“I have to stop pleasing everybody because I will lose myself.”
At 24, Ebony Jones-Thomas hit rock bottom. After a lifetime shaped by foster care, adoption, multiple sexual assaults, identity struggles, and relentless people-pleasing, she made one decision that changed everything.
This sexual assault survivor story isn’t just about overcoming childhood trauma, it’s about healing from trauma and reclaiming identity. It’s the journey from being labeled “a statistic” to rewriting an entire life through faith-based healing, self-forgiveness, and the radical act of choosing yourself.
For the first time, Ebony is sharing her full story publicly. Her vulnerability offers hope to every survivor quietly asking the same question she once did: How do I move forward?
The Beginning: Grief and Identity After Adoption
Ebony’s trauma started at birth. Born to a prostitute as a result of a one-night stand, her mother used drugs during pregnancy. Ebony was severely underweight and had to be detoxed immediately after birth, spending weeks in the hospital.
When Ebony was nine months old, her mother was brutally murdered by her pimp, who was also Ebony’s birth father, listed on her certificate. “She was killed when I was nine months and it was a very brutal murder,” Ebony shares. “So many people were like, ‘You never really knew her, so how can you be sad?’ For so long I felt that. I wasn’t really sure how to grieve, or even if I had the right to do so.”
This begins the complex journey of grief and identity crisis after adoption that would shape Ebony’s childhood.
Placed in foster care, Ebony experienced split custody with her birth father, a life of high drug use, gang violence, and women constantly in and out of apartments. At age two, her father put her in the front bedroom so that, when drive-bys happened, she would be safe.
“I had bullets flying through my bedroom at the age of two years old,” Ebony remembers. “I’m to this day deathly scared of guns.”
The ongoing trauma of those early years led to Ebony being diagnosed with PTSD at age three. “What does a 3-year-old know about post-traumatic stress and how do you cope with that or nurture that?” she asks.
At five, Ebony was adopted. Her birth father, who fought for custody primarily to keep the social security check from her mother’s death, couldn’t be bothered to show up to court. Her adoptive parents won custody.
“I wish I could say that after that, life was great,” Ebony reflects. “I always say I went from rags to riches.”
She moved from inner-city Gresham, Oregon, heavy with drugs, killings, and gang violence, to an affluent neighborhood. But overcoming childhood trauma doesn’t happen just by changing environments.
The Identity Crisis: Not Fitting Anywhere
One of the most painful aspects of Ebony’s healing from trauma journey has been the identity crisis that foster care and adoption created.
“I grieved a little bit of each loss every time I had to move, every time I had to go into a new family,” Ebony shares, until she was adopted.
“I was a minority. We were one of the only biracial families in my neighborhood,” Ebony explains. “I went to a school with maybe eight other Black kids. I was like one of the only adopted people in my community.”
At five, trying to explain why your mom is white and you’re Black? “Does anybody want me or am I just this hot potato?” Ebony wondered.
The grief and identity crisis after adoption compounded with each transition.
At 16, Ebony discovered the gruesome truth about her mother’s murder by reading court records. Around the same time, she realized the man on her birth certificate probably wasn’t her biological father. “Now there’s this added layer,” Ebony says.
The People-Pleasing Pattern
“I didn’t really find my identity until I was in my late twenties because I was such a people-pleaser,” Ebony admits. “I wanted people to love me. I just wanted somebody to love Ebony.”
Even after adoption, with parents who said “we love you and accept you,” Ebony felt she had to prove herself. With an older biological brother in the family, “I’ve always felt like I had to be just a hair better. I had to be better in school. I had to be on the straight and narrow.”
She was a straight-A student, not because she was naturally gifted, but “because I was always seeking acceptance. I wanted people to keep me in their lives.”
Sexual Assault Survivor Story
At 16, while Ebony was already navigating identity struggles and people-pleasing patterns, she experienced her first sexual assault. Her brother’s friend, a 21-year old cheerleading coach, assaulted her.
“For the longest time I blamed myself,” Ebony shares. “Maybe because I was a cheerleader and I worked cheerleading chores, I was enticing this 21-year-old. I had a lot of older men who liked me at a young age. To me it was just normal.”
College brought another sexual assault. “That’s when I got raped,” Ebony states plainly. The response from authorities and even family was predictably victim-blaming: “You drank too much. You still consented. You were at the party.”
“We put a lot of blame on ourselves,” Ebony explains. “‘Maybe they’re right. Maybe I did consent. Maybe I did say ‘yes.’ A lot of women carry that guilt that I carried for so long.”
This sexual assault survivor story also addresses why survivors don’t immediately come forward, a question constantly asked by those who don’t understand trauma.
“Why aren’t people coming forward? Why are they waiting seven years?” Ebony recounts hearing. “They say survivors just want money, that they waited for the perpetrator to be successful. No. It’s because you drag us through the mud.”
Survivors have to relive and retell their assault multiple times.
“You dissect every aspect of our life that you don’t do for a male predator, trying to find a way to blame us,” Ebony says. “For some of us, our peace is worth so much more than that.”
For Ebony, pursuing legal action wouldn’t have improved her life. “Going after this person wouldn’t have made my life better, because guess what? There’s still a million more predators out there.”
The Pivot Point: Choosing Self-Love
Ebony’s rock bottom came through a relationship. “I dated somebody and we got pregnant,” she shares. “Abortion was never, ever something I agreed with. I was in a situation where the father had the opposite say of me.”
That relationship and that choice became the catalyst. “I said, I have to stop pleasing everybody because I will lose myself.”
At 24, Ebony made the most important decision of her life. She took one full year to focus solely on herself. She became celibate. Stayed single. Dove deep into therapy and journaling. Confronted her buried trauma. Learned the art of self-forgiveness.
“I was done being a statistic,” Ebony declares. “At one point in my twenties I accepted that if I didn’t know my background, I was gonna be okay. When I stopped the search of being told who I was or needing something to validate who I was, I just released it. I decided that I wanted to rewrite the story. I wanted a different narrative.”
One year after beginning her healing intensive, she met her husband, Drew.
Faith-Based Healing: PTSD Recovery and Resilience Through God
Throughout her healing journey, faith-based healing played a central role. Ebony’s faith in God sustained her through the darkest moments.
“I had to lean in so much to the deep rooted faith,” Ebony shares about the year after meeting Drew. Even with healing work done, life immediately tested her: a deployment, a mother-in-law who didn’t want her to marry her son, temptation after temptation, people-pleasing exes suddenly noticing her “glow up.”
“Just a lot of noise that could have broke me down to be like, ‘Let me please all these people,’” Ebony says. “If I hadn’t done that year of me, I don’t think I would’ve survived that. I don’t think Drew and I would’ve been together.”
PTSD recovery and resilience isn’t just about healing the past, it’s about building the foundation to withstand future storms. For Ebony, that foundation was built on faith-based healing and the deep work she did in that transformative year.
Boundaries with Family & In-Laws: The Ultimate Test
Shortly after Ebony met Drew, her mother-in-law wrote her a personal letter. “She let me know that the whole family thought I was wrong for Drew,” Ebony shares. “She discredited my sexual assault. She told me how I responded and grieved was too casual, that the fact I seemed over it, I spoke so freely about it, and she called me a liar.”
For a sexual assault survivor story, this kind of invalidation is devastating. For someone overcoming childhood trauma rooted in abandonment and seeking acceptance, this rejection hit every wound.
“That was really the first time since my healing journey I had experienced a hard rejection,” Ebony admits. “That was the last time I ever thought about suicide.”
But here’s where boundaries with family & in-laws became Ebony’s superpower.
Instead of arguing, defending, or people-pleasing, Ebony did something radical: “I said, ‘You’re right. Maybe I still have some more healing to do. I’m still very new in my journey.’”
She didn’t take it personally. She acknowledged that her mother-in-law might be projecting her own unhealed wounds. “There’s probably some trauma in her lifetime that I don’t know about, and that’s for her to deal with.”
Ebony made a choice: “I remember writing and saying, ‘I’m worthy of this love. Even if it’s hard, I’m worthy of this love. He loves me, I love him. And at the end of the day, that’s what matters.’”
Today, Ebony has boundaries with her in-laws. “We have an odd and beautiful in-law relationship,” she says. “It’s ideally not where I want it to be. And that’s okay. I don’t let that dictate my happiness or my peace.”
Her mother-in-law is a good grandmother to Ebony’s kids, and Ebony wants them to have a relationship. So, they have firm boundaries: don’t speak poorly of Ebony, don’t make the kids choose, respect their parenting. Those boundaries have never been crossed.
This is healing from trauma in action: choosing peace, setting boundaries with family & in-laws, and modeling forgiveness for her children.
Forgiveness and Self-Forgiveness: The Hardest Work
Throughout her healing journey, Ebony discovered that forgiveness and self-forgiveness were essential, and that forgiving herself was actually harder than forgiving those who hurt her.
“I had to learn the art of forgiveness of her [referring to her mother-in-law] and of myself,” Ebony says. “I’m not perfect. I’m sure I said some things that stirred the pot. I had to forgive myself.”
Forgiving her birth father, her mother’s murderer, the men who assaulted her, the systems that failed her, all of that paled in comparison to forgiving herself for the choices she made while coping with trauma.
The abortion she didn’t want. The people-pleasing that made her lose herself. The years spent performing instead of being authentic. The guilt she carried about the assaults. All of it required self-forgiveness.
“I’m not gonna let them continue to steal my peace,” Ebony declares about choosing forgiveness. “Without that year of work, I think I would be a very different parent.”
Running for Mental Health
“I’m a runner,” Ebony identifies herself. Running became more than exercise; it became therapy, release, and a path to her nonprofit work.
Running Foster: Supporting Foster Youth
Ebony runs “Running Foster,” a charity helping kids transition out of foster care.
“We help provide college applications, driver’s ed, extracurriculars, homecoming tickets, prom, birthday celebrations,” Ebony explains. “All those things not covered by the state. We help bridge that gap so kids can be kids. The world is already heavy. The last thing you should worry about is having a roof over your head when you turn 18 and you’re still finishing high school.”
Why Survivors Don’t Come Forward
“People always ask: Why aren’t people coming forward?” Ebony addresses this. “Not only do we have to relive it, retell it multiple times, you dissect every aspect of our life that you don’t do for a male predator. At the end of the day, would a conviction have given me anything more? Probably not. My peace is worth so much more.”
The Tools That Changed Everything
Celibacy: Ebony removed romantic relationships to focus inward. Therapy: Professional support helped her to process trauma and develop new patterns. Journaling: She externalized thoughts, tracked patterns, and witnessed growth (fostering hope). Faith: Christian faith-based healing provided meaning and strength. Boundaries: She learned to say no and stop people-pleasing. Self-Forgiveness: The hardest work was forgiving herself for her survival strategies.
These tools equipped Ebony to handle every future challenge: her husband's deployment and her mother-in-law’s rejection.
“I know that one year really set the pace for me to meet Drew and for the foundation of our marriage and our family.”
Life Today: PTSD Recovery and Resilience in Action
Today, Ebony is married to Drew, and she's a mother of two, with her family living in Boise, Idaho. She works as a corporate recruiter, runs competitively, and operates the Running Foster charity.
“I want people to feel seen,” Ebony says. “In the job market, it’s one of the most rejected places. I love giving people visibility.”
Even in her day job, Ebony’s healing shows up: helping people feel valued and accepted, the very things she craved her entire childhood.
“I wanted to rewrite the story,” Ebony said at her pivot point. She has.
This is PTSD recovery and resilience in action: not just surviving but thriving, not just healing but helping others heal.
Why This Sexual Assault Survivor Story Matters
Ebony’s story matters because:
For young survivors: She chose healing at 24. You don’t have to spend decades in pain.
For those foster kids and those who were adopted: Your grief is valid even if you never knew your birth parents. You’re not a hot potato, you’re a whole person worthy of love.
For sexual assault survivors: You don’t have to pursue prosecution to be validated. Coping after rape looks different for everyone.
For people-pleasers: You can stop. You can set boundaries. People-pleasing recovery is possible.
For those struggling with family relationships: You can have boundaries with family & in-laws and still have relationships with them.
For everyone asking “How do I begin to heal?”: One year. Ebony took one dedicated year focused solely on herself and her healing. That transformed everything. Whether it's one year or ten years, healing requires to focus inward on ourselves.
Your Healing Journey Starts Here
Whether you’re healing from trauma, coping after rape, navigating grief and identity after adoption, breaking free from people-pleasing, or asking “How do I move forward?” Ebony's story offers hope.
You don’t have to have it all figured out. You don’t have to heal overnight. But you do have to choose yourself.
“When I stopped the search of being told who I was or needing something to validate who I was, I just released it. I decided I wanted to rewrite the story.”
That one decision changed everything: I am worthy of this love. Even if it’s hard, I’m worthy of this love.
From this point forward, you can be who you want. Regardless of your past, you can rewrite the story. You can refuse to be a statistic.
Your peace is worth it. Your healing is worth it. You are worth it.
Connect with Ebony Jones-Thomas
Ebony is active on LinkedIn, where you can connect with her.
For resources on healing from trauma, coping after rape, and overcoming childhood trauma, visit our Resources page.
This is Ebony’s first time sharing her complete story publicly. May her courage inspire yours. May her choice to heal at 24 encourage every young survivor that it’s never too early to choose yourself. In fact, the sooner you start, the longer of a joyful life you will give yourself.
You, too, can heal. No matter your age.