Initiated Survivor

Mistress Justine Cross  is a professional BDSM consultant, kink educator, and lifestyle Dominatrix based in Los Angeles. Justine is the owner of Dungeon East and has over 15 years experience as a lifestyle Dominatrix and BDSM consultant, being featured on several magazines and newspapers including The Try Guys, Los Angeles Magazine, Playboy, Nylon, LA Weekly, Time Out Los Angeles, Buzzfeed, Salon,...

Dr. Dani Rosenkrantz is a licensed psychologist in Florida, a Jewish and LGBTQ+ Mental Health Expert, a LGBTQ+ and BIPOC Empowerment Collaborator, and Sexual Health and Wellness Champion. She founded Brave Space Psychology, where she aims to help others trust their inner wisdom, while conquering the feeling of self-doubt, anxiety, and disconnection that can overwhelm us. I sit down with her to tal...

Welcome to a new series on Initiated Survivor where I will be answering any and all listener questions about recovery, healing, trauma, and anything else you would like to know from a psychologist. In Part 1, I answer questions about repressed memories, the risk of false memories, sensory processing disorders, treating someone who has said disorder, and how to best support a friend who may be stru...

Kaleigh Cornelison , LMSW, LCSW, specializes on working with teens, educating them on dating violence, sexual assault, bystander intervention, and consent. In this episode, Kaleigh shares her expert knowledge on the way that sexual assault and gender based violence is effecting the youth of today. She covers the various forms of intimate partner violence that teens are most susceptible to, how tee...

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. This is the month where we focus in on ourselves and our survivor community, centering our healing and recovery. I wanted to sit down and talk to you about some of what is going on this month, and the ways that I am trying to heal and what you could do for yourself this month too. Topics/Triggers: Survivor Love Letter by Tani Ikeda Denim Day by Peace Over V...

Kristen Hogan was last seen on the podcast in "Good, Strong, and Brave with Kristen Hogan" where she recounted her experience with surviving intimate partner violence. As a founder of Good. Strong. Brave , Kristen wants to empower other women to feel good enough as they are. Part of that is having the resiliency to go on in spite of the trauma we as survivors have endured. It is from our...

Radical Genuineness is a skill, principle, and personal value that focuses on saying what you mean as you are . It is directly tied to authenticity and honesty in your relationships. It was also something that was very difficult for me to accomplish in my own life, as I used to be afraid about sharing all of who I was with the people around me. With practice, I was slowly able to show up genuinely...

Barb Jenkins was last on the podcast in 2022, in the episode "Reclaiming Justice" . Now, she comes back on to share all that she has done to find a way back to herself again. Part of what she lost in her attack was the joy she had in her hobbies like volunteering. While she will never be the same person she used to be, she has found new ways to help other survivors and even make a change with perp...

These last few months I have taken a step back from several things in my life, due to a lot of overwhelming anxiety and fear. Even though I could logically understand that my feeling of doom was inaccurate, my body still felt as through something terrible was right around the corner. So how do you keep going when everything is falling apart? In this episode, I open up about how I personally got th...

Raina LaGrand (she/her) is a Mixed (Black and white) Queer therapist, coach, and speaker based in Ypsilanti, MI. In her practice she helps mixed people embody their identities with confidence and build the community they've always dreamed of. She also helps intergenerational couples have brave conversations about identity, family, trauma, boundaries, and more. In this episode, we discuss the loss...

You may remember Bobbie Becerra from her previous episode on Intimated Survivor, where she recounted her life and childhood abuse. She opened up about how she broke her own generational chains, and stopped her cycle of trauma. One of the essential steps in that was to let go of the societal pressure placed on survivors to forgive their abusers. Instead, Bobbie has adopted a method of reconciliatio...

In our last episode with Kat McGinty, we explored larger scale methods to creating survivor-safe communities. In this follow-up, I wanted to take the same topic down to an individual basis, and explore the ways that we as individuals can help create communities where survivors will feel safe. Following the publication of the Open Letter in Support of Amber Heard as well as the release of the film...

Kat McGinty was last on the podcast to share her recovery journey and how she went from survivor to thriver. Since then, Kat has created her own female-led production company to provide a safe space for other survivors in the entertainment industry. She takes us through her decision to start a business, her perspective on the Me Too movement from an insider's perspective, and what survivors can do...

In episode 44, Olivia Pepper spoke on the heavy gifts that survivors receive throughout the "after". It made me look back on the first year of the podcast including my previous thoughts on believing all survivors — episodes 1 and 2 of Initiated Survivor, "Why I Believe All Survivors" and "We Believe All Survivors" . In these early episodes, the strategies I spoke about were primarily on an individ...

Olivia Pepper is returning to Initiated Survivor after their previous episode, "Nurturing Trauma Through Community" , where they spoke about their transition from victim to survivor. In this episode, Olivia has returned to tell more about their recovery journey and how the process of healing themselves has led them to activism for others. We speak on community, the work of those that came before u...

In the aftermath of the unprecedented reversal of established precedent, survivors are left wondering what to do. With the Supreme Court becoming increasingly more conservative following the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, many of us survivors are left with a staggering loss of bodily autonomy, independence, and resources. In a follow-up from my previous take on the United States post-Roe vs. Wade,...

Amy Malin is the creator and CEO of Trueheart, which serves as an in-between of Hollywood and philanthropy. A survivor of sexual assault and human trafficking, Amy founded Trueheart during her recovery process. Alongside her husband/business partner Scott Malin, Amy has raised thousands for a wide variety of causes including Domestic Violence, Gender Equality, HIV/AIDS, Homelessness, Human Traffic...

Kim Mecklenburg survived childhood sexual assault from family as well as at the hands of her commanding officers during her time in the Marine Corps. Taking us through how she was able to recover due in part to the aid of psychedelics, Kim shares what it means to finally feel free in her body once again. She has also taken what she learned about survival and recovery and turned it into Kim Chi Wis...

Nichol Bridges is a survivor of multiple incidents of violence. A current member of the RAINN Speakers Bureau, Nicole bears all in this Initiated Survivor interview. From her childhood when she encountered unwanted sexual advances from men much older than her, to being assaulted by multiple peers, to suffering violence at the hands of an ex-boyfriend, Nichol recounts these horrific experiences as...

Kat McGinty experienced multiple assaults that had a lasting impact on her life and mental and physical health. After a long recovery process and battle against constant panic attacks, Kat has gone from survivor to thriver. She takes us through the impact of the immediate aftermath of her assaults and how the initial reactions of those around her stunned her into silence. The minimization that she...

Kelly Johnson is a writer, public speaker, community engagement professional, and survivor of sexual violence. She has her masters in Public History from American University and is extremely passionate about literature. She created a Writers for Hope , which seeks to raise money for The Every Voice Coalition and the Lambda Legal Fund through the annual auctioning of books, writing advice, and stor...

"You are good enough. You are strong enough. You are brave enough." This is Kristen Hogan's mantra — one that she has lived by throughout her recovery journey. Now a mental health and intimate partner violence advocate, Kristen has turned her mantra into a platform, Good. Strong. Brave , to help empower young women in the face of trauma. Lacking any sexual education from her school or family, Kris...

Bobbie Becerra is the author of Learning to Take It: How I Learned to Accept Abuse   where she recounts her life and the childhood abuse that impacted her journey. A Los Angeles native raised by her mother, Bobbie thought it was normal for her and her brother to suffer through physical and sexual abuse. She talks about how difficult it was to become aware of the generational trauma and actual...

Ginger Rex has an undeniable warrior fighter spirit. She survived a brutal assault by a home intruder, and spent decades learning how to be with herself again. Finally finding a sense of peace after reevaluating her relationship with God, Ginger opens up about her recovery journey. From distancing herself from enablers, to gently overcoming her triggers with the help of her daughters and husband,...

Meghan Goode is a therapist and survivor who, after a lifetime of recovery, is a true warrior. She shares her story of being assaulted by a group of three males that she was familiar with in the spring of 1987 in her early teens. Having been abused by her parents and bullied by her peers, she shares how her life was impacted by what these "community heroes" had done to her. From substance abuse to...