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She Was Given Three Months To Live
203 Plays1 year ago
Aoife Griffin was given three months to live. Her heart and organs were failing. The doctor told her it was her choice to live or die. The mother of four had to fight for her life. And she did.
Then COVID hit. She was stuck at home with her children and an abusive alcoholic husband. For a year.
Aoife tells us her powerful and inspiring story of healing, escaping abuse, starting over, and how she's now helping others.
Aoife's website
Aoife's Instagram
The Life Detox is brought to you by Bubble & Bee Organic
If you are in an abusive relationship and need help, reach out at 800-799-7233 or visit https://www.thehotline.org/
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Transcript
Ifa's Health and Personal Struggles
00:00:05
Speaker
Ifa Griffin's doctor gave her an ultimatum. Her heart condition had worsened, and he said, it's up to you whether you live or die. Today, she's sharing her dramatic story of escaping long-term domestic violence, being trapped with an abuser during COVID lockdowns, and finally starting her life over. It's a story of hope and perseverance. She speaks to us from Ireland, and I'm presenting this episode with limited narration.
Introduction to 'The Life Detox'
00:00:31
Speaker
I'm Stephanie Greenwood, and this is The Life Detox.
Family and Career Beginnings
00:00:50
Speaker
As with many abusive relationships, IFA's story starts out like a fairy tale.
00:00:56
Speaker
I met my then husband very young. I was 23. We had one of those whirlwinds within a year. I had met him. We were engaged. We had a baby. We bought a hex. Everything had happened all at once. At the time I was working in hospitality. He was like a staff accountant. I was a revenue manager. Felt good about myself and where I was. Everything happened so quickly. I didn't even know what happened. By the time our son was two, we were married and then expecting another baby within two or three months later.
00:01:26
Speaker
I had doubts, but something goes, you're overreacting. Don't trust your gut. There's something not right. I overrid it. And it's amazing how you can tolerate a lot of stuff without even realising that a lot of my thing was anything for an easy life.
Workplace Challenges and Domestic Control
00:01:41
Speaker
My eldest had autism, ADHD. He started having epileptic seizures from the time he was 18 months. So all of my attention was on him. I then was bullied in work while I was pregnant with my second child. I ended up going into early labour because of it. Then ended up getting a pay out. So I was then at home.
00:02:01
Speaker
You're thinking, God, he's been so lovely. He's so good. He's got, you know what? I'll go to work. You stay at home, focus on the kids. You don't have to worry about it. Little did I know that that was, let's cut you off. Let's now take away your financial freedom. Now let's take away your independence. Knew none of it. I just thought, oh gosh, isn't he so lovely? Like he's working so hard. Then of course, because he was working so hard and I was at home all the time, that meant then that he should be rewarded by going out and drinking.
00:02:27
Speaker
He would disappear, or he'd go on binges, or he, you know, there was all of these kind of patterns began. But again, anything for a quiet life. Anything to kind of keep going. And because my son was really struggling, he was taking up all of my energy. So I kind of just, nothing slight. Then we had our third baby.
Health Crises and Family Chaos
00:02:42
Speaker
My eldest son ended up incredibly sick. He ended up with septicemia, and we thought he was going to die. He was in an isolation ward. They at one stage thought he had leukemia. They thought like he was really, really, really sick.
00:02:53
Speaker
He had kidney abscesses and horrendous things. And I was due to go for a scan. And fibroids and things like that. And Evan was in hospital. And the nurse turned around to me and she went, you should go have that scan. It was like two minutes, like the next hospital up. I went and the doctor said, you either have a very large cyst or a very small baby, but neither are in the place that they should be because they were wedged in the lining of my womb. So they were like, we actually don't know how you have either of those things in this position. And that's what I discovered. I was expecting my fourth child.
00:03:24
Speaker
I was just like shocked, like really, really shocked. So we had Elise, she's my little girl. So I have three boys and Elise is my little girl. And for the whole of her pregnancy was horrendous. I got paravirus. They told me she had a hole in her heart. They told me she had possibly Down syndrome. They told me she would be lucky if she was five pounds. Like she'd see the cardiologist before she was born. The amount of stress in her pregnancy was just unparalleled for a man I think else I'd ever experienced. Then she came out and she was
00:03:53
Speaker
eight pounds for rhymesis. And she was like a little butt up. As I tell you, somebody who came out and she was just like filled with fluid. And that was Elise. She was the only one of my kids that was overdue. In the first two weeks, they lose all of that. And she's just been telling you everything. She's like this little petite little thing. And she's the most amazing, amazing gift. So that's where we kind of stopped our family in that
Heart Condition and the Decision to Escape
00:04:14
Speaker
kind of way. And it took me probably another three or four years when I was diagnosed then with a stress-related heart condition.
00:04:23
Speaker
Two of the kids had had chest infections. So I automatically thought I just had what they had. But I nearly crashed my car one day with the immense pain on my chest. As a mum and as a woman, how often do we not listen to our bodies? So for a long time I had niggling pains. And if there's anybody out there listening to this who has niggling pains, please go get your niggling pains checked. Because I kept thinking, there's nothing. I brushed it off. I powered through for so long. I went to my GP and he was like, I really think you need to go and get your heart checked.
00:04:52
Speaker
I was like, no, it's fine. It's chest flexion. And he went, okay, we'll get a chest x-ray. And he was like, okay, it's your asthma. There's a flare up. Okay. And then the pain got progressively worse. And it was literally somebody was sitting on my chest and coming at my back is the only way I can describe it. And you know, you kind of eventually go, I can't power through this anymore. I need to go and get checked.
00:05:12
Speaker
So over here, there is a cardiac unit where you could go in and you could see everybody in the day. So like you got all your tests done, you got to see a consultant like a walking clinic. So I went and I did that and I'm looking around the room. I was 37. I was the skinniest person and the youngest person in the waiting room. I was like, I am going to be absolutely fine. There is nothing going to be wrong. And then I met the cardiologists after all the test, after test, after test. They went, yes, you either have a really rare condition
00:05:40
Speaker
or you have this RVOT which is stress-related, but you definitely have something. Here's a heart monitor, go home, we'll see you in 24 hours and we'll check all your tests. So I walked out of there going, oh my gosh, and I could, so many more expletives that I won't use on
Transformation and Healing Journey
00:05:54
Speaker
air. And at that moment I rang home, I was just in shock. My then husband turned around to me and he just went, I've been home with kids all day, I need you to go to the shop and get wine.
00:06:01
Speaker
And I was like, oh my god, you know when you have a light bulb moment and you go, whatever this is, I have to figure out how to get out of here. And that was a moment that I realized he didn't give a flying fig about what happened to me. And that was my moment where I went, I don't know how, but I'm going to figure out how to get out of this.
00:06:18
Speaker
It took me another six months where my weight really dropped so low that my organs were starting to fail. January 3rd I was back in hospital and I was told by the loveliest professor that I had three months to live. There was an issue at my heart, there was an issue at my liver, there was an issue at my stomach. My weight was so low you could see every bone in my body is the only way to describe it.
00:06:36
Speaker
And he sat there and he went, the only good news is all of this is reverse, but you have to make a choice. This is your moment now where you can either stay as you are and you will be dead in three months or you do everything that you're told to do and more and you change your life and you live. And I just sat there and I have four children. I don't have a choice. Tell me what I need to do. And at the time it was the middle of flu season. There wasn't a bed to admit me. He knew I had four kids at home and I explained to him the source of my stress was also the fact that I was living with
00:07:03
Speaker
with an addict at the time and my eldest son had so many issues still at that stage and I had three other kids. Like so many women because I put so much energy into my eldest I felt then that I needed to pour love into all the others and got involved in all the other stuff so that they didn't feel left out.
00:07:20
Speaker
So I literally neglected myself as the only way of looking at it to the point where I was given three months to live. And that began my healing journey. So I didn't tell anybody. I just sat with it and I just went, holy crap, what do I do? The shock really hit me of how low I had got. I walked out of the hospital crying with a prescription and a phone number, a plan of some description. And I was just, I don't think I've ever felt so alone and so lost in all my life. It was probably one of the scariest moments ever.
00:07:48
Speaker
this could be it, I could leave my kids. And the waiter, that was just terrifying. So, and yet at the same time, when you said, you have a choice and you can't save yourself, I just went, well. And that made me relook at everything. And that's when I suddenly had to go, right. A psychologist who worked with my son turned around in one of the parenting courses we were on, but she said, right, you have to put your big girl pants on and you have to face the problems. And she was talking about it and totally different, but that voice at the back of my head was like, right, big girl pants on, what can you change and what can you do?
00:08:16
Speaker
And that's when I went on this journey of self-discovery and healing. I tried everything. And I mean everything that you can possibly think of. And I had no idea at that stage that I was in an abusive relationship. But I could kind of start to see the way that the house was not serving us. So for me, the stress of my son, his health, his behavioral difficulties, his struggle, he was being incredibly badly bullied.
00:08:43
Speaker
He has suicidal ideation. He just wanted to end it off. So there was that stress. And then there was the relationship stress. Then there was three other kids. And there was all of this trauma circle. Like this little volcano waiting to erupt nearly every day. You know when you're walking on eggshells and you're just like, I don't know how to get through, but all I need to do is get to bedtime. When the kids go to sleep, as soon as the kids
00:09:06
Speaker
stopped meeting me. I went into panic mode and I used to have a panic attack every single night for years. Unredounced myself all the damage I was doing to my nervous system and my body but I was living in a permanent state of flight or flight and it was when I started really researching the damage that that does and the damage that trauma does to your body it was just like well game-changing.
00:09:31
Speaker
So we did all the things. So for me, I went, I did what the hospital said. I went to a dietician. I got an eating plan. I was sat across a table at my sister's wedding. One of the guys there ran a gym and I would have never thought of joining a gym in a million years. I couldn't have looked less like a gym person in what my, in my, in my imagery of what a gym person would look like. I couldn't, I mean like skin and bone. Like when I think of how bad I looked at the time and if anyone looks at my Instagram, I have photos of how bad I was at times.
00:09:59
Speaker
Like, my face was full and I was completely gone. It was horrendous. He said, come to the gym and we can help you build your way back. We can get a diet plan. You know, we can really help you. And I went in on the very first day and it was terrifying. It was one of the scariest things I've done was walking into this gym, meeting this lovely personal trainer called Laura. She's one of the angels.
00:10:17
Speaker
helped save me because she helped me learn how to get into my body because for me I would have definitely thought there was a complete disconnect like the head was up here doing its thing and the body was down there and they felt at war and every sensation in my body felt like an attack because I was so used to being anxious and all of my anxiety was in my stomach so that's why I couldn't eat that's why I left lost so much weight I was eating enough to survive but not enough to live I was running on empty
00:10:45
Speaker
Then I started to do real alternative stuff. So I learned about hypnosis, energy healing. The first time I started studying Reiki, and when I had my first attunement, that was the first time the pain on my chest left. So I, at the time, was waiting for heart surgery. Within six months, I had regulated my heartbeat so that I didn't need to have surgery. So all of the things that I was doing helped. Granny had died, but at her funeral, I met a naturopath. And she had gone, you don't need surgery. Come to me.
00:11:14
Speaker
and I'll help you with herbs and with reflexology. But she had all these alternative type things. So I went to her and I think that I found worked, I retrained in. So I became an RTT therapist. The rapid transformation would disappear too, because I found the hypnosis side really game changing. Because when I learned
00:11:31
Speaker
how powerful we were, the professor said you have the power to change it. So if I had the power to change it, that meant that I was doing it to myself, which gave me some ownership. For so long I wanted a magic wand. I wanted somebody who was going to fix me, who was going to cure me, who was going to take my pain away, who was going to help me just magically wake up one morning and be better. And I think when you're always looking outside, it totally just takes all your power away.
00:11:56
Speaker
And when you haven't ever had any power and you've been in an abusive relationship you're already so low and you're already thinking I'm worthless and I'm useless and I can't do anything anyway so what's the point in trying? But in that few moments those little glimmers going actually do you know what you have the power to change your mind and your mind affects your body and the thoughts and the emotions that you're having are what's actually causing your health problems.
00:12:19
Speaker
was absolutely unbelievably empowering. So things like mindfulness, I became a mindfulness practitioner. I did happiness coaching. I did quantum flow, which is like breath work. And I did flow coach. I did everything that helped me. And then I learned all about manifestation. For two years, every day I went, I don't know how, but I need to get out of my marriage.
00:12:41
Speaker
At the time, I had no money. I had four children. He had control of everything. We were living in the same house and then COVID hit. And we were stuck in the same house with no escape. I don't think I've ever been more scared in my life. After the break, Aoife will tell us how she survived COVID on lockdown with her abuser and the one thing she said to her son that finally allowed her to escape.
00:13:15
Speaker
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00:13:35
Speaker
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00:13:54
Speaker
at the time I had already said to him I'm leaving him
Lockdown and Escape from Abuse
00:13:56
Speaker
and he was like well there's nowhere to go so if you want to take the kids and go off you go so he was sleeping upstairs and I was sleeping downstairs on the couch and in that year of lockdown I honestly do not know how I survived I do not know how my kids survived I ended up having to get a safety order and on two occasions I had to take the kids and leave the house because we felt in danger
00:14:14
Speaker
And I used to just every day go, I don't know how, but I need somebody to save me. I need somebody to save my kids because it was getting dangerous. And at that time, there was no escape. We had nowhere to go. So nobody could go anywhere. You couldn't talk to another household. You couldn't see anybody. We were all stuck. And I know there's so many women and men who were abused in that time who had no escape. And it was horrendous. But for me, it was like, right, this is it. We have to figure it away.
00:14:42
Speaker
So I knew about a thing called the mandatory child protection. But subconsciously I knew that if I was getting help from my kids and they were being honest about what they were living with, somebody else was going to have to press the escape button. Because I couldn't do it. I didn't have the strength. I was so busy trying to rebuild myself, I couldn't take that final step. But I knew that somebody else would have to do it if I didn't.
00:15:09
Speaker
Kyle was, there was an incident one night where he got hurt. He was in counseling for it. His conversation with his counselor, I was like, you need to tell, tell her everything. Tell her everything that happened this week and how it made you feel. He did. An hour later, I got a call going, we have got to, because of Giles mandatory protection.
00:15:27
Speaker
We have got to report this to Tixla. Do you ever just feel like somebody has just taken this weight off you? Because if somebody had told me that Child Protective Services were going to be the people who were going to be my knight in shining armor, I would have gone absolutely not. Because for years, I hid everything. Nobody was supposed to know how bad things were. Nobody was supposed to know what was going on behind closed doors.
00:15:46
Speaker
everything was supposed to be fine. If you looked at my ex's Facebook, we're the happiest family in the world. Like I say, they got involved. It took three months because things are so slow. It took three months for the call to come from them saying, we're investigating you and asking what was going on. And they had to interview me and they had to interview him. And then they rang me back and went, if you do not get a borrowing order to remove him from your house,
00:16:10
Speaker
we will be in court doing it for you. But at that stage then too, so when we are going to do this for you, for your kids and to get out of my hands. So that was on the Wednesday he moved out on the Thursday.
00:16:23
Speaker
Everything changed from then. Everything just, my kids changed. Their anxiety, they had howl, had skill refusal. They all had stomach pains. Every one of my children had been in hospital with some form of stomach problems, with some sort of anxiety related issues. We all breathed, I think for the first time. I think the night that he left and I got into my bed for the first time in nearly two years, I slept. And it was like my body just went into shock and went, this is what you've been missing.
00:16:51
Speaker
And then by doing more healing and more healing, I discovered the impact of the toxic situation that we were in and how trauma had caused so many my illnesses.
00:17:05
Speaker
If you had asked me about domestic abuse, I always thought, no, he doesn't hit me. I've not been abused. Not at all. Absolutely not. When I looked into course of control, when I looked into financial abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, every box was ticked. I couldn't see it. When I was in it, I could not see
Realization and Rebuilding Life
00:17:22
Speaker
how bad things were. I was just focused on keeping my kids alive every day. You did this. You healed yourself. You have come through all of this stuff on your own. You have saved your kids.
00:17:32
Speaker
And now I have manifested my gorgeous old mate. He's a beautiful man. We now have a new baby, so we now have five kids in the house. And he had his own trauma. When you start doing this sort of work and you really realise how stress can really kill you and the impact of trauma and the impact of abuse, I would never have thought that it could damage my organs, for example.
00:17:54
Speaker
I know now that we hold grief and sadness and depression in our lungs you know our past our kidneys you know all the kind of hurt in different organs the liver was anger and for me obviously I had all this repressed anger that I didn't do anything with because I was so busy just smiling going everything's fine I have you know the kids are great everybody's fine but on the inside I was screaming
00:18:18
Speaker
and not listening to my body. And whenever I'm working with anybody, now I go, when does your body start to whisper before the war? Because for years, I had ovarian cysts. And it was funny because when I listened to your podcast about your PCOS, I was like, oh my God, I never even caught on my giny issues at the time I've stopped. And as soon as I listened to you, I was like, no, they've gone. They're linked to trauma. I had heavy periods.
00:18:46
Speaker
I had stomach issues, I had the weight loss and actually only two weeks ago I was clearing a theatic, there was a load of photos.
00:18:54
Speaker
And I could actually document my decline. Or I could see myself fading away into nothing. And you know you can see the sparkle net in your eyes? And the life just being drained out of you? And I was like, how did I not see it? Because at the end, I didn't recognize myself in the mirror. By the time you're finished with a relationship like that, you don't recognize who you are. You don't even know who you are. I didn't know my own name by the end of it nearly. I didn't know who I was on my own. I was so used to being just a mum, a wife,
00:19:23
Speaker
I didn't know who to be and to have to rebuild yourself and your identity again. And then there's the financial side of stuff I had to suddenly figure I had to support for children on my own. So I had to, I could say I retrained in things. And now I really, really, really make my own mission to help.
00:19:40
Speaker
to understand the impact of stress and trauma on our bodies and how to rebuild ourselves and so much of it comes from us neglecting ourselves and us suddenly thinking that we are not worthy of, in my case I didn't feel worthy of food I wanted to make myself so small I disappeared so that nobody would see me
00:20:01
Speaker
So I literally made myself so small, I didn't exist anymore. And I have, slowly but surely, I'm rebuilding myself. I'm on this 90-day program at the moment, I'm doing it with clients, they're trying to lose, I'm trying to gain. It doesn't matter because so much of our weight issues, and I'm sure you know this yourself, like it isn't around food and diet exclusively, it is about our self-worth. And our body just thinks to protect ourselves unknowingly. So my body's way of protecting itself was to make myself so small, I disappeared and he didn't see me.
00:20:31
Speaker
other people's is to make themselves bigger so that they're stronger and the predator won't attack because they think I could get somebody weaker. It's all our body's ways of protecting ourselves and through hypnosis and the work that I do is amazing because when you go into the subconscious mind and you talk to the part of yourself
00:20:49
Speaker
that has created the issue, so be it anxiety, be it weight, be it guining issues, be it heart conditions. When you talk to yourself about what happened and why, 85% of them will say to protect, to keep them safe. It's unbelievable what our body does to try and protect us and when we can use our power to protect us in a different way, it's amazing what we can do.
00:21:13
Speaker
And we can harness the power of our mind and our thoughts to improve our health, to cure our illnesses, to heal. But we're not taught those things. Nobody tells you that you can actually use your mind to heal yourself.
00:21:28
Speaker
that you can actually direct your thought and reprogram your organs to go back to their original coding and feel good again and to work how they're supposed to and to function how they're supposed to and to literally rebuild yourself from the inside out. It is amazing how powerful we are, yet so much of us
00:21:45
Speaker
are using that power to self-destruct rather than to empower and rebuild. That is what I hope that my mission going forward in the world is, is to reset the self-destruct and rebuild. Because if I can do it and I'm not special, anybody can.
00:22:01
Speaker
We get told things as a child. For me, I was told I was a hypochondriac. I was told there was never anything wrong with me and to stop listening to my gut instinct. So I didn't. So when my gut was telling me, run for the hills, I went shh. But when you start to tune into your body and start to listen and start to kind of go, I have enabled certain circumstances here, that's when you can kind of go stop. Breathe for a second. What am I doing right now in this moment that's enabling this situation?
00:22:28
Speaker
What am I doing? When did I stop? And all of my stuff is around feeling safe. I didn't feel safe in my body. Every sensation felt like an attack. Like I felt like I was at war with myself on a daily basis. So a massive part of the work I do is around people feeling safe in their bodies. How can people work with you? My website is zforgriffin.ie. I do almost all my work online, which is amazing because it opens things up.
00:22:54
Speaker
At the moment, we're in a 90 day program. They also have a six month one for anybody who's fighting their body and wants to reconnect and wants to feel amazing. And I work in a holistic manner. So we work on the mind, the body and the soul in bite size, really safe.
00:23:10
Speaker
non-scary ways. If you're from .ie or own your power within on Instagram, you can DM me and I will happily chat about anything. Is there anything else that you want our listeners to know? You are more powerful than you think and no matter how bad things might feel today. So if anybody out there is listening at the moment and they are battling a health condition or they are in a relationship, it doesn't matter how bad it is today. There is hope for you to get out of it.
00:23:36
Speaker
you can totally change your life. If someone had told me three years ago where I'd be now, I never would have believed them. So things can change really fast when you start to become aware of the fact that you deserve better.
00:23:48
Speaker
I've linked to IFA's website and Instagram in the show notes. Her programs include hypnosis, energy healing, manifestation, and so much more. I thank IFA for sharing her powerful and inspiring story with us. If you are experiencing chronic health issues and stress, I do encourage you to listen to your body, get help, and have a talk with yourself because you might need a life detox.
00:24:26
Speaker
The Life Detox is produced by me, Stephanie Greenwood, and brought to you by Bubble and Be Organic. The views and opinions expressed are the speakers' own and do not necessarily represent those of myself or my company. Material and information presented here is for general information purposes only and is not medical advice. Being a guest on this show does not imply endorsement of Greenplay LLC or any of its projects. Stay well, friends.
00:25:00
Speaker
Next time on The Life Detox. I'm talking with therapist Maggie Nick who's gone viral talking about parenting and how quote, good kids can silently suffer. She opens up about her chronic health struggles after growing up with a narcissistic parent and so much more. I hope you'll join us.