She And Her Mother Have The Same Father

Unfiltered Stories

In today's episode of Unfiltered Stories, we have the privilege of listening to LaKiesha Allen's poignant and deeply personal life journey. Born to a young mother who was only 13 years old at the time, LaKiesha found herself entering a world that she describes as one filled with challenges and adversity from the very beginning. The complex family dynamics surrounding her birth set the stage for a difficult upbringing that would shape her life in profound ways.   Despite the shocking revelation about her family history, LaKiesha's resilience and strength shine through as she opens up about her experiences. By sharing her story, she hopes to provide a beacon of hope and inspiration to others who may be navigating their own personal struggles. LaKiesha's courage in speaking her truth serves as a powerful reminder that even in the face of unimaginable hardships, the human spirit has the capacity to persevere and find a path forward. Join us as we listen to her compelling narrative and reflect on the transformative power of sharing our stories.   #survivorstories #unfilteredstories   You can find Lakiesha here:  FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100081934101573  IG: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100081934101573  YT: https://www.youtube.com/@ProphetLaKiesha  Website: https://www.lakieshacharmainellc.com/   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 ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredFB  Tiktok ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredTT  Snapchat ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredSN

Transcript

00:00I was born into darkness. My mother was 13 years old. When she met her biological father,

00:06she had no idea that her father was a pedophile. My mother went to visit her father over the summer

00:11of 1978, and when she came home from that summer, she was pregnant with me. I was born to a

00:1713-year-old

00:18little girl. I was conceived in sin, conceived in darkness. What I was born into was just as

00:24traumatic. My entire childhood was one form of trauma over another. Dealing with sexual abuse,

00:31sexual molestation from a young age from my mother's older boyfriend, his son, who I would be

00:36left with for him to babysit me, he would sexually molest me, and he would use religion to do it.

00:42He would tell me that I would go to hell if I did not perform. He would tell me that

00:46he would molest

00:47my younger brother if I did not perform, and then he would bribe me with food as a prize for

00:53performing. And I would always want my mother to ask, as the many times she caught him giving me

00:59prizes, I would want her to ask, what is that for? But she never did. I understand now that the

01:05age

01:05that she was, still a teenager herself, and the trauma that she endured, that she was a young girl

01:11looking to be loved herself, looking in all the wrong places. And while she had children, she was

01:16still a child. And mothering children that she'd given birth to was not something that she was

01:20equipped to do. My grandmother was the only person in our family who was really into church. But if

01:25this God is so great, I would think, why would he allow me and my cousins to go through so

01:30much? I just

01:30knew early on that I wanted a life that was different from the one that I was living. And I

01:35knew that I

01:36didn't want anything to do with the God that my grandmother served. After the molestation, my mother

01:41ended up separating from that man. She went from one man after another. I had begun to be the

01:47babysitter. I was eight or nine years old being left at home for days at a time with a four

01:52or

01:52five-year-old and a toddler and then getting penalized via a beating if something was not

01:57right when my mother came home. I began to act out sexually because of the molestation, obviously. And

02:02I would always seek out older boys to let them touch on me. And there was one in particular. And

02:08in this

02:08situation, I know that it was nothing but the hand of God who was protecting me from trauma that I

02:13would

02:13not have been able to overcome. But I remember leaving my sister and my brother, going down to

02:18his house with my friend, and we were both getting into trouble together. We tried to go to this young

02:22man's house so that him and his friend could do whatever we allowed them to do. And it was only

02:28by

02:28the grace of God that a gentleman that my mother knew came down the street and said, get your butt

02:34back

02:34home before I call your mama. I knew, nope, I'm caught. I'm going to get a beating out of this

02:38world. I'm going

02:43man that my friend was going to see had tendencies that we weren't expecting. And he ended up in

02:49serious trouble years later for raping a little girl. Even when I was trying intentionally to get

02:54into trouble of the sexual nature, God was protecting me even back then going, nope, that is not for you.

03:00He moved us closer to where my aunt lived at. Now, my aunt is younger than my mother. She's actually

03:04only a few years older than me. But this aunt had children of her own and she was protective of

03:09her

03:09children. She was finally able to bear witness to the bruises that my mother would leave on me with

03:15the way that my mother would beat me relentlessly. In our family, whooping children was common. My aunt

03:21called CPS when I was in the sixth grade for the first time. The threat of CPS and the threat

03:27of my

03:27mother's beatings from her boyfriend being exposed and what she's doing to me being exposed, her boyfriend

03:33said, nope, I have land in Mississippi. We're going to Mississippi. And so we finally make it to

03:37Mississippi for about a year and a half. I endured beating after beating after beating after beating

03:43tumultuous beatings. Extension cores were her weapon of choice. She would beat me profusely to the point

03:49to where my skin would be black, blue, and purple. And I was getting a little bit older and I

03:54was just

03:54like, I can't take this anymore. I had a lot of anger in me for a guy that I did

03:57not even believe

03:58existed. One night, my mother was beat so bad by her then husband that I think that night something

04:05finally clicked in her head. And she actually tried to fight back. She pulled out a gun and she

04:10tried to shoot him with it, but he pulled the gun from her hands and he beat her with it

04:15and threw

04:15the gun away. Why is my mother so weak? Why is she allowing this man to beat her? Many times

04:20I asked

04:21a cousin and aunt and uncle, grandmother, my mother, who my father was, nobody would ever answer me.

04:27And then another memory fell. It was a memory of me back at the apartment building that we used to

04:32live

04:32in Lansing with a friend. This friend one day says to me after she gets upset with, that's why you

04:38and

04:38your mother have the same father. And I let it go. But as my mother was telling me all this

04:42information

04:43about my biological father, I began to think about that. And I thought, how would a friend that I just

04:49met know that my mother and I have the same father? Clearly everybody knows except me. So I've been the

04:54family secret all this time. Everybody's whispering behind my back. Nobody's telling me the truth.

04:59So after my mother finished explaining to me her truth, my world was just shattered. Up until the

05:05truth was revealed, there was not a night that I did not go to sleep just praying and sleepscaping

05:10and wishing for my father to come and save me. But with the truth of who my father is, that

05:16escape

05:17was no longer. So my father is my grandfather and he's a pedophile. So I was fathered by a pedophile.

05:23The morning after the beating, my brother and I were arguing because he wanted me to iron him a

05:28different pair of clothes. And he was at the bathroom door yelling at me. My mother's husband

05:32heard the argument. He went to my mother yelling at her and she came into the bathroom with that

05:37extension cord. And she gave me a beating that was by far the worst beating that I had ever received.

05:44Looking back on it now, I now know and understand that the beating that I received was the beating

05:50that she wishes she could have given him for the beating that he gave her the night before. I was

05:55just

05:55done. My body was bleeding. I was bruised all over. Welts were forming up on my body. But the emotion

06:02that I felt as I was running out of that house to get on the school bus was different from

06:06any emotion

06:07I'd ever felt after a beating. Everybody got picked up in front of their house. And as I'm on this

06:12school

06:12bus in searing pain, and I had it made up in my mind that if I went back to that

06:17house, I was going to

06:18find that gun and I was going to either kill them or they were going to kill me. And I

06:22remember saying to

06:23God, if I go back to that house, something is going to happen. I got into my first hour class,

06:29my geometry class with Mrs. Burnside, a white teacher, but I built a rapport with Mrs. Burnside

06:34and Mrs. McGraw, the other white teacher out of all the teachers in the building. They were the only

06:39two that I actually trusted with my truth because my mother's husband was a major dealer. His entire

06:45family were major dealers and everybody knew it. So the black community, even in Michigan,

06:50Michigan and Mississippi were terrified of this man. But I knew that if I was able to just share

06:55my truth with Mrs. Burnside, that something would happen. So I wrote her a letter. And after class,

07:01I stuck the letter under her book and I walked out and went to my next class. And within minutes,

07:06she was at the door with tears in her eyes talking to Mrs. McGraw. And they called me and they

07:10said,

07:11we're taking you to the office. CPS was called. They just asked if they could look at my body.

07:16And I said, yes. And I'm standing with my back turned to them as they're looking at my body and

07:22they're taking pictures. And even now, 30 plus years later, I can still hear the sniffles and

07:28the tears and the cries and the way that they were trying to muffle the sounds of their cries from

07:33looking at my body. I ended up in foster care that day. My first foster home, they had good hearts,

07:38but they were definitely a family that no foster child should ever be with. Because one of the

07:44daughters, her boyfriend was a major. I just left a major. And now I'm in a foster home with a

07:50daughter whose boyfriend is a major. And while they were all night, the children and her boyfriend

07:55were all nice to me. I still had to experience the domestic violence between the two of them.

08:00I woke up one morning getting ready for school and I could hear my foster mother on the phone

08:04screaming and yelling into the phone. And I hear her say, I'm sick and tired of my check coming late.

08:10Y'all keep sending me my check late. I don't work for free. Y'all can have this girl back.

08:14And her daughter came upstairs and she said, take this trash bag and put your stuff in a trash bag.

08:197.30 in the morning before DHS events open up. And in Mississippi, where we were, the case workers,

08:26their offices were in double wide trailers, a porch attached to this double wide trailer.

08:31My foster sister pulled up to that porch, told me to sit on the porch and wait for the foster

08:36worker to show up. So at 7.30 in the morning, I'm around 14 or 15 years old with my

08:41belongings in

08:42a trash bag in the dark pretty much because the sun hadn't even quite come up good waiting for

08:46my social worker to show up. And as I'm on that porch, I'm having a conversation with God going,

08:52you cannot be the God that my grandmother serves. And I'm looking at the trash bag with my belongings in

08:58it. And I said, I'm just trash. My life has no purpose. But as I am hearing the voice on

09:03that porch,

09:04I wasn't really equating it to God. I was just hearing a voice in my head that was telling me

09:08to trust him. Even though I was talking to God, I wasn't equating the voice talking back to me with

09:13being God. And so as I'm hearing this voice telling me to just trust him, I'm like, you're right. I'm

09:18done trusting men. I'm done trusting women. I'm done trusting the world. I'm just angry. So my foster

09:23worker, foster care worker, she comes, lets me into her office and she's upset, scrambling because

09:28clearly she wasn't expecting me. They did end up finding me another foster home that day. Thank God I

09:33didn't have to go into a group home. I went into my second foster home, which started out being a

09:38really, really, really good foster home. My new case worker had become fond of me. She had realized

09:43that I was extremely intelligent, that I was extremely vocal and that I would make a great

09:47speaker. I didn't know until she brought it to my attention that the Kellogg Foundation had

09:52sponsored a group of foster teams in the state of Mississippi that had just sworn. The team was

09:57called the Speak Up Now team and they were recruiting foster youth. Being a part of the Speak Up Now

10:02team in Mississippi most certainly was the catalyst for the path that I am on now as far as public

10:08speaking and advocacy work and just protecting and advocating for the little man. Not only had I

10:15been prepared to tell my story, but in sitting in these meetings with other foster teens listening to

10:20their stories, my story didn't seem so bad. Every trauma that you could think of, these kids had

10:26experienced it and the root of all of their complaints was a foster care system that was

10:33underworked, understaffed, and underpaid, filled with professionals who did not have the capacity to

10:39handle their workloads and became careless and let a lot of foster children fall through the cracks. We

10:46decided to take up the termination of parental rights bill and we chose that because so many of the

10:51stories that were coming out as we would get together and we would talk, that one issue with

10:56so many foster children had been in foster care their entire lives, unadoptable. Not because their

11:01biological parents wanted them, not because their biological parents had an actual chance of getting

11:08them back, not because they even wanted to go back to their biological parents, simply because the state of

11:14Mississippi had never done what they needed to do to terminate parental rights. So we thought if we

11:20push to force the state of Mississippi to place a timeline on terminating parental rights, more foster

11:27children would become adoptable, would actually be able to be adopted out of this toxic system. They put us in

11:33front of a crowd, we spoke. I spent my 16th birthday speaking in front of a large crowd and I

11:41will never

11:42forget as I was telling my story looking dead in the face of my first foster worker who put me

11:48in the

11:49home of the foster family that I was in first that I had no business being in. And I remember

11:54saying it

11:54does not matter if your shift ends at five o'clock. If you don't have suitable placement for a child

12:01to go

12:01into, you either work over to make sure we are in suitable homes or you give us to your supervisor

12:08or

12:08someone else who can ensure that we are in safe homes because I should not have had to suffer. I

12:14should not have had to deal with being discarded like I was trash because my social worker just wanted

12:19to get home at five o'clock. So it was okay with her to just place me in the first

12:23foster family that

12:24would say yes. And as I was standing there looking at her, something erupted in me inside and this power

12:31came over me like this is where your freedom is. This is where you are going to find your voice.

12:38And

12:38I thought, okay, I can do this. Before I ended up in foster care, I'd actually attempted suicide. I had

12:44to be between 13 and 14 years old. It was one of the nights where my mother had left me

12:49with her

12:49children yet again. And I planned the suicide attempt. Entire bottle of Tylenol, swallowed them, got

12:55probably 75% of the bottle down. And something came over me. And I now know that it was the

13:00Holy

13:01Spirit. And it forced the pills back up. And I lay there in that bathroom, vomiting profusely, vomiting

13:08violently. I now know that it was without a shadow of a doubt, the voice of God at this point.

13:13And he

13:13was saying to me, Lakeisha, I just need you to trust me. If you trust me, I will use you.

13:21I will use your

13:22voice one day. But you have to trust me. And I just began to cry. Because I'm now understanding

13:28that the God that I have been cursing out, the God that I have been yelling at, the God that

13:33I have

13:33been refusing to believe. And I'm thinking to myself, I don't want to trust you. I don't want

13:38to deal with this. But he wouldn't let me die. Those pills should have killed me. But they had no

13:43effect

13:43on me. God took me back. And before he left me, he said to me, every time you refuse to

13:49forgive your

13:50mother, it's not your mother that you know that you refuse to forgive. It's that 13 year old little

13:55girl. And I just remember crying my eyes out. Forgive her, I forgive her, I forgive her, I forgive

14:03her. I was 16 years old when I forgave my mother for everything that she had done to me. And

14:09even now

14:09at 44 years old, we have never had a healthy relationship because she is stuck in her trauma.

14:16And months and months later, the Speak Up Now team, the son team that I was a part of, we

14:21were

14:21successful. In 1996, the state of Mississippi modified their termination of parental rights

14:27bill. I was in my junior year of high school when my foster family started to decline. My foster

14:34parents were having marital issues. Their daughter was constantly stealing from me. She was quite jealous

14:40of me. And my foster father had made some comments to me that were sexually inappropriate to the point

14:46to where I didn't want to be in the house with him alone anymore. And so I called my grandmother

14:51and I

14:51said, they're going to send me to a group home unless you come and get me. They came to get

14:55me. My

14:56grandmother became my saving grace. The church that I was at with my cousins, I knew that it was cult

15:02-like.

15:02I knew that I didn't want any parts of it. But I can never deny the fact that the prophet

15:09of that

15:09house, who is indeed a prophet, definitely heard from God. And I had been going to this church for

15:15quite a while. And the members of this church, the leaders, none of them ever really paid me any

15:20attention. But this man called me up from the back of the church one day and he said, you, come

15:26here.

15:26And I'm looking around going, who was he talking to? Because he never talked to me before.

15:29And he said, yes, you, come here. And so I got up and I went to the front of the

15:33church and I stood

15:34before him and he looked at me and all he said was, God said, you are about to make a

15:39decision

15:39that is going to change the rest of your life. Don't do it. And I thought, and if I had

15:45known that

15:45I would have actually listened. But at almost 18 years old, I should have listened. I knew what I was

15:52planning to do. I was planning to have my fiance come and get me and take me back to Mississippi.

15:57Mississippi. That's what I should not have done. But I did it. I went back to Mississippi,

16:02breaking up, ended up breaking up with my boyfriend and ended up connecting with a childhood

16:07classmate from Mississippi. We connected when he came off in the military and ended up hooking up.

16:13I moved back to Michigan in the midst of us hooking up and we kind of separated our ways because

16:19he was

16:19in the military anyway. Even though I had come back to Michigan, that hookup would lead to an 18 year

16:26detour in my life and I ended up getting pregnant. I spent my daughter's first 18 years of her life

16:33healing from traumas, running from other traumas, focused on being the best mother that I could be

16:40to her, not focused on Lakeisha at all. God was on a shelf. I had not been to church from

16:46that point

16:47up until the time that my daughter was about five years old when I had an encounter with God,

16:52laying in bed with my daughter asleep. And I got woken up and it felt like I had a thousand

16:57pound

16:58weight on my chest. I could not move. I could not scream for my daughter. I could not move. All

17:05I could

17:05do was lay there. And with tears rolling down my eyes, I thought that I was going to die with

17:10my

17:10daughter laying in the bed next to me. My relationship with God at this point, it's solid.

17:15I'm talking to him. He's talking to me. He knows that I don't care for his people,

17:19i.e. his children, which is why I hadn't been in a church, but my relationship with him was solid.

17:25And I heard him distinctly in the midst of me crying inside and tears falling down my face,

17:32saying to me, Lakeisha, do I have your attention? And I'm thinking to myself, yes, God. And he says to

17:39me, Tabernacle of David. And I'm thinking to myself, yes. Okay. Yes. Tabernacle of David,

17:46please get this weight off of my chest. Please get this weight off of my chest. Please relieve

17:50me from this pain. The weight lifted off of me. I was able to get up and I was able

17:54to run downstairs

17:55two, three o'clock in the morning, go to my computer and type in Tabernacle of David because

17:59I never heard of this Tabernacle of David. And once I looked it up and the church came up, I

18:03thought,

18:04I've been in that church, but that's Pentecostal outreach. And I'm looking at the computer and they

18:09must've had a name change because now it's Tabernacle of David. And this is where God wants me to go.

18:13So Mother's Day weekend is when this happened. Mother's Day weekend, 2007. I got up on Mother's

18:19Day, got my daughter dressed. I said, we're going to church. But I walked into this church

18:23just knowing that I was supposed to be there and sat down ready to figure out why God was sending

18:28me there. The pastor over the church, she was ministering the word in a way that I had never

18:33heard the word ministered before. She ministered the word in a way that resonated with me because it

18:39felt like she was definitely one who was truly here from God. And I remember thinking, wow,

18:46I'm supposed to be here. This is the ministry that I'm supposed to be a part of. I stayed in

18:51that

18:52church for approximately eight, nine years. All of that stuff was a distraction to keep me from who I am

19:01today. But even in the midst of the distractions, God was at an early age developing my voice.

19:10So yes, while I was living in trauma and while I was being adversely affected by what was going on

19:15around me and while I was yet unhealed and while I was imperfect, God was doing the very thing that

19:21he told me to do when I was a little girl and he stopped me from committing suicide. If you

19:25trust me,

19:26one day I will use your voice. And so today at 44 years old, my trust in God has yielded

19:33me to a

19:34position to where he can now use me as truly as his prophet and as a seer of God. But

19:40it hasn't been

19:40easy. Even now there are still trauma. Even now there are still things that I struggle with. But what

19:46separates me from those who are so immersed in their trauma and so immersed in their unforgiveness

19:51is so immersed in the pain of the past that they can't function is I was able to forgive and

19:56I was

19:56able to understand the necessity and the importance of forgiveness. I would not be where I am today

20:03if God had not impressed upon me when I was 16 years old why it was vital for me to

20:10forgive back then

20:11and why I carry the throne of forgiveness around. Unforgiveness would have kept me chained to the

20:17trauma. It would have kept me chained to the trauma of the past. It would have kept me bound. It

20:23would have

20:23kept me unusable to God. I now recognize my traumas. I now recognize my triggers. I now have the power

20:31thanks to God to control them before they overtake me. I am not defined by what I come from. I

20:39am not defined

20:40by anything that happened to me. I am not defined by my conception. I am not defined by the natural

20:46DNA

20:47in my blood. I am defined by my resilience and my faith in God. I am defined by my ability

20:54to say

20:54yes this happened to me but it also is evidence of the mantle that God has called me to. It

21:02is also

21:03what God has used. He's taken pain and turned it into purpose. God has a purpose and a plan for

21:09it all.

21:10What the enemy means for evil. God will indeed use it for his good just as he is using me.

21:17No matter

21:18what is going on in and around and through you God chooses you daily but he wants you to choose

21:23him. He

21:24wants you to trust him. I am living breathing evidence of what it means to truly trust God. I spent

21:31so many

21:32years of my childhood seeking a natural father not realizing that I would never have one but what I

21:39found instead was God who has been my father my entire life even before I was born. For those of

21:46you

21:46who are foster teens currently in the foster care system for those of you who are not in the foster

21:51care system or you're adults who have lived with years and years of trauma and abuse and you have not

21:57spoken up and you have not found that your voice would actually be heard I implore you to speak up

22:04and to speak out. If you have felt like you haven't had anybody to talk to or nobody would believe

22:10you

22:10or nobody would listen to you I am here to tell you that that is a trick of the enemy

22:16to keep you bound

22:17and to keep you stuck dealing with that trauma in your head. The battlefield of the mind where those

22:23thoughts rage is a battlefield where you will not win. Speak up speak out contact me if I can't help

22:33you I will connect you with somebody who can help you but the reason why so many of us as

22:39adults

22:39especially walk around unsuccessful walk around angry and ending up in prison or ending up on

22:47or some other device that we use to medicate our pain is because we don't speak up and we don't

22:55talk

22:55it's because we don't find a proper outlet to communicate our struggles. Talking communicating

23:02in any mechanism even writing is what has helped me. I started out writing poetry when I didn't have

23:09anybody to talk to. Those poems are now being used to minister to other survivors. If you have been

23:16a victim I promise you regardless of what it looks like regardless of what it feels like you are not

23:23alone. For all the adults out there who like my mother and like so many in my family because sexual

23:31molestation is pervasive in my family the secrets are your stronghold. Speak your truth so that you can

23:39heal from it and so that you can unlink yourself to it unchain yourself from it but not just for

23:45you

23:45so many people even with me telling my story here now are healing and are learning to detach

23:52themselves from their own trauma and their own pain because me and so many others like me have decided

23:59to stand in our truth and to speak that which we are called to speak on. I promise you somebody

24:07is

24:08waiting to hear your story. I'm only one person my story will only reach a certain amount of people

24:14your story will reach others your story will help others heal so I am I promise you if you start

24:23talking if you start sharing you will start to realize that you are not alone don't let the enemy

24:30keep you bound we are more together than we are alone.

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