Kelly Johnson

Kelly Johnson was 23 and leaving for work in the morning when she was attacked by a home invader who beat, strangled and raped her. Kelly chose to speak openly about her experiences with those close to her and because of the support she was met with from her family and friends, she felt comfortable starting to work with a therapist. While she accepts that her healing journey will continue to be ongoing, she finds that her good days now outweigh her bad ones.

“I was a ‘victim’, I was ‘victimized,’ but I am a ‘survivor’…and I feel like that transition began when I started speaking to people about what happened to me.” 

“It’s a really strange thing to be grateful that you’ve been messed up enough on the outside that people can acknowledge that you’ve been messed up on the inside.” 

“It’s not that I couldn’t still have an amazing life. I just couldn’t ever again have a life where this wasn’t part of it, where I wasn’t carrying this with me…and for me, accepting that there was no factory reset, that no matter how hard I tried, I was never going to find a button that would get me back to me mental and emotional state from before the attack, it was kind of freeing. It took away one of the internal battles I was fighting and made it easier to start building a sustainable path forward.”