Episode Summary –  Have you ever met someone who has been human trafficked? I said NO but I was wrong. In this VERY important Episode 26 of the Shining Brightly Podcast Show, my guest and human trafficking survivor is Amanda Blackwood. She shares her courageous story and helps us understand the TYPES of human trafficking – (Domestic Servitude, Forced (Child) Labor, Sex (Child) Trafficking, Debt Bondage, Non-Penalization, State-Sponsored).  One of her main goals is to dispel a lot of the false narratives about what abuse and trafficking look like, who the victims are, and the links human trafficking has to other industries. She shows the world how too thrive after experiencing something this traumatic. Amanda is a speaker, expert podcaster, and best-selling author. A few of her titles - Custom Justice, New Hope, Growth from Darkness and The Unlikely. Please listen and share this episode.  National Human Trafficking - ttps://humantraffickinghotline.org and Hotline 1-888-373-7888. You can reach the Hotline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Mentioned Resources

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AmandaBlackwoodSurvivor/

Amazon books - https://www.amazon.com/stores/Amanda-Blackwood/author/B078T1V8M7?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Podcast - https://anchor.fm/amandablackwood

About the guest – Amanda Blackwood is a survivor of human trafficking and Best-selling author. A portion of every book sale goes to help fight human trafficking and to help those still being trafficked. Amanda lives in Denver, Colorado with her rescue cats and supportive husband who keeps her sane. Check out Amanda Blackwood's podcast!

Season 3 (September 2022 to August 2023) will be a series of interviews with other trauma survivors who have written about their own experiences as part of their healing.

About the Host:

Howard Brown is a best-selling author, award-winning international speaker, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, interfaith peacemaker, and a two-time stage IV cancer survivor. He is also a sought-after speaker and consultant for corporate businesses, nonprofits, congregations, and community groups. Howard has co-founded two social networks that were the first to connect religious communities around the world. He is a nationally known patient advocate and “cancer whisperer” to many families. Howard, his wife Lisa, and daughter Emily currently reside in Michigan, and his happy place is on the basketball court.

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Http://www.shiningbrightly.com

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Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/howard.brown.36

LinkedIn - https://wwwlinkedin.com/in/howardsbrown

Instagram - @howard.brown.36

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#human #humantrafficking #servitude #abuse #trauma

#survivor #survivorship #healing #motivation #education #inspiration #podcast

#download #share #shiningbrightly

Well hello, welcome to Shining Brightly.

This is your Maestro with Mike Howard Brown. It's a shining

brightly day because we have an amazing guest. I can't wait to

get into it. Chop it up with Amanda Blackwood. Amanda, how

are you today?

Fantastic. How are you doing, Howard?

I'm great. We've got a fall day in Michigan. The

leaves are falling and changing colours. It's It's going well.

It's dumping snow here.

Okay, well, snow in the in the Rockies is always

a thing that happens in the fall. So I hope you're loving

it.

I know my husband is.

Well, I have to tell you, we have an amazing

story. Amazing, author, amazing artists with us today. Amanda,

give us give us a short bio. Tell Tell tell the viewers about

Yeah.

Okay, so on my business card, it says that I am

an author, an artist, a survivor and a speaker. I'm actually a

survivor of human trafficking. And a lot of what I've written

and a lot of what I have painted has all been part of the

therapeutic process for me to get through and beyond the past

and learn how to be a public speaker on my experiences. I

live here in Colorado with my husband, my foster kiddo and my

six cats. Only six, only six. When I met my husband, I had

four and he had two. So between the two of us we have a petting

zoo.

It's the petting zoo Brady Bunch, right? The

Brady Bunch your cat. So you got six, wow, I was going to ask you

to give me something unique and different that no one knows

about you. But while you already have something else,

I actually have plenty of those little

unique things. So one of the things that very few people know

about me is that I've actually gone to school to be a dental

assistant. I am a Certified Dental Assistant here in the

state of Colorado and I've never done the job.

You know what you take training and you learn from

it. But you didn't put it to us. That's okay, you got to find out

what makes you happy and and what you want to do. So that's

interesting. You chose that path. And then you didn't end up

doing it. That's okay. We all make choices. And like, I want

to get a little more serious right now. Because when we first

met, and you and I had a pre conversation about this, your

story is one. Just remarkable to me. And I learned a lot. And

we're going to teach our audience today a lot about

trafficking. And I after we finished talking, I just got

real emotional because you had said something to me that was

truly stunning. And remarkable. Meaning that I said I had never

met anyone that had human traffic. And do you remember

your reply what you said to me?

You probably haven't you just don't know what

made me sad. Because you helped educate me to

the cause. And with your particular story. And I, I want

to the audience and the viewers to know how serious this is, and

hearing it from your story and how you picked yourself up off

the ground because it's really amazing. So, so describe,

describe your trauma, and let's start there.

So I started off with some early childhood

abuse, being molested at four. I was then molested again at 12.

Again 13 Again at 15 and raped at 17. But things got really

serious at 18. When I was trafficked the first time I was

trafficked three different times in my life once 18 Once it 19

and once at 31 years old. And people are usually shocked by

this because what the media portrays as being human

trafficking involves nothing but children and children. It's

horrible when it happens to children. But that's only one

quarter of all the victims worldwide under the age of 18.

Most are over the age of 18. And this is a huge problem that's

being largely ignored. Because it doesn't match up with what

the media says it should look like. I didn't even realise that

I was a survivor of human trafficking until I went to a

conference in 2018. And I started to learn more about it.

I was going to the conference because I wanted to fight back

against what was happening to the kids. I didn't have any clue

that this was something that had happened to me and I still

needed to learn how to fight back against that too.

I know and you also enlightened me by telling

me there are types of traffic and not just sexual trafficking.

There's servitude or slavery, trafficking. And I saw the

others right. I'm sure I'm missing. So

forced marriage. There's Oregon

trafficking. We don't have a whole lot of Oregon trafficking

here in the US but there was a case just recently, I believe in

San Diego where a man woke up in a hotel room with one missing

kidney. And we've been seeing a lot more of that here. I mean,

here in the US, it probably takes up less than 1% of all

trafficking cases, but it is starting to seep in. Sex

trafficking is huge here in the US and forced servitude labour

trafficking is definitely on the rise. But the the the most

popular form of trafficking worldwide outside of the US is

Labour trafficking, and child soldiers.

Just trying to take it all in. Wow. It's a lot

I know. It is. So tell us more of your story. Continue.

So, when I was 18, I was dating a man who was

more than twice my age. And this man decided that he wanted to

give me a free trip to Las Vegas with a buddy of his. So we

jumped on an aeroplane and I went with his friend to Las

Vegas for a birthday party, I didn't realise that I was the

birthday party, I was being given as a gift to exploit and

do as they pleased with. In their words, later on, it was

cheaper than hiring somebody once they were in Las Vegas. So

it was a $99 ticket to get there. That's all they had to

spend on me other than the food. Once we got there, I was told I

was not to leave the hotel room. I could get room service only

once a day and the hotel had strict instructions to leave the

food outside of the door. So there would be no questions. And

nobody thought that I was being trafficked. They nobody asked

any questions. They never asked if I was okay. I was stuck in

that hotel room for 52 hours. And after 52 hours, we flew back

to Vegas, and people have asked and I flew back to Arizona,

where I was living at the time. And people have asked me why

didn't you just leave the hotel and go to find police there in

Las Vegas. I didn't trust police. I had already been a

foster kid myself, I was moving in and out of my home. The

police kept on taking me back to the abusive situation because

those are the people who said that they had authority over my

life and I didn't trust the police anymore. If I had just

left the hotel room and had gone out on the streets of Las Vegas,

I would have ended it been in a worse situation than what I was

already in. By being there and being molested and raped. I

wasn't ready for that. So I waited until I got back to

Arizona and I grabbed my stuff and I left that place as quick

as I could. I bounced around for a while for a little while I was

homeless, ended up marrying a different abusive man who was

more than twice my age. And in my efforts to escape him, I left

and went to Florida to go stay with my grandmother. And when I

got to Florida, my grandmother left me at the Daytona Beach bus

station, and said that she wasn't going to take me in. And

it came out later on that it was because my parents had called

her and told her that if she took me and they would never

speak to her again. I was taken in by a young couple who told me

that they would allow me the time and energy to get on my

feet and they would give me free room and board while I did as

little is as they had they were willing to share it with me and

I was grateful. But when they said what, until I got on my

feet what they really meant was until I found the highest bidder

because they sold me to a guy named Esteban. I was locked up

in a small room for 23 and a half hours with no food, no

water, no bathroom facilities. And thankfully, I watched a lot

of MacGyver growing up. And Richard Dean Anderson saved my

hide, I was able to MacGyver my way out of that room and I ran

ran for my life. And again, I ended up homeless for a little

while, bounced around from one place to another and dependent

on the kindness of strangers in spite of what I'd already been

through. I ended up out in California, and I lived there

for a number of years. And I was constantly looking for

acceptance and love and appreciation in whatever way

that I could find it. I never had it as a kid growing up. And

this is part of why I kept on ending up in these horribly

abusive relationships, because that was the person who was

offering that kindness, as well as what I was familiar with from

my youth. When you grow up with abuse in your own household.

People become conditioned to believe that the abuse goes hand

in hand with love when one does not exist without the other. So

these abusive relationships were what I was familiar with. It was

the way I had been raised. This was normal. This was comforting.

This was comfortable. And I was afraid to leave that. But I had

known one particular man the whole time I was in California.

I've known him for seven years. He was a police Officer in

Scotland. And I had known a couple of police officers who

had kind of changed the way that I saw the police. I was getting

to where I was trusting them finally, and this man, I was

watching his daughter grow up in photos. And we've just always

stayed in contact. And he lived too far away, we were never

going to have an actual relationship. And we had

resigned ourselves to that. But after seven years, he finally

came over to see me, I went over there to go and see him. And we

decided that we were in love. And that was all we needed. And

we were going to spend the rest of our lives together. So I got

a fiancee visa. And in January of 2011, I moved over to Kobe

with him. And it took him seven years to get me there. And it

took him seven days to start trafficking me once I got there.

Almost instantly, he had my passport, my driver's licence,

all that stuff, everything. And it took me 152 days to be able

to get my way out of there. I spent what little money I had

left on an emergency flight home after less than a month of being

there. And I ended up so sick with a severe kidney infection

because of the abuse that I was having to endure that I ended up

missing the flight. And the ticket was non refundable. And

it was every penny that I had. It was an upside down time, I

ended up convincing him that I had Stockholm syndrome. And I

told him, at the end of my visa, if we're not married, you can

get in trouble or lose your job as a police officer. And we

don't want that. I was pretty convincing, far more so than I

just was. I convinced him that he needed to either send me back

to California for six months, and I could return or he needed

to marry me. And I was praying that he didn't choose the option

of marrying me to keep me there. And he went for it, he was

convinced by my act that I had Stockholm syndrome and that I

was in love with him and I would return to Him and to the abuse

after six months. So after multiple attempts of convincing

him, he finally bought a round trip flight for me to leave

Scotland, and to go back to California for six months. And

if I could use the round trip flight, I would have landed back

in Scotland six months to the day after I left just in time

for Christmas. And I'm proud to say that I still have that

ticket and it's hanging in the shadow box filled with things

that I did and did not do my year back. That kept me alive.

Let's give you a break for a second because I

know you tell your story and you relive it here but it's you

shared with me the details of of basically, servitude, slave

labour cleaning that house taking care of a child, you

know, servicing him sexually. And it's just a lot. Yeah, for

for people to take in so and you know, but God, how do you how do

you even move past this? I just you know, I'm a cancer survivor.

I'm helping other cancer survivors try to rebuild their

lives and put their survivorship plan in place. And how do you

how do you do this? And how do you help others to do this, it's

just please share.

I didn't know how for a long time. So I

mentioned my shadow box, I've got a huge shadow box hanging on

the wall just outside of my bedroom door. And this shadow

box has tickets and pictures and mementos. And fridge magnets and

all kinds of stuff hanging in it are all the stuff that I did to

keep me busy that first year out. suicide rates among new

survivors is just incredibly high. You don't want to survive

after something like that. You feel broken. You feel like

you're less than human. And it's a horrible place to be. It

wasn't until after I had been out for a while and he started

putting up photos and videos of me being raped during the

molestation that he started putting all these up on

different pornography websites and making a bunch of money off

of it. When he was doing this, he was putting links to my

social media. People were able to find me and they knew who I

was. And they were sending me pictures, screenshots of these

videos. And it was it was awful. So I had to go into therapy to

try and figure out how I was going to get through this. And

eventually I learned that if he's gonna make me famous,

people might as well know the truth. And that's when I started

standing up and fighting back and I wrote my book and I

started getting on stage. And just this became a part of who I

was, rather than just something I was running from rather than

just the past. This became a part of my mission and I knew

that if this was happening to me, it was happening to other

people too. And they needed to find their voices, they needed

to figure out how to fight back. It's not an easy thing to do.

And not everybody can write their book, not everybody can

stand on stage and talk about their own traumas. But they can

process it, they can move through it and beyond it and

have productive, meaningful lives, even after massive

amounts of trauma. It's still possible.

It is and I mean, there's a lot of exposure to

this now with the Jeffrey Epstein case. Yeah. And it's

just Layne Maxwell case now of of trafficking young women. And

I love that you said no the truth. People need to know the

truth. Because we live in this digital society where half the

stuff that's put in front of you, you have no idea if it's

fake news, or real news or anything as well. So thank you

for sharing that. So your your recovery process is started. And

it's probably continues forever. And now you also help others.

I do I have a podcast where I interview other

survivors of trauma to give them a platform to be able to talk on

most of the people that I interview with the exception of

maybe two have not written about their experience. So typically,

it's authors who have these experiences, and they want to

also help other people through. So they're trauma informed

therapists, and they're people like yourself, they're published

authors who know what they've been through is not an anomaly.

I mean, you're you are an absolute miracle. And people

need to know that this kind of miracle is possible, and that

there is healing and there is recovery. And that's, that's

kind of my goal in life is to make sure that people recognise

this. And they realise that if they need help, there's help

available, they can reach out to me directly if they're being

trafficked, or they're a survivor of trafficking, and

they need that help to be able to move beyond that, and find

organisations to be able to help them. I didn't know that that

kind of help was available to me, until I got involved with an

anti trafficking group out here. And if it hadn't been for them,

I wouldn't have had that therapy, I wouldn't be where I

am now.

Well, I appreciate that. I do feel very blessed,

very grateful and very lucky. And I know you do too, but you

are courageous. You are the definition of courage. So I

guess, you told me before how you how you gotta celebrate the

wins, because you've had plenty of losses or devastation going

on. So how do you celebrate the wins?

Sometimes I make myself a cookie. I love to

cook. Sometimes I will go and purchase a nice big juicy steak.

And I'll cook it for my husband because I'm not supposed to have

very much red meat. I have Crohn's disease. And I know that

if I cook him a big juicy steak, I'm going to get a bite or two.

Yeah, but also, I saw the most beautiful picture

on LinkedIn today of you painting in nature. Thank you,

that brings you joy, too.

I absolutely love it. So that was part of my

therapy. Also, I just started painting in January of last

year. And I'm now painting my own book covers, including a

historical fiction series. And I'm highlighting that on my

social media right now, just because it's been a fun series

for me to paint. I've got four in the series completed, there's

going to be a total of 10.

Well, that's awesome. I love that you're

putting your energy into that. So where do you derive your

inspiration now?

Oh, my gosh, my husband is probably one of my

my biggest inspirations. All my life. Like I said, I was

searching for somewhere that I could be accepted and loved. And

I always saw it as coming hand in hand with abuse. He's been

through some kind of crazy stuff in his past also. And because of

that he did go into counselling. He learned enough about himself

and about the way men react to things versus the way women

react to things. And I've never known anybody more patient in my

life. He is patient and resilient and kind and gentle

and understanding. And did I mention patient, he's very

patient. He's all the things that God knew that I was going

to need in my life long before I ever did. And he has been such

an inspiration to me. He gave me the ability to now pursue this

full time rather than going into dentistry or continuing on

working for corporations as some little peon in the bottom of the

totem pole when struggling. I'm a high school dropout with

really very little education otherwise, I wasn't going to

make ends meet very well. And because he's been able to

support me in this way and just tell me go do it. Go pursue your

dreams. Because of that either. actually been able to make huge

strides just this year in my writing career in my art career.

And it's, it's been amazing.

You might not have formal education, but you've

developed street smarts, toughness, resilience, and you

found your knight in shining armour who is patient and loving

and unconditionally, and, and so deserved. It really, really is.

So there's going to be people asking for resources. And what

do you tell someone that's going through this? And do you have

resources for them?

Yes, probably the biggest resource that I know

of right now here in the state of Colorado is a group called

covered Colorado, covered Colorado was the group that I

partnered with, they were the ones to find the therapy and the

counselling for me when I needed it most. They offer other

services to survivors as well, such as housing, food, day,

daily essentials, cooking classes, they do life skills

classes, I mean, just all the stuff that that a lot of kids

learn growing up in normally functioning households, but that

survivors of abuse and trauma and human trafficking, never got

a chance to learn growing up. And they were hugely beneficial,

very helpful. The National Human Trafficking Hotline is a big

one. They're willing and able to help people get out of those

situations and find safe places for them. And the other one here

in Colorado is shift shift is who was putting on the the

conference in 2018, where I learned enough about human

trafficking to learn that I was actually a survivor. I've since

partnered with them, I'm on their board of advisors, as

having my lived experience. I'm a subject matter expert, I go

around and speak with them at local schools talking about the

safeties and dangers of social media for change children and

teenagers. And they just they're doing amazing things, the

founder of shift, his his shift, his his mindset has kind of

shifted in recent years, he's no longer doing the big

conferences. Instead, he's building an algorithm

intelligent software to help teach people and train people

across the nation on what signs to watch for when it comes to

human trafficking, how to prevent it, what to do, if you

spot it, who you can contact and it's just, it's amazing. I love

being involved with this kind of stuff. But John Do Young is his

name. And he's just his mind blowing with the ideas that just

pop out of his head on random occasions, on ways to be able to

fight back.

Now we're gonna put the 800 number and the

website links. It'll scroll across on the on the podcast.

which book do you want to feature today? A few. So which

book would you like to tell us about?

So my autobiography custom justice.

This is currently in talks of being either a film or limited

series within the next year or so I'm very excited, but also

terrified. Because this means that everybody's going to know

my life story. This book starts and we're

gonna know the truth about your life story. I

want to go back to that.

Yes, that's, that's very true. It starts off

when I was four, and it talks about some of that early abuse

without going into graphic details, but it does show how I

was predisposed to being more susceptible to being trafficked

later on. Most victims of trafficking did grow up in

abusive households and they just like me, were looking for that

love and acceptance wherever they could find it. This book I

started writing in December of 2020. I finished it in December

of 2020. It's 300 pages and the very last page ends with my own

baptism. So it's my

Where Did someone get the book?

This is available on Amazon or Barnes

and Noble they can also get it from my Etsy shop if they want a

signed copy directly from me that I will send to them

personally with a little note on say where else I said I think I

think there's a couple of copies on ebay but I would say don't

get those because that means that somebody else has read

them.

No, no, no, we'll get the book links and we'll get

the st link as well. How do you want people to get in touch with

you?

They can always reach out to me through

my website detailed pieces.com they can email me directly

author Amanda blackwood@gmail.com. I'm on

Facebook very active facebook.com/author.com facebook.com/amanda

Blackwood survivor. I'm on Instagram and Tik Tok and

Twitter under at detailed pieces.

You can be found,

I can be found and I am willing to be found

so Let last word, as we come to a close

up, if you're interested in human trafficking

get educated. It's not what it looks like in the media. less

than 2% of all victims actually survive. The fact that I'm still

standing here and still able to breathe is a miracle in itself,

of those 2% even less are willing to talk about it. So as

we said, towards the beginning, you probably have met a survivor

of human trafficking and you just don't know. And in some

cases, they might not know it either.

Incredible, incredible. Thank you for

spending time. My book shining brightly is doing really well.

speaking gigs are happening, and publicity and it's, we're both

helping people get back up after they got knocked down. And you

can reach me at my website, shining brightly.com. And I just

want us to put on some glasses today together, Amanda, because

you are shining brightly in the shining, brightly spotlight.

Thank you for sharing on a very tough subject, but unnecessary

education, just the fraction of education that we're able to

give the audience today. And I am grateful for you. And thank

you, and I just wish you strength with your knight in

shining armour. And what a great information and your story and I

do hope it gets to be made a movie, people need to know the

truth.

Thank you. Thank you, Howard. This was

awesome.

Thank you. Thank you