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Tracey's Story: Dead or Alive? image

Tracey's Story: Dead or Alive?

S1 E5 ยท Benita & The Berracas
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112 Plays2 years ago

Tracey is shocked when she finally uncovers the truth about her fiance, including disturbing lies about family members.

Transcript

Introduction and Guest Welcome

00:00:04
Speaker
Episode 5, Tracy's Story, Dead or Alive?
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to Benita and the Baracas. Nancy will correct me on how to pronounce that in a moment. Thank you all for being here. Before we start, I just want to say, if you're watching this on YouTube and you have not yet subscribed to this channel, please do so so that you can get updates on when new episodes come out. If you are listening to this, you can find me on Instagram and TikTok at lovekond, which is L-O-V-E-C-O-N-N-E-D. I appreciate all your support and the following. And tonight,
00:00:39
Speaker
I have with me my dear friend Nancy. Welcome back, Nance. Hello, darling. How are you? Good, honey. You're looking fabulous. Thank you, honey. You too. I love the blue butterfly. And then we have also from Florida with us tonight, Tracy. Welcome, Tracy. Hi. Glad to have you with us tonight. Thank you. Thank you for coming on to share your story. It's not an easy thing to do. Really appreciate it. I'm excited to be here.
00:01:06
Speaker
I'm really glad you're here. Before we start, I have to say, give a little disclaimer here. We do swear on this show. There is adult language in the show, so be forewarned, please. This is not a G-rated show. She's mainly talking about me, but I'm trying to do better. I will. Because you don't want me.

Tracy's Connection to Benita's Story

00:01:30
Speaker
OK, so Tracy, I think you first heard my story on Dr. Death. Is that right? Yes, that's correct.
00:01:36
Speaker
What was it when you heard my story? I'm just curious. What was it that resonated with you or what were your thoughts? What made you reach out to me?
00:01:44
Speaker
When you started talking about the crazy, um, the crazy lies, I mean, it just, it resonated with so many things that I had been through. I had reached out cause I just wanted to say thank you really, because I know it's so hard to talk about and people don't realize that these things happen to, to a lot of us and we feel stupid and we feel embarrassed and we don't want to talk about it and we want to hide our story. But I mean, I think the more of us that yell it from the rooftops, the less people it's going to happen to.
00:02:14
Speaker
100% yeah could not agree with you more and that's why I'm so grateful that you did reach out and I'm so grateful that you're Talking it's it's hard. It's hard to talk about and it's it's hard to be in the public eye and I've been doing this for Seven years now and it's it's still hard I still get all the the shamers and the haters and the and I've been talking a lot about that this week the victim shaming It just never ceases to amaze me, you know here we have
00:02:39
Speaker
women, I mean, all of us have been through things and to come forward and talk about it and be brave enough to talk about something that's personal and humiliating. And then to have the finger pointed at you, you know, it's like, Whoa, this is just the wrong. It's so it's just it's so damaging. I hope we can do something to

Jay's Initial Attraction and Secrecy

00:02:55
Speaker
stop it. You know, so we're gonna give you first of all, we're gonna give you your guy a fake name because we don't want to so make us give us a name. What are we calling your guys tonight? Jay.
00:03:04
Speaker
Jay, okay, I'm calling him Jay. So you met Jay back in 2005, right? Yep. I know you told me you were going through a kind of a vulnerable period at the time. What was going on in your life? I had gone through a really ugly divorce, had been in an abusive marriage. So I had come through all that and had reached a point where I just, I'd stopped dating. I didn't date anybody for several years. My daughter at the time was
00:03:35
Speaker
gosh, she must have been like seven or eight. I was just really, I'd spent several years just focused on being a mom and dating was the last thing on my list. So I had signed up on an online dating site. I met him online and we hit it off really easily and very quickly from there.
00:03:54
Speaker
What about him at the beginning that attracted you to him? What about him drew you in? His sense of humor. He didn't take things super seriously. He didn't get angry. I think coming out of having been in an abusive relationship, interacting with someone who didn't get angry, who didn't yell and lash out over minor things was appealing to me. So coupled with his sense of humor and his intelligence and
00:04:22
Speaker
We just connected on a lot of levels. That's the hard part with any of these guys, right? At the beginning, you think they're kind of like Mr. Perfect. Yeah.
00:04:32
Speaker
Especially a couple months after we started dating, my mom had a heart attack. I ended up staying in a hotel for a week while my mom had triple bypass surgery so I could be at the hospital with her. When I went to go check out and they're telling me that my bill's been paid because he had called and paid it because he didn't want me to have that stress in my life. Having somebody who was thoughtful and caring and
00:04:58
Speaker
You know, it made me feel special. And you hadn't been dating him very long at that point, right? No, I think it was maybe like two or three months at

Breakup and Reunion with Jay

00:05:07
Speaker
that point. Yeah, definitely. That would be just something nice, kind, and generous. Yeah, right? That just seemed like a nice person. Yeah.
00:05:15
Speaker
So I'm going to go through, Tracy, some of the things, but you said not very long into it. You started to feel like you phrased it as a dirty little secret. Explain that to us. So we were more than a year into it at that point. And I hadn't met his family. I hadn't met any of his friends. I was a separate piece of his life. And I pushed and pushed and pushed because it bothered me. I did. I felt like a dirty little secret. He was ashamed of me. And he had to hide me away.
00:05:47
Speaker
Did he give you, what was his reason for not bringing you into the fold of his life and introducing you to his family, his friends, whatever? At the time, he said he didn't have a lot of friends, that he hadn't been in Florida for that long. I was okay with that. With the family, it was that they wouldn't approve of me, that I was a single parent, that I was divorced. That's hard.
00:06:13
Speaker
And he would say, he's like, well, I've only ever brought one other person around for my family to meet. And that was somebody that he said he had been engaged to. And at one point, we did break up because I had just reached the point of, listen, if this isn't going to grow beyond where we are, then what's the point of this? I'm not going to stay in the wings forever. Talk about a warning sign.
00:06:37
Speaker
Beep, beep. That's like emergency, get out, pull the slide.
00:06:44
Speaker
Yeah. And then he kind of lowers you back

Romantic Proposal in Key West

00:06:47
Speaker
in. How does he do that? So it was going into the holidays and my daughter and I had had pictures taken. And so on a whim, I sent him a Christmas card with our picture in it. But then a couple of, I guess about a month or so after that, he said that he'd been thinking a lot and he wanted to sit down and have a conversation with me.
00:07:11
Speaker
And against my better judgment decided, okay, let's all sit down and I'll have a conversation with him. And so, I mean, I flat out said, I'm not going to go back to what we were just doing. You know, we need to be working towards getting married. I mean, we've been together, you know, we've known each other for two years at this point. So, you know, the agreement to get back together was based on the conversation of him saying, okay, yes, we will work towards getting married and we will, you know, move things forward from that point.
00:07:39
Speaker
Yeah, things are different. Yeah, and then he did propose, right? It sounds like a kind of a gorgeous proposal. Tell me about that. He had booked a couple days in Key West and we were staying at a beautiful hotel right on the water and walked out on the pier at sunset and he had proposed at sunset on the pier there. Romantic. It was very beautiful.
00:08:05
Speaker
So at this point, you think everything's kind of okay, right? Yeah, at this point, I had met his parents. So things had started to progress in what people would be normal. So he was following through on the things that I had told him needed to happen in order for us to be together.

Suspicious Cancellations and Lies

00:08:23
Speaker
But then you start talking about a series of kind of catastrophes, right? Often there are excuses why he has to cancel plans at the last minute or he's disappearing. So the first one was actually I had had surgery and spent like four days in the hospital. I come home and he promised he was going to be there to help take care of me. And so we get back from the hospital and
00:08:47
Speaker
Like, within hours, he's telling me, he's like, my parents were in Canada, they were in a car accident, the OnStar went off, and fire rescue came and got him. His dad, I guess he said, his dad had a heart attack. But he had to jump on a plane and take off and take care of his parents and be with his family.
00:09:05
Speaker
Even though you just got out of surgery, you sound like an idiot or an asshole if you say, oh, stay with me, right? Right, exactly. Then I'm the asshole because I want you to take care of me because this is what you promised me you're going to do. And then my mom had another heart attack. And so he's on his way up to be with me and tells me that he gets a call that his dad had a stroke. And so he can't come to be with me. He's on his way to go help take care of his parents.
00:09:35
Speaker
Um, and then there was his mom being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's leukemia. And with that, it was a constant. I mean, every time I was expecting him to show up, he would disappear because, oh, mom's having this, this catastrophe and this catastrophe. And it was always coinciding with a holiday. Um, in my case, it was an emergency surgery, but it was always at the holidays too. Yeah. Interesting.
00:10:02
Speaker
And then there were situations where it was like I was running the Chicago marathon and he was supposed to fly out to be with me, but all of a sudden he comes down with the flu or something. And you know, it was like every time I turned around when I needed him and I was going to rely on him, some catastrophe happened. Right.
00:10:21
Speaker
The walking catastrophe, I call it. Yes. And then during all of this, so your wedding keeps getting postponed, right? You're engaged, but the wedding plans keep getting postponed? Is that right? There was just so much going on with his family that there was no way. Yeah. But at the same time, my mom's in and out of the hospital. I had had continued health issues, so I had had
00:10:42
Speaker
actually two surgeries that year. And my daughter is starting middle school. So like my focus is not really on that. I think this is another thing that happens too when women get involved with these types of guys.
00:10:57
Speaker
They have an ability to not only choose women that are vulnerable, but also to choose women and they choose them on purpose that are often single moms or widows or whatever with kids and big jobs and whatever that we have so much going on that we literally can't. We're focused on all this and they count on that because they know we don't have time to zero in on all that bullshit.
00:11:20
Speaker
Okay.

Discovery of Jay's Secret Family

00:11:21
Speaker
So then his mom dies in 2008 and he flies you to Philly for his mom's funeral and tell me. Oh gosh. Yeah. So this is, um, so he flies me to Philly for his mom's funeral and I can't get ahold of him. And so now it's the night before and I'm still not getting ahold of him. It's the morning of, and I finally reached him and he tells me that he's, I don't remember where he was. It was Virginia, North Carolina, somewhere, somewhere not in Philadelphia though. Um,
00:11:51
Speaker
But what he tells me is that there had been multiple disagreements in the family and that his mother had told his father that I was not to be at her funeral and that he would lose his trust if he brought me with him to the funeral. And so his- What's wrong? Why are you the big bad witch? What's wrong with you? I wasn't good enough. That was the
00:12:21
Speaker
That's just awful to hear. I'm really sorry. Yeah, it was horrible to hear. But at the same time, that to me was secondary because I'm concerned about him who's just lost his mom. So it's like, okay, fine, whatever. So he said that he and his sister, who was also dating somebody that they apparently didn't approve of,
00:12:41
Speaker
had taken off and had gone to Santa cabin and to do their own memorial for their mom. And that was where they were. And they weren't going to go to the funeral. No outsiders, right? Nobody from the outside. It wasn't just you. Right. Well, but so from there it gets crazier.
00:13:02
Speaker
So from there he's like he tells me that his dad was driving to where they are and his dad has a heart attack and That they were on the way to the hospital to take care of their dad because he was on death. He was on his death bed at that point. Oh Man, okay
00:13:22
Speaker
another catastrophe. You kind of get fed up, right? But then he kind of comes around and you guys move in together. And he starts being really good with your daughter. Yeah, so after, you know, him being long distance for a while there with him in South Florida, and I'm in Central Florida, my daughter starts playing soccer on a highly competitive level. So we're traveling a lot. So his suggestion was, well, either work full time and put her in private school. Or if you want to work part time, I'll
00:13:51
Speaker
I'll cover the expenses in the house and you can homeschool her and not worry about it. And so that was what we ended up doing. He sponsors her soccer team. He's at her games most of the time. I mean, he's a huge support for her during this.
00:14:07
Speaker
But you also said then he would disappear like three or four nights a week, right? He would be gone on either to conferences or like in other parts of the state. And so he would stay for a night or two. But with everything I had going on, it wasn't a big deal to me. It was fine. And because his office was over an hour away, he would sometimes tell me he was staying in his office. And if you questioned it, did he
00:14:34
Speaker
make you feel like you were kind of the one that was crazy or something was wrong? Then I was the asshole. Yeah, so whenever he would start getting sketchy and I would confront it, he would manipulate it to make me feel bad. Yeah, gaslighting. Yeah, gaslighting. I used to call it the fog of lies. Anytime I would question my guy, they're so good at twisting it around that your head starts feeling foggy because you're like, okay, wait, am I the one that's crazy? Am I the one that's wrong?
00:15:03
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And the fact that they can keep all the lies straight, like that's the part that always baffles me. It's like compartmentalizing. Okay, so now I want to fast forward to March of 2015. You guys have been together 10 years at this point, minus, you know, time off for breakups, right? You're still engaged. Yes, don't worry.
00:15:26
Speaker
You take this big ski trip to Colorado. Part of it is to celebrate your 10-year anniversary. And this is where everything blows up. Tell us what happens. So we were in Colorado, and when we got there, there was a weird situation where he had a niece who went to school in Colorado who lived in Florida, though. So
00:15:49
Speaker
He was borrowing her car the week that we were there. He asked me to get something out of the glove box and I reach in there and I find a driver's license with a name on it and the name doesn't make sense. It's his niece's driver's license and his niece is his sister's daughter who was married.
00:16:08
Speaker
It has his, his niece has his last name, which doesn't add up. And I'm like, why does, why does she have your last name? If this is your sister's daughter, why doesn't she have her father's last name? And he's like, Oh, my sister never took her husband's name. And so the kids have her name. And I'm like, okay, weird, but just sort of filed it in the back of my brain. But the entire trip, it was, it was like an itch that I was like, something's not right here.
00:16:34
Speaker
Intuition, intuition. Yeah, female intuition. The very last day, I'm upstairs in the condo that we had rented, getting ready, and on a whim, I put the name into my phone just to search, and I come up with a Facebook page for this girl, and it has her going to a high school on the east coast of Florida when I'm under the impression that they live on the west coast of Florida.
00:17:03
Speaker
So I'm like, this doesn't add up, but now we're running out the door. So we go out, we ski the rest of the day and this has been, this bothers me the entire day. So we get to the airport and I pull out my laptop and I put that name back into, I Google search it again.
00:17:18
Speaker
And this time I come up with an obituary. You know, I'm under the impression his mom died in 2008. Well, I pull up this obituary for his mother from 2014 saying that his mother was survived by... Wait, wait, hold on. For six years, he's been telling you his mother's dead and she's still alive for six whole years. And his father, he told me his father
00:17:43
Speaker
When his father had that heart attack, his father ends up passing away. That's not dad either? Dad is still alive to this day. And there was a nephew that he killed off as well that is still alive as well.
00:17:59
Speaker
But then there was a part about. But wait, wait. It's better. So I'm reading the obituary and I'm sitting at the airport, like waiting to board a plane and the obituary says that she is survived by her three children, including Jay, his wife.
00:18:20
Speaker
and their two children, Denise was his daughter. Oh, God. Oh, no. Denise has been telling me- Denise has been married this whole time. Yep.

Confronting Jay's Deception

00:18:31
Speaker
So then I get on an airplane and I fly home and I'm like freaking out in my head the entire time. And I don't need that, right? He told you he had three sisters and one of the sisters had two kids and it turns out that those kids were his kids, right? And the sister's probably his wife. His wife, his wife. The other, he had two sisters and the third one was the wife. Damn. Slick Willie, wow. Who lies about somebody dying? That's demented.
00:19:01
Speaker
She said, I felt numb. Nothing felt real. I felt like I was looking at myself from the outside in. And I know that feeling so well. Like, who was this person that I thought I was in love with? Who was this person that's sleeping in my bed, right? It was just surreal. Like, time wasn't moving. And I'm just watching this from the outside. And I didn't want to speak. If I said anything, if I spoke, it was real. So I just said nothing. Like, my daughter was trying to figure out what's wrong with me. Why am I not talking?
00:19:29
Speaker
and I'm just completely silent through this entire flight home, the entire drive home from the airport, even once we get home. Everything just felt like it was moving in slow motion around me and I'm just sitting there watching it happen from outside of myself. Because it's such a shock, right? Yeah. What's real? What else is a lie? What in the things that I know about you and the things that we've been through for 10 years now, what is real out of this?
00:19:58
Speaker
And who I was like a rolodex. And then you're now you're putting it in reverse, like the scene from a movie and you're just, you're back playing it now and you're like, was that real? Was that real? Was that real? Exactly. So
00:20:13
Speaker
Did you confront him? I don't confront him for a couple of days, actually. Because he went to Chicago. I've gone into full like private investigator mode at this point. He was coming back Wednesday. So we had made a plan to meet and have dinner. I didn't want to confront him at home because I was scared. Not that I was ever scared of him, but when you confront somebody and you corner them, you don't know what they're going to do. And I did not want to risk that. So I wanted to confront him in public.
00:20:43
Speaker
So we get to the restaurant and we always sat next to each other when we were in a restaurant. We never sat across from each other. So as we're walking up to the table with the hostess, I'm like, Oh, I don't want to sit next to him. I want to sit across him. I want to see his face. So I excuse myself and I run to the restroom really quick and I come back and I sit down and I chugged to my teen heaps in about three seconds. And I'm like, I'm like, listen,
00:21:10
Speaker
You know all those deep, dark secrets in life that you would never want anybody to find out about?
00:21:16
Speaker
I know all of them. And I just waited for a reaction and there was none. It was just poker face, no expression whatsoever. So he's like, well, if you know, then I don't need to tell you anything. And I'm like, no, I want to hear the words come out of your mouth. I want to see you. I want to see you tell me this. And did he? He tried to glaze over things. He was like, oh, well, you know, you found out I have a wife. Okay. Yeah, but we're divorced now. And I'm like, well, you know,
00:21:46
Speaker
Why have you been lying all this time?" And he's like, well, I wanted to tell you so many times, but I knew that if I told you and you knew the truth, you would leave. Well, no shit, Sherlock. Why do you think he did this? What do you think is wrong with him or is wrong with him? I think that his marriage was broken and he was looking to cheat and he never intended to actually develop feelings for somebody. I'm going to say, Tracy, even if that were true,
00:22:13
Speaker
That's maybe understandable, but to make up these kind of lies. Right, but then at that point he was too far in to backpedal. And so I think that he just kept digging the hole deeper and deeper, hoping that eventually it would level out. But it wasn't ever going to because at some point I had to find the truth. That's the same with my guy. But also I think
00:22:33
Speaker
In order to be able to tell those kind of lies, you're a pathological liar at a minimum. Yes. And more likely a sociopath, right? People don't tell those kind of lies. You don't walk around for six years saying your mother's dead when your mother's not dead. Right. And his father. I mean, he'd been telling me his dad was dead since 2008, the same year.
00:22:51
Speaker
And the actual nephew, not the nephew that was really his son, his real actual sister's son. He told me he was shot on Christmas day in a hunting, on Christmas Eve in a hunting accident, shot in the head. The whole thing made up. Wow. The other thing that really killed me about all this, aside from all these people that were still alive or died when, you know, later than that, you also found out that the ring was less sort of like I did. The ring was fake, right? Yep.
00:23:18
Speaker
So at that point we had split and I had a daughter going off to college and I'm trying to restart my career because I had stopped working in what, 2009. So I'm trying to get myself back on my feet. And so I take the ring in to see what it's worth because I'm under the impression that this is a platinum ring with a large diamond that is a very good cut. So I get in and they're like, that's a cubic zirconia.
00:23:48
Speaker
Sorry, and it's titanium, right? You know, my ring was fake too, right? I don't know if you knew that part. Yeah. Mine was supposedly worth $100,000. It was actually worth maybe $1,000 if I was lucky.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah, this was supposed to be like a VVS one, like, you know, almost perfect, asher cut two carat diamond. It was definitely a slap in the face. After so many years of, you know, canceled wedding dates and postponed things that hurt. That was hard. Sorry.
00:24:21
Speaker
You talked about the fact that they kind of walk away, you know, even when they're caught, they just walk away and they don't understand how much it fucks us up mentally when they do this.

Recovery and Trust Issues

00:24:30
Speaker
They walk away and move on with their lives. And we are stuck with the guilt. Yep. The guilt, the shame, the emotional backlash of it all. And he was married, he was married to someone else within a year of us breaking up. Damn. Wow. Wow. How did that make you feel? Do you feel like he ever actually loved you?
00:24:49
Speaker
I do feel like he loved me, but it was a slap in the face. But there's also guilt because you put your kid and everybody in your family, you put all these other people through this. And so there is guilt. There is a sense of, you know, I brought this into my daughter's life. Very much so. So Tracy, how are you doing now?
00:25:15
Speaker
Is there a rainbow? Is there a light at the end of this rainbow? You're so beautiful. You're such a pretty lady and you have such a nice heart. How are you doing?
00:25:31
Speaker
Financially and professionally, I'm fully recovered. I'm in a good place in those parts of my life. Relationship wise, it's definitely been a struggle. I mean, how do you trust? How do you let your walls down? And then I try to date and I get into these situations where I'm told I'm quote unquote too independent because I can't allow somebody in enough to let them
00:25:56
Speaker
feel like I need them because I don't and I don't think I ever need another person at this point and so you know, I've come to terms with that and and
00:26:08
Speaker
You know, I'm pretty upfront with people about what I've been through because like, as soon as I meet somebody, like I need last names. I'm doing like, I see all the courthouse records. If you've told me you're divorced, I want to be able to see proof of your divorce. If you're separated, I want to see that there's a divorce finalized. I mean, like. Badly necessary. Yeah.
00:26:28
Speaker
But a good person will understand that. Like, Monita and I talk about it all the time as far as, wow, what do our, what do our later years look like? I'd like to meet somebody again and fall in love again. I know, but you start wondering if you ever will. Yeah, we're bruised. We're broken. We're hurt. And it's hard to trust again. And, you know, because there are so many really good liars out there, you know, it's like, what about your daughter? What kind of impact impact has this had on her?
00:26:57
Speaker
She has trust issues. I think she's okay from it, but she has similar trust issues that I have with everything. Yeah, it's hard. You guys still close, your new daughter? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're very close. Yeah. And thank goodness we have that, right? I think this would be so difficult if... I can't imagine having done this alone, and I have...
00:27:22
Speaker
Nancy here, incredible. I have really, really incredible friends that have gotten me through this. And like, I don't think I could have gotten through it without them actually. I was really fortunate when I moved. So when everything happened and my daughter was going off to college, I didn't have anybody, any real strong support system where I had moved to in South Florida. So I moved back to Central Florida, where my family is.
00:27:48
Speaker
And because I had lived here before I had, you know, I had friends and stuff like that here. And so when I moved back, um, my friends just, they, they introduced me into their circles of friends and they, they just embraced me. I mean, they, they never let me sit home and feel sorry for myself. No matter how many times I just wanted to be home and by myself, they dragged my ass out and enjoy life and live.

Support System and Moving On

00:28:15
Speaker
And.
00:28:15
Speaker
and not dwell on it. And they pushed me to move forward with my life. And I am so grateful for them and my brother, especially. I mean, I don't know how many times I've cried on my brother over everything. And yeah. I just had goosebumps because that's your tribe, you know? Oh yeah. We talked a little bit at the beginning about victim shaming, but what are some of the things you want women to know, Tracey, that might be
00:28:44
Speaker
just coming out of this or going through this or watching this tonight thinking like you when you listen to me like oh god that's that's me that's my story um i think the i think the the biggest takeaway is you can't you can't let it break you number one but you also can't um you
00:29:06
Speaker
It happens no matter how smart you are, no matter how intelligent you are and how much you think you have your eyes open, things happen and you can't control them. And all you can do is control how you respond to them. You can't control the things that happen to you. Yeah. Very well said. Yeah. Very well said. I can relate on that in so many levels and gratitude sets in for the people that did pull you up and
00:29:35
Speaker
slap you around, let's go, get up. I think the message too is that you can, and that's what I always want women to know, is you can survive this. It feels like you can't. And there are still days when I'm just like, oh, why am I doing this? But you can survive this. And it does make you better and stronger. And I think talking about this is so important because it's just
00:30:00
Speaker
that's the only way to fight back against all the naysayers and all the trolls and all the haters and all the people are like oh you're so stupid that would never happen to me you know you know every day on tiktok i see this oh please that would never happen to me it's like you know what don't be so sure you know yeah be careful yeah right and it's like because when you take
00:30:18
Speaker
10 years worth of crazy situations and you condense it into a one hour conversation and you're just seeing those crazy situations. There's still 10 years of normalcy and just day to day life where everything is good and we're happy and everything is fine.
00:30:39
Speaker
Well, thank you, Tracy. I'm really glad you reached out. I'm glad to meet you virtually. Yes. And which Nancy I forgot at the beginning, I'm going to let you do to explain what a Baraka is. I'm going to let you tell you how, tell everyone how you pronounce it correctly and what it is. I forgot to do that at the beginning. Well, Barakas is basically a Colombian name for badass women. So.
00:31:03
Speaker
It's for women that have come back from something and
00:31:10
Speaker
you know, resolved and just strong women, you know, resilient women, resilient. We celebrate you, Tracy, and we encourage you. And I really encourage you to write, write your book and whether, whether it's a blog, vlog or podcast, whatever, you know, your story is amazing. I want to reach out. Yeah.
00:31:39
Speaker
You know, we've all got those stories and it's like, you know, we got to tell them and share them because hopefully there's some younger women out there that maybe the one message they get is just pay attention. I know we're doing the right thing by talking about this. So thank you. Like I said, I really appreciate the platform to share my story because it is important. I think that the more women, the more people hear it, the less likely someone else is to go through it. Yeah.
00:32:07
Speaker
And maybe they'll wake up and resolve and realize their situation. Yeah. Very strong. Thank you. Thank you so much. Hopefully we'll get to meet in person sometime. Yeah. All right. Keep in touch, Tracy, for sure. Absolutely. Thank you both. Good night. Good night. Thank you. Until next time.
00:32:30
Speaker
This episode of Benita and the Baracas was hosted and executive produced by me, Benita Alexander. My guests are Nancy Comba and the lovely Tracy. Episode was edited by Brandon Kiefer.