My Story

Survival was the starting point. Agency was the turning point.

The compounded effects of trauma reshaped my nervous system and my life. Learning to be “okay” was not denial. It was and continues to be deliberate work. On top of having to reprogram my nervous system, I’ve also had to rebuild my own stability in a way that is independent of anyone else’s say on my life.

While the outside opinions on what I “should” do comes from well-intended people, it is advice from those who have never and will never understand what it’s like to walk in my shoes. Rebuilding stability after chronic trauma-induced destabilization is not an easy process, but it is a necessary one. My mission is to not just to reclaim my life fully but to inspire hope, help others, and make an impact in the process.

Content Note: The following section discusses exploitation and coercive control.

Childhood exploitation shaped my understanding of consent, power, safety, and agency long before adulthood. Those early violations created a baseline in which coercion could later be misunderstood as responsibility, duty, and loyalty. That baseline was exploited again in adulthood through a coerced marriage.

Most people aren’t aware that forced marriages happen in the United States, and our legal systems fail to allow pathways for accountability and justice.

I can and will go into the deeper psychological aspects of how this happen through some (not all) of my work — not because I have a degree on the matter, but because the metacognition that comes from lived-trauma has been enlightening.

While I didn’t know it early on, coercive control was present throughout the “relationship” manifesting as grooming and exploitation. In the marriage the abuse patterns continued, resulting in restricted independence, disrupted employment, isolation, and various forms of abuse. These dynamics did not emerge in isolation; they followed a recognizable pattern over many years which altered a sense of agency in my life. From the time “I became legal” I made choices out of the wishes of my abuser, because having had my autonomy taken at a young age taught me my choice, my voice, and my life don’t matter.

During the marriage, my ability to maintain employment was repeatedly destabilized by relocations tied to my former spouse’s work and by childcare costs that made consistent employment financially difficult. When I finally left, my inconsistent work history to support him and the children was framed as an effort to take advantage of his income when I was left with no choice but to sacrifice my development if I wanted to keep the family together.

My employment was impacted through relocation, financial constraint, and restricted autonomy — conditions that made sustainable income structurally difficult. Even though my job choices were affected by my family values, I still tried to work from home to bring some income in. This is where I invested time into learning how to transfer my sales experience into freelance writing. I set a goal in 2019 to read 100 books about entrepreneurship, business, marketing, and how to build my own personal enterprise (a term I coined, btw).

As I worked to work, autonomy became a point of conflict. Efforts toward financial independence were met with control, suspicion, and coercion. While I had the growing platform to turn it into sustainable income, my ex husband would be jealous over me networking with clients. Accusing me of cheating, while simultaneously put me down for not yet making enough money so he could stay home. Efforts toward financial independence were met with pressure to monetize myself in ways that compromised safety.

When I attempted to speak out and eventually leave, I encountered systemic abandonment rather than protection. At the time of separation, I had no material stability. I had no housing, no transportation, and no independent financial footing. My freelance business wasn’t manageable at that time due to a dysregulated state from my whole life collapsing and having just come out of abuse where my choices to “do this” weren’t respected. I was expected to just get a job and find my own place in the fallout, during a pandemic, with no completed college education in any “essential job” trade.

My vehicles were sold to support his employment-related relocations. My credit was severely damaged after my accounts were used to cover household expenses during my former spouse’s job transition without repayment. Essential bills went unpaid and entered collections once I was no longer formally employed. Because of the instability, despite the context of coercion and abuse, I temporarily lost custody of my children because I couldn’t provide for them.

The systemic abandonment led my children to be left with a man who would whack them in the face, who had no problem leaving a 5 yr old in charge of her 3yr old brother and 1 yr old sister while he went to work, who would let them at 6 yrs old on an 18+ Roblox account, someone who is my own groomer and molester, and someone who eventually threatened to kill them.

During this period of separation, which felt like more years than it was — I believed that supporting my former spouse would reduce the abuse. I went without court ordered alimony, so the children wouldn’t suffer for my financial gain. And because, I knew finances was a trigger for him. That belief was not denial or naïveté. It was a survival strategy shaped by coercion and earlier exploitation, an attempt to stabilize danger by managing the person causing it. That belief did not cause the abuse, it was shaped by it. This left me with nothing but the support my family was willing to give me.

But when I spoke openly about what had occurred, I experienced social ostracization rather than true support. I was given financial support, but not the emotional and social support I needed to heal from this. This is a type of isolation I cannot put into words and limited access to resources that claim to help with that specifically made recovery more difficult. Housing insecurity, and loss of community occurred simultaneously. My “allegations”were framed as mental illness, and I had to do my own inner work to understand where my thoughts, behavior, and perceived insanity were coming from.

But in simple terms: I sought assistance through systems that publicly commit to victim advocacy, legal aid, court support, and therapy and was failed. While these systems promised assistance and protection, none provided continuity of care or material stability and none actually helped solve the problems I was facing. Upon further examination, it’s less to do with their desire to help and more to do with legal policies. I was trapped in a domestic situation that started with childhood exploitation.

Due to the domestic factor, no-one could honestly believe me. Downplayed the situation because they associate child exploitation and forced marriage in cases like this… Legal processes addressed civil and criminal matters separately but not the cumulative impact of their overlap. State laws fail to account for exploitation, coercive control, and abuse as ongoing issues within a “civil” matrimony. The result of reaching for help was abandonment through bureaucracy.

On top of everything I was dealing with, shelters were consistently at capacity for over a year. That is why I was physically separated from my children, left with no choice to move back home. Which was a good thing, because there I could finally make the report in the proper jurisdiction. Which leads me to address a huge problem. Which leads me to address another systematic issue: jurisdiction problems arise wen an abuser can take their victim out of state, marry, divorce, and still “validate” the statutory marriage exception in aggravated sexual assault.

Before I was even sure I wanted to — or rather, had the strength — to prosecute, the divorce was finalized. I had been asking for annulment since the start. So please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. I’m not criticizing police for due process. I’m criticizing the civil matters where judgements are made without all the facts, with little to no legal process and support to make the documents reflect reality.

The times I could make it to court to defend myself, the judge told me, “you won’t get your virginity back” and “he will still get visitation if he’s in jail”. I felt forsaken. My efforts to have my civil record match my lived experiences was not prosecuting him, it wasn’t about the children (though he framed it that way), and it certainly wasn’t about getting my virginity back. It was about my identity. Judgements were made without me present, without all the facts. And because of that divorce judgement, I’ve struggled to get any justice… due to marital loopholes in the law. Meaning, child rape was okay if the perpetrator and the victim get married.

What made this period of my life so devastating was not only the loss of stability, but being unable to care for my children independently while systems designed to help failed to do so. It took me 3 years trying to rebuild stability to make progress. The psychological impact of prolonged abuse, coercion and abandonment was treated as evidence of personal instability.Rather than the predictable outcome of systemic failure.

After trial and error with returning to work, I reestablished income through working for a non-profit organization. The role I secured with the nonprofit organization, whose mission aligned with my values and who’s work I was deeply invested in, later came to an end after reporting inappropriate conduct by a member of leadership. Even though I raised the concern through appropriate internal channels, I was seen as problematic for speaking up. Being fired through me off, but it didn’t derail me — it helped me focus. I’m not and will never be ashamed of operating with integrity. how to operate independently after years of constraint.

By that point, I had accumulated transferable skills through sales, freelancing, and nonprofit work. But I also recognized something important.

The structures that promised safety and help outside myself could not be relied upon for stability or protection. No job, no organization, nothing. My experiences with exploitation, coercive control, forced marriage and the problems with reaching out for help following abuse — revealed systemic gaps between survivor realities and institutional response. These experiences laid the foundation of the NorthPoint Coalition Project, which focuses on addressing those gap directly.

Rebuilding my own material stability requires enterprise — work that is mine, directed with agency, and that which is structured directly under my authority. These experiences, although challenging, taught me to redirect my energy into investing fully into work I own and missions that help create real change in the world: ventures where my effort, values, and decision-making are aligned under my own direction.

Though I am passionate about bridging the gaps between child exploitation and forced marriages, victimhood is not an identity that I chose, nor is it everything I want to be recognized for.

For more on what else I’m doing outside of the survivor space and advocacy, please visit Ventures.

— Emilee Harper