Episode 32
Episode 32: Reproductive Coercion, Coercive Control & The Invisible Side of Abuse with Lynn Stroud
This is your go-to Podcast, where we help parents navigate the complexities of family life. Hosted by Ali Kessler of Greyson’s Choice, we’ll cover everything from understanding domestic violence to navigating the legal system, finding the right therapists, life hacks, family law, mental health, custody battles, and how to protect children in dangerous situations.
About Lynn Stroud:
Drawing from her extensive lived experience with reproductive coercion, domestic abuse, and sexual assault, Lynn Stroud delves into cultivating a trauma-informed mindset and increased legal remedies for victims. She stresses the significance of listening without judgment, validating survivors' experiences, and recognizing the resilience that often emerges from adversity. Stroud addresses common misconceptions about trauma and emphasizes the need for ongoing education and awareness. She hopes to serve as a beacon of understanding and compassion, offering a roadmap for survivors, advocates, law enforcement, and beyond to increase their knowledge of reproductive coercion. By sharing her story, she hopes more listeners will recognize the warning signs and dangers of coercion, embrace knowledge, and actively seek out proactive change. Her hope is that one day we can collectively build a world where survivors are not only heard but supported in their paths to healing and empowerment.
About Ali Kessler
Ali Kessler is a writer, marketing professional, passionate parent advocate, and founder of Greyson’s Choice, a 501(c)(3) created to raise awareness about the risk of domestic abuse on children. Greyson’s Choice was founded by Ali Kessler in memory of her sweet, vibrant, and fearless 4.5-year-old son, Greyson, who was murdered by his biological father in a murder-suicide during an unsupervised, court-approved visit in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, in 2021. This came just hours after her petition for a domestic violence injunction was denied by a Broward County judge, citing that the “petitioner has failed to allege any overt acts by the respondent which would constitute domestic violence under Florida Statute.”
Ali’s advocacy efforts culminated in successfully passing Greyson’s Law during the 2023 legislative session. This bill now requires the court to consider threats against ex-partners or spouses when making child visitation and custody determinations in the court, expanding to include the following factors: evidence of domestic violence, whether a parent in the past or currently has reasonable cause to believe that they or a minor child is, or has been in imminent danger of becoming the victim of domestic/sexual violence by the other parent, even if no other legal action has been brought or is currently pending in court.
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Transcript
Lynn Stroud Podcast
[:Ali Kessler: Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Grey Minds Think Alike. I'm your host, Ali Kessler, and today I am speaking with Lynn Stroud, a renowned advocate in trauma recovery as well as a legal analyst. Lynn also participates with the Storytelling Collective at the National Domestic Violence Hotline, sharing her experience with intimate partner violence and reproduction coercion.
Lynn is a sexual assault survivor and now makes it her mission to help others by teaching practical strategies for cultivating a trauma enforced mindset and raising awareness to break the stigma surrounding trauma. So welcome lynn, thank you so much for joining us today.
If you don't mind, if you can just tell our listeners a little bit about your background. You can go from there.
ars. And I actually ended up [:Because I thought it was such a fascinating field to go into. But I'd say I. It has really helped me, years later while trying to make my way through all of this trauma and recover from all of these assaults. It's been really useful, have those skills, to be able to do the research and to be able to see what laws, our current.
Here in America and what bills are pending and also what's going on globally.
Ali Kessler: Right. Well yeah, that's definitely a great background to have. So I guess if we wanna go into, why you feel so strongly about sharing your experiences regarding all of these epic failures in the family court system, I'd love to hear.
roud: Right. Absolutely. So, [:Ali Kessler: you right there. Can you just explain what reproductive coercion is for our listeners?
Lynn Stroud: Absolutely.
Ali Kessler: I think I know what it is, but I just wanna make sure that it's correct.
Lynn Stroud: So reproductive coercion is a form of abuse where someone intentionally interferes with another person's reproductive health decision-making or pregnancy outcome, often to maintain power and control within a relationship.
ner pregnant when they don't [:Ali Kessler: Okay? So it can go either way. For or against. Okay. Got it.
Lynn Stroud: Absolutely. And that could also include even trying to not only just threatening them or verbally trying to convince them not to have an abortion. But it can also include, financially taking away the means to get an abortion.
Right. Or refusing to, allow them access car, a car to get to an abortion clinic or to get to a Planned Parenthood.
Ali Kessler: Right.
Lynn Stroud: And it can involve just other tactics like monitoring someone's menstrual cycle or withholding financial support for them to get contraceptive devices. And basically any kind of verbal, physical, coercive threat to control their reproductive choices.
So it really includes a lot.
at as well because my entire [:So, yeah, so I guess now I know that I'm a victim of that as well, and the whole reason why Greyson's father was so angry was because he felt that. This was not the way to bring a child into the world and that I ruined his life by making this decision when he had, he didn't have to be a part of it at all.
In fact, I gave him that out, but Interesting. Okay, so now let's hear about your background with it.
Lynn Stroud: Sure. Well, first of all, I just wanna say I'm so incredibly sorry. That you went through that, that you experienced that. And I'm also Thank you so incredibly sorry for your loss. Thank you. And my heart goes out to you and it's something that no one should ever have to experience.
I agree.
Ali Kessler: And that's why we're here today.
Lynn Stroud: Exactly. [:And we, the agreed upon method of contraception that we had agreed on was that he was going to pull out. And when it came to the last minute. He did not pull out. And I was so shocked when it first happened that I just looked at him and said, what did you just do? And this is a, this is before plan
Ali Kessler: B.
gynecologist and ask for it. [:Ali Kessler: Right,
Lynn Stroud: right. Because this was very early two thousands.
Yeah. I don't think I've
Ali Kessler: heard of it. Back then.
over the counter, maybe like:Because once I found out that. I was pregnant even after that one time. I didn't want anyone to know even though I was legally an adult, I was over 18 and I was 20. Sure.
Ali Kessler: I don't think scary for anyone, honestly,
Lynn Stroud: look around at any 20-year-old and say, that's an adult right there, like, right.
Ali Kessler: No, for sure. You
Lynn Stroud: know and the man that I was still in
Ali Kessler: college when I was 20, so I definitely, as, as
g about it once I told him I [:I'm not ready to be a mother. I still have two more years to go to get my bachelor's. I might wanna go to law school. I don't know, I'm right in the middle of this, transitionary period in my life. And also the father of the baby, he and I had only been dating for about four or five months.
Ali Kessler: So, so did he, so you did get pregnant from that incident, correct?
Lynn Stroud: I did. You did? I did.
Ali Kessler: And was that something that. You talked about before did he want children? Were you trying, talking about a future or was this sort of I'm playing these games to sort of lock her in because I want to control her?
o? His response was, oh, I'm [:Ali Kessler: right?
Lynn Stroud: But I was reminding him the entire time that we were having sex.
Don't forget to pull out. Don't forget to pull out, right? So really, there's no excuse, but once I was able to look back at the situation years later. I realized based on the way that he acted and the things that he said, that he 100% intentionally impregnated me and wanted to trap me into a relationship with him.
Once it was time for us to sit down and talk about what we wanted to do about the pregnancy and how we were gonna proceed going forward, he was so adamant against me getting the abortion. And it wasn't an easy decision for me to make, it wasn't like I just snapped my fingers and I was like, oh, I'll just go take care of this on Tuesday and never think about it again.
the spectrum, it's a really [:Right? He was starting to get more controlling, more possessive. He was, jabbing me with these little insults and, you know, side eyed, comments. And it was just getting, a more coercive as the relationship was going on, right? And so, eventually. Thankfully at that time I was able to get an abortion.
It was legally accessible in the state that I was in. And also, this was years ago before Roe v. Wade was overturned. Right. But he actually refused to drive me to the procedure. He refused to go with me and he refused to pay for it.
Ali Kessler: Okay. But you did it?
Lynn Stroud: I did it.
Ali Kessler: Okay. I did it. That was gonna be my next question.
who agreed to take me. Sure. [:Ali Kessler: Okay.
Lynn Stroud: And so, definitely a more liberal state. , The whole process of obtaining it, although stressful and emotional was. Fairly easy, like Planned Parenthood, when I went to go see them, they were very kind, they were very understanding, told me what my options were, and when, the one thing I was not expecting when I approached the clinic the day of was protestors.
Ali Kessler: Yes, I experienced that as well. Yeah. Yeah. I actually went to a clinic when I was pregnant with Grey. It was just like an all women's clinic, but apparently they're really big on abortion there. I wasn't going there for an abortion, but I just went to get some intel on how far along I was and whatnot. And there were a crowd of people with signs up about, against abortion.
And I was like, I'm, I'm not having one, but it's my right if I want one.
Lynn Stroud: Right. [:Right. In a young woman's life. With signs, screaming things at her or throwing things at her. It's absolutely horrific. Definitely
Ali Kessler: scary.
Lynn Stroud: Yeah.
Ali Kessler: But and you don't even know to what level they would go.
Lynn Stroud: Right. I think the interesting twist about my story is that it ended up affecting me later in life because not only did I end up staying with that man in a relationship with him after the abortion.
We ended up staying together for the next three or four years. Oh, wow. And the relationship at that pivotal point, the abuse kicked up a notch, right?
Ali Kessler: Sure.
the decision that I had made [:And it went on for the next four years after that. I mean,
Ali Kessler: it sounds like you were still together, so I don't know what he was. So upset about it. It's not like you broke up right after.
Lynn Stroud: Yeah. I think he was just so upset that I hadn't gone through with that. I hadn't, gone through with the pregnancy.
And he wanted any way possible to punish me and I think he was just such. A damaged person to begin with. And it just became horrific after a while. At one point we didn't live together, but we were still dating and I broke up with him and this was after like three, four years of us going back and forth in this tumultuous, I break up and then we get back together and this awful, vicious, abusive cycle.
. We're not doing this cycle [:I'm still in my mid twenties. I have my whole life ahead of me. Right. And I found out that he was stalking me. Right. So he actually broke into the house that I was living in. And I was there alone because the roommate that I had was in Germany for the summer. And the only thing I had with me was my dog.
And unfortunately, my dog knew who he was, so she didn't bark when he broke in the middle of the night. And he just came right in and walked into my bedroom. Scared me. And, what did he want? You know, he, the conversation with him, I was trying to like, catch my bearings, so I think I was so startled and I just started asking him questions like, what are you doing here?
Why are you here? Did [:Right. Ever. And that's still not
Ali Kessler: an invitation for someone to walk through the door
Lynn Stroud: act. Exactly, exactly. Just because you don't have to break to enter doesn't mean you can enter. Right. Like Right. It's not your domicile. You need to, yeah. But, so we, I ended up just trying to appease him as we were sitting next to each other, like on my bed, right?
And I said, okay, you know what? I don't want this to escalate any further. Why don't we just go to sleep and we'll talk about it in the morning? And when I woke up, he was gone. And he had left me this incredibly scary note that said a bunch of things, but one of the creepiest things it said was, I just wanted to watch you sleep.
Ali Kessler: [:Lynn Stroud: Yeah. But the interesting thing about that is that it ended up affecting me later in life because I carried all that trauma with me and because I had such a toxic circle of friends around me at the time, because many of them were also friends with.
The boyfriend that when I actually reached out to a few of them and said, he broke into my house last night. I think I should go get a protective order. Every single one of them was like, no, don't do that. You're going to ruin his life. And and they all said that the note was kind of sweet,
Ali Kessler: right?
So to him, he didn't break in. He was just coming to say hello,
Lynn Stroud: right? Because he missed right. Just popping in at 3:00 AM just, did he ever
Ali Kessler: do that again after that?
dn't. Okay. He didn't. But I [:and really hold him accountable. And sadly with people like that, if you don't catch them at the right moment and hold them accountable, they really believe that they can get away with anything and that they're entitled to anything.
Ali Kessler: Right. So what happened after that?
Lynn Stroud: So we ended up breaking up eventually and it ended in, you know, this terrible basically like violent verbal encounter.
And we were living together at that time and I eventually put everything that I could into a car. My dog was the first thing I put into the car, but I put everything I could into a car and I just drove away. And I went to my parents. And I had to finally open up about everything, right? That had happened over the last four or five years.
till, I didn't open up about [:You know? Sure. Things are gonna be, I've got my whole life ahead of me, but I kept getting into that same that same pattern. Exactly. Like with just similar men over and over again. Right. I dated another man. A few years later, I was maybe 26, 27, and he was also older, so he was like in his early thirties.
Right. And I thought, again, he's got a house, he's got a job, he's got a car. He's, he's good, right? He's got all the good things on paper that everyone should have. And that relationship became. Abusive as well. And it became physically abusive and verbally abusive in, in a different way, but also in similar ways.
You know, he was a [:Ali Kessler: women actually fall into a pattern where they attract the same type of men?
Do you think it's something that stems from their childhood or the way they're brought up, or maybe some sort of, I'm just curious on your take because I probably am guilty of the same thing I.
Lynn Stroud: I think for some of us, I can't speak for every woman. Sure. But I think for some of us, it absolutely stems from our childhood.
Right. If I look back, I would never say that my father was physically abusive, but my father was he was so emotionally absent.
Ali Kessler: Right.
Lynn Stroud: When I was just gonna say, mine was
Ali Kessler: all emotionally unavailable.
think that a lot of us, you [:To me, I think some of us with a lot of those parents that maybe fall into that boomer era
I think a lot of us are looking back and realizing a lot of our parents were really emotionally unavailable.
Ali Kessler: Yeah.
Lynn Stroud: And that probably stems from their childhood. Sure. Like their parents were coming straight outta war.
I mean, they Right. Everyone was just trying to gather food generational.
Ali Kessler: Right?
Lynn Stroud: Right. There's all this generational trauma that gets passed on and passed on and you know, I was the culture that I was raised in was so misogynistic and overprotective when I was a kid. It was like the boys could do whatever they wanted and the girls needed to deal with it.
Ali Kessler: Right.
everyone is going to try to [:So instead of looking to, instead of learning to speak up for myself. I just learned to quiet myself and anytime anything upset me, I just swallowed it. Right. And that's, I think, what led me into these recurrent vi, violent relationships, these toxic, terrible relationships. Right. And the man that I ended up dating in my late twenties I was actually raped by him while we were dating.
rape you, I didn't rape you.[:Right. I may have gotten a little rough, but I didn't rape you. Right. , And I felt like if I go to the police and it's my word against his, and I tell them that we were already having sex, and then he got violent with me and held me down and forcibly had sex with me, right? They won't believe a word that I say.
Ali Kessler: No, it's true.
Lynn Stroud: You know,
Ali Kessler: it's true.
Lynn Stroud: And a few years after that, I actually met my first husband. And at first, he seemed like a dream, there was so much love bombing going on, you know, and I had just gotten out of that second, really abusive relationship where I was sexually assaulted and.
on because you weren't ready [:But now you're ready. Now you're approaching 30 and we can start a life together, and now you can have that baby that you always wanted that. Hurts you so deeply inside that, the loss. Right. And everything he was saying was like right online. Right online. And it was love bombing. And he had me completely fooled.
Right. Completely fooled. Told me things about himself that I found out later were not true degrees. That he had universities that he attended, things that he had done in his life, things that he had not done. You know, he completely failed to mention that he had been arrested for distributing drugs early years earlier.
That would've been nice to know.
Ali Kessler: Sure. Yeah.
t with him, and I felt like. [:Right. To have children and everyone has flaws. And, but you know what? We love each other and we're gonna work on the flaws together, but no one's perfect. So let's just make this work. Right. Just like my parents did. Hey, my dad wasn't perfect, but my mom made it work. And I'm gonna be just like my mom.
And I admire my mother so much because she's so strong. But in a way, what she did for me to witness it was so toxic, right? 'cause I witnessed her stay. When maybe the best thing for her was to leave. To take us and to leave.
Ali Kessler: Right. Like staying isn't necessarily strong. We may have thought it was strong then because we're like, wow, she's really holding it together for the family.
se it's best for all parties [:Lynn Stroud: Absolutely. Absolutely. A lot
Ali Kessler: of couple stays together 'cause of the children and I'm always like, no. Separate because of the children. Absolutely. Like that's what you need to do to be, you know, have a healthy, you know, parent-child relationship.
Lynn Stroud: I couldn't agree more. And so once I married him at this point. I was in my early thirties, and we, of course he wanted to try to get pregnant right away. You know, he started talking about that even right when we were first talking, before we even got engaged. Oh, I want children with you. I'm so madly in love with you.
alist and I ended up getting [:Three times, and I lost all three pregnancies to miscarriage. Oh,
Ali Kessler: I'm sorry to hear that.
Lynn Stroud: Thank you. But it kept me, it kept me even more trauma bonded to him because then I wasn't just dealing with, past traumatic events and the way that he was love bombing me and lying to me. But now I'm dealing with grief on top of it, and I'm letting all this pile up.
No matter what I do, no matter how many counselors I talk to or therapists that I see at this time, I'm never able to like fully verbalize everything that's happened. I can never like fully peel back all the layers of the onion to get to the center, right? You know, , and I wasn't able to do that until two years ago.
I had a beautiful daughter. [:And the way that he knew that he could trap me. Was because we had all these deep conversations about our past. Right? And one of the things that I had told him about was that first boyfriend and how he had gotten me pregnant, how he had coercively, reproductively coerced me, right? How he had sexually assaulted me.
ou know? Fantastic. And so I [:I think that just consumed me, like I didn't even care about how ridiculous and completely. Non, unhelpful and non uninvolved. He was being, like, didn't wanna change any diapers, didn't wanna bathe her, didn't wanna rock her to sleep, didn't wanna help, you know, none of that.
He was, he started even avoiding us.
Ali Kessler: Right.
Lynn Stroud: You know, he started staying at work, not just late, you know, like maybe seven or eight o'clock. He started staying at work until like nine, 10 o'clock at night. Then it got later. Then he is staying at work until midnight. Right. Then he is not coming home until two in the morning, and I'm waking up to do like the two in the morning breastfeeding, and he's walking in the door, right?
e were you? I still, to this [:Right. I have no idea. But he was gone when I really needed him. But I was so wrapped up in this little beautiful ball of happiness and I was just so happy to have her. So I just said, okay, look, it's a rough patch. A lot of parents go through a rough patch when the baby's born. It's a tough, it's a tough first year.
Yeah. It'll get better. Don't worry, Lynn. Hang in there. Right, right. And I just kept telling myself those toxic things. Yeah. But.
Ali Kessler: A breaking point. I thought the same thing. I just kept saying to myself, I'm just gonna let this roll off my shoulder because I am happy with Greyson and all I have to do is look at him and just try to forget the other stuff.
t see them hold the baby for [:Oh, may maybe we're gonna be okay. You know, like there's that false hope you get
Ali Kessler: Sure.
Lynn Stroud: You know, looking at your baby and the father and you're like, maybe, maybe we're gonna make it through. Right. You know what? And but I hit a breaking point when she was maybe, I don't know, six months old and he started to become.
Not just absent. And I'd say like, , an uninvolved father, but he started to become verbally abusive. You know, he would, even at the times that he would come home from work, he would sit in the garage and he would just smoke cigarettes and play on his phone all night long. And I came down one night and I said, I can actually smell.
The cigarette smoke coming in the house. And we have a brand new baby, so, you have to stop.
Ali Kessler: Yeah.
Lynn Stroud: And he exploded [:Ali Kessler: You can
Lynn Stroud: Oh, okay. But you can edit it out later if it, you feel like it offends anyone, but he exploded and screamed at me while I was breastfeeding my child.
Fuck you, cunt. In my face while I was holding my baby. Oh, lovely. Breastfeeding my six month old baby. And I eventually did get him to leave because what I wanted was for him to leave us alone. Sure. Because it started to escalate more and more where we were. We would get into this arguments and I would be holding the baby in my arms and he would be standing in front of me with his fist clenched.
er been involved in because. [:I'm afraid for my daughter's life, things are escalating. He shouldn't have visitation alone with this baby. He needs to have. He can have supervised visitation, but he should not have time alone with this child. That he's never bathed, that he's barely changed a diaper, that he's never cared for this child, and now he's getting violent.
Verbally abusive and threats, to me, in front of, with the baby in my arms. The judge didn't care because I didn't show up full of bruises. Right. The baby didn't show up full of bruises. Yeah. If they're not seeing it physically, they don't care. He actually, we found out going through his medical records that he had tested positive for cocaine use.
Ali Kessler: Right
Lynn Stroud: around the time the baby was born. So he was using, but he's still a
Ali Kessler: good dad.
Lynn Stroud: Right,
Ali Kessler: which is what I got. Yeah. Which is every single
Lynn Stroud: time. That's why
Ali Kessler: all my, injunctions and petitions were all denied,
Lynn Stroud: right?
Kessler: Because everything [:Lynn Stroud: Right. It's so terrible the way that they treat asinine,
Ali Kessler: backwards,
Lynn Stroud: protective parents. So, for someone who was already so traumatized from previous abuse and from everything that had happened, I was absolutely devastated when that man showed up to the house to take that baby away, that baby that he had never cared for.
And he took her away for 48 hours from me. Right. And she was exclusively breastfed.
Ali Kessler: Right.
Lynn Stroud: And I was not pumping. She had never taken a bottle like she was only nursing. I was like, I'm never gonna see this baby ever again. How is she gonna go two days without milk? Right. You know, like, it, it was terrifying.
share that child. Sure. And [:And she even claimed that she was like a domestic abuse survivor. Right? And and I was like, oh, if anyone's gonna get it, it's this woman. She treated me even worse.
Ali Kessler: My judge that denied the, our first injunction was a woman, so yeah, it, you know, clearly it has nothing to do with it, but now I'm curious, what is something that you would have told your younger self today?
If you could go back and tell your younger self any piece of advice, what do you think it would be?
Lynn Stroud: Trust your instincts. Trust your gut. If you feel like something is wrong, right, it's something is probably wrong.
Ali Kessler: Right. I agree with that. Sometimes it's hard to really know what your gut is telling you.
that's the tricky part, but [:Seek help for.
Lynn Stroud: I mean, I think that if anyone has experienced any type of abuse verbal, physical, psychological, religious and reproductive coercion, anything like that, it's 100% not your fault. And I encourage you to try to find, a really helpful therapist, a counselor, a psychologist.
d it is really hard once you [:Ali Kessler: each time? Yes. I reclaim
Lynn Stroud: a little bit more of my voice, and who I am, and I'm finally starting to peel my way out of the darkness.
Ali Kessler: Oh, well, I'm glad to hear that.
Lynn Stroud: It's been a long road, but I encourage everyone to, try everything that you can try. If therapy is too hard, try just getting outside. , Take a walk, get a good friend who's a good listener,
Ali Kessler: Right. I anything. I agree with all of that. Now, how can anyone get in touch with you or find out more about, trauma informed care?
Lynn Stroud: Sure. I I do have a LinkedIn page. I also have an Instagram page. Okay.
Thank you.
You can either contact direct me directly or you can also go through the domestic violence storytellers Collective.
Ali Kessler: Okay, great.
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