MEMOIRS

In 1973, a young woman, barely sixteen years old, and a zealous member of a cultist religious group, married a twenty-three year-old man, also a member of a the same religious group:

Fifteen years of abuse and five children later, Sara Niles fled for her life, crossed three state lines, and finally landed in a Safe Port. The Journey is the story of the Niles Family, especially the Children who grew up in a violent and traumatic environment.

TORN From the Inside Out tells the story of Sara Nile's abuse and eventual escape. The Journey is the rest of the story.

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Torn From the Inside Out

Born from Trauma: 'A Pain so Great as to Tear the Soul Inside Out'

On a sunny day in 1960, a white haired, eighty-year-old man, walked up a steep hill deep in the countryside of Southern Arkansas, and walked away with a three- and one-half year old, little dirty girl-child, riding high atop his shoulders, holding tightly onto the old man’s bald head. The little girl was scared, hungry, as always, and she had no idea of the home she was going to. The little girl had been given away by her biological mother to an elderly Great-uncle, the brother of her maternal grandmother. That little girl was Me, Sara Niles. I lived a fairytale life on 'the Flower Bed of Eden', at least, that is how it all began.

Fast Forward
February 13, 1987

"I am going to kill you DEAD!', screamed my husband and father of my five children, Thomas Niles, as I flew down the stairs of the townhouse, two steps at a time, running for my life. Domestic Violence homicide had taken the lives of two local acquaintances that I knew well, only a few years earlier, as both were murdered by their long-time husbands, each much like mine. I was about to suffer the same fate. I was going to die that night, I knew it, as the thunder storm raged outside, a worse storm raged inside.

It was the storms inside that night that I feared.

Every life carries a tale, a backstory of origins, choices, successes, and failures; for a life is no small thing to live, some lives are smooth like paved roads, while others are bumpy and fraught with danger. An unconventional life, one without the prerequisite cushions of predictability and stability, is especially fraught with dangers, as was mine. The dire straits created by unforeseeable events and circumstances, just as the biblical verse states: “Time and unforeseen occurrences befall them all”, befell me more times than I could count. I lived a dangerous life with a dangerous man.

From the Garden of Eden straight into 'Hell'

In 1973, Sara married Thomas Niles, which negatively altered the outcome of Sara Nile's life. Saved from trauma as a child, nurtured, and trained in sound moral principles by loving relatives, nothing prepared Sara for life with Thomas Niles.

The Fairy-tale wedding in a Jehovah's Witness Kingdom hall packed to the four walls, soon became a prolonged nightmare in which the hopes and dreams of a talented child, were singularly shelved in favor of survival. The Storm that ignited as an innocent marriage before man and God, would last awhile, because unbeknown to Sara, she had married a monster in disguise.

I am a different Sara Niles, than the young girl of my long-gone youth; I have the insight young Sara never had, and I am much wiser and stronger than the infatuated young girl that I once was. I will be your narrator as you journey with me across time and space, back to where it all began.

The JOURNEY (411 pages)

Forty Years in the 'Wilderness' of shame and denial that shrouds the The-headed Monster in secrecy; denying the truth of what you see with your own eyes, and the emotions you feel in your heart, is tantamount to self-murder. Most people who survive abuse and carry its wounds and scars, never speak of it openly, therefore, they carry wounds that never heal.

The life the Niles family lived after fleeing abuse began as a quest for freedom, but issues, and ingrained hurts incurred during the long nightmare living with Thomas Niles, continued to appear at dubious times, in ways that could not be ignored.

It is estimated that up to seventy percent of people in the world have suffered some degree of family dysfunction, yet people rarely speak of it. Secrecy and denial aid in the perpetuation of dysfunction, The Journey tells the stark truth-sometimes leaving in only a new beginning.

How It All Began:

We left our whole world behind, and fled with nothing, yet the children never even once asked Why?"
When a Raging Fire strikes a home in the middle of the night, everyone flees the home, with no regard for possessions, no grabbing of personal belongings, because every second counts. In most cases, there are family and friends, co-workers, and others standing by to help.
In 1987, we fled from a different type of 'Fire', a would-be killer who promised to erase us from the earth. The Niles Family would embark on a lifelong Journey of Reparation and searches for Resolution.