(upbeat music)

- When Brenda Crouch was in her 20s,

she began having reoccurring nightmares.

They were like fragmentedscenes from a movie.

These traumatic dreams left Brenda

with a lingering sick feeling inside her.

And they were visionsthat always, invariably,

featured her father.

(soft hollow echo)

- [Narrator] TV host,author, and singer-songwriter

Brenda Crouch sufferedfrom childhood sexual abuse

and adult domestic violence.

- It's no secret that our world is filled

with broken, hurting peoplewho, like I once did,

feel trapped in their anger,shame, and identity confusion.

- [Narrator] Brenda's book, Fight Forward,

gives real answers tothose suffering from abuse

bringing freedom from a victim mindset

leading to a new lifefilled with joy and purpose.

- Well Brenda Crouch is here with us now.

And Brenda, we welcome you to the program.

Wanna mention the title ofyour book, Fight Forward,

Reclaim the Real You.

I mentioned just a momentago these recurring dreams

that you had that leftyou feeling so unsettled.

Years later, as an adult,you went to a counselor

when you were goingthrough some difficulty.

And the counselor said, "Wereyou ever sexually molested?"

- Yes, he did.- How did you answer that?

- Well immediately, I wasfilled with this shame.

And I thought, oh, I don'tknow how to answer that.

I knew of some things that I could recall

that had happened withsome church members,

which my mother hadintervened and you know.

So I began to share those things.

But then I knew there was something more,

and so I began to share the dreams.

And he told me that I was reallykind of a textbook example

with my defense mechanisms and personality

and the things that I had gone through.

- It would seem like it wouldbe so hard to accept that

when you hadn't on your own, in reality,

like, anchored into that.- Acknowledged.

Yeah, right.- Yes.

Well, plus, you had a,and this is, I guess,

some of the confusionthat enters young kids

when this happens, is youhad a loving relationship

with your father.

I mean, your dad was reallyyour hero in a sense.

I mean, you did fun things together.

He had a great personality.

He was a funny guy.

So when you realizedthat this hero of yours

was actually at the centerof your repressed memories,

what did that do?

How did you respond?

- Well it took years.

I tried to talk to my dad about it,

and he just was not ready.

I was probably in my 40s at that point.

And he was just not ready.

It was just so shameful for him.

And then it was really on his deathbed

that he then confessed tome and he asked forgiveness.

And I was confirmed on thingsthat I knew God had shown me

throughout the years.

But it was very difficultfor me to be able

to kind of take that information

and be able to process that.

Because when a child traumatically bonds

with their parent, whichrepresents good and bad,

they become kind of splitin their own identity.

And they carry those dynamicsinto their adult life.

So, and that's exactly what I did,

which took me into domestic abuse, really.

- Yeah, how hard wasit to forgive your dad?

- You know, I loved my dad so much,

and I knew, I understoodthat my dad had been abused,

and that he--- Himself.

- Yes, in many ways

and also so verballyput down his whole life.

And so often the victimsbecome victimizers.

This is the pattern.

And so my heart right nowis that we break the cycles,

that this can be broken.

And so God really had givenme the grace, I think,

to walk through this, Terry,to be able to understand it

in the process and to lovemy father through his eyes.

So no longer did I make him my hero.

No longer did I need him to be the things

that he couldn't be becausehe was not equipped.

But I looked at himthrough the mercy of God.

And I began to understand that it is,

the real enemy is not theperpetrators of abuse,

it's Satan himself who comesin to hijack our identities,

to twist us, and then tocause us to do things.

The blame lies with our choices,

but I believe that we mustuncover who the real enemy is.

- And what the goal is.

The Bible says that we're made

in the image and likeness of God.

So when he smears thatimage, I just believe

it gives him such pleasureto hurt the heart of God

who's watching his child go through this.

You mentioned, then, goinginto an abusive marriage.

I mean, often when things are mixed up

in our heads and ourhearts, we look for love

in all the wrong places andfor all the wrong reasons.

- Right.- Talk a little bit

about how you got into that.

- Well I really startedprojecting, because of my shame,

projecting this kind of persona

of what I thought wasglamorous and successful.

I was in the Miss America program.

- [Terry] You were in that (chuckling)?

- And for me, it was just where I learned

to really get good at my counterfeits.

I call these counterfeit identities.

(clears throat) And I believe

that when we don't know who we are,

we are just grabbing at whatever we can,

because we're so desperate to be loved.

So in so doing, all I was doing

was attracting counterfeit people

who wanted to have me in their life

just to be that kind of arm candy

or to make them look better.

But they weren't loving me for who I was,

because I didn't know how to love myself.

- And you didn't evenknow what it looked like

- No.- to be loved the right way.

- I didn't.

- You write that therewas no specific moment

where I magically shiftedfrom thinking like a victim

of abuse to becoming a champion over it.

You had a victim mentality,which is so common

in so many lives today.

What was your healing process like?

- It was progressive, and itwas something I walked through

throughout the years.

And I wanna say that in the process

of my unraveling, where all that persona

that I tried to believe myself

and I wanted others to believe,

as it became unraveled,that was really my gift.

It's where God met meand he was in the middle

of that unraveling.

In that, I could heal and I could really,

he kind of peeled the onion back and said,

baby girl, we're gonnalook at who you really are.

And he took me back to the little girl

that I was so ashamed of,the girl that I hated.

And I had to learn tolove her through his eyes,

to begin to see her as God created her

and that she was perfectly imperfect.

- Such a scary process

- Yes, oh my goodness.- and to go through that.

- It really is.- What do you want people

who read your book, who mayhave come through all kinds

of abusive scenarios, notnecessarily the same as your own,

what do you want them to find?

- I want people to seethat our culture is going

to tell them, oh, you be you.

But even they don't understand what it is,

because we have so thrown God out.

He is our creator.

And we can't really see who we are

until we stand with face unveiled

in the place that we can'teven barely look at ourself

and look into the glory ofGod to see our own reflection.

I want people to come to that place

as they read this book,to journey with Jesus,

and to begin to discover whothey are in Christ alone,

because he has a purpose,and he has a plan.

And it doesn't matter how far you've gone

or how much you've messed up.

If you feel like you're a total failure,

I have been there.

And it doesn't matter whatthe circumstances are.

God has such a beautifulstory to continue for you

if you will allow him to take the reigns.

- Yeah, I think of, as I read your book,

I thought of thescripture where Jesus said

he came to set the captive free.

And if that's you, I want you to hear more

of Brenda's story by getting her book.

It's called, Fight Forward,Reclaim the Real You.

It's available nationwide,so get ahold of it.