Lisa A. Mash is a life-long advocate for empowering women and girls. She is an advocates for all females. She has had the privilege of being able to start a self-defense training course in the Saint Charles County and St Louis County. She is a r**e survivor and began training and getting certified three months after this experience. While she developed many skill sets in the self-defense courses, she felt there was more to learn specific to what women encounter in regards to self-defense and personal safety. After taking several programs and getting those certifications, she finally built the educational and tactical pieces that filled in gaps and has been able to help many women since. This has made her become an Uniquely Unforgettable Expert.
In so many ways, I’m not so different from others, but then again, my life was so much different. Even before I remember, documents showed I was malnourished as an infant. I was put into 21 different foster homes until I was adopted at 2 ½ yrs old.
Once I was adopted, I grew up in a small town and experienced common struggles with friends, school, and boys. I went to church Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night. I was taught about Jesus from the time I can remember.
My adoptive father started to s*xually abuse me in the mornings before he went to work. This started when I was so young I couldn’t remember when it started, and continued to age 13. I finally ran away to remove myself from the situation. Child protective services found me, and removed me from the home. I was placed in a children’s group home at that time.
After an outing with my fellow group home friends, I went on a walk with two male friends on a trail. They began to joke about ra**ng me, asking me what I’d do if they r**ed me. I brushed it off, playing it off as a joke. However they were serious, and both boys ended up ra**ng me in the park. Again I was left confused and abused.
I reported it to the “house mother” at the group home. However since the boys were “straight A” students no one believed me. They sent me away to other group home out of state, to a place called “The Lord’s Ranch”. They proceeded to tell me I was “Satan’s girl”, and I had invited all the s*xual abuse in my life.
My train of abuse did not stop at the ranch. One of the male staff would throw me up against walls, kiss me, and feel me up. My sports coach would kiss me, touch me, and tell me he wanted to marry me. And during all of this, I was placed under the care of a psychiatrist that began a s*xual relationship with me. He told me often he had never cheated on his wife, and even took me home on holidays to spend them with his family. Once the management at the ranch found out about the s*xual abuse, they quietly removed me, made sure I got my GED and sent me back to Texas with overt threats to keep me silent.
I went off to college. I struggled with my relationships, I was highly s*xualized after enduring years of trauma. I had no self-esteem or self-regard. I spend my time drifting from relationship to relationship, attracted to men who were mean and dismissive. All I wanted was someone to love me, but after multiple times of having empty s*xual relationships I completely numbed out. I was emotionless, s*x was just a physical act. I didn’t trust or believe that anyone could love and accept me because of the rejection and abandonment I had dealt with my entire life. I felt that no one would want me, and kept trying to use s*x to find love. The only time I felt any “feelings” was during in*******se.
This is when I first was told I was a “love” addict.
Now I went from one college major to becoming a police officer. During the time between my college graduation and when I started the police academy, I got married to my first husband. During the police academy and after, I engaged in unhealthy s*xual relationships with my colleagues, and as a result I became pregnant with my second child. The pregnancy would not let me work out in the field and I would have been on desk work, which I had no interest in.
About this time I was now being told I was a “s*x” addict.
After my husband and I separated and got divorced, I was in and out of relationships. Then I settled down with one. He was very controlling and jealous, He would hit me, not just in private, but in public, and no one would help. He would make sure I knew no one wanted me, and no one would love me the way he does. After repeatingly going back n forth to him, I finally had enough when he had gotten so aggressive, hitting me and throwing things at me, that I truly thought I was going to die.
Living alone was hard, I still craved attention and s*x. I was introduced to doing internet p**n. I can remember feeling loved on these filming’s because I was told I was beautiful and the best. This was like a dream job. I got the attention that I thought I wanted. I can honestly say I didn’t know who I was, and this was the starting point of me becoming whoever or whatever anyone said I was.
Shortly after I got into this, someone told me about how I can meet men (sugardaddy’s) on the internet and get paid to perform. They call it a high-class pr******te. I didn’t stand on a corner, instead men contacted me on the internet. It appeared to be quick money and temporary fulfillment. I wanted to be liked, so I did whatever anyone wanted to do. I think this is where my self-worth was nowhere to be found.
I met this man during this time, he appeared sincere. He paid me multiple times, but he would say he didn’t want me to live my life that way, that I was better. I felt like Julia Roberts on “Pretty Woman”. So I stopped it all. This man gave me what I thought I wanted and needed. He took me to fancy places, bought me nice clothes, and took me to extravagant dinners. Once he knew he hooked me, he began to slap me and degrade me. I tried to be everything he wanted, but it seemed it wasn’t good enough. He would tie me up, he would r**e me, and he would slap me hard multiple times making me repeat that he was the only person for me. I left him many times, but he would convince me that no one would love because of my baggage, and so I would go back. I even married him thinking that would make him realize I only wanted him. It took about 9 ½ years to break the abuse cycle with him.
It took up to me finally leaving him, to realize that is not what a relationship is supposed to be. In the back of my mind, I truly thought it was okay for men to hit me when I did something wrong.
Still searching for ‘real’ love, I met a man who appeared to love God. He was funny and so different than the men I have had in my life. He wouldn’t even have s*x with me. He said I was the marrying kind. Him & I married in 72 days after meeting. But s*x still wasn’t an importance to him. After a few weeks, I found out he was bi-s*xual. We were divorced 79 days after we married.
Had several off and on relationships or s*x partners, until I met my 4th husband. Met him at church. He was a bit broken, I was too, so I thought we would make a perfect pair. He too didn’t want to have s*x till marriage. So, we jumped in less than six months. Things weren’t perfect, but I was sure trying to make them. One night, after I had got done instructing a class, I was r**ed by a man I knew. I had so many emotions at the time that I’m still not sure I can describe them all, but I do know I felt scared, scared that no one would believe me. I truly felt I was destined to be back in the seductive s*x industry. It felt like it was the only thing that would numb my brokenness. I blamed my husband over and over for not saving me, which caused us to divorce.
I had settled down a bit on getting into relationships or having s*x with strangers.
Months later, I met my 5th husband. We were married, and it only took him three months to leave me. Many watched us get back together, separate, to finally get divorced. And I wanted so badly to be wanted, and he appeared he wanted me too, so we re-married. But it was the same thing, alcohol. He may of married me on paper, but he was truly married to his bourbon. My insecurity and low self-esteem continued to let him come back, but it didn’t work until we both accepted our addiction and did what we needed to cope.
My story is a lot like the woman at the well in the Bible. She had already made five trips down the aisle like myself. In the story, she is going to the well to fetch water, because she wanted a drink. She wasn’t looking for a man. But there was one sitting there and He asked her for a drink. In our world, that would be an open invitation to converse, and let’s become friends. The difference in this story, Jesus told her about the free gift of the ‘living water’. He continued to tell her that everyone who drinks the kind of water this world offers, would be thirsty again, because nothing on this earth truly satisfies. She was willing to settle for less, just like I have done in my own past. But Jesus wanted to give her more, just like He wants to give all of us more.
God does not care where we have come from and what is in our past. He has a place for us and a plan. But we have choices. We can choose to ignore God, or we can choose to listen, choose to be bold, choose to have a servant’s heart, choose to be teachable and choose to be inclusive with what God is doing in our lives.
If we are constantly seeking to satisfy our bodies, our spiritual selves will languish. My head knows this, even my heart knows this. The time has come to hold out both hands and receive all that Jesus has to offer.
Going to church, carrying a Bible around, listening to Christian music are all well and good, but they’re not the same as drinking the living water. Those who drink are the ones who admit they’re thirsty, and know only God has the living water they need. The people who open their mouths and partake, they don’t just read the Word, they do what is says.
Imgine a life without wanting and wishing and striving and stressing. Feeling refreshed instead of depleted. Feeling full rather than empty.
Jesus not only met this woman at the well, he also offered her “a well of water”. And He didn’t come to wash her clean on the outside, he came to wash her clean on the inside. The end result isn’t an end at all. It’s the beginning of an ‘endless life’, drawing power and strength from “a well of life that lasts forever”.
And for me, the cool thing, without the woman at the well’s given name, we are free to step into her story even more fully, and scribble our own names in the margin. ;)
And as for my story? It’s not over yet, in fact it’s just beginning. But I know that God is so good and that my preparation wasn’t wasted. I know now that I wasn’t meant to marry those men for a million different, beautiful reasons. But mostly, because God has something else in mind.
