Blog — Serena Kelley

Trauma

One ring to rule them all… My child bride cult ring.

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I was born as a child celebrity in the cult founder David Berg’s compound. He named me, wrote stories about me and I grew up basically promised to him from birth.

At 3 I was taken to David Berg by my own mother and presented as his child bride. Berg gave me a heart shaped ring way too big for my 3 yr old finger. He wrapped tape around the band until it fit, saying the ring was big on purpose so I could wear it forever. I still have the ring to this day and it fits on my pinkie finger.

That is sick. He put that much thought into how he could possess me for the rest of my life, and how he could ensure that the ring would fit me through adulthood. I still have it, and it still does.

The first photo at the top of the page is me wearing that ring as an adult.

Berg systematically broke down children, abused and trafficked them, then had his followers do the same. This was his way to control, a way to satiate his perverted mind that had also been control and abused as a child himself, by his own nanny. His mind was so far gone and so fucked up that he continued to inflict pain on thousands of people, the way pain was inflicted on him in his childhood.

What’s that saying again…hurt people hurt people, healed people heal people.


I still have the ring, yes. I keep in my possession, no one will ever know where, I don’t wear it but I also don’t feel the need to burn it. This ring is part of my story now, it’s part of my power and part of my path. It’s not Berg’s, and it never will be.

In the video on my previous post, I talk about being trafficked as a child in the infamous sex cult The Children of God, aka The Family.

Yes, trafficking is a harsh word. We think of children being grabbed off the street and chained to a bed and all kinds of horrible things happening to them. But if you look at the definition of child trafficking online, it paints a different picture.

The definition of child trafficking is the illegal movement of children for forced labor or sexual exploitation.

When I first read this definition, I was floored, because that literally described my life. If I could sum up my life in one sentence, it would literally be that.

So, I embarked on an even deeper healing journey, to learn more about child trafficking and all its nuances that we typically wouldn’t associate it with. Since then, I’ve talked to many of my fellow survivors about our childhood, and we’ve all slowly come to terms with the fact that yes, we were in fact, trafficked. It’s a hard pill to swallow at first, but something important when to acknowledge about our lives.

Photo info:

  1. To the left is a photO of me at two years old, shortly before I received the ring on my 3rd birthday.

  2. Below, you can see a photo of Berg, laying a hand on my pregnant mother’s belly, and inside that belly is me.

  3. Second to the bottom is a picture of Berg’s cousin Mary Dear. He wrote a personal note to my mother about naming me after his cousin he was in love with. Mary Dear became my celebrity cult name and it’s in the cult publications.

  4. A recent photo of me now, living life to the fullest and loving every second

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Child trafficking is not always forcibly grabbing someone off the street, throwing them into a van and hiding them in a warehouse. Most of the time it’s far more covert and insidious. It’s low income families exchanging sexual favors for money. It’s sex cults who separate families & travel in the middle of the night to escape authorities looking for them. It’s the family down the street with the creepy uncle who always comes by when the parents are away but the kids are home. Or the family friend who brings money for the kids and the parents let them have special play time with. Or the masked kid walking down the street with the man grabbing their arm just a bit too forcefully.

These things are happening today all around us. Maybe to you or someone you know. This is a pandemic in our country of massive proportions and it’s only getting worse through generations. Research child trafficking in your area. The results may shock you.

Child Trafficking and why I'm talking about it


Child Trafficking and why I'm talking about it

In this video I explain why I'm talking about child trafficking, provide stats, why we should care, and my personal experience being trafficked in the sex cult The Children of God, something I've never talked about publicly before.

I'll continue to speak about this topic and supply as much credible information I can, and tips on how to look out for trafficked children and what you can do about it.

Why I stopped hating women

It wasn’t the women who were the issue…it was me.

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I used to have this story in my head that I didn't get along with females, they were always in "competition" with me, they were bitches, not to be trusted, etc. All crap based on past experiences. Of course, what happened? The same females kept popping up in my life, reinforcing my negative beliefs.

I finally realized that I was the one that needed to change. While yes, I've been burned by female friends in the past and bullied while growing up, holding on to these negative memories only invited more of the same into my life.

It was only when I stopped judging and being jealous of other women did I start to find my tribe. I reconnected with old friends, let some old ones go, and in doing so found new ones with the space it created in my life.

I've connected with women both in person and online and it's been the most welcome surprise of the year. Best of all, I fully support them and they me.

Your tribe is out there, you just gotta be willing to go out and find it. Start with letting go of some old beliefs--maybe even some old friendships--in order to make space for new and better ones to find you.

If you wanna walk naked in the woods with someone else's dog, collect turkey feathers thinking it's from a hawk, do cartwheels on a main road with a gun strapped to you, climb a canyon everyday and take a full moon bath covered in mud, that's A-ok! The best part is, there are others who do the same.

Find your tribe and your sisterhood. Start supporting women and seeing them as allies rather than competition. Surround yourself with females that support and inspire you. And watch how fast your circle grows.

"Because there’s one thing stronger than magic. Sisterhood." ⭐⭐

Child Marriage is LEGAL in the USA!

Whey are more people not talking about this? Where is the outrage?

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In the image above, pay attention to the gray states. NO legal minimum age for child marriage! That means with parental consent a child can marry at 8 or 18.

When activists have sought to eliminate those exceptions and ban marriage prior to age 18, as they are attempting to do in about 10 states nationwide, they are met with substantial pushback. Take the last slide, for example. In California--a very liberal state--a bill to set the minimum marriage age at 18 failed in 2017 after objections from lawmakers and LIBERAL groups such as the state's American Civil Liberties Union. The state STILL currently has no minimum marriage age. Why?

The ACLU argued that the bill "unnecessarily and unduly intrudes on the fundamental rights of marriage without sufficient cause," saying that banning underage marriage without evidence regarding the nature and severity of the problem "puts the cart before the horse." Evidence? Seriously? Even just one case should be enough to pass a bill.

The minimum marriage age in Alabama today is 16, though for most of the state’s history girls could marry at 14 and boys at 17. Don't take my research for it. Look it up yourself.

In Louisiana, Republicans and Democrats actually debated last over whether to set a minimum marriage age in the state. They finally settled on the marriage age at 16 with no more than 3 years age difference.

Why are politicians debating over this? Why isn't this a clear cut issue? I'll tell you why. Because we have a pandemic going on called child trafficking and pedophilia, not COVID-19. It's that people want to harm your children and get away with it.

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This is not a partisan issue, this is left AND right. But please don't kid yourself thinking this is a southern or conservative issue, it's not. The issue is that a lot of us just don't care or don't bother to look into something that doesn't directly affect us. I did the same thing. But once I started researching a lot of things started making sense, and the fact that so many politicians have been arrested and charged with child pornography.

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Ghislane Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein are only the beginning. But the more we shine a light on this issue, the more we'll put a stop to it!

Honoring the Feminine

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I grew up in a cult where being feminine was not only encouraged but enforced.

Cutting your hair and dressing in shorts or pants were not allowed and if you did dress like that, you were shunned and punished for it.

I had no say in my life or body. I was treated as an object and sexually abused whenever any male felt like it, then punished for speaking out about it. I was taught that my purpose was to service men, have babies at 16 and be happy and thankful for any sexual encounter experienced. If I didn't like it, it was my own fault.

I lived my whole childhood in fear of sexual assaults, wishing I was a boy.

As I got to my teenage years I found safety in looking like a boy. I dressed like them, I got punished with them, & hid my female traits with baggy clothes and short hair.

While there is nothing wrong with dressing and looking this way, as I got older I felt I was doing myself a disservice resisting my feminine side. I was scared of embracing my own feminine power. I’ve always been a tomboy, had short hair and wear minimal make up. That’s just who I am. But on the inside I felt I needed a better balance between masculine and feminine. I knew I needed to let go of my childhood fears of appearing too feminine, too vulnerable, too "soft". In order to do that, however, I first had to work on healing my childhood traumas.

In 2019 I started a journey of getting back in touch with my feminine side. It was the year I started loving my body at whatever state it’s in, the year I truly started rooting for every female around me, the year I built my own beautiful female support group, and the year I started to step into my feminine energy to learn what it truly meant to be a woman, embrace my sexuality, my body, my powers and everything I and society tells you what's wrong with yourself.

Femininity comes in many forms. Sure, it's being comfortable in your own skin, but it's also embracing the flow of life, going through hardships and challenges and coming out not hardened but softer and kinder. It’s being in touch with your emotions, open to transformation and understand that you don’t have to do it all, it’s OK to ask and accept help. It's embracing what it means to be a woman. To own your sexuality, work with the feminine 30 day lunar cycle of the moon, not the masculine solar 24 hours cycle of the sun.

There is so much more I have to learn about my own feminine power. But every year I am able to look back and see how far I've come.

These pictures are not comparisons of before and after, but to show how we can grow, how we can learn, how we can evolve. It's to show that as humans it is our right and gift to be able to transform ourselves again and again.

Human Trafficking...the real pandemic

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I’ve seen many people on Social Media with such strong views about what’s going on in today’s world. Everyone seems to believe something different regarding COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, politics, vaccines, and all the conspiracy theories going around.

I do admire the people who are using their platform to speak out on things that are going on in the world, which is something I’m choosing to do more. One of the things I've been particularly interested in is human trafficking, and I'm happy that this topic is getting more attention.

In doing some research I found the following statistics:

▪️In 2020 alone, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children experienced a 90.46% increase in reports of missing and exploited children, compared to the same time frame in 2019. Think about that...that’s almost a 100% increase, and there’s still five more months to go in 2020!

▪️In 2019, the NCMEC assisted with more than 29,000 cases of missing children. These case types were:

▫️91% endangered runaways
▫️4% family abductions
▫️4% critically missing young adults, ages 18 to 20
▫️Less than 1% nonfamily abductions
▫️1%, injured or otherwise missing children

▪️ From the 26,300 runaways reported to NCMEC in 2019, 1 in 6 were likely victims of child sex trafficking. Now think of that number and multiply it by 90...and we have hit the stats for the 1st seven months of 2020. That is an astronomical amount.

Conspiracy theories or not, human trafficking--in particular child exploitation---is happening. Whether you are Republican, Democrat, somewhere in the middle or not political at all, these stats should shock, concern, and horrify you. This is the real pandemic, folks. This is what we should be talking about and what needs attention.

Something is going on that is hurting our kids. We need to pay attention, question and be willing to look deeper into uncomfortable issues. Now is not the time to keep following the masses. Do research for yourself, find out what’s going on & what you can do about it.

We may think our voice doesn’t make a difference, but it does. The more we continue to shine a light on things that are ignored, collectively we can exact change.