Ashley Darby was a victim of sexual abuse as a child and in a recent Instagram Live video, she opened up about the trauma and how she worked through it.
As she hosted a Sacral Chakra Chat, the Real Housewives of Potomac star, who is currently expecting her first child with husband Michael Darby, admitted that after being sexually abused between the ages of 5 and 6, she dealt with shame and guilt and even kept the devastating experience from her mother.
“I was sexually abused as a child for a number of years, and I didn’t really understand exactly how it could affect me later on in life until I began my yoga journey and my mindfulness journey,” she said, according to The Daily Dish.
According to Ashley, she believed she was somehow responsible for the sexual abuse she fell victim to at the time it occurred and didn’t begin healing until many, many years later.
“I thought that there was something that I had done or said that made this person want to sexually violate me for how long he did,” Ashley said. “I felt I was the reason I was experiencing this, I invited this man to touch me the way he did.”
Then, in 2017, after temporarily separating from Michael, Ashley began working to heal from the experience.
“I came back to yoga and mindfulness and really came back to love myself again,” she shared.
Although Ashley has moved on from the abuse, she acknowledges that there have been certain ramifications that impact her day-to-day life, including her marriage.
“Part of the reason I think I had issues in my marriage the way I did was I didn’t feel comfortable with my emotions,” Ashley explained.
Prior to meeting her husband, Ashley said she was “overly sexual” and had been “attracting people who had emotional dysfunction” due to the sexual abuse she experienced.
“I wanted to heal them,” Ashley recalled. “I became an empath to an unhealthy degree.”
While Ashley has made leaps and bounds as her healing continues, she admittedly became obsessive after learning she was expecting a baby. Luckily, she was able to recenter her life through therapy, meditation, and yoga, and also utilizes daily affirmations to cope.
“I do find these tactics and these principles really help me,” she said. “And I believe that there’s so much power in ourselves and learning how to heal ourselves and learning how to hear the inner voice.”
The Real Housewives of Potomac season four is expected to air on Bravo TV later this year.
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