#10 Beyond Freedom: Empowerment After Trauma (A Sex Trafficking Story)

Jennelle Gordon speaks about leaving her traumatic past behind for a brighter future. Having been the product of rape and then the system, her fate would have been sealed by statistics to either death or a life of addiction. But rather than sit in the passenger seat of her own life and live in compliance with societal programming, she took the wheel and created her own destiny.  Born from violence to a troubled single mother in Pittsburgh, she quickly became a ward of the state and placed in a foster home of religious extremists. Her new family brought her on a missionary trip to Thailand where she was kept from receiving a proper education or medical treatment for her most critical formative years. They continued neglecting her health long after their return to America, and as she grew they would also keep her in isolation and secluded from the outside world in an effort to control her body and mind. However, her strength of self overcame their attempts at brainwashing and she left home on her eighteenth birthday.  Unfortunately, at a period of extreme vulnerability, she attracted predators who would sexually exploit her over the course of a decade through coercion and manipulation. She fell into the same cycle of victimization from her childhood and finally broke free when she faked her death in order to escape certain death. It was then that she would return to Thailand and study tantra; fully liberating her body, mind, and spirit. Through her spiritual studies and yogic practices, she healed herself holistically from unresolved trauma and developed Dance Om; an integrative form of dance therapy designed to relinquish women from societal constraints on their sexuality and sense of self.