What if the bravest choice is the one that breaks the silence?
We sit down with author Joni to trace a raw path through addiction, emotional abuse, and the long road to safety—guided by late-night journaling, fierce love for her kids, and a faith that learned to set boundaries. From collecting empty vodka bottles to a failed intervention, from courtroom frustration to therapy breakthroughs, Joni shows how truth-telling becomes a lifeline when secrecy keeps families stuck.
We unpack the difference between enabling and love, and the hidden damage of “toughen up” parenting that leaves children hypervigilant and ashamed. Joni describes growing up in a small, controlling faith bubble, marrying young, and losing herself in roles that kept her compliant.
Divorce forced a reckoning with identity—ego patterns that crave approval vs. the soul’s quiet call to dignity and safety. When her ex-husband’s health collapsed, and he died, grief arrived tangled with relief and unresolved family conflict. Her story is a blueprint for protective co-parenting, even amid denial and legal strain.
Joni’s book shines a light for anyone navigating alcoholism, domestic abuse, and faith deconstruction, offering practical tools—documentation, therapy, boundaries—and a reminder that love tells the truth. If you’ve ever wondered how to leave, how to heal, or how to help your children feel safe again, this conversation offers hard-won wisdom and hope.
If this resonated, follow the show, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more listeners can find these stories. Your support helps keep these lights on.
To connect or purchase Joni’s book, Burned, Blocked, and Better visit her website: www.joniwoods.com
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, Sylvia Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
Hey library, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Release. Today is Johnny Ritz, and she is the author of Burnt A lot and better than ever. And it released on October 7th of this year. So it’s brand new, hot off the press. She’s someone that when I read her biography of being dismissed and silenced for so long, and that being her story of transformation, I could relate. I know as a child I felt like that by my own father. And that unfortunately led to belief systems that blocked me along my way. And really, as I projected that onto my relationships, I attracted that kind of man into my life, and I felt dismissed in my first marriage. So much so that I remember telling my second husband, the way I always felt was like my first husband had me and his boot was on my throat. And I just didn’t feel like I could speak or I could be my authentic self. And that that can hurt people along the way. So I know that I really want to dive deep into what Johnny has to say today. So without further ado, Johnny, thank you so much for joining us.
Hi, thank you for having me. I’m so excited.
I am too. I think this topic is one that really needs to be addressed, uh, very much so, because sometimes it’s not just women feeling dismissed. I hear men get dismissed a lot, and I think it’s our culture that has provoked that exchange a lot. You you had women that initially historically didn’t have a voice, then they went and got equal rights, and it kind of shifted the pendulum shifted, but it too dramatically to the right. And now we’re trying to seek that balance, that middle where we can collaborate and be in partnerships with men and women, or women and women, however it is that we flourish in life. Um, so do tell us that amazing story of transformation you have to share with us that led to the the writing of this book.
Um, so I started the book in uh 2015 and or 2016-2017. I was in the middle of getting a divorce and I was a youth and young adult pastor for um probably about almost 20 years. And my ex-husband and I, as uh, you know, values really started to shift and change, and um, he became a different person. He was um alcoholic at that point, and um it just it it I decided I was like this wasn’t the life I signed up for, and um it didn’t matter how much I was trying to change, um, how much I was told I needed to pray more or do more or be more. Um, I wasn’t changing him. So it was just kind of like, all right, well, uh uh yeah, we’re done. And so I got as I started doing the divorce, um, you know, there was there’s lots of noise when you’re getting a divorce. You really have to kind of um know why you’re doing it and what’s most important to you. And um, so that that’s I journaled. I essentially journaled because I was working at the hospital overnight. I was doing the 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift. There’s not a lot to do in the middle of the evening hour. So I just I was writing all my experiences, what it was like to date. I hadn’t dated ever. Um I got married when I was 20 years old, and there I am 36, trying to learn how to date amongst, you know, plenty of fish apps and you know, I don’t even know the dating apps anymore because I stayed away from those. But I was in, I think, all of them when I started dating, and I was like, whoa, what is happening here? Like, what is going on? And um, yeah, so just learning how to live life, how to raise um two children who didn’t really fully understand what was going on. They were pretty young. Um, and so I just journaled and I journaled and um I discovered myself. And through the years of the first two years as I was writing the book, just discovering who I wanted to be and realizing I just I had spent my entire life trying to be what everyone else wanted me to be. And the first step towards reclaiming myself was the divorce.
So wow, major turning point. I’ve been there myself, as as I shared with you at the beginning. Um and yes, you’re right. There’s a lot of noise. I find that when there’s a major turning point, you you have two identities that are pulling at you a great deal. This is something I detail in my own book, In Faith I Thrive, Finding Joy Through God’s Master Plan. Um, the ego identity is pulling at us to be a certain way, these old patterns of behaving, because they’re ingrained in us, you know, they’re formed from a very young age. And then we have our soul identity, that identity where the spirit lives that is pulling us into our light, into who we were created to be before all the layers kind of piled up on top of us. And when you have that noise, it’s important to take an inventory of why we landed in this space in the first place. And take an inventory of who’s surrounding us because the influence of others and how it’s hurting us or helping us really matters. So kind of guide us in those late night hours of journaling. Like what were those experiences that you were putting on paper and those aha moments for you as you navigated divorce?
Um, the aha moments were probably um recognizing that I had very little knowledge in figuring out who I wanted to be because I had been in such a small bubble. I grew up um in a very abusive home. It was faith-based, and there was a lot of um abuse through through that. So everything kept me small, like a very small bubble here, and then I moved to um in in with my mom and my stepfather, and it was still very small because we were just we were only ever involved in the church. And then I went to pastoral school, so it was a very small bubble, you know, and I just didn’t even know how to find myself outside of everything that everyone told me I was supposed to be. Um, and so how do I test the waters? Is this good waters for me? Is this good, you know, plowing ground? You know how to like you, you know, crops and all that kind of stuff. Is this good ground to build something on? I had no idea. So here I’m out there just trying everything, going, oh, okay, nah, this one isn’t as good as I thought it would be. Or this is something that helps me understand, you know, a little bit more about who I am and who I want to be. Um that I think was the biggest thing is I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I just didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t know how to stand up for myself with my ex-husband. I didn’t know that I needed to build a better co-parenting relationship with my ex-husband because when I got a divorce, I paid attorneys and I was like, you know, like it’s all you guys. I’ve dealt with him for 15 years, you take him on. Um, but because of that, there were things that happened that snowballed that when he passed away in 2020, um, my kids suffered from that. You know, I didn’t I didn’t recognize the importance of maintaining some sort of co-parenting relationship, not only with my ex-husband, but with his family, so that when my ex-husband passed, they could they wouldn’t take on his um you know, flag of hate. They would recognize, you know, here is someone who’s getting ready to raise children whose lives have completely changed. And they just weren’t aware of that because we hadn’t worked through what that looked like. So so many aha moments, just so many. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
So tell us more about that. How did you ever heal that relationship with your in-laws uh to move these kids through that grief process? Because as parents, you know, divorce is hard enough navigating everything that we navigate, right? As as parents, as single moms. When my first husband asked for a divorce, he was in the middle of a hurricane. It’s like, really? This was your time. Um, he had just uh gotten his last certification in surveying. I had helped build his engineering business in Brownsville and uh South Texas, that is, and uh and we were in the middle of a storm and we had been in counseling for seven months, and he asked very he was like he was sitting on the same chair, we used to rock our kid, our baby boy, to sleep. Um, and there was no electricity in the house, and the roof was being blown off. And it’s like, wow, I’m like, what are we doing here? And he’s rocking and he looks at me and goes, How long have we been in therapy? And I said, Well, about seven months, and he goes, I think we should get a divorce. And it was just so nonchalant, like, no big deal. Like, I’m about to like you know, break apart a whole family. And our son, our young boy, was in the next room playing quietly. And I remember thinking, I can’t, I don’t want to make a scene, I don’t want to scare him. And I remember just feeling like everything coming up through my throat, like everything got constricted, and but somewhere deep inside of me, I felt relief. I felt relief. Uh it was so the contrast of it was so wow, like it just kind of shook me. But I remember those first couple of weeks coming out of it were so tumultuous.
Yeah.
Because, you know, we’re still in the same house, and there’s a hurricane, and the house is just, you know, the roof was destroyed, there’s water coming in from all sorts of angles. Um, and I had a little boy. I still had a little boy that depended on me, that whose life was about to be uprooted, like completely changed. Um, so I kind of want to understand, kind of guide us on that journey with your in-laws. Like after your husband, I’m so sorry to hear that he, your ex-husband, the father of your children, passed away in 2020. Um, how did you start rebuilding that relationship?
Um, so when he he went quickly, um, he had been an alcoholic for um when I divorced him in 2015. We had tried to do an intervention, it didn’t work, he managed to flip the script, and the family took his side, said it was all my fault. So again, I separated, I separated from that. But um as his alcoholism continued to get worse and worse, they continued to brush it under the the rug, which was unfortunate because um about I was hearing all this secondhand after he was in the hospital because um he ended up calling me and asking me to come get the kids. It was like seven in the morning. He thought he had COVID because it was um still like August, so the second wave of COVID was hitting. And so he called me and he said, Can you come get the kids? I it actually was on a voicemail. Um, the voicemail is like a minute and a half long, but he maybe only says 20 words in it. Like you could just tell something was wrong. And I was like, Okay. So um I come get the kids. Uh, and at this point, my children tell me that he couldn’t even um, he couldn’t find, he couldn’t see straight. Like he was just standing and looking at a wall, going, Where are your clothes? And the clothes are like right over here. So even they were scared. Um, so we I pick them up, I pick up the dog, and um he had called an ambulance to come get him. He couldn’t even drive. And it took him two ambulances to get him, because at this point, alcoholism and and everything, he was um grossly overweight. And uh they uh hospitalized him. He sent one update, and that’s I I called my sister-in-law, and her her and I still kind of maintained some sort of a friendship over the years. She was team me. Well, everyone else was team ex-husband, and uh, I I sent her a text message. I was like, Do you know that he’s in the hospital? And she said, No. Um, her her husband, his brother, and my ex-husband had had a falling out about nine months previous because my ex-husband left a full-time job to become an Uber driver. And so his brother is like, What is wrong with you? And they just weren’t seeing the signs of alcoholism. Like, you know, that was just and he was doing such crazy things. Like he left that job. Um, he’d leave my kids at three in the morning to go do the late night late night bar run. My kids were eight and four at that point, and for no, like seven and three. So he’d leave them alone and go do the 3 a.m. bar run to for Uber. And they were like, What is wrong with you? So he’s losing all sense, common sense. And um, so it just distanced them instead of you know, proactively like, hey, let’s have some conversations, even with me, let me know what’s going on so my kids can be safe. Um and so as that started to happen, it got worse and worse, obviously with COVID, a lot of people started drinking even more, and he was one of them. And uh to the point where they they took him in and he was on life support within 24 hours. Like his he had just his body’s just okay, we’re done. We’ve we’ve done as much as we can. Um, we can’t do anything. Uh, they unfortunately he was too heavy to life flight, so they had to do an ambulance to um St. Louis and they took him down there, and so I picked my kids up on Friday morning. He was gone by Monday morning. That’s how quickly it went. And his family just had no idea. They had no idea. Um, when I clued the brother in, that’s when he started calling his mother. That’s when he started calling his best friend, and his best friend was like, You don’t understand how bad it’s been. And he told him he was like, you know, there are points where he’d have conversations, hit my ex-husband had stopped eating, but was only drinking. So it was just all alcohol. And so I mean, to the it was just, it was so blatantly obvious, but they were in so much pain that there was no, there was no like and no desire for me to be like, I told you, like I told you this like four years ago. What what happened? And I I that wasn’t the place, but my kids um because of the the alcoholism, the abuse in the home got worse. And so I had taken my ex-husband back to court before COVID hit. Literally, we were supposed to have a court date before COVID hit and they hit pause on it. And um, you know, for the people, if you remember COVID, the abuse for some got worse than it did for my kids, and so having all of that ammunition. Sorry, I have to have a drink because I’m gonna cough made it really hard when he passed to not be arrogant about it. Instead, the the moment I was getting text messages from my sister-in-law, you know, they pulled the plug, he’s you know, his heart rate, all of these kind of things, what was happening, what was going on. And the moment she said he’s gone, I was just like, our lives will never be the same now. Our lives will never be the same. And I sent them text messages. I sent one to his mother and one to his brother, and I said, I’m so sorry for your loss. You are more than welcome to come see the kids. You know, come you, I’m inviting you to my home to come see the kids. And for me, I was picturing, you know, the Sally Fields moment in um the J that Julia Roberts movie. I forget what it’s called. Yeah. I was picturing them running to the door and like holding their children, their grandchildren, their you know, their sons, kids, and just reclaiming that. Um and they they never came, they never showed up, they never responded. Um, I it took them that obviously it was um last minute, so it took them about two weeks for them to put together the funeral, and I was gonna go. I was like, I’m this is the worst day of my children’s life. I’m going. And they refused to have me. They had me court-ordered not to go. And so to the point where my sister-in-law, she was the only one I’d allow in my house, um, because we had to have an emergency court session. Like, that’s how stupid it was. And I was like, I literally invited you in to my home, and now this is this. And so um, she had to come in and like take my daughter off the bed. And I was like, You guys are making this day so much worse. You know, that it’s the worst day of their life, and you’ve made it that much worse. And so having all of that, the thing that changed my attitude towards being like, okay, well, you know, like you guys, you guys did this to yourself, you know, kind of that that mentality was um my kids they didn’t hear from their grandparents um after the funeral. They didn’t hear from them. My son had a birthday, they had Christmas, they had Thanksgiving, and my kids just looked at me and they said, What did we do wrong?
And I was like, Oh my goodness, oh my heart.
And for me, I was like, damn it, that was that’s my fault. You know, I should have done better. I should have somehow built a bridge because now my kids are paying the price. And if they never recognize that, fine, fine. But I recognize that. I recognize that my choices over the the course of like not having a relationship with them, um, you know, all of that, it was my fault. And I mean, thankfully, we were able to um reconcile. So um my ex-husband’s parents, they had separated or they were divorced. And so his father um and step-grandmother, um, her and I reconciled right away. Like I sent the text message to her. She showed up the the day of, you know, she came in, she hugged the kids, she I hadn’t seen her in four years. So she was the one that really got them through that initial crisis. She um, because he died about five, eight days before his birthday, and I invited her to come over. I said, Why don’t you pick up his favorite pizzas, come over, and we’ll do a little something with the kids, you know. Obviously, their father’s so she’s dad.
It’s their dad.
So she brought their his favorite pizzas. We made my ex-husband a little birthday cake, you know, like all of that kind of stuff because I I’m not gonna ignore him, you know. My kids need to need to grieve and they need to do it in a safe space, and they need to know that they can do it with me. And so uh having her there really helped. And I think over time it really started to get to the other side of the family that, like, you know, she’s she actually is opening the door, she actually is trying. Why don’t we meet her halfway? But they still didn’t. They took me to court. Um, they wanted to have half custody of my kids, and I was like, that’s not happening.
No, no, no, they have to they have to uh determine. I don’t know, in Texas, they have to determine that the mother’s unfit, and that would be very difficult to um to claim. That’s the only reason why they take and judges take that really seriously because kids need the stability, they need security, and the only ones that can provide that are their parents initially. If the parents are incapable or you know, incapacitated or something, then the grandparents come into play or aunts or uncles or something. But but no, they don’t just take so I when you said that I was like, yeah, good luck within that one, but especially with when you see the actions that you were making, despite being blocked out or sued or whatever it was that they you know court-ordered on the on the day of of his funeral, which is really the nobody’s thinking of the children, they’re thinking of their own. And I I commend you first off. I want to commend you. I want to let you know how courageous you were and how loving you were. That the the the line in scripture says love transforms. It does when we love our children, that love that we have for them that’s so great, transforms us from the inside out. And it’s it’s very selfless. It it kind of reminds me of the scripture of love is not self-seeking. You were not self-seeking, you were seeking to protect your children, you were seeking to love others despite whether they loved you back or not. That’s between them and God. You did your job, you stayed obedient to how love is given to us. That’s all I’m gonna say about that. When we are in relationships where we’re not meant to change other people, that’s not our role. That was a role I had to God sat me down recently and said, Baby girl, you’re stepping on my toes. I my job is to transform your husband, not yours. Your job is to stay obedient to me, to my promptings, and however, I need you to change. Or remove certain layers because you have layers of trauma too that you need to heal, and that’s something you and I are working on. Leave that there. Don’t try to you know engage with your husband, don’t try to change him. That’s not your role. Your role here is to obey me and stay obedient to me as my kid. I’m your pet, you’re my kid, this is your role. Yeah, because you almost sit me down. Because you know, as women, we are used to taking charge of our children’s lives because that’s our role. We’re the nurturers, and we sometimes forget that we’re not supposed to do that with our husbands ever, or with anybody else, really, you know. Um, and that’s kind of my relationship with God, is it actually started right after the divorce. I turned away from God for 10 years during my first marriage. Because as I was explaining to the the interview prior to yours, um he was an alcoholic who talked about his recovery. And I tell you, these things are they always go in threes. It’s really funny how God is like, I was like, okay, I guess when these episodes are releasing, it’s meant for somebody on the other side. You know, that in that moment at that precise timing is going to land the way it needs to land. Because right now he’s working through them or through you know, women or however, right? So I never I don’t get involved with that piece. I get involved with okay, I’m supposed to interview Johnny today, and I’m gonna bring out her light. That’s my job. That’s your kid, you deal with it, you know, and um so I just want you to understand that this is like a super big role that you play. And and and really I loved how you you continued it no matter what, right? And that’s uh always something you can look back on and and remind yourself of when guilt or shame come knocking on your door. Sometimes the enemy will come in and and say, Hey, you feel guilty about this. You could have gone better, you know? You could have gone better. But here here’s the thing that I want you to to remember, Johnny. Your husband uh had free will. He made a choice. He made a choice to keep drinking, you did the right thing to do the intervention. A lot of people don’t even do that because they’re too afraid of the abuse that’s gonna come at them. But you were courageous enough. You did it for your children, you even did it for him because you loved him and you wanted to save him, he didn’t want to save himself. And there are likely times that God reached out to him and he ignored those promptings, I guarantee you. Because God always comes and he tries to prompt us and tries to talk to us, and we’re not willing to listen to him, he can’t transform us because we’re not inviting him in into a relationship. And I find I l I love it when people want to blame him for stuff that he didn’t do, you know. You know, the free will aspect is the aspect that most families forget about. They want someone to blame because they’re in so much pain.
Yeah.
I mean, to lose a child like that, it’s a horrible death, by the way. Like if he died from alcoholism, did he die from cirrhosis of the liver?
Uh they called it something, it was something of the liver, but not cirrhosis.
It wasn’t cirrhosis? Okay, because that death, uh, my father was a physician, he passed away last year, and I come from an entire family of doctors. That death is one of the most painful deaths out there. It is horrifying to die from cirrhosis. And I’ve had a friend die from cirrhosis during COVID. He got COVID, but the actual death certificate claims cirrhosis of the liver because he just couldn’t stop drinking. And he was a young guy, young guy, good friend of ours, very good friend. I’m so friends with his wife, and um and it’s horrifying, it’s a horrible life to live because it’s it’s gotta be the most frustrating thing to watch someone that you love slowly kill themselves.
Yeah.
It just and and there’s no way you can stop them because you try and it’s no, they don’t want to. And the intervention it I mean, the intervention was what you try to bring in the family, yeah. Okay, and how did then the family didn’t want to do that?
Well, no, so what I had done, um, I knew it was getting out of control because he was drinking and he was mixing it with pills too. So he was on pain meds for his back, and um, so my mother was an alcoholic, and I she we almost lost her because of sort liver cirrhosis. Um, and I had spent a week with her and just watching how terrible that life was, even in recovery, you know, like she could barely she slept 20 hours a day. You only spent four hours with her. I was like, this isn’t the life I want with my husband. You know, that no, no, thank you. So what I had done was for three weeks, 21 days, I collected all of his vodka bottles. So he wasn’t like drinking beer, he was drinking vodka. Of course. They beat that Laps. Right. I collected all of them. So every time he’d throw one in the in the trash, I would take it out and I’d put it and I’d hide it. And for 21 days, I collected 20 bottles. And I so the day he broke into my email, he was snooping on me and um because he knew something was up. Like I I was just like, I was over it, you know. I I didn’t I didn’t want to live this life anymore. And so he um hacked into my email and I saw that he’d gotten in there and I saw that he had seen um notes to my therapist because we were in therapy for out of our 15 years of marriage, we were in therapy for eight. Eight years of therapy. Like that was just like crazy. And to the point where my therapist at our last session was like, I don’t think I can help him anymore, but I’ll be willing to help you. And so I the day he cracked into it, I went home, collected all those bottles, and I drove around to his family’s house and I went to his brother’s work and I said, I opened the truck and I said, I want you to see what I’m dealing with. This is what I’m dealing with. And then I went to his mother’s and I said, This is what I’m dealing with. And so they all rallied. They were like, Yes, we’ll we’re gonna go to a soccer game with our kids, and then we’ll come and do intervention after. And he didn’t know this was happening, and then as soon as we all walked in, he stormed right out of the house and went to his best friend’s house. And his best friend, I think his best friend was probably the enabler that nearly killed that probably killed him. Um, because he when I went to him to talk to him before I did the intervention, he looked at me and said, Well, I said, I’m I’m concerned about his drinking, and he said, Well, is he beating you? And I was like, No, and he’s like, Is he cheating on you? And he’s like, No. And he said, Well, he’s he doesn’t have a problem then. And I was like, isn’t it coming from another alcoholic, probably, right? Uh yeah, he had his fair share of red wine. He definitely drank. Um and so it was just like, seriously, and so my ex-husband that night just drove off and went to, you know, his best friend’s house, and then his best friend called his brother, and they all started, and I was just like, and yeah, they they all knew it, and um he didn’t talk to them for a while afterwards. He wrote them a note and said that I was abusing him, that that’s the reason he was drinking was because I was um emotionally and physically abusing him. I’m like, dude, you’re like 300 pounds. I’m not I mean, and he would just it was terrible. There was one point where and it’s in the book, all these stories are actually in the book. Um, even the letter that he wrote. I I had saved text messages, and so my book is very real time, like this happening. Um, and the the letter is in there, but then one during one of our fights, towards the end, he’s chasing me around the bedroom, and I go to crawl over the bed to get away from him, and he grabs my foot and I just looked at him and said, What do you want me to do right now? Because if I defend myself, if I kick, I’m abusing you. Like you have put me in a position where I can’t even protect myself at this point. And um, you know, that shut him up for half a second before he got back in my face. But you know, like it was just that’s where all of those kind of things just slowly made the decision so much easier to go.
Well, because and you also were looking out for the safety of your children because if he’s abusive with you, he’s also abusive with them. And you said earlier in the interview that he was being very abusive to the children towards the end. Is that correct?
I was yeah, he was um abusive with my son. My daughter was the golden child. Um, there’s that dynamic in abusive families. Um, my and he had been like that with my son for a while, to the point where um when I told my son we were getting a divorce, he looked at me when my ex wasn’t around and he said, Who’s gonna protect me when you’re gone? And I said, Buddy, I said, My goal for divorce is for you to have two happy homes, and maybe getting out of this equation will help it be um a little bit better. And but unfortunately, he did not tell me um how bad it was getting. I only discovered it in um 2019. Like I would hear little stories, and so I documented it, you know, nothing where I could take it to the court. But um 2019 in October, my daughter had written me a note or sent me a text message um and said, What happens if you don’t love your life anymore or don’t like your life anymore? And I had gotten it in the morning and I thought for sure I was gonna wake up to a dead dead girl. I thought for sure she had committed suicide in the middle of the night. Um, she thanked God she was still alive. And I took my son to school and I was like, Do you know what’s going on? And he was like, No, I don’t know what’s going on. I was like, Okay. And I got her, um, I went back and I got in bed with her and I just asked her, I was like, What’s going on? And she just broke down and she that’s when she told me all the stuff that was happening to her brother, and that it had she was suffering secondary trauma because of everything that my ex-husband was doing to him. He would, he wanted to toughen up my boy. My boy was very kind-hearted, very soft. He wasn’t aggressive, like he didn’t like when he would play soccer, he’d kick the ball of the other kids and cheer them on, you know. My ex hated that. He would read him out, he’d be the embarrassing father on the sidelines that you’re just like, oh my god, like please stop. Um and so he would get in my son’s face and he’d um throw punches to the side of his head to make sure he wouldn’t flinch. He was like, I’m gonna you you need to toughen up, you can’t flinch, and he’d throw a punch and hit the wall behind him. Scary shit like that, you know, like nothing that’s actually like it’s oh it was all mental, all mental emotional.
But that’s uh worse.
Worse.
That’s worse because that stays with you forever and ever. You know, the physical eyes prefer like a spanking or something versus the verbal coming at me. The verbal, you were playing your head over and over and over again. And this is what causes a lot of the breakdown mentally that we have later on as you know, from children into adolescents, and all of that starts to reveal itself in very negative ways. So yeah, it’s it’s important for them to heal. Did you by any chance put your kids through therapy after their father passed away or divorced?
When I um found out about what was happening in 2019, that’s when I went back to the court. I tried to do an emergency PPO to get my son out of there, but the court wouldn’t issue it. So that put but that put my ex on alert. So he they went back to the honeymoon phase where my ex was just so great to the kids and it was wonderful. And um we uh put them in therapy, and that was court ordered. So they were going to therapy, and um the nice thing was, even though I told my son and I told my daughter every time I was like, This is your therapy appointment, you do not have to share anything with me. You can talk about me, and they do this is your person. But my ex-husband wouldn’t do that, he would badger the kids. What’d you say? What’d you say? You didn’t make me sound bad, you’d like all this kind of stuff. And I was like, This is your free time, your free time, this is your safe space, talk. And um so we did that throughout COVID. Uh, and then after he passed, I took them in and both therapists because it was it was bittersweet, you know, they they were glad he was gone.
They were that’s that’s saddening because you can tell the abuse is bad.
Right, yeah, exactly. So it was like, and uh to the point where my ex-husband’s family, once they finally recognized and we went through the court and it’s January of 2021, and they finally had Christmas with my kids, my son’s laughing. And his brother looked at um the step-grandmother, because she ended up telling me he looked at her and said, I have never seen Ashton laugh. And I was like, Yeah, that’s that was the life that they’re in. You know, there there are pictures that um they have of the kids and their father. My son never smiles in it, never. He looks so miserable in all of them.
I’m sorry, that is that is tough as a mom to watch. Oh very tough. Um my boy is also like yours. Um when he when we divorced, uh I ran putting him in derpy and he clammed up, he wouldn’t talk. He stopped singing altogether. Not that the father was abusive, but the father also while we were married, I had to call an intervention with his uh younger brother because he was drinking too much. He was starting to pick up, and I knew about alcoholism because it ran very um deeply in my family, and that’s why I don’t drink as much. I I drink but very minimally. In fact, both husbands always used to say, if she orders a drink and I order a drink, I’m gonna end up drinking a drink and a half because she will only drink half and leave it there, and which is great because I don’t need all of that to make me feel good. I I feel good without it. Periodically, I’ll have one. But going back to this, I remember calling my brother-in-law and saying, and the and our son was a baby, and I said, He’s drinking too much, and you know how alcoholism is a big deal in your family, and he’s drinking these massive glasses of wine, and they’re huge. I go, so it’s the equivalent of like four glasses of wine or an entire bottle a night. That’s not good. And I remember him telling me, I need a drink. I said, When you have when you tell yourself you need a drink, you’re an alcoholic. You have to have a drink every day, you’re an alcoholic. It may not, you don’t have to drink like seven glasses of anything, as long as it’s every day, it’s a consistency thing, and it just builds from there. And after that, after that buzz, if it doesn’t give you what you need to numb whatever it is that you’re numbing, you go on to the next big thing, you know. And in your husband’s case, it was the pills. And then when that didn’t work, it was like more drinking on top of that, and it’s just spiraling, right? So I remember putting our first of all, I called the intervention, and it actually stopped for a little bit, like because the brother was the only one with influence over him, nobody else had influence. I had to find that one person that I knew could speak to him in a way that he needed to be spoken to. It couldn’t come from me because he wasn’t listening to me and he didn’t care. You know, once they they they start doing that for whatever reason. And and so I remember I put him in therapy and he just climbed up and I remember the therapist telling me, you need to get him away from that father of his. That that recommendation was interesting, but I was like, what do you mean? He’s like, he’s not a good influence for him at all. Like, and you know, over the years, I will say this about my ex. He never missed um a court time to come and see his boy when I moved away. I moved, uh he did sue me twice. He sewed me um trying to get back at me when I was getting remarried and stuff. All that is documented in my book as well, because it was like to guide parents, single parents, in this journey of like, you know, when you see the obstacles come, always know that God’s on your side. Like, reach out for help, get the help that you need, you know, uh always be loving, always do the right thing. Because, you know, the thing is this when we when we operate from love, regardless of how the other people are with us, because I remember getting divorced, and none of his family wanted to talk to me except my brother-in-law. That was like nice. It’s when you have the grandmother and your ex-sister-in-law, and I had my ex-brother-in-law. That was actually like a cool guy with me. He was the only one. Everybody else was like blaming me for everything. I was like, You realize he asked for a divorce, right? Like I don’t think you shared this part with y’all. But I was the one that filed for divorce, but he’s the one that asked for it twice, you know, and in not a not in a very nice way either, you know, in a really sly way. And all that was documented, you know, and it’s not to make him look bad, but it’s to talk about the reality and the truth of the situation. Because we can’t start to heal if we don’t start with the truth first. What was the truth of what happened? And then from that space, then we can heal. And interestingly enough, my relationship, I did develop a co-parenting there because I I wanted my son not to feel abandoned. He already felt abandoned once. I didn’t need him to feel abandoned repeatedly, you know. So I remember school events. He went to a private school at the time, and my ex didn’t want to pay for the private school. He didn’t want to pay half. He’s like, I pay you what I need to pay you, and that’s it. Beyond that, you’re on your own. I’m like, okay. And I worked for Pfizer from Citroëns. I was in the hospital division, I made six-figure salary, but we also lived affluently in an affluent neighborhood and stuff. And I have one of the therapists telling me, you don’t want to change too much of uh of your son’s environment because it’s already a really dramatic change, like for the father to leave, right? So then I worked really hard to keep us in the home that we were in and his school and everything that came of that. But remember when they were like school events, I like you wanted to like get back at him because it was like, can’t I, you know, like I’m doing my best here. Um, but somewhere deep inside of me, I I know the Lord was like, No, but think of your boy. That’s what I’m saying. Love transforms, right? Think of your boy. I know you want to get back at him, but revenge is mine. Don’t don’t worry, I’ll take revenge for you. You you you worry about this. So I remember inviting my ex to all the school events, and people knew who was paying the tab because they saw the check. And so they knew, oh my goodness, it’s her paying, and she’s inviting him. Why? You know, and I’m like, for my son. So he doesn’t feel different than the other kids. I mean, kids can be cruel, you know, so you want to protect them. Um it sounds like you and I had some similarities to a degree, you know, although yours was way more traumatic because he ends up passing away and and the aftermath of that. Um, you’ve written the book, it got published in October. Um, any books, any more books on the horizon, or is this it for you?
Well, definitely. Um, I love writing. I eventually want to do some speaking. Um I just think there are so many people that are alone in the world who don’t know. Because when I got divorced, I had no idea that other marriages were as miserable as mine. Like I just thought everyone was good. And I mean, that’s part of the reason why it took so long for me to make the change that it that I did, anyways. Again, because my bubble was so small. Um, and when I just discovered, wow, there are so many people out there that are miserable that are being in an abusive situation, men that are in abusive relationships, that I’m like, how? I mean, how can your wife treat you like this? Like, oh my gosh. Like it was just it was eye-opening. And so, you know, for me, this book and then my next book um is tentatively called Um I’m the Problem, it’s me. No, let’s do ownership, let’s do ownership earlier. It’s accountability, it’s self-reflection, it’s understanding. I mean, that was the pivotal point when my kids looked at me and said, What did we do wrong? And I was like, Oh, it was my fault. You know, like these are in in so many ways, I can fix things. You know, there’s relationships that I stayed in post-marriage where I was dating, where I had just stayed in them far too long. And it was my fault because I was unwilling, unable to recognize how I was contributing to my own misery. And for me, that’s why, yeah, I’ve got several more books.
That’s awesome. So, how do we how do we find you? Do we want to book you to be a speaker or we want to get your the book that released in October? How do we how do we get it to be that?
Um I’ve got a website, uh Johnnywoods.com. You can fill up the form, um, start there. I’m on LinkedIn. Um, I’m on uh new Instagram. Unfortunately, my ex husband’s family were not happy that I made the book, so they got my Other social media banned. So that was unfortunate. I was like, oh, all right. Well, it’s not gonna stop me. The story’s coming out, whether you like it or not.
So if it helps and transforms other families to recognize earlier the science of alcoholism, if there’s information on that, why not? It it is meant to heal people, it’s not meant to put people down. You know, I remember asking my dad who made a mistake with me early on, um, chapter one of In Faith I Thrive and talks a lot about my father’s mistake. And I remember asking my dad, would it be okay for me to share this mistake? And he said, Sylvia, if it helps another parent not make the same mistake I made with you, put it in there. And I think that that’s a wonderful way to be. Nothing is gonna stop us from making mistakes, right? I mean human, fallible. If it helps another family out in transforming them in seeking the help that they need, you’ve done your job. You’ve loved another the way that God has loved you. You’ve done the hard thing. Sometimes love is hard. We have to make hard choices, but it is a choice that we make, and and I commend you for being vulnerable enough and putting yourself out there. Um, it’s not an easy thing to be that vulnerable, to take the steps and be faithful and say, okay, I’m being obedient. I’m gonna write this book because it’s meant to help somebody. That’s your mission. You’re in your purpose, it sounds like your divine purpose, and you’re nothing’s gonna be able to stop you. And I’m very happy for you. I’m very happy that you did publish this, that your kids sound like they’re doing better now. Um, I’ll certainly be praying for them because that’s hard. It’s hard to heal when kids suffer that much. Um, and even us, women, you know. I I, sister in Christ that you are to me, I’m going to pray for you and and buy your book and read it and and and share with others that may be in the same chapter. And maybe that that can help them get out of that situation faster. So thank you for for being on the podcast and sharing your story and being brave. Um and maybe lots of words of encouragement for the listeners before we sign off.
Um, yeah, every time I get this opportunity, um, I always say, you know, if your relationships aren’t life-giving, if they aren’t full of love and joy and having fun, take some time to think about them. How can you fix them? What can you do? What what do you need to do? And don’t be afraid. Just whatever you do, don’t be afraid.
Oh, yeah. Fear, fear will stop us, that’s for sure, from taking like that initial step uh that we need to take, or like letting go of that fear is is step one, and you did that. And now you can say you’ve done it and learned tons of lessons from it that now you can apply the next relationship moving forward, you know. Um, that’s how we learn. And so we know I just want to thank you, uh Johnny, for being on. Um, I really learned a lot um about this this addiction and about the suffering and the pain that that families suffer in silence sometimes for years and years. Um I do hope that your light, and I know your light, uh your book is a light in this world. So I want to remind the listeners of release that reveal purpose to remember Matthew 5.14 to be the light, be your light, let it shine for others to see, because what you have inside of you is a gift that is meant to be given to humanity. So humanity can continue moving forward and continue being brave to step into their own light. And we can do it, so can they. So thank you again, Johnny, for joining us. And for the rest of uh those, I love you all. Have a wonderful and blessed day.
So that’s it for today’s episode of Release Doubt Reveal Purpose. Uh head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on iTunes. We’ll win a chance the grand prize drawing to win a twenty-five thousand dollar private VIP day with Sylvia Worsham herself. Be sure to head on over to sylviaworsham.com and pick up a free copy of Sylvia’s gift and join us on the next episode.