S1:E3: The Blessing of Rejection

This episode is to honor victims of sexual assault and survivors of emotional and psychological abuse. My story can be triggering so listener discretion is advised.

In this episode, I talk about the rejection I faced from my partner’s friends and family who knew the man that sexually assaulted me. As painful as this experience was, I now see it as a blessing in disguise. I was being protected from people who are part of a toxic system that perpetuates the culture where victims of sexual assault remain unsafe and unprotected. If you have ever experienced this type of rejection from speaking out against your perpetrator, please know you didn’t deserve it, I believe you and I stand with you.

Transcript

Intro:
Welcome to Mental Breakthrough, a memoir podcast about owning our most vulnerable stories so we can live a life of authenticity.

I’m Maryann Samreth, the woman behind the pen name, Sincerely Miss Mary. Together, I take you through my healing journey as I share stories of moving through pain to get to the other side where the light shines again.

In this season, I carry you moment to moment, starting with a tumultuous breakup, then multiple breakdowns, and eventually a breakthrough.

I share stories of how my gift of writing guided me through the darkest moments of my life, leading me to reconnect with my Cambodian ancestors and break the cycle of generational trauma.

There is power in storytelling and sharing our vulnerabilities with the world. It opens doors to cultivate deeper connections with others on the same journey so we can heal as a collective.

By sharing my truths, I pave the way for others to feel safe sharing theirs. We all have a story to tell. Stories that can be someone’s silver lining. Stories of hope.

Episode 3 Intro:
This episode is to honor victims of sexual assault and survivors of emotional and psychological abuse. My story can be triggering so listener discretion is advised.

If you missed episode 2, The Reckoning of Sincerely Miss Mary, I recommend going back and listening to the origin story of my Instagram pen name persona. She was created in the midst of the gaslighting and victim blaming I endured after confronting my partner about his predatory friend.

In this episode, I talk about the rejection I faced from my partner’s friends and family who knew the man that sexually assaulted me. As painful as this experience was, I now see it as a blessing in disguise. I was being protected from people who are part of a toxic system that perpetuates the culture where victims of sexual assault remain unsafe and unprotected. If you have ever experienced this type of rejection from speaking out against your perpetrator, please know you didn’t deserve it, I believe you and I stand with you.

Episode 3: The Blessing of Rejection
People often ask me where I get my confidence from…You see I wasn’t always this badass speaker of truths.

I once lived a life in fear of rejection. So much that I would willingly make myself smaller to appease everyone. Yet I was unconscious towards who I was directing this behavior towards…it was to people that would reaffirm the narrative I told myself…that I was not enough as I am.

My confidence was built from surviving one of the worst rejections of my life. It was the friends and family of my partner, people I had known for the 5 years we were together. People who I celebrated holidays, birthdays and marriages with. People who also knew the man that sexually assaulted me and turned their backs on me once I spoke up about it.

Shortly after my catastrophic breakup, my ex held a smear campaign against my character. He was so vain he made my sexual assault about him and twisted whatever narrated he needed to probably continue his friendship with the man that put his entitled hands up my skirt.

I’ll never know what was said about me nor do I want to know. Because it’s probably worse than what I could imagine it to be.

If the people in his life were so easily manipulated into believe a version of me before getting my side of the story it’s because of these 2 reasons.

1. They were already looking for a reason to dislike me.

2. Their view of the world is very limited.

I can’t fully fault them for rejecting me because this was the result of my ex’s narcissistic rage of no longer being able to control me. However, he is who he is because of his upbringing and the type of people he surrounded himself with.

Rejection in the age of social media burns on another level. As trivial as it should be, my heart would still drop when the unfollowing parade of Instagram and Facebook began by people who knew for the 5 years I was with my partner.

The first to go was my partner’s mom. She blocked me on FB.

The 2nd was the married couple who called my ex instead of me after I publicly condemned their friend on Instagram for sexually assaulting me…I now refer to the wife as the Karen of my life..which you’ll find out in a later episode why…

And for the finale…was my ex’s father…who unfollowed my dog’s Instagram..my DOG’s Instagram…

I just can’t imagine how badly my character was twisted for someone to hate me that much they unfollowed a furry four-legged teddy bear…

As I said in episode 1…someone’s response to my vulnerability sheds a light on who they are and not who I am…The audacity to unfollow a dog’s Instagram makes me believe that you do not deserve dogs.

The unfollowing summer festival of 2019 felt like constant daggers stabbing at my heart over and over again after I my heart was already beaten by the breakup.

In a dream world, I would have gotten justice by condemning the man that sexually assaulted me…instead I got banished, betrayed, and rejected…

I was treated as though I was the boy that cried wolf when all I ever did was tell the truth.

It was impossible to make sense of this nonsense, but I slowly realized why victims of sexual assault rarely speak out against their perpetrator…the fear of rejection.

My perpetrator had no consequences and was free to strike again to more women.

My ex and abuser of over a year also walked free coated in his toxic masculinity and misogynistic beliefs of a women’s place.

His friends and family that ghosted me…an entire system… rooted in toxic masculinity, white privilege, silence, complicity would continue a toxic cycle that perpetuates a culture where people who speak up are shunned.

I shouldn’t be surprised that I was rejected because of the system we live in…The person I was becoming, a woman who stands up for herself was challenging their belief systems and was an attempt to break their cycle.

Their rejection hurt like hell…but I now see it as redirecting me away from people who would never accept anyone who spoke up the way I did.

Their rejection was my protection from people who would never make me feel safe to be myself.

Their rejection was my blessing in disguised because I never belonged in their world. 

I never belonged to this outdated system.

A memory that lives rent free in my mind is Thanksgiving of 2018…

We were at my partner’s family’s house at the dinner table…and his older brother begins to victimize himself as his wife was changing his daughter’s diaper. He describes how his life could have been different if he didn’t have to move wherever his wife did because of her career as a doctor. He complains how he could have lived in California instead of Texas…of how he could have had a better life…yet had no choice but to follow his wife’s career path.

Thanksgiving dinner quickly turned into a pity party for a man smothering his insecurities in turkey, gravy, and white male privilege…

I sat in silence as he spoke, along with the rest of his family.

I’ve replayed this memory over again because I’m no longer the person that would allow a man to speak this way about his wife. This moment also speaks volumes to the deep-rooted toxic beliefs passed onto my partner by an influential person in his life. He greatly looked up to and admired his older brother…

Entitlement, superiority, and narcissism is taught…and studies show the best way to lead is by example…and his brother was leading a life of white fragility.

I always made myself smaller around my ex’s family. My anxiety and insecurity would amplify because I was surrounded by people who I had to beg to be seen and heard.

Every sentence that came out of my mouth was said in my head maybe 2-3 times. I never could feel like I could be myself. I was rejecting myself in order to please people who would never accept me.

They may have discarded me from whatever lies my ex spread about me…but the truth is they would never accept anyone who spoke their truths as actively and fearlessly as I began to…starting with that Instagram post condemning my perpetrator.

I was different…and they most likely knew that from the moment they met me.

People who reject you for setting boundaries will make you feel like you self-sabotaged when you were standing up for yourself. You were using your voice. You were speaking your truths. You were inserting your boundaries.

The ones that walk away from you because you stood up for yourself says more about their lack of judgments, their lack of respect, and their lack of character.

The ones that walked away from you because you stood your ground did you a favor by allowing you to conserve your energy for the right people in your life.

The hardest lesson you will ever learn is that people will always find a reason to dislike you. Reasons that have more to do with their limiting beliefs based on where they are at with their lives.

This will separate the people that belong to you and the people that are meant to leave you.

Rejection is redirection.
Rejection is protection.
Rejection is a blessing in disguise.

Outro:
We all have a story to tell and I want to thank you for listening to mine. I’m Maryann, the woman behind the pen name, Sincerely Miss Mary. Please subscribe to my podcast for more stories of healing and words of encouragement. If you loved this episode, please leave me a review! You can also follow me on TikTok and Instagram @sincerelymissmary and visit my website at www.sincerelymissmary.com