They're Not Going to Believe You, Tell Them Anyway: Jenny Combs on Turning Adversity into Advocacy cover art

They're Not Going to Believe You, Tell Them Anyway: Jenny Combs on Turning Adversity into Advocacy

They're Not Going to Believe You, Tell Them Anyway: Jenny Combs on Turning Adversity into Advocacy

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Jenny didn't set out to become someone who testifies before legislators or writes articles that strangers message her about at midnight. She set out to survive.

Her story begins with a childhood defined by a cousin's long illness and a quiet sense of not fitting the mold — too physical, too emotional, too outside the lines of what a Southern girl was supposed to be. It moves through a high school history teacher who noticed her grief and used it, a disclosure her mother couldn't quite hear, and a decision to pack the memory down and keep going.

Decades later, in the middle of a marriage under enormous strain, Jenny found herself in a counselor's office hoping for help. What she got instead was a second round of the same thing — grooming, manipulation, and an abuse of the therapeutic relationship that left her more broken than when she arrived.

In this conversation, she talks about what it feels like to recognize a pattern you lived through twice before you had the language to name it. She talks about transference, about the way predators weaponize your own vulnerability against you, and about the specific devastation of not being believed by the person you most needed to believe you.

She also talks about what came after. The six-month recovery program. The slow return to therapy with a practitioner she could actually trust. The decision to go public — anonymously at first, then fully — after the person who hurt her told his version of events before she could tell hers.

Jenny is now in her second year of pushing for legislation in Mississippi that would criminalize sexual misconduct by licensed counselors against adult clients. The bills have not yet passed. She believes they will.

This episode is for anyone who has ever asked themselves whether what happened to them was real, whether anyone would believe them, or whether speaking would cost more than staying silent. Jenny's answer to all three questions is direct, hard-earned, and worth hearing.

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