Trigger warning: This episode includes discussion of domestic abuse, coercive control, religious trauma, sexual assault, and emotional abuse. Please take care while listening.

Links Mentioned in This Episode:

Turning Survival Into Words: From Houses of Fear to Freedom (Memoir)

Pen And Brush Ink (Blog)

How to contact Boni Woodland

The Resilient Writers Radio Show: Interview with Boni Woodland – Full Episode Transcript

Intro:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas. And this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love. 

Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page. 

This podcast is for writers who love books and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who want to learn and grow in their craft and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them. Writers who want to spend more time in that flow state. 

Writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community, in this crazy roller coaster ride, we call the writing life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.

Rhonda:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome back to another episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm excited to talk to Boni Woodland today. Boni is an artist, writer, and a survivor with a deep love of storytelling that heals, inspires, and empowers.

Her memoir, Turning Survival Into Words: From Houses of Fear to Freedom, uh shares her journey of resilience escape and finding freedom after years of hardship. Through her writing, she hopes to shed light on the realities of domestic abuse, while offering hope to those seeking their own path to safety and self-discovery.

When she's not writing, paints and creates connections to her art. She believes in the power of nature, kindness, and the strength that can be found in every person's story. You can find her at penandbrushink.blogspot.com and painterandthreads.com.

Welcome, Boni.

Boni:

Hi, thank you so much, Rhonda. Thank you for having me on air this morning.

Rhonda:

No, I'm really, really excited to talk to you. So um you and I met when you had a draft of this book.

Boni:

That's right. We did.

Rhonda:

Tell me about writing the draft. How did you, when did you decide that you wanted to write this story and how did you go about fitting it into your life?

Boni:

Okay. It was a couple of years ago. My life had settled down, it changed a lot, so I had the space of mind to start thinking about my past life. And I ended up going to therapy because it was affecting my present life. And I didn't really think so, but yeah, it was.

So I went to therapy and therapy for me is real difficult. I had been silent most of all of my life. It wasn't a privilege to speak my mind. So going to therapy was super difficult. And I found I would write the incidents that I wanted to talk about beforehand, and then we would discuss it. It was so much easier.

Soon I had a big pile of incidents and I realized that I wanted to do something with all that pain to be able to turn it around and make it into something that might possibly help somebody. So I sort of, I didn't just wake up one day and go, Bing, I'm going to write a book. But I started laying it all out on the floor.

And um I started separating it into houses, which helped me turn the progression of the book forward. So I put the different incidents in different houses. And that way it gave me a structure with places in the middle to fill in what I thought about that at the time, or a little more information for readers to get to know my life at that time, because I had been in a cult and a very bad marriage. So there's a lot to talk about.

Rhonda:

Tell me a little about the cult? What was the cult like?

Boni:

Well, the cult was like a religion that I inherited from my parents. I think they joined when I was pretty young. And it was it flew under the radar of cultism for a long time because we've resembled so many other Christians. But it was super law. You know, there were laws for everything.

Women couldn't wear makeup, she couldn't wear wigs, you couldn't wear nylons, everything was you know orientated to controlling the woman, woman couldn't speak in church you couldn't do this.

You couldn't do that there were laws about what we can eat we never eat shrimp we never eat pork we never ate so many different things it regulated our lives and they said hey you can't be friends out in the world because you might get pulled out into Satan's world if you develop friendship.

So you had to marry in the church it was it was but you know, I, as a young kid, grew up in that and I loved it as far as I knew as a kid. And I didn't start to really feel separation from it until I was a teen. And I noticed that church was super prejudiced.

You could sit at a table and eat with the Black brethren, but you couldn't dance with them at church dances. It was the most odd regulations. And it wasn't until I was in my late 60s that I actually had the bright idea I should Google my church.

And yes, they were declared a cult back in the 80s. And the person that was at the head, he was caught mismanaging money and buying fur coats and cars and yachts, just like every other pastor that gets caught doing that sort of thing. And there was just a lot more to that, just a lot more.

Rhonda:

Wow. So that really governs your life from very early on.

Boni:

It did.

Rhonda:

Even if all the way, you know, until after you were married.

Boni:

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Rhonda:

It was governing your relationships like your relationship with your husband when you married him, your relationships with your parents. Like, how did all of that, The all the laws and rules and regulations, how did they um govern your life? How did they make…

Boni:

It was totally governed. It was totally governed. One of the biggest thing our church taught was that the man was the head of the household, whatever he said goes. And from that, the woman had to do whatever he said, whatever he wanted. It's like you didn't really have a life except to be his helpmate, which is what they defined as service.

So it was very controlling. And I did not realize when I married him, that he saw life different than I did. I thought I was leaving a sort of bad home situation and I would be free, but I ended up going from the fry pan to the fire, so to speak.

Rhonda:

Yeah. So um I remember when we were working on this book together you had foot notes at the end of each chapter and I suggested you put them in the end and so they're here. What are you hoping um that writers, readers rather take from this book? Like, what are you hoping it does?

Boni:

I'm hoping that if you're not a person that is in a dysfunctional abusive relationship and you're just curious and you want to read the book, that you can, you can see the progression of the dysfunction and understand.

Like when I was in it I didn't know that him not bringing food home was a crime. But if you look at the penal code, it is.

Rhonda:

Wow. Okay.

Boni:

So there was no like, there was no phones, there was no way for me to get an education unless I snuck to the library, which I ended up doing eventually. And if you are a person who is in an abusive relationship, I know, I want you to know that I see you.

I have been there. I know how scared and difficult it is, especially if you can't give a definition to the moments that are happening in your life. If someone else has the control to say, you you made me punch that hole in the wall. It's all your fault.

Then you, you know, sort of inside that's not true, but you're made to believe that and carry on. So I just want people to know that the moment you decide the meanings of things that are happening, that's when choice is going to become possible for you. And that's the moment you're going to stop being invisible to yourself.

And maybe, maybe you can't do anything in that moment because it's not safe, but start keeping track. And pretty soon you will find a way to leave your situation too. But go to the professionals. They're there to help.

Rhonda:

So you really wanted to share your own story as a way of inspiring someone who might be in a similar situation.

Boni:

Right.

Rhonda:

Someone who, you know, like me, I haven't been in an abusive relationship, but I really loved reading your story. I felt like I was understanding something.

Boni:

Yeah.

Rhonda:

And so what were what were some of the challenges that you had putting this book together Boni when you were writing.

Boni:

Everything.

Rhonda:

Oh really? Wow!

Boni:

I mean, everything because I I I was not a well-educated person. I did go back to college and get an A.S. But life has just been consuming and I didn't settle down. I do have loads and loads of stories that I've written over time up in the attic in a box and some on my computer. I actually have a blog where I put some of my better stories.

I didn't intend to become a writer, but when this happened to me and I saw that I had all of this, I keep hearing people say, why doesn't she just leave?

And that question sort of infuriates me because they have no idea. If you have no family, no money, no connections, you're locked in, whatever is going on, you cannot just leave. And especially if you have four bitty babies with you.

I was just inspired to write my story and put it out there hoping it lands in the right spot for people.

Rhonda:

And um putting it together into into what's now, you know, a book of 200 pages, how did you make the choices that you made to organize the book in the way you did?

Boni:

Well, that was pretty difficult. There were so many incidents to choose from. A lot could pile up and I didn't want it to be a litany of this bad thing and that bad thing. I wanted to have a few to represent the progression.

Because I knew I had learned because I actually went back and worked for the DVC people in town for a while when I was out of my situation, but I found out I was too close to the trauma.

But I feel like I um broke the book up into sections to try to show progression because you know, women aren't going to marry usually someone who right off the way does all the things to them.

Rhonda:

Right.

Boni:

Unless they're so dysfunctional themselves, they need help. People, my husband was charming and he was handsome and he was in my church and he was legal for me to marry. And, and I wanted to show people that it starts out, you know, kicks the dog when he comes home and then it starts in on the kids and then you and then everything.

So that's how I set the book up and I use the different houses because each thing happened in one of those houses. And of course we moved many more times than I represented in the book. That's what happens when you're poor.

So because I knew that stories had to wait and had to have a way to move forward. And when I had this manuscript piled up, I went online and found you Resilient Writers. I attended one of your Book Finishers Bootcamps and I was so excited because I thought, oh, this is my book. This is so amazing. And I found out it was a messy first draft, nowhere near finished.

And I loved your week long camp. It's the best thing that ever happened to me as a learning writer. I highly recommend it.

Rhonda:

That's so great. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, I I loved reading it. I think you have a talent for like your scene work is really good. I could I could sink into what was happening into the moments into, you know, the dilemmas and what was going through your head. So a pivotal point for you was when you started going to the library.

Boni:

Right.

Rhonda:

Talk to me a little bit about that.

Boni:

The very first time I went to the library, I lived in Del Paso Heights which is mostly a ethnic neighborhood, very poverty, poverty ridden. And I got the lady next door to look after my babies while I went down to the library, which was totally illegal to my husband, his husband's rules.

No one was allowed to watch the kids and I wasn't allowed to leave the house, but I snuck down to the library and I started finding books. My church only let us read the pamphlets and books that they put out basically that was the extent of my knowledge.

We weren't allowed to listen to music other music and it was so controlling so when I got in the library and I saw all those books I felt like I had died and went to heaven.

Rhonda:

Right. Yeha.

Boni:

And I was only supposed to go to the Christian section but I ended up going to self help. I was desperate for somebody to tell me what craziness I had got myself into and what I could do to get out of it.

I wanted a book so bad like the one I just wrote where somebody told a story how they got out and gave me hope. I didn't exactly find that, but I found a lot of books that broke my heart that told me the type of life I was really living in.

Rhonda:

Yeah. I mean, libraries are amazing things. I just think that, you know, um they're the heart of a community really. Yeah.

Boni:

They really are.

Rhonda:

So, you've got like, you've named all these different houses, right?

Boni:

Right.

Rhonda:

We have the House of Non-Consent, the House of No Money, the House of Hunger, the House of Chilling. How did you decide to, how did you decide on like the chapter titles?

Boni:

Well, you know, I took one of the incidents that I had wrote about in therapy and tried to tone it down. I know that the book is difficult to read. It'd have been a lot more difficult if I hadn't atoned it down. But I just picked an incident in the house that we were living at the time. And that became the title of that chapter, even though I might have went on to talk about a lot of other things in there. That's how I picked the title.

And it also the titles kind of show the types of things that can happen in dysfunctional abusive relationships. And like in the, in the House of Non-Consent where it was essentially an RAPE situation, my pastor, when I went to talk to him about it, he just covered his mouth and smiled and said, you can't be, you're married.

And that was heartbreaking to me because I felt sure that something, I felt inside that something terrible had happened between my husband and I, but he just affirmed that no. It didn't.

Rhonda:

It’s not possible.

Boni:

Right.

Rhonda:

Yeah. So awful.

Boni:

So that's how that became the chapter title.

Rhonda:

Yeah. And um talk to me a little bit about toning it down. Why did you decide to tone it down? And what did that mean when it came to the writing that the writing?

Boni:

Yeah. It's a lot scarier and difficult and brutal than I actually wrote.

Rhonda:

Oh, really? Okay.

Boni:

And I feel like I could not get anybody to read. You know how you ask what limited friends you have to look over your writing to see if you're even heading in the right direction? They couldn't do it.

Rhonda:

Oh, really? It was too hard for them to read when you get…

Boni:

It was just too hard. There was so much dissidence when they look at me now. They can't imagine I lived through that or that that was my life. It does feel like a whole movie of a different life.

And even the book I have now, some of my closest friends won't read it because they just they're too tender hearted and they they they just have to hard even though I've toned it so far down in my opinion. It's hard. It's a hard subject to talk about, but it's really, really important.

Rhonda:

Yeah. No, it is important to talk about it. So, um, you decided to self publish this book.

Boni:

Yes. Yes.

Rhonda:

Why did you decide to self publish and, and what was that like? How did you figure that out?

Boni:

Um, I tried to study as hard as I could, both situations. I did a lot of research and built the pros and cons. A lot of it was money and time. I felt like the situation in my country is coming to such a head times are so difficult. needed that book to go out now not two, three more years into the future.

Rhonda:

You didn’t want to wait.

Boni:

Right. And of course, it was difficult for me because I'm my own worst enemy about things like that. I'm not good at asking for help. And if I would have done that, the process would have been so much easier. So I highly recommend it.

If you're a writer, go out, get join writer groups, go find help, talk to other writers. You know, and I did that to a very limited degree, because my subject matter wasn't the kind of thing that I could go into a writer's group and read the chapter.

Rhonda:

Yeah, for sure. And so how did you decide on the cover? Right. So what we have are there's a book that kind of is the cover is made of stone and then there are plants bursting from it on the back. Well, you made that. How did you how did you?

Boni:

It is it is an idea that I had in my book designer helped put it together. She was very accommodating to me. It's supposed to resent resent. It resemble a Bible, but I didn't want it to be super offensive. But that was my experience with religion.

It was a very hard religion, but I cracked through it. And that's what those flowers resemble. It's on a wooden step of like an old church with a path to freedom beyond that. And she did a great job of putting my idea um exactly how I saw it.

Rhonda:

What’s your experience once the book was like published and out in the world. How did that feel and what was different in you when you knew you had this book published?

Boni:

I have felt I have felt the biggest smile in my in my life and I feel I'm a much different person because laying out my life and looking at it has changed everything. I was not an open person. The husband my really good husband that I married didn't even know half of this, not even, but maybe a fourth of this. I'm just not very good at speaking out about my life. It was shameful to me. It was difficult to me.

So I feel like it has improved my life. It has taught me a new skill that I can keep refining and maybe I could become an actual writer of books that people really want to read. And it's beautiful. It's wonderful to feel like I accomplished something. And I'm the first woman in my family line to break an abusive situation, get some sort of college degree, and publish a book.

Rhonda:

That's amazing. That's so amazing. Do you have any tips for folks who are thinking of self-publishing based on your experience getting this book into the world?

Boni:

Do a lot of research. Ask for help. um I think that my book would be even more fantastic if I knew how to do that at the time, even though I love it the way it is and it says exactly what I needed to say. There's always a lot more you can do to make a book better. Find a good editor, which I feel like I did.

Rhonda:

I’m gonna say yes because it was me.

Boni:

Yeah. Yes, I did. And find even more. Don't just stick with one. You've got to split it out to different things and build your money so that you can afford to pay for it. And you can do it. If someone like me, who had no life and was locked away and no education and basically no friends and I had a life like that and I have come to do this then I think just about anybody can. They just have to sit down and be dedicated to it.

Rhonda:

Yeah. So the book is Turning Survival Into Words: From Houses of Fear to Freedom. I love that subtitle by the way, From Houses of Fear to Freedom.

Boni:

Thank you.

Rhonda:

 And it's by Boni Woodland. I'll put a link to it in the notes and trigger warning. There is some abuse in here, but you know, it's still worth reading to understand. So Boni, what are you, are you still thinking of writing something else? Are you still writing?

Boni:

I am. Like I told you, I have a blog post called uh Pen and Brush Ink on a blog post. And I also joined Reedsy. I don't know if you've heard of them.

Rhonda:

Yeah.

Boni:

I have my stories up there also. And I'm practicing there's a lot to learn. Every time I think I've wrote a really great story, I realized, I got to try harder.

Rhonda:

Got to be rewritten. Yeah, I mean, I think great stories are all rewritten. And you were so you were so good at, you know, hearing the feedback and saying, okay, I'm gonna now I'm going to adjust this book. And so you really did the work.

Boni:

Yes.

Rhonda:

To make it a book you could be proud of, which is all in the end any of us can say.

Boni:

So that's right. You got to be willing to accept criticism. You just have to know that they're just trying to help you be better.

Rhonda:

Yeah, totally. That's so great. Okay, well, thanks so much for being with me today, Boni. It's been a pleasure speaking to you.

Boni:

Thank you so much. I appreciate all your help and time. And I recommend you to other writers out there.

Rhonda:

Oh, thank you.

Outro:

Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes. 

Your ratings and reviews tell the podcast algorithm gods that yes, this is a great show, definitely recommend it to other writers. And that will help us reach new listeners who might need a boost in their writing lives today as well. So please take a moment and leave a review. I'd really appreciate it. And I promise to read every single one. Thank you so much.