Alexandra Ford | Prevailing Over Human Trafficking and Creating a New Healing Narrative

Written By Nicole Christie

Alexandra Ford, anti-trafficking activist and founder of The Laughing Survivor, shares her heart-wrenching story from victim to survivor to advocate. Alexandra candidly discusses her past as a child advocate, being groomed and sexually assaulted at a young age, falling into drug addiction, and her traumatic entanglement in human trafficking. Despite multiple degrees and working extensively in the helping field, it took her over a decade to recognize her experience could be classified as “trafficking.” Alexandra also discusses her unique approach to healing, the importance of self-compassion, challenging societal norms around abuse and trafficking (including changing the narrative around gender roles), and her quest to create safe spaces for difficult conversations.

Show Notes:

  • Nicole: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, it's Nicole. Before we get into my conversation with Alexandra Ford, I wanted to give you a heads up that we discuss human trafficking and intimate partner violence in this episode. If needed, please be sure you're somewhere you can safely process any emotions you may experience as you listen. Thanks for tuning in, and now here's Alexandra and me in conversation.

    Welcome to Here For Me, a podcast about the power of choosing yourself. I'm Nicole Christie, and I'm honored to be here with you to share life-altering stories, lessons learned, and advice from leading experts that will help you show up for yourself with the love, honor, compassion, and encouragement you give to others. Because just as we say, I'm here for you to show we care for someone, saying I'm here for me to ourselves is the best form of self-care.

    Today I'm talking [00:01:00] with Alexandra Ford. Alexandra is an anti-trafficking activist and survivor of human trafficking. At just 11 years old, she was a child advocate for the Free the Children organization. Then, as a pre-teen, she was sexually groomed and sexually assaulted at 13, embroiled in hard drugs for a decade, sex trafficked at 20 and survived three attempts on her life by a manic, drug dealing, sociopathic boyfriend. Alexandra always knew what happened to her was abusive. But despite multiple degrees in the helping field, a bachelor's in criminology, master's in psychology, post graduate certification in victimology, and a diploma in community and justice services, she had no idea it was considered trafficking. Alexandra founded The Laughing Survivor to tell her story and educate people on the signs of human trafficking, all the while healing her way through this work. She is a mother, lover of tequila, [00:02:00] and bad romance novels on a mission to create comfortable spaces to have difficult conversations anywhere, which is why I am thrilled to have her on this podcast. We'll talk with Alexandra about domestic human trafficking, her healing journey, and what it means to widen the lens for what healing looks like for all of us. Alexandra, welcome to here for me.

    Alexandra: [00:02:23] Hi, Nicole. Thank you so much for having me.

    Nicole: [00:02:26] Thank you so much for being on. I just want to say, I'm not going to lie, when I first heard your story, I went on a massive deep dive of your Instagram, your website, your whole online presence. I am floored by what you have endured. And per the theme of this season of Here For Me, what you have prevailed beyond. It's epic. And I know that healing isn't linear and it's never over, which you well know and speak to so beautifully in your work. But the way [00:03:00] that you have turned pain into purpose and are telling your story to educate and heal others is inspiring. So it is an absolute honor to talk with you today.

    Alexandra: [00:03:10] Well, that's a really good way to render me speechless at the very beginning of a podcast. Thank you very much for that, I am humbled. Thank you.

    Nicole: [00:03:19] Thank you for what you are doing and I'm so excited to dive into it. I shared the milestones of your journey in the intro from child advocate to trafficking victim to trafficking survivor and now anti-trafficking activist. So let's get into it. How did this unfold and what was life like for you through these experiences?

    Alexandra: [00:03:43] I always kind of jump around when I tell my story, because I think it's a little easier for me to tell it that way. I was a child advocate, like you said, at about 11 or 12 years old. At 20 years old, I was using meth, [00:04:00] dating a drug dealer, and I was trafficked by him.

    And I didn't find out I was trafficked until I was in my 30s, at which point I once again became an advocate, sort of this full circle moment. But to go back to that child advocate, like, how do you go from being a child advocate to a meth addict? That's not really the path that most people are envisioning.

    So around ten, 11, 12 years old, I'm doing exactly what every other ten, 11, 12 year old is doing, which is trying to find my thing. I was not sporty. I was not the cool kid. I had a very bold and dramatic unibrow that rivaled Burt's from Sesame Street. I had buck teeth because I sucked my thumb until I was like ten. I had round Harry Potter-esque glasses, but this is years before Harry Potter was ever invented, so they were certainly not cool.

    And I had really hairy arms for a girl. So I was not only trying to find where I fit in, I was finding all the places I didn't fit in, and I was also really, really intelligent, which didn't really endear me to my peers.

    So my teacher one day reads our class a story about a boy who had started a nonprofit organization in Toronto. I was living in a suburb just outside of Toronto, Ontario, and he had started this when he had learned about child labor and exploitation in other countries, children working in sweatshops to make garments and in brothels and all of this.

    And he had started this organization with the focus of being kids, helping kids. It was a kid founded, kid employed really organization. And it was the first time that I think I registered that kids could do something. We didn't just have to read magazines and hang at the mall and giggle with our friends. We could do something of importance. And that meant something to me.

    So myself and two of my friends started the first Oakville chapter of what was then called Free the Children and later became WE Charity, which ended up being behind a massive Children Helping Children movement across the globe. And instead of going to my first school dance or hanging at the mall, I was door knocking, looking for signatures for a petition that we had developed to send to our prime minister, asking them to strengthen laws on garments made by children and sweatshops overseas. And I was collecting money for school and health kits for kids who had been freed from child labor overseas.

    So I'm pretty sure at this point my parents were just like, you know, well, we've won parenting, you know, like, this one's done.

    Stick a fork in her. She's done, she's parented. We don't have to worry about her.

    And that was my life path at that point. When asked which camp I wanted to go to, I went to the leadership camp so I could learn how to speak publicly and lead fundraising efforts.

    And then when I was about 13 or 14, my best friend's uncle began sexually assaulting me. He groomed me, which I didn't really come to realize until later, and he started sexually assaulting me. And this went on throughout all of my teenage years. And it derailed my life, understandably.

    Now, I think where people get confused or where we have this expectation from movies and media they're expecting, because I always get asked, where were your parents? How did they not notice you went from this to this? And I say, well, it wasn't a movie montage.

    I didn't suddenly start wearing black eyeliner and listening to heavy metal while stomping around my house with big headphones on. I was still a nerd. I just also started doing drugs, but I planned it out very carefully, and I did them only on evenings and weekends. And I'm not suggesting anyone else do that. But this is how I lived this double life.

    I moved away from the advocacy work, but not in a way that really shocked my parents, and kids at that age pick up and drop hobbies like hot potatoes. It's not a shock to a parent if one day a kid's like, I love this, and the next day they're like, what are you talking about? I hate it.

    And part of the problem for me is I didn't register what was happening to me as sexual abuse. I was so desperate to be loved. I was so desperate to be told I was pretty because I was at this age, being taught by everything around me that that was my social currency, right, was my looks, and mine was not treating high at that point. And when this good looking thirty-something year old man is showing interest in me, it made me feel really good. So I kind of turned it around in my head to be this clandestine relationship.

    He thought of me as mature and I was special, but my body knew that wasn't true. And I say that because I started doing drugs. I was trying to cope and self-medicate in ways to try and deal with this confusion.

    So fast forward through my teenage years and I started smoking weed, doing mushrooms. Then I got into ketamine, I got into ecstasy, cocaine, and then I was doing methamphetamine.

    And I will stop there really quickly and caution anyone who kind of goes, yeah, well, weed is a gateway drug. Trauma is a gateway drug.

    Weed was medicine to me at that point. Not necessarily good or healthy medicine, but it was not the gateway drug. The trauma was the gateway drug.

    So then I graduated high school and I didn't go off to college. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And the criminal justice system got involved. We ended up going to the police. And just like any tenuous hold I had on the good girl life, the working full-time and all of that, I really started to lose it because I was no longer able to tell myself the story, that maybe there was something okay with this, or maybe it was a clandestine relationship.

    It was now labeled by the authorities as sexual abuse, and I couldn't call it something different. And I was mad at the world.

    So when the town drug dealer came into my tanning salon, I was running a tanning salon at the time and showed interest in me. I knew he was dangerous. I knew he was violent, and I was like, hell yes, that that is a match made in heaven. I do meth, you sell meth? This is perfect. Let's do this. So we got in a relationship.

    I try and always make sure this part of my story is candid, because so many people are like, were you so in love with him that he convinced you to do these things? And no, at the time I thought I loved him, but it wasn't that I was head over heels in love with him, it’s that I was angry.

    I was so angry at the world, at the criminal justice system, for stealing my story and making me a secondary character in it. For no one having seen what was wrong, even though I had made it my life's purpose to make sure they didn't. I was really angry.

    So when he suggested, like, hey, do you want to help? You know, we're doing more drugs than we're selling. We got to make more money. Do you want to help? And I was like, absolutely, yes. Yeah, sign me up for this.

    Now I'm no longer just a wifey. Now I'm your partner. Now we're in this together. I've elevated myself to man status.

    At that point, I understood that if I was going to have power in this world, it was going to have to be connected to a penis. So I was like, yeah, well, now I have power. And that's how it all started. Everything just went shockingly downhill from there.

    Nicole: [00:11:47] What was transpiring between the two of you? What did you eventually come to see that as being?

    Alexandra: [00:11:55] Our relationship was violent very quickly. It progressed very quickly. Like we are two individuals who are chemically enhanced and who are not sleeping. You know, things progress very quickly when you have 24 hours a day to talk at each other in speeds that sober people are like, what did you how, how are you speaking that fast?

    And he was a skilled predator. He knew how to ask me all the questions and find out all the information about me. And I needed to talk at that point. I needed to be heard and feel heard. So I talked and I told him everything.

    And interspersed with that was violence. And so when he started saying, you know, I want you to take this guy into this bedroom and distract him there so I can steal some things. And I was like, no, I don't know, I don't know if I want to do that. And he was, Yeah, well, I didn't really ask you. I told you.

    We would be partying at a strip club, and there's one day, all of a sudden my feet were no longer on the floor, and I'm being deposited up on the stage. And the last thing he whispers to me is, don't get down until you've made me some money.

    We weren't together that long. But this all happened and it progressed and the violence got worse.

    And after several near death experiences or attempts on my life by him, I finally realized I wasn't going to get out of this alive if I didn't make a move.

    So I ran to Ottawa, which is about a six-hour drive. It's our nation's capital, and I decided to go to school, and I put everything that had happened in this box in my brain and like, you know, scribbled on it like, never fucking look here. Like, this was bad. Just put it in some recess of your brain and pretend it didn't happen.

    Nicole: [00:13:30] Compartmentalize it. Yeah, it’s a survival skill.

    Alexandra: [00:13:32] Exactly. And I started school, and the nerd in me was like, oh, hey, love this for you. Let's do this. This is great. And I got after my first year of college, I actually got a scholarship to university for a “crim” program. I switched into that.

    I was just like, it didn't even happen. Like it wasn't that bad. Who am I kidding? I have some scars, you know, I have nightmares constantly. I have some physical scars on my body. But at the same time, look, here I am. I'm getting straight A's in school.

    So was it that bad? Because victims, they're sitting in corners crying, and I'm not doing that. So I wasn't a victim.

    And I did understand what had happened to me to be domestic violence. There's no way someone can burn you with a lighter or strangle you, or slice you open with a knife and not understand that to be physical violence.

    But the rest of it I understood to just be my own bad decisions. I knew who he was when I got involved with him. I shouldn't have done that. I said yes to the first thing, so how could I say no to the others? And then he found me about a year and a half after I'd escaped.

    And once again, the criminal justice system got involved in my life. And once again, they took my story and made me a secondary character. It's no longer, he committed a crime against me. It's he committed a crime against the state or the province, and I'm a witness to that.

    And so that was really, really hard. And once again, I went off the rails a little bit. I had to drop out of my “crim” program. I finished my second year, but then was just like, I can't focus on this.

    We went through trial. He was found not guilty on two of the four charges, the two more significant charges he was found not guilty on, and he was released from jail. And he found me again.

    And at that point, I started going, you know, I'm never going to get away from him. And do I just deliver myself to him and hope he kills me quickly or do I fake my own death and never see my family again?

    I just had no idea how to navigate anything or move forward. And then, as I'm gearing myself up to try and figure this out and the cops are saying, well, we're going back to court because he violated the restraining order, all of that. And I'm going, oh my God, not another court case. Like, I can't, I can't do that again.

    He ended up in a situation completely unrelated to me getting himself Killed in our hometown. He was killed in 2011, and I didn't find out that what happened to me was human trafficking until about 2019? The occurrence happened in 2007, so it was more than ten years that I wore the blame and the shame and the guilt of I'm an idiot and I made bad choices.

    Nicole: [00:16:26] And you're someone with multiple degrees in the helping field, which you received after this relationship. So it's ten plus years that you figure it out.

    How did you come to realize that what you were experiencing was human trafficking?

    Alexandra: [00:16:43] Like you said, throughout this ten years, I've collected a bunch of degrees. Nerd me shines through, prevails. And I had moved to Wyoming with my husband, and I was pregnant with our son. I was about four months pregnant and I'm Canadian, so because of visa restrictions I couldn't work. But I'm also not someone who can just sit there and do nothing.

    So I had heard that there was a woman in town who was doing some anti-human trafficking work, and I was like, I know absolutely fucking nothing about human trafficking, but I've now spent ten years collecting degrees in criminology, victimology, justice services. I've worked with offenders, with victims in prevention and rehabilitation, in domestic violence shelters.

    I myself am a survivor of domestic violence. I can probably do this work. Her name is Terri. I sent her an email and said, hey, this is who I am. Would you like to meet me for coffee? I'd love to learn more and help your organization.

    And we met for coffee and we got to talking. And I remember sharing with her that I was a survivor of domestic violence and, for some reason, I shared details with her that I had not shared with another soul before. That box that I had shoved into the corner that the police during the investigation had tried to pry open, and I had clutched to my chest with like, I will give you the bare minimum of information you ask for because I don't trust you. I don't trust the system. I'm not going to lie, but I'm absolutely not giving you everything.

    And something about Terri. The box jumped off the shelf and just emptied on the table in front of us to go with the metaphor, and I told her these details about being put on stage at a strip club, about sexually explicit photos of me that he traded or sold. I still don't even know the full details.

    And she said to me, you know, so kindly and cautiously, you know, Alexandra, what you're describing to me sounds like human trafficking. It sounds like you were trafficked.

    And I remember laughing and being like, no, no, it's not what happened. Like I was never kidnaped. I've seen Taken. There was no Liam Neeson on a phone, angrily promising to find me. I was never in a shipping container. There was never a hotel room with a series of men, or a dude with a necklace that looked like a pimp. This is what trafficking was in my mind, and none of those things had happened.

    So I remember saying to her like, no, no, no, no, it wasn't trafficking. It was domestic violence in a series of my own bad choices. And we kept talking, and I learned a little more.

    And I remember over the next, I think it was a couple of days, that this information just turned around in my head of the definition of human trafficking is if someone's over the age of 18, which I was when it happened, I was 20. If somebody compels somebody else to perform acts of either labor or commercial sex, and if they're over 18, there's force, fraud or coercion present and a third party profit.

    So the person performing the acts is not the person keeping whatever of value they're getting. There is someone else getting that.

    And so I'm starting to get these flashbacks of coming off stage and having to hand over whatever tip money I'd been given. Or force, I mean the violence that was in our relationship and learning to understand what coercion meant and the levels of manipulation I had experienced.

    And all of a sudden I'm just like, Holy Mother of Jesus Christ, I was trafficked. Oh my God.

    And as quickly as I came to that realization, I was like, well, I need to put that to the side for a second because I'm not fucking ready to deal with that. That's a lot. I'm not ready for it.

    But the next thing I remember thinking is hold on a second. At that point, I had three degrees. I had spent ten years working in the helping field. I had been through a criminal investigation against my boyfriend cum trafficker, and I had absolutely no idea I was trafficked.

    How the hell is anyone else supposed to understand what human trafficking is, or recognize if they're being trafficked, or protect their children or communities or families against trafficking? And from that point, Terri and I co-founded Uprising, which is our nonprofit based out of Wyoming, because it was just like, if I don't know nobody knows.

    People need to know this. We need this information.

    Nicole: [00:21:03] Yeah. One of the interesting things that you were talking about was I recognize this as abuse and domestic violence. There are parallels between trafficking and abuse, which, of course, trafficking is abuse.

    But it's something we've talked about on this podcast and particularly narcissistic abuse, which is something that I've experienced. And things like love bombing, gaslighting. You talked about how fast it moved.

    A dear friend of mine recently told me she saw me being dismantled in the early stages of my relationship, which she told me this 11 years after that moment, and it was very emotional for me to hear that. But she said, you were being love bombed so much. We didn't know what to do because you were so entrenched in this honeymoon phase and this narrative.

    And you also had a narrative of like, I know what I'm doing, I know this guy's violent, but, you know, this is my story and the story that you had when you were a teenager.

    Can you talk about the parallels between abuse and trafficking, and then also how they're different so someone can recognize if this is happening to them?

    Alexandra: [00:22:04] It is a bit difficult to talk about them as parallels because they're not parallels. They're like deeply entrenched and intertwined and all trafficking is abuse. All abuse is not trafficking.

    We do see grooming happening. And you see that typically in a lot of different types of abuse and trauma bonds, again, same sort of thing. I have a colleague, Megan Lundstrom, who is a survivor as well. And she did a bunch of research on pimp controlled domestic sex trafficking, and she came to find that it actually mirrors the characteristics of a cult. And I bring that up because I think when you have this outside perspective of, like, if some dude asked me to have sex for money, the answer would be no. Like, who does that? How can you be so stupid?

    But I think when you talk about a cult, people maybe still don't understand it, but there's a little more empathy to it because they're like, oh, people are being brainwashed. I don't understand how someone can be brainwashed, but I understand that it can happen.

    So when you compare these two and you say, we see this happening in sex trafficking, in especially pimp controlled domestic sex, trafficking is brainwashing is happening. I think that's where we can start breeding some empathy and start understanding trafficking a, I hate to say it, but almost as commonplace as abuse or more commonplace, like abuse, as opposed to this thing that happens to those people over there that I don't have to worry about.

    We're starting to bring it into a narrative that people can digest and can understand as a reality.

    Nicole: [00:23:49] You also talked about having this conversation, having the difficult conversations about abuse. I love what you said. I think it was on your website. You said, you know, silence before, during and after abuse only helps the abusers.

    So what are you doing through your work to really facilitate these conversations and get people talking about that? How can people recognize someone as being brainwashed?

    Like, that's essentially what my friend said to me. She called it the dismantling. That was a grooming or a love bombing phase of like, erasing, so that I would just walk into this. And essentially it was a trauma bond for a decade.

    So having these conversations with the people that you're working with and the work that you're doing, how are you educating people so they can talk about this and see that.

    Alexandra: [00:24:37] Couple different ways. When I'm talking to parents or caregivers or people who work in a professional caregiver capacity, I'm trying to give tangible tips about.

    First off is, start talking about consent and healthy relationships and boundaries as young as possible. If your kids are already teenagers, start now. If your kids are two and four, start now if you haven't had them yet. Start now with your partner about how you might want to have those conversations. Have the conversations with your friends.

    We need to understand these things to be as critical as teaching our kids how to walk, talk, read, eat, sleep. It has to happen early and it has to happen often.

    The other way is kind of by throwing myself on the sword. That's where the Laughing Survivor comes from, is like, I am absolutely willing at a backyard barbecue, you know, we're all standing around, and if somebody makes an off color joke that's, you know, misogynistic or racist or something, I'm going to be that person who's like, no, dude, no, that's not okay. Like, oh, it's just a joke. No, let me tell you why it's not just a joke.

    And my typical way is usually a bit confrontational, but also a little bit self-deprecating or a little bit of throwing my own humor in there, because people don't learn when they're on the defensive. But also, these conversations have to happen everywhere, all the time.

    And I want to invite people to be willing to have those conversations and be willing to recognize that trafficking isn't what you think it is, and that victims do or don't look like you think they do, or may not act like you think they act like victims are not always just in a corner crying like I thought they were right?

    Nicole: [00:26:24] Or underground, hidden away somewhere. Which I think a lot of people think about international human trafficking. That's the narrative. That's not always how it is.

    Alexandra: [00:26:32] Exactly. The more we can talk about this, the more we can dispel myths and have hard conversations. And I will say, also shift conversations away from teaching people how not to be victimized to having conversations about why people victimize. It goes back to that narrative of when people are like, oh, but why didn't she leave? No, shut the fuck up. Why did he hit? It drives me absolutely mad.

    So when we have these conversations about bodily autonomy, consent, healthy relationships, boundaries with young kids, and we start that narrative really young, not only are we providing protective factors to help prevent victimization, we're hopefully also instilling in kids that victimizing other people is not okay.

    Exploiting other people is not okay. Bullying is not okay. You should just care about other people because there are other people. That's what we want to instill in kids.

    So that conversation needs to be happening in a more complete way. Because right now we're teaching half the population one thing and the other half of the population another thing, and it's not working.

    Nicole: [00:27:48] I love that because and it's such a good way to add another aspect to the conversation, because I think about as women, when we're growing up, it's like boys like you when they pull your pigtails, boys like you when they tease you. And it's one of the most irritating things—you're making this face—and it's like, no, why are little girls trained to accept that? Why is that a sign of love, which is essentially a very mild form of abuse, of ridiculing, bullying? So to flip that narrative, I love that.

    And I will say, as someone who is a narcissistic abuse survivor, one of the things that I'm most angry about, I'm angry at the culture that raised him to do this and to believe it's okay, or that didn't recognize whatever it was that he needed or didn't allow him to be a sensitive man.

    There was all of this armor that was up of like, what a strong man he was, you know, physically and mentally. And that is as much of the process.

    Let's talk to this culture about how we raise people. And it tends to be men or people who identify as men disproportionately.

    Why are we not having that conversation? It's not just avoid this, but how about not do it at all?

    Alexandra: [00:29:01] 100%. So an awesome example that I use when I have disclosed, like since being sexually abused and then being trafficked, I've obviously dated people, and then I was married, and I disclosed that abuse at different points in those relationships.

    And without fail, 100% of the men that I disclosed to while I was dating them got, you know, all either angry or stoic or silent or were like, where is he? I'm going to find him and I'm going to kill him or something. And I'm just like, that's extremely unhelpful.

    First of all, I'm not looking for a knight. I'm looking for a sword. I already escaped, I already saved myself. You are not part of that story. This isn't a story about Prince Charming finding Prince Charming, or a fairy tale of someone needing to save me. Like I already saved myself.

    I don't need you to come in all big and macho. I remember a specific example talking to one boyfriend being like, what I need you to do is when we were hanging out at the bar last night with your friends and one of them made a comment about the waitress's ass, I need you to turn around and say, no, that's fucked up. Don't say shit like that. That is what needs to be said. That is what is helpful.

    I don't need you to stand in front of me and fight my fights for me. I need you to have my back and make sure that the culture is being changed so I can fight the fights in front of me, and I'm not constantly having to look behind me and see what next person is coming for me to make a comment about me, or try and grab my ass, or think it's okay to whistle at me as I walk down the street when I'm six years old.

    I need that culture changed for me, and now for my daughter and for my son to be able to have the voice so he can turn around. The amount of times I talk to guys and I say, look, I'm not asking you to challenge your buddy to fisticuffs. That's not the thing. All I'm asking is for you to have the wherewithal to say, dude, that's fucked up. Don't say that.

    Nicole: [00:30:52] You need an ally. Like you said, I don't need a knight. I need an ally to shift the expectations of this culture. What it means to, in particular, be a male or identifying as a male in this culture. Can we please shift that narrative? Thank you for having that conversation because, my God, it needs to happen.

    Alexandra: [00:31:10] Exactly. You know, I said earlier, we're teaching 50% of the population one thing and 50% of the population the other. How much do we see in our culture that, when this is going to be heteronormative, the way I explain it, but it is how it's typical, but not the only way. But we see in romcoms and stuff like the original answer is a no. And then hold on, let me annoy you into saying yes. Let me keep following you until you figure out that you actually truly are in love with me. And so we're now being raised as women to see that people ignoring our nose is a sign of romance.

    It means they truly want you. And the amount of times I've had conversations with guys my age when I was younger, and now my friends who have sons who are growing up, they're like, oh, the girl I asked out said no, and I'm sad. And dad's like, well, you know, you just got to try harder. And I'm like, no you don't. No, no, no, you got an answer? No, you got the answer. She's not playing hard to get.

    Nicole: [00:32:05] No is a complete sentence.

    Alexandra: [00:32:06] No is a complete sentence. She is not playing hard to get. You are playing hard to get rid of. Stop.

    We need to change that conversation because it is then also on the on the flip side, it is not fair. To tell teenage boys to keep pushing and keep trying and keep convincing her. And then at some point in their 20s, turn around and say, oh, now you're a predator. If you do that, we're sending mixed messages.

    No, teach them young that respect to know. And you know what? If she didn't mean that, then guess what? The ball's in her court and she can now come find you. She has your interest. She has that. Or he or she or however we want to gender that.

    But it's not fair to men to teach them one thing. And then at some point, they're big and strong enough that now it's not cute and endearing. It's predatory. It's always predatory. Knock it off from the very beginning.

    Nicole: [00:33:03] And it also is disempowering to women.

    Thank you for bringing up romcoms. It's one of the most irritating things for me is it's like, does this woman need to be like pursued? Why is that romantic?

    It makes women seem weak, and it furthers that narrative that women are the weaker sex, which is fucking bullshit. So yeah, I love that you're having both sides of the conversation.

    How do you avoid being victimized? How do you also not victimize? And this goes for all genders. And then also, there's a cultural media shift that has to happen as well.

    Women like yourself being involved in changing these kinds of movies, television shows, books. But you love bad romance novels. I mean, let's talk about that for a second.

    Say more about that because the plots of most bad romance novels, and I'm not saying I haven't read a few, say more about that from a media perspective.

    Alexandra: [00:34:01] So I don't believe in guilty pleasure because I just believe in pleasure. If it brings you pleasure, like good, great, wonderful. It's not guilty.

    But it's like, guilty feminists, like the feminist in me when I'm reading these is just like like I can't do like, oh my God. But it's interesting because I still continue to read them, but also so much of the work I do, the things I talk about, my own history, working when I work with law enforcement or I work on cases or any of that, is steeped in the absolute horrors of humanity.

    So when I read before bed and I read before bed every single night, it's how I fall asleep. I want to just have the Danielle Steel equation of, within the first three pages, you know exactly what is going to happen. And I am going to be deeply annoyed at this character because she is fawning, and deeply annoyed at this male character because he's macho. But I know it. I know the emotions I'm going to go through. It is just that thing. Every time I'm like, all right, self, we don't have to read about human trafficking before bed.

    Right before I'm going to bed is not when my brain has the time to read anything of any intelligence. I have a four-year-old and a two-year-old, one of which is on a sleep strike and has been for some time. I am tired, I am writing my own book. That last few minutes before I fall asleep is not the time to be fighting and challenging and dismantling the patriarchy.

    Nicole: [00:35:39] I love that you embrace the duality within yourself. I wish that more people would do that. Of, like I get it. I can be super pissed off at the characters in this novel, and I understand how I feel about that from a philosophical perspective. But I also recognize that I need to breathe, and I need to sleep, and I need to just unplug and decompress for a second.

    And when I think about what you're doing with The Laughing Survivor, those two things being next to each other are embracing duality, which I think is beautiful.

    And I actually wrote a quote down because I have a framed piece of art in my house, and it says, “The most beautiful people are the ones who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and found their way out of the depths.”

    And you are, without question, one of those people.

    I'd love you to talk more about this. The Danielle Steel was such a beautiful segue into this, but finding your way to the other side of traumas—and I've experienced this as well—people assume if you have a light heart and spirit that you haven't been through anything. And I find that it's actually the opposite.

    The more you go through and more importantly, the more you face and process your trauma, the way that you have, the more you find levity. And you walk with lightness and love and acceptance through the world, and you're also able to sit with others through their trauma. And this is shocking to people.

    So as The Laughing Survivor, I'm curious what your experience has been as you fully embrace and share the depths of what you've been through and then at the same time show up as a light in the world.

    Alexandra: [00:37:14] I found my space in healing or my process of healing. When I stopped trying to do it right. When I first sought to heal from the abuse I endured, I looked up healing, and I went to rape crisis centers, and I got therapists. And the messaging that I got back was do yoga. Definitely yoga. That's how you heal from trauma is yoga.

    And I was like, okay. It was that who you are now is this sad, broken caterpillar. But once you heal, you will become this beautiful butterfly. Like, okay, check. Need to do yoga and become a butterfly. I can do that.

    A lot of the therapists and very well meaning victim services workers and counselors, they all talked to me like this and this sort of breathy head tilt, and created this space that had Zen written all over it.

    And, and I was like, okay, one must become Zen. So I have to like scented things now. All right, I can do that. And I think I should sit on a pillow because there seems to be a lot of those around. And this is what healing looks like. And I'm just going to try and do this.

    And I remember doing so much yoga and being like, when does the healing come? And even at the end of the class, the savasana. And they're like, lie there with your eyes closed. And the whole time I'm like, eyes closed, open, eyes closed, open. Like, this is so fucking uncomfortable. I'm in a dark room with 30 strangers I don't know, wearing skin tight clothes, smelling sweat, which smells a little bit like sex, which brings back weird memories. Like it…just all of it. I was like, I don't want to do this, this doesn't feel right.

    I remember one of my best friends taking me down to the lake, and she had me scream into the void, “I am not the hunted, I am the hunter.” And I remember being like, what am I not doing this, this stupid? Like what if someone hears me just like no scream it, “I am not the hunted, I am the hunter.” And I was screaming this and at the end of that I felt ridiculous. And I felt my throat hurt and I felt free in a way I had never felt, and it wasn't because I wanted to suddenly become a hunter or hunt down people who had hurt me.

    It was healing to me looks like being allowed and finding a punching bag and finding heavy weights and lifting things and feeling my body get stronger, and being able to flex in front of a mirror and being like, hey, I got biceps! And it looks like being able to drink whiskey and being able to laugh at the really ridiculous shit that happened to me being stalked across a province by my sociopathic manic ex-boyfriend who almost killed me three times, only for him to be killed on a street corner in our hometown by a scared kid.

    Healing to me looks like not trying to tell everyone that I'm healed and never be triggered again. It looks like finding the safe people around me who, when I am triggered and I spiral, they're not like, oh, you need to get back into therapy because you're not healed. You know? News flash, I'm in therapy and I always will be.

    But they stand there with their arms out figuratively and say, okay, spiral, this is a safe space to spiral in. Do you want to get really drunk tonight? Do you want to yell and scream? Do you want to go punch a punching bag? What do you need? How can I ensure that you can spiral as much as you need to spiral out of control in a controlled and safe environment?

    And then when I hit my rock bottom of that spiral, they're not there like, wow. They're like, you know, that was impressive. I didn't know some of those words. Pretty cool.

    You know, like, hey, what do you need right now? Do you want to talk about it? Or do you just want to put it away for now? Like they're just there to let me do it how I want to do it and not have a therapist be like, oh, that's quite a setback.

    And that's what I heard when I kept trying to find these healing spaces. I kept hearing from people and again, well-meaning people, you're not a victim, you're a survivor.

    And I remember being like, well, shit, I just realized I was a victim. You're trying to take that away from me. And you're like, oh, I have to stop yelling and getting angry because that's not healing.

    I have to be calm and speak in these voices. And finally, when I shed all of that and I was like, you know what? Maybe that's good for some people. But for me, healing looks like a lot of swear words, and it looks like lifting heavy shit. And it looks like drinking whiskey with my friends, and it looks like screaming and crying sometimes, and it looks like writing, and it looks like writing my book and telling my story in a way that is authentic to me.

    That is where my healing path is, and it's covered in everything from banana peels to barbed wire. And I am going to slip and I'm going to hurt myself, and I'm going to end up with new scars that I'm causing myself because I'm still navigating this, but I'm navigating it.

    Someone isn't telling me anymore what healing looks like, or when I will hit my healing level up or anything.

    And you know what? I don't want to become the fucking butterfly. I am a really cool caterpillar and I just want to be the caterpillar.

    Nicole: [00:42:33] What I hear from you and we think about this podcast being here for yourself, you allow yourself to be present, you have self-compassion for yourself and your journey, and you're not forcing yourself into any box at all. It's like, this is fucking who I am and how I'm going through it.

    Thank you for having that perspective, sharing it, and starting the conversation on this, because I think that more people need to have self-compassion with where they are and stop judging themselves.

    If I'm not far enough along, I haven't found the right mix of meds. I'm not doing the right things. I need to do more yoga, more Reiki, more acupuncture, nothing against all of those things I do. All those things you've done, all those things.

    But just be where you're at and let yourself feel your feelings. Eat macaroni and cheese. My producers know macaroni and cheese is coming. I did two interviews today. That's what's happening tonight, because that's how I'm, that's how I'm going to soothe. It's not the worst thing. It's the chickpea fucking version. Okay? It's gluten free.

    But yeah, just be with it and allow yourself to spiral. If you fight those things, you know this, if you fight those things, it really doesn't serve the process and honor where you're at.

    Alexandra: [00:43:42] Exactly. Stop allowing yourself to be told what healing looks like and start creating your own healing journey and let it be as ugly and as loud and as sharp and as scattered and as discombobulated as it is.

    Because in that mess you will find everything you need.

    I don't know how many times I have cleaned up my house and then been like, I can find nothing. I don't know where anything is because this didn't help me. No, because I knew exactly that my keys were on the floor underneath that pair of pants I wore yesterday, because I heard them fall out of my pocket when I took my pants off and I didn't pick them up, so I knew they were there. And now I've put them away and I don't know where the fuck they are.

    So just let the mess be. And then let yourself navigate that and you will find what is beautiful and what honors you and what feels good.

    And it doesn't have to be what anyone else tells you feels good. It can just be what feels good to you in that moment, and it can feel like shit to you the next day. And that's okay too, because it felt good to you in that moment.

    Nicole: [00:44:48] Exactly. We're all progressing and then regressing. That's part of the journey, too, of like, you know, I often call it like you take two steps forward, one step back, but sometimes it's two steps back or three, and then you just fall down and you cry for a while and you're like, I just, I got to be in this.

    So giving people that permission to just go through it the way that it's happening and not judge it in any way. I love the lack of judgment you have of yourself and other people. I think it's a beautiful gift.

    Alexandra: [00:45:13] Well, thank you very much. I think it is an ongoing practice. I try very hard. It is a lot of work for me.

    It sounds like anyone listening, if you think like, oh wow, she's kind of like figured that out and she's non-judgmental and so self compassionate. No, I have to figure this out every day. And I have to tell myself every day that I deserve happiness, and I'm a good mom, and I know what I'm talking about, and I don't need to shut up and sit down more. And I have a voice that's worth sharing and all of that.

    But the point is, I tell myself that. And maybe if I forget to for several days, then I'm very lucky to have good people in my life who will tell me carefully and then scream it in my face until I'm like, okay, I got it. Yes, self-compassion, here I am. I'm awesome. Thank you. I'm back on the train.

    Nicole: [00:46:04] Yeah, healing is not linear and it never ends.

    Alexandra: [00:46:08] It's messy as hell.

    Nicole: [00:46:10] It's messy as fucking hell.

    As we wrap our conversation with everything you've been through and everything you've shared today, what is the most important thing you've learned on this journey? And what one piece of advice do you have for listeners on how to be here for themselves?

    Alexandra: [00:46:33] Find joy where you can find it. I think what you said earlier, the beautiful quote you shared earlier, it reminded me of a quote that I have lived by for a long time, which is, “Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light.”

    And it is that, if there's light in any moment, I don't care if you are at a funeral, and it is the worst day of your life, and you see a little yellow flower, and for a moment you smile, don't stop that smile because you think you know I'm supposed to be sad right now.

    Let that smile happen. Let that laughter happen. Let that joy in.

    Because laughter breeds more laughter and light breeds more light. And if you are laughing at something that is so fucking inappropriate that everyone is glaring at you, keep laughing and you can apologize later if you need to. But if you feel joy in that moment, hold on to it, because there is nothing more important than being able to find joy when you have lived in darkness.

    Nicole: [00:47:37] And it's a dark world far too often. So anywhere we can find it, and inappropriateness sometimes gives rise to conversation like the ones that you're facilitating.

    Alexandra: [00:47:46] Yeah, exactly.

    Nicole: [00:47:48] Thank you for being here today, for sharing your story, for all that you are doing, healing yourself, healing others.

    You are an absolute light in [00:48:00] the world. And I mean that as you're talking about light and the light gets into those cracks. Thank you for, for showing us what that looks like.

    Alexandra: [00:48:07] Thank you so much. Thank you.

    Nicole: [00:48:16] Alexandra Ford is the epitome of walking through darkness and finding light and laughter on the other side. Her terrifying roller coaster of a journey is one most would deem unsurvivable.

    Yet Alexandra not only grabbed survival and healing by the horns, she's turned them into superpowers.

    She leads with an empowered feminist perspective on abuse and trafficking, shifting from why didn't she leave, to why did he hit? Shining a light on romantic comedies where no is a challenge instead of a complete sentence. Pointing out how we teach boys to woo and pursue and later call it predatory.

    What Alexandra is doing is more than just creating awareness around trafficking and doing her part to put an end to it. She's jackhammering the foundation of a culture that gave rise to it in the first place.

    She's also questioning the definition of what it means to heal by stating outright that there is no definition, that it doesn't have to look like yoga and lemon water and becoming a butterfly. For her, it's screaming and whiskey and being a really cool caterpillar. It's authentic to who she is, and there's no better way to tackle anything than with authenticity.

    It's when you tune out the voices outside you and tune in to the one inside you. It's when you embrace this journey that's uniquely yours, with its sunlight and darkness, laughter and tears, and to quote Alexandra, “banana peels and barbed wire.”

    It's when you finally tune your inner compass, align with your path, and walk forward step by step. It's knowing you'll prevail. Not once, but again and again.

    And if you create your own unique brand of healing, the challenges start to feel less daunting because you trust yourself. And once you do, you find the laughter and those little yellow flowers more easily, and the weight of the world is lifted.

    For more information about Alexandra and the topics discussed in this episode, check out the show notes at hereformepodcast.com.

    And that's a wrap on the Prevail season of Here For Me. I want to thank Indie Lee, Diana Min, Scout Sobel, Jane Ratcliffe, and Alexandra Ford for sharing their stories of prevailing over some of the biggest challenges life can throw our way.

    My intent this season was to showcase how everyone is fighting a hard battle, no matter how positive, healed, or successful they are or appear to be.

    We also learned that prevailing isn't a one and done scenario, but a lifelong endeavor. As Kelly Henderson shared in the Velvet's Edge episode we aired this season, that journey is like a corkscrew. Sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down.

    I'd take the analogy one step further and say, sometimes what the corkscrew opens is a double edged sword.

    It can leave you relaxed and reflective or wrecked on the bathroom floor. In those wrecked moments, life asks us to revive ourselves, to reevaluate and reinvent who we are and how we show up in the world.

    This is what we'll explore on Here For Me in January, in our Revive mini-season. We'll share two episodes with women who achieved success in the public eye, watched it crumble in what we call tower moments, and walked the painful journey of letting go and reviving themselves at a time of year when many of us are starting fresh.

    I hope you'll find these stories reassuring and enlightening. For now and as always, thanks for listening.

    As we close 2023 and prepare to welcome 2024, I wish you peace on the journey of being here for you, whatever that looks like in this season of life. Have a beautiful new year and I'll see you on the other side of it.

    Here For Me is produced by Lens Group Media in association with Tulla Productions. As is often said, it takes a village to make this podcast, and my deepest gratitude goes out to every person in that village. Our producers Dave Nelson and Stacy Harris, our audio editor, JD Delgado, designer and illustrator Amy Senftleben, and our production assistant, Sarah Carefoot. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you'd follow the show, rate, review, and share it with people you love. You can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook at nicolejchristie. Until next time, thank you so much for listening—here's to you being here for you and to the power of choosing yourself.

Nicole Christie
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