to come in and do training for the whole staff, teaching and non-teaching about abuse, and we were sitting there, they were showing a video, and suddenly my secretary was about to retire, she was 16, a run out of the room sobbing, and I left the room, and I went to find her, and she was inconsolable, I couldn't, to start with, I couldn't tell what she was saying, she couldn't stop crying, and it turned out that she had been abused sexually, when she'd been in her teens, and she had never told anybody, not even her husband, or especially not her husband, perhaps, and for the first time, she felt ready to talk about it,

8:19and you think, you know, that had happened nearly five decades before, and to carry that burden, it had definitely coloured her whole life, it's so wrong and such a shame, and that won't be uncommon at all, I've got many, many incidents when I first showed my school in 2014, with an organisation called the Forgiveness Project, within a few weeks, a few weeks, I had hundreds of messages, mostly from friends of mine, but again, another friend in her sixties had never told anyone, you know, for the first time, and then it kind of went to different countries, and it kind of went a bit viral, the posts that we shared, and so many people shared their story of abuse and rape, but also for the very first time, and I think it just showed me that there's so much power in sharing our stories, but also showed me how sad it is that we hold onto this, and as you say, she will be looking through her life,

9:19through those lenses of trauma, and never been healed, and that kind of dark chapter, you know, that shameful secret, looking through the eyes of that, but it also showed me that courage is contagious as well, you know, we can give people hope by sharing our stories, which is kind of really why I do what I do, because it was somebody else speaking out that helped me find my voice, and I just really want to pay that forward, I guess. We're going to go for a short break now, but when we come back, I want to explore with you the whole theme of forgiveness. I think it's got tremendous power, for even the most keenest things that have happened, and we'll be back in a couple of minutes. If you are affected by this story, then please do contact either Madeline or I, and we will have the details at the end of the show. Please have a pencil and or pen and paper ready. We'll see in a couple of minutes.

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11:21And we're talking about abuse and the need to heal and how to heal effectively from something which is so significant in your life, whether that's an inappropriate action or full-blown rape. The trauma, the level of trauma doesn't necessarily equate to the level of hurt and need to heal, does it? Yeah, it's not about comparison. Pain Olympics, it's not what you would say to me when I was rape, but it wasn't as bad as you, because it's never about what happens. It's always what we do of it. And it's where you're starting from as well. You know, when I worked as a therapist, I could have two people that lost their father, for example. And the one would say, I'll never get over the death of my dad. And one would say, I'm so grateful he was my dad. You know, so it's always our approach, our attitude that we bring to everything. But if we really choose to, we can work it and get past anything that happens to us.

12:22And actually, now I think from living with PTSD for years, I would say I have post-traumatic growth from speaking out and not really caring. Who knows my story anymore? I think that's a really powerful thing to say, you know, post-traumatic growth. There is the opportunity. And one of the approaches before we get into the business of forgiveness, I think that when we can reframe things from I was a victim, to I'm a survivor, I think that there's such a different energy behind those two beliefs, isn't there? So living, we can grow through what we go through. Yes. I mean, that's true of life in general. We grow through our challenges. Not that I'm suggesting for one second that people should go through the trauma of abuse in order to grow. That's not what I'm saying. But ultimately, when life is dropping along nicely, there's not necessarily a lot of growth going on.

13:26And we can use what happens to us in our life. Life gives us the tools, things are challenging. You know, are you going to resist it because what we resist persist? Or are you going to take the lessons? Are you going to learn from whatever life is showing you at? And eventually I had to stop denying and resisting and open up to everything that had happened to me in order to let it go and really just step into the darkest chapters, the most painful parts of my life that I didn't want to look at. That was how I was able to let it go. You know, I think the burying those powerful emotions is rather like trying to keep a dragon in a box. Keeping the lid on the box takes so much energy, doesn't it? And it's not productive energy. And then every now and again, the dragon gets out of the box and there's the fear that you're never going to get it back in again and put the lid back on. I liken it to a jack in the box, but eventually my jack in the box, the lid is open and I just couldn't close it anymore.

14:27I had years of perfecting the closing it and then somehow the lid got jammed open and I I just couldn't shut that lid down again and you know the spring thing we're all over the place in it would not close so that's when I thought. But isn't it interesting though that when that happened out of that, not just the box being open but how you dealt with it, you're giving yourself freedom. And for me, the forgiveness is about freedom. Lots of people think, well if I forgive someone, I'm condoning the act or I've got to forget it and it's quite the opposite, isn't it? I would never forgive the act of ribbon. I do want to be clear, I'm not a forgiveness preacher, you know, but books not a self-help guide, this is how I did it. Forgiveness was my journey, I'm not saying you know, forgive, but whatever I think allows you to stop dying, to face up to the facts, to accept them and learn to let it go, and that's what forgiveness did for me. It cut. It cut everything that tied me to them.

15:28The nose ties chain to me down, they stopped my growth, they kept me in the past, I wasn't present in any way. So yeah, forgiveness really was my key to freedom absolutely. The way I like and not forgiving is you take the poison yourself and you expect the other person to die, but ultimately by holding on to that shame and that pain, it does nothing to the perpetrator, does it? I think to you, I was filled with anger and hate and revenge for years and you know, I struggled to have these children, and I thought, what kind of mother am I going to be if I can't let that go? If I can't show them, you know, we can go through tough times with being through them as well. I wanted them to see that as well, to build their resilience. So, you know, I just thought, this is doing me more damage than they don't have any ideas. So for me, I deserved peace with my past. You know, I deserved to let it go, I held on to it for way too long

16:30and it was really, it was like a boredom chain around my ankle. I was just dragging it everywhere with me, so it was definitely time to let it go. But you know, we don't see that until we see it, so it's very hard. And I always used to call myself an accidental figure, because I was never going to forgive them. I plotted all these horrible scenarios against them, hoping that they would get it, you know, somebody would do the same to them and worse. But then I saw, that kind of makes me just as better than really, not that I would carry out any of those acts, but just to have those thoughts. I thought, I'm capable of these evil thoughts as well. You know, we're all human, at the end of the day. Ultimately, I think, for me, and forgiveness at a personal level, I had a very inappropriate uncle. But trusting people was always very difficult after that. But ultimately, when I worked with clients, I think the recognition that in the act of forgiveness,

17:32which is not condoning and not forgetting, that ball and chain that keeps yanking you back into the past that stops you fully embracing who you are and what life can offer, once you choose to do that and you choose to let it go, then the world opens up. Simon was more peaceful in my head. It was like a battle in my head constantly, but it was the one that had all the sort of paying attention and all the weapons firing off. It was me, you know, once I learned to put my weapons down or mass destruction inside my head, and yeah, life is so much more peaceful. At the end, you start to see it in 3D and in color and all of that would have escaped me. I wasn't really living my life. I had protected myself from living so much that I wasn't really living a life. I was just, it was brick wall around me and I had to learn to take the bricks down, I guess, one by one.

18:34But yeah, I was so scared, my security, that I had to, yes, absolutely letting it go just totally showed me that we can have a spontaneous, big, bold, courageous life if we really choose to. I'm interested that you've got three daughters. How much of your choice to reveal what had gone on was around having three daughters and wanting them to be resourced, because there would be some parents who perhaps, well, I can't say anything about it because they don't want my daughters to know. And yet you've taken a very opposite view. Yeah, because I know I kind of ended up in the situation because I had lied. I lied about where I was staying. I always wanted them to be honest with me. And I always say, look, I don't care what you're doing. If you're drunk, you're stoned, you're whatever. Just phone us and we will come and get you and we won't judge you so that we always had this open communication.

19:35Obviously, they don't tell me everything. But yeah, they've always known. When they were little, I would just say that mummy was hurt by two boys very badly. And then as they got older, near to the age that I was 13, I, you know, very clear about consent and in a sexual relationship. But also, consent when they were little, I never, these parents that forced them to go and kiss their auntie or their uncle or sit on someone's knee or hug everyone goodbye, you know, just to say, if you want to do it, that's fine. If you don't, you don't have to. So just show that there's always consent. There's always choice in everything that we do, not just in our relationships, but consent, I think, not really shown so much. I always wanted to show them consent as well. So yeah, I was very honest with them what had happened. And when I wrote my manuscript, my book, I said, you can read it before. It's published if you want. So it's very interesting. Anna read the chapter about her. Mimi read the very end chapter,

20:35which is what she does with one of Harry Potter books and everything else went through the little girl. And Layla, who wasn't yet 13, she read everything and it does have a lot of detail in my book as well. So they're very interesting. But yeah, they know what I speak about. They know what I do. And rape is not a taboo subject. They have friends come to me. They don't want to go to the police or tell their parents. So I've had many of their friends contact me in the past or friends or friends. They all know that I'm a sexual violence activist. And so I just offer them advice and point them in the right direction. I can't be their therapist, but I just sign, post them to the right place and make sure they've got good support and their friends know how to care for them. Which is really just being there for someone and don't judge them, don't ask them too many questions. Just go at their pace and feed them well and run them fast and make sure they sleep and normal kind of nurturing stuff, really. We're going to go for another break. We've talked really about your openness with your daughters.

21:37But I'd like to, in the last part of the show, if parents are listening to this and they've got songs or you're a man, I'd like to explore the issue around consent because I think it's something that often gets very clouded and I'd just be very interested in your view of that. So please don't go away. We'll be back in just a minute. When it comes to vaping, the truth can get clouded. So let's make it clear. vaping is not safe for kids, teens or young adults. It's just not. Because vaping can put microscopic particles into your lungs. And dangerous things like metals and volatile organic compounds into your body. And nicotine, the same highly addictive substance found in regular cigarettes. Nicotine can harm a person's brain development through their mid-twenties. Effecting learning, memory, attention, and impulse control and priming the brain for other addictions.

22:37Vaping products also come in kid-friendly flavors that can make them appealing to youth. And many kids also use other drugs like marijuana and vaping devices. With appealing flavors, high nicotine levels and lots of promotion on social media. Many kids think vaping is harmless, but it's not. So talk to your kids about the risks of vaping. Because when you talk, they hear you. For more information, visit underagedrinking.samsa.gov. Hi, we're the Oak Ridge Boys. Scammers steal bins of dollars from unsuspecting people every year. We are working with AARP's Fraud Watch Network and the Department of Justice to keep you from being a victim of fraud. They have vital information for you. They will help you get in touch with folks that fight fraud every day. Go to AARP.org slash Fraud Watch Network. Welcome back. I'm talking to Madeline Back about her experiences

23:38and we've been talking about the whole issue of forgiveness and in her case, particularly around rape. And I'd like to just explore in this last part of the show. If you'd had boys rather than girls, do you think that you would have spoken differently? What would you be saying to your boys, do you think? I would still make sure they knew what consent was. More if you think consent isn't really difficult. You just need to make sure you've got a very clear guess in regards of sexual orientation. If you don't have a clear guess, you can't go ahead. You know, not saying yes is not consent. And if you're too drunk to be able to not say yes or no, that's not consent either. It's pretty easy and pretty straightforward. But you know, I would just treat my boys, if I had boys exactly the same way. If they were in trouble, if they were ever worried, just call us, we'll come and pick them up. I would never judge them. I just want them to be okay out there.

24:38But it's hard because I wanted to get the balance of not overly protecting them, but also letting them live their life. And I saw that I could overly protect them. And I thought, I could corrupt them. I could put all my fear and project all of my stuff and my head onto them. You know, we have to be careful what we ask for, because I wanted them to be fierce, independent, you know, confident young women, which they are. In some ways it's good. In some ways it's not so good. But you know, I got what I asked for. And I thought, if I coddle them up, wrap them up in cotton wool, and never let them out, they're never going to be straight white. It's how well they know how to be out there. So I had to learn to let them live their lives, which was tricky from my point of view. So they're all absolutely free. It's interesting, isn't it, how, you know, that there's no manual that comes with being a parent. And they're all different. As you say, your three daughters dealt with your book very differently.

25:38But I think for, you know, you know, coming from the point of view of being a head teacher or a principal, how often parents would come and say, I'm not sure how to handle this. And would often underestimate what children could deal with. And they're wish to protect them. I think very often we do the very opposite because we don't give them the tools to handle life. I'm Mike. Absolutely. My uncle's daughter just got married and my nephews were there. My youngest, my second youngest nephew, he's about 15. And he said to me, he wanted to read my book. And I said, you know what it's about. And I said, it's not always very nice to read, Sammy. And he said, but it's okay. I look at you now and I know that you're okay in the end as well. So, you know, what a huge amount. Yeah. He is a living space. What's my undimediliner? So, yeah, that's what he said. He says, I can see.

26:38You end up really well. So, let's remind our listeners what the book is called. It's called Unbroken. And you can find that on Amazon and on your website, I believe. Yes. In any book store. You can order it or from any online book store. Yes. So, where can people find you, Natalie? They can just find me all over social media. But just go to my website, madlaneblack.co.uk. It's been an absolute joy to talk to you. But we're not quite finished yet. And we are very proud to be members of B1G1. By 1G1. And we invite all of our guests to choose from one of four projects each month. And the projects this month are clean water, feeding the hungry, the environment. And we have a project for young people in Ukraine. They're going through traumas at the moment. So, which of those four projects would you like us to donate to?

27:39How can you ask me to pick? Sorry about that. Well, I think feeding people who shouldn't be hungry. You know, we shouldn't have people hungry in this day and age. It's just so much food wastage. And then there's people that don't have food to eat. That really brings my heart. So, I'm hoping that will come across quite a few of those charities. Thank you. And that we will be donating on your behalf. So, final couple minutes to the show. What would you like to leave our listeners with? What's the message that you would like to give them? Always hope. Always hope stands for. Well, there's two things you said. Help one person every get out of her situation. But I love the other one, which was hold on pain ends. So, there is always hope. And I also think it's important to say, it's never too late to find your voice. It's never too late to go and get the help that you deserve, to heal, to really live your best life, to not carry that trauma to your grave, and never tell anyone.

28:40So, doesn't have to be a therapist. It could be a friend. It could just be yourself. But tell yourself your story. Stop denying it. Write it down. Read it back. And really do the work to heal from this trauma and just live your best courageous life. Very, very great advice. Thank you so much, Madeline. And thank you as listeners for joining us today. It's a real pleasure. Please do let us know what you think. Email me at Gina Gardner and Friends.com. And ultimately, recognize that you have the power to influence your life. If you want help, reach out. So, if you want to speak to me, email me at Gina at Gina Gardner and Friends.com. Thanks again. And I look forward to seeing you on the next show. Bye bye now. Thanks for listening to Gina Gardner and Friends. The show that helps you live a happier,

29:40more successful, and fulfilling life. To learn more about Gina Gardner, go to genuinely-u.com. If you would like to work with Gina, or book her as a speaker, email her at Gina at genuinely-u.com.