Today on Unfiltered Stories, we share the journey of Sarah Burleton, who endured a tumultuous and violent upbringing at the hands of her mother. Facing harsh punishments and physical aggression, Sarah's resilience shone through. At age 16, she finally stood up for herself, marking the beginning of her path to freedom and healing. Join us as we explore her story of courage and survival.
#survivorstories #healingjourney #traumasurvivor
Thank you for watching Unfiltered Stories! We offer a platform for our guests to speak openly about their life stories and journeys, shedding light on the challenges they faced and the resilience they've shown.
Our mission is to raise awareness about survivors by delving into their stories, exploring the impact of their experiences, and how they've managed to heal and rebuild their lives.
By sharing these stories, we aim to break the silence surrounding those challenging memories and create a compassionate environment.
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#survivorstories #healingjourney #traumasurvivor
Thank you for watching Unfiltered Stories! We offer a platform for our guests to speak openly about their life stories and journeys, shedding light on the challenges they faced and the resilience they've shown.
Our mission is to raise awareness about survivors by delving into their stories, exploring the impact of their experiences, and how they've managed to heal and rebuild their lives.
By sharing these stories, we aim to break the silence surrounding those challenging memories and create a compassionate environment.
🌅 FOLLOW US 🌅
Facebook âž® https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredFB
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NewsTranscript
00:00My name is Sarah Burlaton and my story is about how my mother abused me physically, mentally my
00:07entire life. The pain of dealing with it as a child and dealing with the repercussions of it
00:12as an adult and how I've turned it around to make a success out of myself and help others who
00:17might
00:17be in my same situation. My mother was a lonely, angry person. She came from a rich family, a rich
00:25childhood. I don't think she liked the situation she was in, maybe having me too young, deterred her
00:31plans. She was very selfish. It was always about her, her, her. I remember abuse when we were very
00:37little living up near Chicago, Illinois. I remember horrible things and horrible words and beatings.
00:43My first memory is actually laying on the floor after she had hit me in the apartment complex and
00:50I woke up and I must have urinated because she was rubbing my nose in it and that's my first
00:54memory.
00:55Things got extremely weird, bad, and almost life-threatening when we moved away from Chicago
01:02area and we moved to this little farm community and we were very isolated and the abuse, it was
01:08unbearable. It's really scary when you're an abused kid and then you move from a big city to a place
01:13where nobody can hear you scream. If I ever lied to my mother, it was because I was just trying
01:18to
01:18protect myself and I thought I was prolonging the inevitable beating if I did lie. I mean, there was no
01:24talk. There was no why would you lie or what happened. It was just immediate. I'm going to grab
01:29you by your hair. I'm going to throw you in the kitchen chair and open your mouth. Grab my mouth
01:34like that and just pour it in until she was satisfied and I'd sit there and just, it would be
01:38bubbling out
01:39the sides of my mouth and I can't, it felt like hours. Maybe it was probably minutes. I was what,
01:44six,
01:45seven years old. I remember I would sit there literally gripping the sides of the wooden chair in the kitchen
01:50just holding that like a chipmunk in my mouth. She would come in. I don't know what, how much time,
01:56she didn't have it. There was no timer. There was no warning. There was no, you're sitting here for
02:00five minutes. There was no time. It was sometimes it felt like minutes. Sometimes it felt like hours.
02:05I'd spit it out in the sink. She'd laugh and then she'd look at me and if I still was
02:10too scared to tell
02:11her the truth, that's when I would have to start writing over and over and over and I don't know
02:15why.
02:15Sometimes I was just like, gosh, if I just, if I just said, you know, oh yeah, I got a
02:20poor grade
02:21in kindergarten or I remember I got a detention in kindergarten because I was mad it was another
02:26girl's birthday. Like I'll never forget it. And sister Mary was so mad at me. She was just,
02:32she gave me a little like in school, like a little lunch detention. And that was my first memory of
02:37soap because I didn't want to tell it. Like I ripped up the detention notice and everything. When with the
02:41soap
02:42and the punishments that you didn't know when it would end, it was like when she would put me in
02:46the crawl space. One day I was in there for 10 minutes and one day she left me in there
02:50overnight.
02:51I am terrified of small spaces to this day because of it. You just never knew you wish for it
02:57to be
02:57over. And I would sit in my head while I'm sitting there and I'd be thinking, gosh, why don't I
03:01just
03:01tell the truth? Well, if I told the truth, I'd get beaten. So, you know, and there was just no
03:05when it was
03:07like get punished for lying or tell the truth and get beat. Sometimes I think I wanted to pick the
03:12easy route. I mean, I knew what soap was like, but I didn't know if mom was going to have
03:16a fit and do
03:18some of the crazy things she did to me. I mean, there was a time in my life where she
03:21pushed me
03:22in the bathroom and pushed me into the tub, poured bleach in the sink and left it running on hot
03:27water
03:28and then locked me in there with a towel underneath. And I don't even know what I did. I like,
03:32I cannot
03:33remember what I did, but I remember my throat burning and my eyes burning and I was suffocating
03:38and all of a sudden the door opened and I could breathe. I mean, so do I risk that punishment
03:43when
03:44I lie or do I risk the soap in the mouth and the writing? I could never mess up. I
03:49had to be perfect.
03:50If I messed up, I would get it. And I just, sometimes her expectations of perfection, I don't
03:56know that I could have ever reached them, especially at such a young age. It just depended on her mood.
04:01I can't describe it. One day she would wake up and it would be a great day. And I remember
04:06when
04:06things go to bed and I think, Oh my God, I did not get beaten that day. And other days,
04:11I mean, it would just seem to stretch out for weeks. Like she would just be so angry and just
04:17nothing you could do was right. I mean, no, nobody can do anything right in her eyes. And we all
04:22paid
04:22for it. I don't know my real father. I mean, I do know his name. My first memory of my
04:28real father was
04:29in a courtroom. I remember being very young. My sister had been born. So I had to have been
04:34around six. And I think my stepdad, that was the day he was taking custody of me. And I remember
04:39seeing him and sitting down at the end of a bench and a tan trench coat. And he signed me
04:44away that
04:45day. And I always thought that day when things got really tough, like he even walked out on me,
04:51you know, my stepdad, he abused me at first, like he whipped me with a belt and choke me. But
04:57then
04:57one day he stopped beating me. I don't know why, but he stopped physically beating me. He just kind
05:03of got really quiet. And that loneliness has carried over to my adulthood. Like I have few,
05:09few friends. I pretty much stay to myself. I'm very socially awkward. You know, you're an adult and
05:15things from your childhood are still affecting you. Like I look in the mirror and I'm like, Oh gosh,
05:19I'm so ugly. I am ugly. And I do have big lips and bug eyes on the farm. Beatings had
05:25gotten so
05:27incredibly bad. So bad because we were out in the middle of nowhere. We had a neighbor across the
05:33street down a way and then a neighbor just like a field over. But I could take the abuse. Like
05:38I was,
05:39I felt like I could take it. I knew how to cover my body. I knew how to hide. I
05:44knew, I knew a lot at
05:45that point. Years later with my book, I had to get affidavits. My mother's sister actually wrote
05:52a big legal affidavit to verify all this abuse because she knew about it. And she wrote about
05:57mom calling her laughing about shooting my goat the way she did and how she just thought it was
06:03the funniest thing in the world. And I have to say that an animal was your best friend,
06:07but he was all I had. She got really into killing animals and lived on the farm. The neighbor I
06:12said
06:13lived down across the street. They had cats and she hated cats and she would shoot them with the BB
06:19gun and kill them on our property. And then I'd have to go out with like a feed bag and
06:24pick up
06:25these dead cats and put them in an old horse feed bag and dispose of them. But then there was
06:30this one
06:30day I came home from school and in the back of our kitchen was a pantry. You know, we keep
06:36stuff.
06:37It had a blue door on it that you would keep shut. And I came home and mom was sitting
06:42in front of the
06:42pantry in a chair like the ones I would sit in when she had soap in my mouth. And she
06:47was just sitting
06:48there staring at the door and she had a BB gun in her hand. And I went and opened the
06:52door and she had
06:53strung one of the cats up by a bell to the light and it was like hanging. It was dead.
07:00But that smell
07:01never left that pantry. It was awful. I remember her getting up and cooking dinner. It was just like
07:06she would do these crazy things and just get up and cook. But she would make friends. Like she would
07:11be part of these women's groups in this little town and she would be part of like these co-ops
07:16and
07:16do things for the 4-H show and volunteer. But she would have a friend for like a day or
07:22two,
07:22it seemed like. And then all of a sudden, poof, like gone. Mom was very keen on choking. She liked
07:30to choke me almost to the point to where I would pass out. You know, it's something I think is
07:35important to acknowledge is that during the months of August, May, she would beat me but not to the
07:41point to where marks would be left because she knew I was going to school. She knew people would see
07:46me.
07:47There were a couple times I'd have to wear turtlenecks when it was hot because I would have choke
07:51marks around my neck. What people need to understand is that like everybody's so excited
07:55about Christmas vacations and summer vacations. But for an abused kid, those are the most terrifying
07:59times of your life. There's no school to go to. There's nothing that's going to really keep them
08:05at bay for at least two months. Well, the worst beating I got was she tried to drown me. She
08:09tried
08:09to drown me in the tub. I was taking a shower. I was still young. My sister and I were
08:14taking a shower
08:15together probably to conserve water. She opened up the shower curtain and she said that I was
08:21hogging the water and that my sister wasn't getting wet enough. She still had soap in her hair.
08:26She backhanded me and I slipped out and I cracked the back of my head on the faucet. I hit
08:32the stopper
08:32on the tub when I did that and started filling up. She got my sister out of there and she
08:37came back in
08:38and just flipped me over. And that's the worst beating I can remember. I was, I remember thrashing.
08:43I remember having my eyes open. I didn't see her because she was over, you know, I was down. She
08:48was holding me down and then she just lets me up. I mean, just lets me up. Now my relatives
08:53will
08:54probably tell you that wasn't my worst beating. My aunt told me that I have a giant, the side of
08:59my
08:59eyebrow is completely like jutted out. Like it's, you can feel the bone. When my aunt said that when I
09:05was
09:05two years old, she had come by the house and I had a black eye and mom had fractured my
09:10skull.
09:11She took me to the hospital. My mom and I had to live with my aunt for a while. My
09:15cousins would
09:16tell you at times her chasing me around with a knife because I couldn't button my sweater.
09:20I remember her beating me to the point where I would constantly urinate myself and I was born with
09:26only one kidney. So bladder problems were kind of a constant with me. It was just all the degrading
09:32things, especially if I would urinate myself and she would rub my nose in it. I was young
09:37and I was, I had found her makeup bag. I had watched Mary Poppins and I loved Julie Andrews
09:43bright red lipstick. And so mom had red lipstick and I put it on my face. She caught me, got
09:48furious.
09:49She knocked me down. She had the bleach under the bathroom cabinet in the vanity. I just laid there.
09:55I didn't know what she was doing with bleach. I didn't know if she was going to pour it on
09:57me. I didn't
09:58know what she was going to do. She just put the stopper down in the sink, turned the water on
10:03hot
10:03and started to put bleach in it and turned it on and started to fill it up. She walked out.
10:08I don't
10:08know if the door locked from the outside or she was holding it shut and she took a bath towel
10:12with
10:12her. She left and she put it. I must have been on the outside because she, I don't know if
10:17she didn't,
10:17I don't know. She was on the outside. I could see the shadow of it. She rolled it up and
10:21put it there
10:21and then like held the door. And it was, it wasn't long. I mean, the smell of it just started
10:25to gag me.
10:26My eyes burned. My throat burned. I leaned over the toilet and then I heard my stepdad go,
10:31what the hell are you doing? What the hell are you doing? And then, uh, that was that door opened.
10:36Fresh air came in. Oh, and he didn't help me. He just, I mean, he just made mom open the
10:41door.
10:41I stood up. I just remember stumbling to my room. Like I just laid down on the bed. I take
10:46that back.
10:46My stepdad did bring me a glass of water. So I drank that and I'm sure I went to sleep.
10:50I mean, I,
10:51I'll just never forget that sting and the tear. I, it was just like, it was like my throat was
10:56closing. It was almost like she almost wanted to see how far she could go before she killed me.
11:02I mean, as I remember my stories and I tell my stories and I remember my past, it was just
11:07like,
11:07God, I was like this close, this close. So many times there's nothing quite like your mother on top
11:13of you just gripping in with her fingernails into your neck. And just, you don't know when she's going to
11:18stop, but she always stopped before it was too late. So maybe that's what helped me. I knew she
11:25wasn't going to kill me. You reach an age where enough's enough. And if you've got friends who
11:29are going to take you in and friends, families who see what's going on and they're like, Hey,
11:34you can come stay with us until you figure it out. I mean, I took it. She had a lot
11:38of affairs with my,
11:39against my stepdad. I would be her patsy. Like I, oh boy, this is going off track.
11:45She started having affairs on the farm. There was a guy that come over. His name was uncle Bill.
11:49That's what we called him, me and my sister, because he'd be there when we got off the bus,
11:53but he'd leave before my stepdad got home. And if we ever said anything, boy, she would make sure
11:58to beat it into my head, especially that if I ever said a word, I mean, that'd be it. That'd
12:04be it.
12:05She continued the affairs. When we moved to the other little town, she'd meet guys. I'd have to go sit
12:10in the car while she would go. And there'd be a car dealership guy or a construction guy that she
12:15thought was just gorgeous. And she'd tell my stepdad, Oh, you know, Sarah and I are going
12:20here. But in reality, I'm going to go sit in the car while you're in an apartment doing God knows
12:24what. And I have to wait and wait. And then these guys would come out and try to be all
12:29nice to me,
12:29like, Oh, you know, like they were my uncle or something. And it was just so gross. She really
12:35pissed me off when I was 15. I don't remember what she did, but she pissed me off. And I
12:39looked
12:39at her right in the eyes. And I told her, I was like, you know, I said, I can tell
12:43my stepdad.
12:44I can tell him anytime I want. I can tell him anything. And just the look on her face. It
12:49was
12:50the first time I saw fear. She threw me on the bed and she beat the ever loving hell out
12:55of me.
12:56My stepdad came in and broke her off me, got her out of the room. And he said, what's wrong?
13:00What's
13:00wrong? And she said, Oh, that little bitch, that little bitch. And she walked out of the room.
13:04I didn't say anything that day about her affairs, but I had fear in her face and I liked it.
13:10I knew
13:10I had finally had something. And so she was sitting there one night when I was 16,
13:16I had come home. I came home late. I'm not going to lie. I got a little rebellious
13:20and she would just started accusing me of being a slut and who were you with and this and that.
13:25And I lost it. And I laid it all out in front of her, in front of my stepdad. And
13:31the look on his
13:32face. It was almost like he knew because I named names. And so he knew these people and she jumped
13:36on top of me and she started choking me and choking me. And I, she just, I hate you. I
13:41hate you. And just
13:42screaming at me. And I took my fist and I hit her so hard and it felt so good. And
13:48I saw that fear
13:49again because I was taller than her. I was bigger than her, you know, and I left. I put my
13:53stuff into
13:54two trash bags and I left and I never went back and I still graduated high school and went to
13:59college.
14:00That was a lot. When I was walking away, I was terrified. Oh my God. I was so terrified. I
14:06was
14:06like, of course I felt big and struck first. I thought she was going to call the police on me
14:10and
14:10say I assaulted her, but I had her fingernail marks in my neck. I mean, I'm sure I think some
14:15of them
14:15were even bleeding. And I was like, wow, if it happens, it happens. She never called the police.
14:19I was terrified. I felt free. Like I felt like I'm not going to get hit anymore. And I haven't
14:26been hit since. I mean, no one's ever hit me. It was hard. I'm married. I got divorced. You know,
14:31I got married for the wrong reasons. I met my first husband when I was 17 and he was older.
14:37I was in a
14:37new town and I think I wanted the family. It stinks. It takes long to realize that's what you got
14:42married
14:43for. But I'm, uh, remarried now. I've been with this, we're on our, what, 12 years. Um, I have two
14:49boys, a stepson. My oldest is 17 and my youngest is 12. They are the loves of my life. I
14:56love them so
14:57much. They were my proof that the cycle could be broken. Like I was so scared to have Evan, my
15:05first
15:05one. Cause I thought, well, what if mom was normal and like you have a baby and it makes you
15:11abusive.
15:12But I held him after I had him. And I said, I promised him I would never, I couldn't imagine.
15:19I'm a little lax on discipline, but they're great kids. I love them so much. When I was a little
15:23girl,
15:24I always dreamt of living in a brick house with white pillars and I live in a brick house with
15:28white
15:28pillars on my porch. I have two great Danes that I love to death. We live in the country,
15:33a little dead end road. I work from home. I write my book once in a while. I do those.
15:39I score for,
15:40uh, Stan, I didn't have, we don't even talk about that. I do, you know, those standardized tests kids
15:46take and the essays they write. I tell, I score those. Like I read them and evaluate them. I don't
15:52know. I enjoy doing it. And I like reading how kids write. So it helps me, you know, see what
15:57their
15:57lingo is or, you know, it's just my own way of getting paid to do a little research. I wrote
16:02my first book,
16:03Why Me? After I had had Evan, I wanted to understand why I had been abused. I was a new
16:09mom.
16:10I didn't have any help. You know, I didn't have a mom I could call for questions and I started
16:16to get
16:16angry. I was angry. I didn't have any help. I was angry. I didn't know what to do. I was
16:20angry. I
16:20didn't know how to change a diaper even and I needed to get it out. And so I wrote my
16:24first book,
16:25Why Me? It took me honestly two weeks to write. I had some, one of my old college professors edit
16:30it
16:31and it made me feel a lot better when I wrote The End. It's very childish writing. It was everything
16:36I could ever remember. I didn't want to lie. So I just wrote instances that I could remember.
16:42Word by word, you know, this is, this is exactly what happened. And I thought it may,
16:46it makes me feel good. I'll upload it. You know, I'll upload it to Amazon. I did a search for
16:51self
16:51publishing. You know, how does one do that? I thought I would have to do all my own work,
16:55but no, it was so easy. And I just left it alone. And I'm not kidding. I literally opened up
17:00my
17:00computer one day and it had blown up. I didn't even know I was on the New York Times till
17:04I Googled
17:04my name. Like, it's not like they send you a letter. I thought I'd get a letter or a phone
17:09call.
17:10I never marketed it. I never advertised it. It was all word of mouth. And then it took off on
17:16Barnes and
17:16Noble. I don't know. And then I started speaking to groups of kids, which has been fantastic.
17:22I speak to kids who are in the system. I've helped. I speak to DCFS workers to help them
17:28recognize signs of abuse. I've spoken to cops, teachers. I went back to my old high school and
17:34did a big presentation in front of the whole student body and old teachers who knew me when
17:38I had been abused. People who've been in abusive situations, it's important to have empathy for
17:44others. Me and other people I've met in my situation, we, I'm guilty of it as a mother. Like,
17:49I don't understand why my son's crying over something that I perceived so silly when I
17:54got beaten so hard and I didn't shed a tear. Empathy is something that you definitely need to learn
18:01and realize that, thank God, not everybody had the same situation as you.
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