Ep 12: Sexual Trauma & How It Impacts Relationships - with April Daniels
The Body Remembers What We Were Taught to Endure
⚠️ Content Note / Trigger Warning
This episode includes discussion of sexual trauma, childhood sexual abuse, coercion, grooming, repression, and their impact on intimacy, relationships, and the nervous system.
Please listen with care and at your own pace. You are always welcome to pause, skip, or return when and if it feels right for you.If you or someone you know is experiencing sexual violence or assault, the National Sexual Assault Hotline: 800.656.HOPE (4673) provides emotional support, advice, and crisis intervention.
Today’s episode is tender—and important.
In this episode of How to Blow Up Your Life, I’m joined by a truly special guest: April Daniels —author, survivor, and someone who has done the kind of healing work that doesn’t just change a life… it rebuilds one.
We’re talking about sexual trauma—and specifically how it impacts our relationships. The relationship we have with our bodies. The relationship we have with intimacy. The relationship we have with trust. And, most quietly, the relationship we have with ourselves.
This conversation is sensitive, and I want you to move through it with care. If you need to pause, take a breath, or come back later—please do. There is no “right way” to listen to something like this. There is only your way.
April shares how her healing began through a completely different doorway—discovering that her parents were alcoholics, stepping into codependency recovery, and beginning to see how often the patterns we grow up with become the patterns we repeat. And then, through therapy, something cracked open. Repressed memories surfaced. Her life—this successful, high-achieving, “I’m fine” life—collapsed under the weight of what her nervous system had been carrying all along.
If you’ve lived through anything like that, you know: when the truth returns, it doesn’t arrive politely…
It arrives like a storm.
One of the most powerful parts of this episode is how April describes the way trauma can cut us off from ourselves. She talks about feeling like she was four years old again in a thirty-year-old body—how trauma doesn’t just live in the past, it can pull you back into the past emotionally. We talk about how repression doesn’t only block traumatic memories—it can block joy, play, presence, and even basic access to your own inner world.
We also talk about something I wish more people understood: sexual trauma isn’t only “the thing you think it is.” It can be coercion. Grooming. Psychological violation. Exposure. Power and domination disguised as normalcy. It’s not about sex—it’s about power, vulnerability, and objectification. About being reduced from a person into an object.
And that carries into adulthood in ways that are often invisible from the outside.
In this episode, we explore:
How sexual trauma impacts intimacy, trust, and embodiment
The ways trauma can disconnect us from ourselves—not just our memories
Why repression can block joy, creativity, and presence alongside pain
How trauma can show up as over-functioning, intellectualizing, or emotional distance
Why boundaries can feel especially difficult after violations
How healing can unlock parts of you you didn’t even know were locked away
What it actually means to come back to yourself, piece by piece
April also shares how healing can restore creativity, competence, and joy—and how building a beautiful life doesn’t require becoming someone else. It requires returning to who you already are.
Her message to survivors is simple and fierce: If I can do it, you can do it.
And before we close, she leaves us with something I want to underline, highlight, and repeat: Believe children.
If a child tells you something, don’t dismiss it. Don’t minimize it. Don’t explain it away.
Check it out.
About April
April Daniels is the author of Paperdolls and Cowboy Boots, a powerful memoir about healing from sexual trauma and reclaiming the self after violation. Her work speaks to the long arc of recovery—and to what becomes possible when truth, safety, and compassion are allowed to coexist.
✨ Find April here on Substack:
Book: Paperdolls and Cowboy Boots, by April Daniels and Carol Scott
April talks about how her story is tragically linked to that of both Elizabeth Smart and Kacie Woody. Many already know Elizabeth Smart’s story from the news media and her NY Times Best-Selling books, as well as her foundation dedicated to bringing hope, empowerment, and change in the fight against sexual violence. Kacies’ story had a different ending, unfortunately. To learn more about Kacie Woody, please read her Wikipedia page or watch this news report.
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