Wonder Woman Wednesday-Woman stabbed over 40 times makes educating others her mission

Since the launch of Wonder Woman Wednesday on my Damsel in Defense blog, I have read, listened to, and watched some amazingly heroic stories.  All of them ripped my heart right out of my chest and lit it on fire, but this week, one took me by surprise. 

In 2005, Ilianexy Morales was a 33 year old beautiful woman with her entire life ahead of her.  She had recently broken it off with her boyfriend, and was moving on with her life.   One day, he showed up at her door saying he wanted to speak with her, and she let him in.  It never occurred to her that he came that day planning to kill her.

In a moment’s time, he pulled the knife from his sock and slashed her over 40 times all over her body.

“One day I was young, beautiful and healthy, then suddenly I was slashed everywhere, my face disfigured and my teeth were gone.  All because one person, who I’ve known for three years, felt he had the right to do this to me,” Morales explains, “I was stabbed and slashed over 40 times, all over my body, face, head, neck, breasts, stomach, arms, hands, legs and feet, and my teeth were shattered by the knife as well.”

After a miracle and three months in the hospital, half of which she spent in a medically induced coma, Morales survived the attack and has since had to endure more than 20 reconstructive surgeries.
 

What kept her hanging on?  She had a 6-year-old daughter and a bedridden mother who needed her.  Morales attribute them for keeping her strong.  She wasn’t going to leave her baby, and her mother, who heard the entire attack but couldn’t help, was not going to have that as her last memory of her child.

Saddened that she endured so much pain and disfiguration, Morales never let what happened to her get the best of her.  She used it to fuel her passion for helping others, and she never quit smiling.

Aryn Quinn, the founder of Beauty Cares, a non-profit organization dedicated to breaking the cycle of domestic abuse against teens, women and children brought Morales’ story to GLAM4GOOD.  Quinn nominated Morales for a day of Glam4Good pampering, stating, “Ilianexy embodies the founding spirit of Beauty Cares by taking something terrible which happened to her and turning it into an opportunity to empower others.  She’s strong, lovely, and generous with her talents and hard learned lessons.  Domestic violence shreds a woman’s spirit and I knew this GLAM4GOOD experience would be a celebration and powerful step to wholeness for Ilianexy.”

Morales explained that her boyfriend was never violent before that day, but was always extremely controlling, jealous, insecure, obsessive, and smothering.  He isolated her from her family and friends and followed her when she was in school or at the store.  She explained that he’d threatened to kill her then himself if she ever left, but she didn’t have a weak personality, and only submitted when death threats came into the picture.  Still, she believed he was generally good.

Morales’s ex-boyfriend was arrested at her apartment the night of the attack and sentenced to 15 years in prison.  He will be out in 2020.

Wonder Woman Wednesday this week goes to Ilianexy Morales, who was not only strong enough to survive, but strong enough to use her tragedy to help other women who might not otherwise know any better. 

Ilianexy Morales-Wonder Woman

“My message to women who are currently in abusive relationships is there is no excuse to stay in such a situation.  You deserve better, you deserve to be treated with respect and love,” she advises, “Seek therapy so others can help you understand that this is not the life you deserve.”

“To women in situations like mine, that have survived an attack and are hiding and ashamed and don’t know what to do, I want you to know that there is help out there for you,” she continues, “It first starts with acceptance; your scars, injuries, and everything else can be treated by amazing doctors that donate their time to help, but you are in control of what’s inside.”

When asked how she feels now, she will smile and tell you she is very lucky to be alive because, “There are women being killed every day by their partners.  I barely escaped with my life.  Do not let it get this far or worse; you must take action now for yourself and your children.”

Not only does Ilianexy Morales get the Wonder Woman Wednesday award this week, so do Beauty Cares and GLAM4GOOD for their mission to empower and educate women to live safer lives. 

They do hard things to build strong women, which falls directly in line with the mission of Damsel in Defense. 

If your partner threatens or physically abuses you, which includes pushing or shoving, there is no justification and it will only get worse.  Tell your family and call the national domestic abuse hotline immediately at 1-800-799-SAFE.

See Ilianexy's full story here.

If you or anyone you know needs help, reach out.  Do hard things.

Do you know of a Wonder Woman?  I'd like to hear from you.  Email me at sunshine@yourdamseldiva.com.

Cryptocurrency is being used in everything from socks to sex trafficking

Something terrifying occurred to me today.  A strange Instagram page named coinmkt.com started liking all of the pictures with one of my daughters in it. 

I am in no way saying that the coinmkt.com Instagram person is a perverted weirdo or involved in any crime, organized or otherwise, but my eyes were open to the world of cryptocurrencies when I clicked on their profile, and it scared me enough that I blocked them.

Cryptocurrencies are often used to tip fellow internet users or in online games.  It’s a currency traded solely through the internet, and there are dozens and dozens of versions from the bitcoin to the Dogecoin.  Basically, it’s digital money.

It doesn’t sound real, does it?  Fake money traded in fake games and between people in fake internet land.  Well get ready to be freaked out, because it’s huge.  We’re talking a trillion dollar market of eCommerce.  Did I just blow your mind?

The scary thing is that it’s highly unregulated.  Anyone can come up with a cryptocurrency.  Anyone.  People are creating eWallets, ePens, eWatches, eEverything else.  This ‘pretend’ money is being circulated every day from people trading it to make their virtual gaming landscape better to people trading it for drugs, guns, goods, sex, and even people. 

Yes.  People.

One of the biggest draws to cryptocurrency is that there is no invasion by the government.  It’s an easy way for the bad guys to launder MILLIONS of dollars unnoticed, and it’s happening every day!  There are no taxes, no regulations, and no one even has to know that you have your own cryptocurrency. 

It blew my mind.  You get to decide the type of cryptocurrency, what it can be used on, how many units that can be minted in your pretend online land, hide private wealth, and use it to buy and sell humans.

China has banned any business from using any sort of bitcoin.  If one of the leading financial countries in the world has decided to ban it, you know it’s big.

It’s changing so fast that laywers and law makers are struggling to keep up with it.  Ron Paul has stated to CNN that it could “destroy the dollar”.  Paul’s bitcoin, RonPaulcoin is ranked at 47^th most valuable of the more than 70 cryptocurrencies available.

Cryptocurrencies are currently being used by drug dealers, criminals, and sex traffickers in a space known to tech savvy criminals as the “deep web” on sites similar to Silk Road, where drugs such as mushrooms, LSD, and ecstasy could be purchased using digital dollars.  Dealers then would turn around and sell their purchases for paper dollars at a 300% markup. 

It’s a shadow economy that is performing better than paper money, and it can’t be traced!  Bitcoin is being traded on the market for over $30 per share and it’ becoming the world’s best performing currency.

How do you buy them?  Through an online exchange service such as coinmkt.com, the company that liked my Instagram pictures and sent me on this journey down the rabbit hole.  This is where you pay your actual real money for internet money that is stored in your eWallet, which is code for turning your money invisible so you can spend it on anything that takes bitcoins, which is everything from tangible items like shoes to sex with prostitutes, child pornography, or drugs.  Discovery News even found that you could buy guns with bitcoins.

Great for the bad guys, because it’s anonymous, but bad for the good consumers because unlike virtual pay sites like PayPal, you can’t dispute the charge if you never receive the goods.  There is no legislation to protect you from fraud.

By the time the world learns about bitcoins, how to use them, how to buy them, and what you can spend them on, the damage will be done.  All countries are looking into regulating bitcoins because they are being used for sex trafficking, money laundering, drug dealing, murder for hire, and you name it. 

Sites like Silk Road, which has since been shut down, only allow cryptocurrency.   The Baltimore Sun even reported that poachers selling  rhinoceros on the black market are even using bitcoin.  Black market sites like it can pop up and disappear in a heartbeat without anyone knowing who ran them, who sold the goods, or where they came from.  There is no trace.

If you can imagine a bad guy wanting it, you can imagine it’s available with payment in bitcoins.

Even child pornography.  According to the Daily Dot, CNN Money reported that a loophole in the code that powers Bitcoin, which heretofore has used to post jokes, was discovered to contain repellent links to sex sites that included child pornography sites.

The Daily Beast found a hitman network that says it accepts bitcoin to murder for hire.

If you learn something new every day, here’s your education.  Not all cryptocurrency trading is bad.  People are selling houses and cars for bitcoin.  People are running successful legitimate bitcoin businesses, but there is a very large and very dark side to cryptocurrency use, and we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg. 

As a Damsel in Defense Independent Pro, I am dedicated to fighting sex trafficking of any kind, and will use it as a platform to spread awareness.  I want everyone to understand the dangers that come with cryptocurrency, and to be aware.

Enduring the scars of your past

It's why Damsel in Defense made perfect senses to me

“Some days are better than others.  Some days you just can’t figure out.” –Meredith Brooks

Every day when you look in the mirror, you should see something different than you did the day before.  I’m not talking about crow’s feet or laugh lines; I’m talking about you as a whole being.   How can I say that with complete faith?  Endurance.  We all start everything we do at the beginning.  We started walking by taking one step forward, then falling on our rear ends.  We started using a cup without a lid by picking it up and spilling it.  Everything we have ever done began at the beginning, and we get better because we’re constantly building endurance.

Endurance isn’t only specific to muscles or fine motor skills.  Endurance also accounts for getting better at our jobs, our marriages, our lives, and reversing our deficits. 

Tonight, as I was looking in the mirror, I turned and saw a scar.  It’s a familiar scar, and the pain that radiated from it when it was an open would has long gone.  Most of the time, I think the pain from how it got there is gone too, but then I’ll see it’s creation in bits and pieces flashing back like the reflection of passing lights in fragments of broken glass.  Bits and pieces like cars whizzing by on the freeway.  Not long ago, I would look at that scar and the emotions of its creation would pour out of it like hot white light as if it was still an open wound.  Not long before that, those emotions would grip my heart and cripple me, creating debilitating fear, hate, and shame.  Not long before that, I couldn’t even turn my shoulder in that direction when looking in the mirror because I couldn’t stand the thought that it even existed, so I kept it covered at all costs.  

The reason I can look at it now and not let it take over my life is because I built endurance to tolerate it.  Whether I like it or not, it’s here and it will never go away.  It is part of me and I am part of it.  I built endurance through counselling, my support system, and my church family.  I let God touch it with his healing hands and trusted that He would release the negativity from it.  I learned how to live with it and turn it into motivation to help others.  I stumbled at first, and I fell a lot, but every time I fell I got back up and started again.  Every time I got back up, I got a little farther before I fell again.  Now I see it, and the person wearing it as a warrior.  I see it as the mark of a champion fighting for other women who are still trapped in that terrible raw pain after an attack.  I see it as a reminder that no matter how wonderful the world is, there is also ugliness, and unless you learn to recognize that ugliness, you won’t see it for what it is when it looks you in the eye just before it pounces.

The night I got the scar in question was just like any other night.  It was a cool fall evening during my 16^th year.  My boyfriend had to work after the football game, so I decided to go to a party with a friend.  There was drinking involved, and a very dark train tunnel that we should have never been walking around in.  A man in his early 20’s was there, and he kept being near me, striking up conversations and saying things that made me feel like I wasn’t brave enough, or trusting enough, or hard core enough, and I felt like I wanted to prove him wrong.  Some sort of Spidey sense went off in the back of my brain like fireworks, but I was intoxicated, and didn’t have enough courage to ask my friend to take me home and seem like a total dork.  About an hour later, I was off looking for a suitable bathroom spot, when something slammed against me.  It happened so fast.  I didn’t see it coming.  I hit the ground with a thud, knocking the wind out of me.   A rock dug into my shoulder while I gasped for air.  The pain was immense, and I was trying to scream, but a large hand that smelled like whiskey and tasted like salt and dirt covered my mouth.  The harder I fought, the harder he held tight, and I found myself struggling to breathe.  I tasted blood from the split in my lip.  That rock dug in deeper and deeper, and although the immediate horror was over in a matter of minutes, the lasting scars from that gravel hill are with me forever, never ceasing to remind me of that one dark pinpoint in my lifeline.

It wasn’t the last, and definitely not the first time I had fallen prey to a predator, and it wasn’t even the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, but it’s the only one that left a visible mark for me to see when I look in the mirror every day.

Now that scar is a visible reminder of what’s out there.  It’s motivation for me to push forward all the time so I don’t end up there ever again.  It’s why Damsel in Defense made such perfect sense to me and why I became an Independent Pro.  I can use the drive from that scar to teach women how to stay safe, so hopefully they will never have to face down a permanent reminder of what happened to them.  It’s a very big part of why I stand up in front of strangers in living rooms all over spreading the Damsel in Defense mission to educate, equip, and empower women.  It’s a reminder of how hard I have worked to build up enough endurance so that I can completely reframe the events in my life.

Some days are better than others, and some days you just can’t figure out, but when you pull yourself out of a bad day and start again, you will build the endurance you need to get through another and endure the scars of your past.

If you’re ready to join a team and make a difference, let’s talk about what that looks like for you.  If you’re ready to host a self-defense presentation in your home, I can make that happen.  For more information, email sunshine@yourdamseldiva.com.