Terrorists of My Mind Hijackers of My Soul

My Journey from Captivity to Freedom, from Silence to Voice, from Hostage to Whole.
Content Warning: This piece addresses childhood trauma, abuse, and survival. Please care for yourself as you read.
I want to tell you about ransom notes that were written on my soul in broad daylight, while the world walked by pretending not to see. They were posted everywhere—on my small body moving through my childhood home and classrooms and church pews, fluttering like torn white surrender flags that nobody thought to read. The demands were written in a language of silence, paid in the currency of stolen innocence, negotiated in the economics of a childhood that was bartered away before I even learned my own worth and was started before my birth.

But no one stopped to decode the emergency signals I was broadcasting. No one read the SOS written in every flinch, every withdrawal, every way I tried to get help without having words to tell them or even knowing what I would say. I was five when they first put a price tag on my soul. Five when the terrorists of the mind discovered that small hands make no fists, that tiny voices carry no thunder, that a child's trust is the most profitable commodity in markets that exist in shadows cast by the very institutions we're taught to revere. They wore the masks of respectability—holy robes, white coats, kind smiles that promised safety while hands dealt devastation. Both my father and mother. A priest. A nun. My primary childhood doctor and the German Nazi scientists in a makeshift lab in the back of the free medical clinic that my family went to. They spoke the language of protection while orchestrating the most sophisticated theft imaginable: the hijacking of a mind still learning what it means to be human. I was well into adulthood before I could even begin to start to learn what it meant to be human, have needs and to be treated with kindness and dignity.

I was trafficked through systems designed to nurture, sold in spaces meant to heal, programmed in places that promised gifts and talents while stealing the most precious gift of all—my right to exist unbroken. They even put me on a school bus to the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program with a select few other students from varying grades along with classmates.

And the ransom notes? They were written in my silence,stored in every cell of my body, in the recesses of hidden spaces in my mind through parts who knew what happened to me that were out of my conscious awareness. They were hidden in plain sight in the way I learned to disappear while still occupying space, in the hypervigilance that taught my nervous system to scan every room for exits, every face for threat, every touch for the violence it might contain.

The Conspiracy of Looking Away

The most devastating part wasn't the abuse itself—it was the orchestrated blindness of those who should have seen. The elaborate dance of denial performed by adults who preferred the comfort of ignorance to the inconvenience of action. My own mother found my dad sexually abusing me and blamed me and she either threw me down the steps in her rage or I fell, but either way I became the criminal of what my father did to me. My ransom notes were posted on every surface of my being. In the way I retreated in fear. In the premature wisdom that settled behind my eyes like old grief. In the way I learned to soothe others' discomfort with my pain, to make myself small enough to fit into their need to believe the world was safe. But they looked through me like I was made of the same transparent material as their conscience. They chose not to read the emergency signals my body was broadcasting, not to decode the SOS written in every gesture, every withdrawal, every desperate attempt to communicate what I had no words for. If they suspected, no one did anything to help me. Because seeing me would have meant seeing the systems they trusted. And that was a ransom they weren't willing to pay.

The Laboratory Years

They called it education. They called it treatment. They called it gifts and opportunities while they experimented on the raw material of my developing mind. In the back of a free medical clinic, German Nazi scientists turned a white sterile laboratory where I became their lab rat, where I was caged, they tested the limits of human endurance, where they mapped the geography of terror onto the landscape of my consciousness as I wrote help me on the inside of my skull in my mind. I was both the subject and the experiment, the question and the answer they were trying to extract. They wanted to know how far they could bend a young mind before it broke, how deep they could bury my authentic self before I forgot my own name. Through MKUltra mind control projects, through medical experimentation, through being groomed for sex trafficking starting at age five, they tried to program me into forgetting who I was before I could ever develop into the person I could have been. They installed locks on my consciousness, buried my memories under layers of forced amnesia, tried to turn me into someone else entirely by purposefully engineering the splintering of me into multiple personalities that would then go on and do child pornography, sex trafficking (being raped by multiple business men on a regular basis). But what they didn't count on was my soul's stubborn refusal to be completely erased. What they couldn't program was the essential spark that would lie dormant but never dead, waiting for the moment when their sophisticated architecture of control would finally crack as a part of me desperately held onto hope, determined not to die and not to give up!

When the Walls Came Down
This lasted until my father was allegedly murdered. That's when everything changed. His death became the earthquake that destabilized their psychological infrastructure, and suddenly, the locks they had installed on my consciousness began to rattle and give way. The tears came first—not just grief, but archaeology. Each one washed away layers of forced forgetting, revealing the artifacts of truth they had tried so desperately to bury. At first I just thought I was having trouble getting over my father's death. Memory by memory, I began to unearth myself from the burial ground of my own mind. Each recovered fragment was a small rebellion against the amnesia they had so carefully constructed. And with each memory reclaimed, each piece of my stolen self recovered, their power diminished. The hostage they had so carefully crafted began to remember that freedom was her birthright.

The Ransom That Was Never Paid

Here's what they never understood: I was never really for sale. They could traffic my body, they could program my mind, they could steal my childhood and attempt to rewrite my story. But the essential me—the core of light that makes me who I am—that remained untouchable, hidden in places so deep that even their most sophisticated torture and abuse couldn't reach it. They wrote ransom notes demanding my soul, my spirit, my right to exist freely in my own skin. They demanded payment in silence, in shame, in the slow suicide of forgetting who I really was without ever getting to know myself the way a developing child gets to discover. But the ransom was never paid. Because what they were demanding was never theirs to take.

My Art as Revolution

That's why I created "Hostage"—my poster art that expresses what I felt back when I was still held captive. Every line I draw, every word I speak, every moment I choose to exist authentically in my recovered self is a small earthquake that destabilizes the empire built on my suffering. There is power in naming what was done to me. In refusing to dress it up in polite language that makes others comfortable. In calling torture torture, calling trafficking rape, calling the theft of childhood exactly what it was; the hijacking of a child's mind by terrorists of the worst kind. Unseen, protected by a hidden network of elite players in an interconnected system of the mafia, CIA, criminal kind . My art is an act of revolution and reckoning. It's the moment when the survivor becomes the narrator of her own story, when the one who was silenced finds her voice and uses it to shatter the sound barriers that kept her truth contained.

The Expensive Grace I Chose

And then—perhaps the most radical act of all—I chose forgiveness. Not the cheap kind that pretends nothing happened, but the expensive grace that acknowledges the full weight of what was done and chooses freedom anyway. I forgive not because they deserve it, but because I do. I forgive not to minimize the damage, but to refuse to let that damage define the rest of my story. I forgive because carrying the poison of their hatred was keeping me hostage to the very system I had escaped. To those who turned a blind eye, betrayed me and walked away—you didn't destroy me, and I forgive all my abusers. Most importantly, I forgive myself—for surviving however I had to survive, for the ways I learned to cope, for every moment I believed their lies about my worth. What happened to me was not my fault.

Standing in My Truth

Now I stand in the light of my own truth, no longer a commodity in anyone's marketplace. The price tag has been torn away, the ransom notes burned, the chains unlocked from the inside. I am priceless—not because someone decided to value me, but because I remembered that my worth was never up for negotiation in the first place. I am priceless because I survived what was meant to destroy me and chose to transform it into testimony. The cost on my head now is that I am priceless. No person on this earth gets to define the value and worth of a human being, and no person should ever be for sale. My freedom is not just personal—it's political. Every day I choose to exist fully, authentically, powerfully in my recovered self, I am living proof that their system can be beaten. I am evidence that the human spirit is more resilient than their most sophisticated programming. I am a walking, breathing testimony to the possibility of liberation.

What I Want You to Know

I am an overcomer of what could have destroyed me. I am living proof that even the most sophisticated programming can break down and what was meant for evil turned out for my good as I fulfill my purpose.If you are reading this and seeing your own story reflected in these words, know this: You are not alone. Your experience was real. Your survival matters. Your freedom is possible.If you are reading this and recognizing someone you love, know this: Believing them is the beginning of healing. Witnessing their truth is a sacred responsibility.If you are reading this and feeling overwhelmed by the reality of such darkness existing in the world, know this: The darkness only has as much power as we give it. Every time we choose to see, to speak, to act on behalf of those who have been silenced, we diminish its territory.

My Message to Other Survivors

Every survivor who breaks their silence creates space for another to breathe. Every person who refuses to remain a hostage to their past shows others that the doors to the prison were never as locked as they appeared. When I speak, I speak for the five-year-old who had no words for what was happening to her. When I create, I create for every child whose creativity was turned into a weapon against them. When I exist freely, I exist for everyone who is still learning that freedom is possible.Your scars are not evidence of weakness—they are proof of survival. Your wounds are not sources of shame—they are sites of strength. Your memory is not a burden to carry—it's a gift to give to a world that needs to know that healing is possible.

From Hostage to Whole

I am thankful to say that I am free, no longer a hostage, no longer a captive. My life now is a freedom song—not the kind that denies the reality of captivity, but the kind that celebrates the moment when the prisoner realizes the door was never locked from the inside.Every morning I wake up and choose to exist is a verse in that song. Every boundary I set, every authentic word I speak, every moment I refuse to minimize my experience to make others comfortable—it's all part of the melody of liberation. My freedom doesn't erase what happened. It transforms it. It takes the raw material of suffering and alchemizes it into something that serves life instead of death, hope instead of despair, connection instead of isolation.From hostage to whole. From captive to creator. From silenced to speaking truth that sets others free.This is my testimony. This is my revolution. This is my gift to a world that desperately needs to know that transformation is always possible.My worth was never a question mark. It was always an exclamation point.My freedom was never something to be earned. It was always my birthright.My voice was never meant to be silenced. It was always meant to sing the song of overcoming. Thank you for witnessing my freedom from captivity. Thank you for standing with me as I celebrate this victory. Thank you for seeing that what was meant to destroy me only made me stronger.

I am priceless. I always was. I always will be.AND so are you!

If this resonates with you, please know: your survival matters, your voice matters, your freedom is possible. The terrorists of the mind cannot hold hostage what was always meant to be free.We were never meant to be abused, exploited or sold for profit. We deserve freedom! I'm happy to be able to celebrate our freedom together.