Episode Details

Alex Shaw's daughter gets dropped at her grandparents' farm with a promise to be back in a day or two, and then nobody turns up for a week. The grandparents draw their own conclusions. What is actually happening is that Alex cannot be seen until the injuries fade, and she has run out of explanations that hold. She lived that stretch for years, and says her family read it as a difficult adult child rather than anything else.

Alex Shaw is in northwestern Ontario, where she works as a 911 dispatcher for ambulance and volunteers with victim services, connecting survivors of human trafficking and people leaving gangs with the organizations that can help them. She has served as vice chair of her local Crime Stoppers and works with a peer support program for first responders. She also speaks publicly, mostly to young people, about the three years she spent in a relationship with a gang member in southern Ontario, a period she only later had the vocabulary to call trafficking.

She tells the story in order. Losing the barn and the identity that came with it at thirteen. An assault at fifteen, a police interview that left her believing she would not be believed, and years of nobody in the family knowing how to raise it again. Her daughter's father and his addiction. Then the man who ran the security company she worked for, and a first year of being told she was intelligent, capable, and worth more than she had settled for. She describes the standards that came attached, and the night he had her drive through every red light between two clubs, which she now recognizes as a test of how far compliance would go.

The turn comes with a traffic stop and a name she did not recognize on the ticket. The first time she questioned him, he beat her badly enough that she could not open her eyes the next day, and then spent a day nursing her. Alex is clear-eyed about why that combination held her: he caused the damage and then became the person she needed to survive it. She talks about how she eventually got out, why she dislikes telling that part, and what she wants families to hear. Loving someone where they are. Not asking questions you will only get lies to. Gathering the resources now, so that they exist on the day the person is ready.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why "just leave" ignores the moving parts, and what leaving actually required
• How love bombing arrives dressed as someone holding you to a higher standard
• The small compliance tests that come before anything violent happens
• What happened the first time she questioned the story she had been given
• Why the person causing the harm can become the person you feel dependent on
• Why she lied to and stole from the family who were trying to help
• What families can do instead of rescuing, and why digging for the truth backfires
• How she found the word for what happened to her, years after it ended

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why Alex tells this story publicly
3:00 Losing the barn at thirteen, and the identity that went with it
5:00 Assaulted at fifteen, and what the officer said about charges
11:00 Her daughter's father, addiction, and leaving at a year and a half
13:00 The first year: praise, standards, and every red light
19:00 The name on the traffic ticket, and the first question she asked
23:00 What she was actually inside, and the plan for her parents' farm
27:00 Asking a childhood friend for help, and why it is not a route to copy
37:00 Moving away, and learning there was a word for it
41:00 Loving someone where they are: what families can and cannot do

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out