Divorce Recovery and Self-Discovery: Teri M. Brown on Healing, Boundaries, and Bold Adventure

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to another episode of Bent Not Broken. Heartbreak and trauma may feel like the end of your story, but here it's the beginning of a bold new chapter. I'm your host, Coach Deborah Griffiths, and this is the space where women rise, rebuild, and rediscover their purpose. Remember this truth. You are bent, not broken. Born in Athens, Greece, Terry M. Brown has been a storyteller her entire life. Now living on the North Carolina coast, she draws inspiration from the sea and from bold adventures, like riding a tandem bicycle across the United States in 2020. After years of writing nonfiction and leaving a 14-year emotionally abusive marriage, Terry pursued her dreams of fiction, publishing award-winning works including Sunflowers Beneath the Snow, An Enemy Like Me, and Daughters of Green Mountain Gap. She continues to write across genres, including her inspirational 2025 release, 10 Little Rules for a Double Budded Adventure, and her upcoming children's book, Little Lola and Her Big Dream. Terry is a wife, mother, grandmother, and mentor who loves the beach, photography, word games, and empowering women and youth. Welcome, Terry. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here today. I'm excited for our discussion. So you left a 14-year abusive marriage. Can you tell us a little bit about that? And what was the catalyst or what was that straw that broke the camel's back that made you decide to leave?

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Yeah. So this was my second marriage. And when we first got married and when we dated, he seemed like a really nice guy. Like I always tell people I didn't know what I was getting into. He really seemed to be good. The first few months of our marriage were a little rocky, but I have four children, and he was coming in as the stepfather. So I was trying to give him a lot of leeway because I know how difficult it is to insert yourself into a family. And so I kept trying to assume that what I was seeing was just growing pains. It turns out that that's not what it was. That was just really who he was and what his personality was. But because it was my second marriage, even though I would say by six months in, I knew that this was a mistake, I didn't want to be divorced twice. I'm a very determined kind of person. And so I made sure that we were going to make this marriage work, which means that I put in a lot of time and energy for it to get nowhere.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Did it feel one-sided at times?

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Very well, it was it was very one-sided because he didn't see there was a problem except for me. It was emotional abuse. So it was not physical abuse. Even though there's a part of your brain that knows what you're being told is not true, you hear it for long enough and you start to believe it. He was an excellent manipulator and managed to pretty much isolate me, where my family, my extended family, was really no longer speaking to me. I had almost no friends anymore. Slowly but surely, people would go away. They mostly went away, I think, to get away from him. But that's not the way it felt to me, nor was it what he would say to me. Two years before I left that relationship, he did something he had done many times, which was he took all of our money and he would put it into another bank account and would not give me access to it. And then eventually I would get access to it. Well, when it happened at that particular time, I said, Well, we obviously need some marital therapy. We started going to a marriage counselor, but I refused to participate with the marriage counseling until he signed a document stating he would never move the money again. I said, if you ever touch the money again, I'm going to leave. That was my only rule. Don't touch the money again. I'm willing to work on everything else. Moving the money is not done in anger. At some point in this journey of going to the bank, closing the account, you have to be able to think clearly. It took him almost three months of therapy before he would be willing to sign that document. And he eventually did. And then two years later, he took all the money again.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Wow. So not only were you dealing with emotional abuse, but you were dealing with financial abuse as well.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

He used money. He would tell me all the time that what would I do if I left him? I had four kids. I'd never be able to make it on my own. You start to believe that two years before I left, I went and spent a week with my son, who is at this point grown and married. And he said to me, Mom, you need to get out of that relationship. And I said to him, Now, this is me. I have a college degree and I am a successful individual now. And I said, I don't know what I would do. I would end up being a Walmart greeter and living in a cardboard box on the side of the road. And I look back at that statement and I think, who was that woman? Like, oh my gosh, that was me. You get to a point where you just no longer believe in who you are. But when he took the money, something just snapped in my head where I realized this was my only line.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

And he called a very strong boundary that you drew to make him sign a document to say this isn't going to happen again. And then he did.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

And I really believe the reason that he did was because he didn't believe I'd really leave. And once he'd broken the document, then he had complete control. And I guess he didn't understand who I was underneath all of the batter. You pull all that away, and I only had one rule. It's all I asked. I wasn't asking for anything else. I should have asked for a lot more. But all I asked was, don't move the money. And when he did, he moved the money. I found out around 7 p.m. on a Thursday night. And on Friday at 4 p.m., everything that I had that was mine was in a storage unit. And I was on my way to go live with my son. Wow. So less than 24 hours. I was gone. And it's interesting because my son said to me, Mom, you know you can't go back. And I said, I have no intention of going back. To this day, I am so grateful that he took the money because I might still be there. I might still be trying to fix something that is not fixable. Because you can only fix something if both people see it as a problem and want to fix it.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Absolutely. So then you became a writer. Did you use writing as a catalyst to heal?

SPEAKER_01 7:24

I think I did, but I wasn't doing it on purpose. I didn't sit down and say, oh, this is a good way to help me heal. I had been doing nonfiction for a while. I had been writing for small businesses and doing those kinds of things, but it never felt like it was my work. It was something that a company asked me if I could do for them. So I would and I was paid for it, but it wasn't, wasn't like emotional or characters or things that were creative from inside of me. And I had been wanting to do that, but I didn't have a safe space to do that in. And when you're living in this emotional abuse, when you put your words out there, there are people who are not kind about them and they give you one-star reviews. It hurts. Well, I wasn't in a place where I could pile more of that on me. I didn't need any one-star reviews. Let's put it that way.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

You were already in pain and you needed to heal from that, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:22

So as soon as I got out of that relationship, words started pouring out of me. And I began writing. I think it was a way of healing, but I didn't see it as that. My very first character, and this manuscript will never go anywhere because it's terrible, but it's your first, and you don't expect great things out of a first manuscript. My character was perfect. She had no flaws, but every bad thing that happened to her, and lots of bad things happened to her, she handled perfectly. One after the other. She was like Superwoman. She reminded me of those Baywatch characters that always looked perfectly groomed, even though they've been in the water. And I realized as I was writing that my characters needed way more depth. But I think the reason I made her perfect was because I felt I needed to be perfect. I was creating the character who was going to be able to get through all that life was throwing at her. I look back now and I feel confident that was the representation of who I felt I needed to be to get through this next period of my life.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

It sounds like it's more representative of the person that you were during the marriage. You had to be the perfect person, the perfect wife. Right, right. Isn't it interesting how we manifest that?

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Yeah. Yeah. And so the character was flat and terrible, and the story is not likely to go anywhere, but it taught me that I had 50,000 words in me. And so I wrote another one. And then I wrote another one. But I wasn't sharing them with anyone. I wasn't telling anyone I was being an author because I still didn't believe in myself. You don't leave a bad relationship and then become instantaneously okay. That's not the way it works. I was in that space where on the outside everything looked fine. You know, if you were just to take a look, oh, Terry's doing well. She has a little condo and she's living at the beach. And doesn't this look good? On the inside, I was still a quivering mess. They're still in trouble going to the grocery store and picking which peanut butter, because what if I made the wrong decision? You know, and when I say that to people, they look at me and go, I don't, and it's like that's where you get to that spot. Because coming home with the wrong peanut butter could have started World War III in my house.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

No, and when you're in abusive toxic relationships, you're constantly walking on eggshells. Yeah. One day you could have picked the right peanut butter. And then the next time you go to the store, you could have picked the very same peanut butter, but is there something wrong? And it keeps you off guard. You start questioning, and I can't tell you how many times I start questioning myself. Do I say anything? What do I do? Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Did I say I'm a lot better now? And I recognize it when it's happening. But my first thought is, oh no, I haven't heard from somebody. Did I say something? Did I do something? What did I do that offended them? And it's like, nothing to do with me. I haven't heard from them because their life right now is crazy and I'm not on their top 10 list. And that doesn't mean anything other than that's where I fall right there. But yeah, that first thing that you do is what did I do wrong? I still apologize too much. I do the same thing. I apologize for things that are not my fault.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Yes. I can totally relate. I do the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Someone will tell me, like, oh, I've been sick, and I'll go, Oh, I'm so sorry. As though I am sorry they've been sick, but I'm sorry, like somehow I caused it. Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

And that's the impact of the emotional abuse and the scars that are left that we have to pick up the pieces from and heal ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

Figure them out.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Right. Right. Right. What possessed you to ride a tandem bike across the United States?

SPEAKER_01 12:11

So a couple of things kind of came together. When I got out of that relationship in April of 2017, my son had a friend who was walking the Appalachian Trail. I started reading his blog. I can't explain it, but whenever he had a blog come out, I read it and reread it and analyzed it. And I started to kind of fantasize about doing that. And then I thought, I don't want to walk alone that far. That's a little scary. The idea of a woman alone in the woods. It's like, that's everything my mother told me never to do. But I had this desire to do something big and bold. And I thought I needed to prove to the world that I still had value. Now it turns out that the world did not believe I didn't have value. That was me, but I didn't know that. And so I really was looking for some big adventure. Then I met Bruce. This could be a podcast all by itself because I was never going to be in a relationship again, ever. I had zero desire. I've already had two failed marriages and I'm done. I obviously don't know how to pick and I don't need this in my life. But Bruce comes waltzing into my life and he just doesn't leave. He told people that he chased me until I caught him. He just stuck around until I got used to him being there. But while we were doing this, I don't even call it dating. I don't even know what we were doing. He called it courting because it was so formal. We went out for six months before I ever kissed him. I was not interested. And I kept telling him, I'm not interested. You're interested in something, and I'm not, and you should leave. And he would not leave. And the next thing you know, while we're doing that weird courting thing, he said that he had always wanted to ride across the United States on a bicycle. And I thought, okay, now that's an adventure. And I liked him enough that I thought we could do this adventure together. We don't have to be married to do an adventure together. Right. And so I said, Are you going to talk about this until the day you die, or are you going to do it? And he said, No, I really want to do it. And I said, Count me in. Well, what's crazy is I had not been on a bicycle in 40 years. So I'm not in any way prepared to do a trip like this. So he and I started training, and it became apparent very quickly that Bruce is an avid cyclist who knows what he's doing and I don't. And he had a tandem bicycle and he suggested that we start riding tandem. And the next thing you know, we made this decision to ride across the United States on that tandem. It makes sense because he can't go faster than me. I can't go slower than him. We're going to have to work together to make this work. And what's crazy is before we go on this adventure, we ended up marrying him. I really think part of it was the training on the tandem bicycle because you learn about people very quickly when you have to do things together. And tandem is very together. Everything getting on the bike, getting off the bike, needing to take a break, needing to coast versus pedal, everything requires that you work together. And I became very aware that he really was who he said he was. You can't hide it on a tandem. If I had ridden a tandem with my abusive spouse prior to getting married, I would have known what I was getting into. You can't hide that kind of it's gonna come out, especially after thousands of miles of practice. I mean, we rode over a thousand practice miles.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Okay, that is so interesting. I never really thought about having to be so much in sync.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

The communication has to be there, and it has to be there in a way that doesn't leave the other person frustrated. I had to be able to communicate with him, he had to be able to communicate with me, and we had to be able to do it in a way that didn't send someone off into an angry fit because of the way you did it. You had to learn how to communicate and how to be part of one another. And we ended up going on the ride. It was a little over three months out on the road, and we said that was like 20 years of marriage, not in a bad way, but in all that we learned about one another, it was like 20 years of marriage, those three months of togetherness.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

The tandem ride across the country actually helped you grow closer.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Yes, which is crazy because a lot of people say riding a tandem is like a divorce machine. And the number of couples that I've talked with that said, Oh, I would never get on a tandem with my husband. No way would I get on a tandem. I had no problem with it prior to getting on that tandem with him and going across the United States. I already knew that we could do this because it felt good. He was who he said he was, it was beautiful. But when we started on that trip, even though we're married and my life is really good, I still have all kinds of what my husband called swamp gas. So he would say something to me and it would be like when I would turn into this, like defending myself, and and I would get instantly angry at him because I felt like he was pushing me. He's standing there going, I don't know what I just said. Like I simply asked if he wanted to watch the television show with me. It was things like that. Shortly after we got married, he had said to me, Would you be willing to get those bills done in the next day or two? I said, Sure, no problem. And I sat down almost instantaneously, because when someone asks me to do something, I get it done right away. And I was doing that, and he walked into the office and he said, Hey, I was gonna watch something on television. Did you want to watch it with me? And I turned around and looked at him and I said, Can't do two things at once. I don't know how you expect me to be doing the builds and watching the television. And I mean, I'm just and I'm I'm almost hysterical. And he's standing there going, right? I still had a lot of stuff and I didn't believe in myself. And I was really very afraid about this adventure. I wanted to go, but there was a lot of fear, anxiety by the end of the trip. Most of that had been put away. I think that when you do something huge like this outside of my comfort zone, I realized I'm capable. I mean, look at me. I just rode across it. How can you say you're not capable? I just rode across the United States on a tandem bicycle. Very true. They don't fit together. You also have a lot of time on a bicycle. So there's a lot of time to think and to process and to put things away in the boxes they belong in. Like, I don't need this anymore. This was a piece of my life, but I don't need the emotions that go with that anymore. By the end of the ride, I had healed. I'm not 100%. I still have my little things, but I now recognize them. I'll feel that emotion bubble up and I think, oh, where did that come from? I recognize that for what it is. And then I can deal with it and put it back away where it needs to be. Whereas before it would bubble up and then it might affect my week as I was dealing with all of the trauma. And now it's like, oh, that's trauma. You know what that is. Let's put that away. We don't need that today. On the very last day of the trip, my thought was, oh my gosh, I just rode across the United States on a bicycle. I can do anything. It's not a matter of, can I do it? But what do I want to do? And the answer was, I want to be an author. And 14 months later, my first book came out. That ride really changed the trajectory of everything about me. I found myself again. I had people say to me, the ride changed you. And it was like, nope, the ride helped me find me again. It was the me that had been buried underneath all the crud. And I was able to dig myself back out from underneath all of that crud. And then it's like, here I am. So a lot of people said it changed you. And it was like, no, it didn't change me. I was able to get rid of the stuff I didn't like anymore.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

What were some of the highs and some of the lows on this trip?

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Oh, well, the highs were there were so many beautiful things to see. We had horses run with us one time. We were going up a hill, and horses in a pasture next to us started to run with us. When we got to the top of the hill, their pasture ended, the stallion moved forward and shook his head, you know, and this mane flopped everywhere. And you're just like, oh my gosh, you couldn't pay to have that happen. Right. Some harder things were I had a lot of crazy fears that don't make any sense. I can't even place them as to why I would have that fear because of the relationship I was in. I just know that prior to being in that relationship, I didn't have fears. And afterward, I had a lot of them that seemed to attach themselves, like I was afraid of bridges. There's really no reason to be afraid of a bridge, but crossing over bridges on a bicycle, not the flat ones, the big bridges, terrified me. Absolutely terrified me. And so those first several big bridges that we had to go over, you have to, you know, it's not like you could take the bicycle through the river. You got to go over the bridge. Heart palpitations. And there was one bridge. Couldn't I had to walk? We had to push the bike because I could not do it. By the end, we would be coming toward a big bridge, and I would feel that chest thing happening. And I could then say, How many bridges have you been over? You know you can do it, you've done it before. Let's take a few deep breaths. We're gonna do this. So it's not that it completely went away, but I started to be able to say, You've already done it. You've done it. I wish that I could figure out where the bridge thing came from, but who knows? Who knows?

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Interesting, interesting. And as you said, you came to really grow together as a couple very quickly and in a positive way. That's great to hear. So tell us a little bit about your book. I see in the background, is that your latest? That's the 10 little rules for a double-budded adventure.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

This is 10 life lessons I learned while on this bicycle trip. For people who want a blow-by-blow every day, I kept a blog. You're welcome to go to my website. You can find the blog, but most people do not want to hear about the temperature and the number of miles that we rode every day. When we finished the ride, it was really hard for me to comprehend that I had made it across the United States. I remember each and every day, but you do not ride from the coast of Oregon to Washington, D.C. You ride Monday, and then you ride Tuesday, and then you ride Wednesday. On Wednesday, you put Tuesday away. You can only worry about today. At the end of all those today's, all of a sudden we've made it across the U.S. I started reading my blog, trying to get the feeling in my head because it didn't feel like I had done it, even though I knew I had. As I was reading the blog, I started seeing that wow, that's when I learned. Look at that lesson I learned. I started jotting them down, just you know, on a pad of paper, just as a and before long I had a nice long list. Then it hit me, this is what I need to do. I need to write this book. Eventually I got that book written and it came out this year. Excellent.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

So for our listeners, what advice would you tell women who may be leaving or recently left a toxic relationship about life on the other side?

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Yeah. So first thing, there is life on the other side. I think there is a tendency to believe that there isn't, that there is no other side. There really is, and that it looks better than what your mind is imagining. Because I imagined myself living in a box. It's better than you think it is, and there are people out there who can help. You don't have to do it alone. There are shelters, there are therapists, there are friends, there could be family. I don't, you know, every situation is different. Even if there's no one currently in your life that can help, there are organizations that will help you find that beautiful life on the other side of whatever you're dealing with, which isn't pretty.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

I agree. How can our listeners learn more about you and purchase your books?

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Absolutely. The easiest thing is to go to my website, which is my name, TerryMbrown.com. That's Terry with one R. At my website, you can find all my books. I have a podcast where I talk with other authors. So you could listen to that. You can sign up for my newsletter. You can see all my social media links. And I even have a contact me page if you wanted to reach out and ask me a question. Anyone who's listening who feels they need a friend because they're going through something and they don't have someone to talk to, reach out. I am more than willing to be those ears for you.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Great. And I'll have all of that information in the show note. Terry, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for being here today and imparting your lessons that you've learned with us. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Thank you for listening to today's episode of Bent Not Broken. I hope that this episode reminded you that even through life's toughest moments, you are bent, not broken. If this message inspired you, please share, rate, review, and subscribe, as it helps us reach more women who are ready to rise and rebuild. And until next time, keep living bold and walking in your purpose.