In the inaugural episode of the "Pain, Passion, and Purpose" podcast, host Shakeea Torres delivers a raw, autobiographical testimony that frames her life as a continuum of pain, passion, and purpose. She recounts a childhood marked by extreme poverty, an alcoholic and abusive single mother, and repeated sexual abuse by her mother’s boyfriend from ages eight to eleven. After disclosing the abuse, she was removed from her home by Child Protective Services and placed first with the abuser’s sister—who herself was a victim of familial abuse—and later with a great‑aunt who subjected her to further manipulation and neglect. A subsequent tragedy struck when her mother died in a house fire, leaving her and her siblings orphaned. Throughout these hardships, church and choir participation offered a spiritual refuge, eventually leading her to testify against her abuser. In 2008, Shakeea surrendered her life to God, describing a gradual, divine‑led healing process that transformed her pain into a calling. She now works as a Christian life coach, therapist, and mentor through the Empowered Purpose Academy, the podcast’s sponsor, and invites listeners to engage, subscribe, and support the ministry.
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Welcome to Pain, Passion, and Purpose. I am your host, Shakeeta Torres, where I share mental health education, biblical teachings, and tips to help you to heal on purpose so you can walk boldly in your God-given purpose. This podcast is sponsored by Empowered Purpose Academy, a certified online Christian academy where we provide services such as certification for Christian life coaches, mentorship for master's level aspiring and existing Christian therapists, mentorship for Christians, and continued education courses for the body of Christ. You can visit www.empoweredpurposeacademy.com to learn more and to download your free guide. If you like today's episode, please subscribe and leave us a raving review so so that others can tap into the knowledge and wisdom that will be shared on this podcast. Thank you so much for being here. Hi, my name is Shakeeta Torres and welcome to the first episode of my podcast. So today I'm going to talk about pain, passion, and purpose.
You guys, pain, passion, and purpose is literally the story of my life, word for word, okay? And so today I want to talk about my pain and share with you guys my testimony, my story, and some of the things that I've been through. There's no way I can share every single detail, but I do want to share with you all just a synopsis of my story so that you can understand why I'm so passionate about what I do, why I'm so passionate about being a life coach, why I'm passionate about being, being a therapist, and all those good things, and how I got to where I am today. I was raised by a single mother, and I'm the oldest of 4 children. As far as I could remember, we always live in like a 2-bedroom apartment or 2-bedroom house or 2-bedroom trailer. We've never really had enough room for the 4 of us to have, you know, separate rooms. My mom had 2 boys, 2 girls. As far as I can remember, my mom, for the most part, was always an alcoholic, and she always was involved in domestic violence relationships. And I mean drag-out fights, fussing, arguing. They even abused me and my siblings as well. And so my childhood honestly was horrible. We were in poverty and we always had food stamps, Medicaid, and WIC. Half the time we didn't have any lights on or have water, and so my mom would have to always borrow money or always have to ask for help, or I always have to go to our neighbors to ask them if we could use their water hose to bring water into our house. And so just imagine at, you know, that age, you know, being, you know, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, I'm going through all these different things. But at 8 years old, my life turned around for the worse. At 8 years old, my mom's new boyfriend had sexually assaulted me. For the very first time. I will never forget it. I'll never forget the way he looked. I never forget the time, the trailer, the situation, and all of that. My mom was asleep, and I'm assuming she was probably drunk as well. And so that was the first time that it had happened, and I was honestly confused. I was in a state of shock, and I did not know what to say. Or even how to tell my mom. And he came back again like the following week and did the same thing. And so again, I was shocked, didn't know what to say, didn't know how to act or anything. And at that, he didn't even— you guys, he didn't even groom me. It was like he was sent from Satan himself. And, you know, typically when a child is being sexually abused, the person that's doing it, they may know and they may groom them for a period of time. But no, it was the very first time I met this man and he put his hands on me. From age 8 to 11 years old, this man continued to abuse me. So I'm assuming around 11 years old, maybe a little bit sooner, I was spending weekends with one of my cousins, my mom's cousin. And I'm assuming that they must have like noticed some behaviors or things I've done or said to make them believe that I was being sexually violated. And for all— as far as I know, God probably told her, hey, or show her in a dream or vision, I don't know. And I might have to go back and ask her, hey, how did you know that I was being sexually abused? So anyway, I'm at that time, you know, I would go with her to church all the time, and I love, love going to church. It was my escape. It was an escape from my situation, my reality. I mean, I was in the choir singing, and I just loved it, loved it, loved it. It was really like, oh my gosh, you got— I can't even put it into words how much my heart was so full just to be a part of that ministry. And so I'm so grateful for the seed that was sown in my life at that age. At that point, she took me to see her pastor and he too asked me the same question. And I told them exactly what had happened, what had been going on. And so from that point, he ended up calling the cops, and I ended up going back home. But I remember DSS coming to the house, and they took me out the home. Now, at the time, I didn't know this until a few years, like, you know, later, after, you know my mom had died, but she had chose him over me. My mom had a choice to choose me to stay there or tell him to leave. So just imagine, you know, how I felt. You know, I'm the oldest of 4, having to actually leave my home. And not only that, they end up placing me in the home with my abuser's sister. Now, his sister was sweet, she was awesome, and she was the only person that did not have any kind of criminal history or have anything going on in her life that would prevent her from having temporary guardianship over me while they figure out the court case and figure out what to do and all that good stuff. So I was there for a few months maybe, um, but she definitely believed me because she said that her brother, which was my abuser, had also abused her when she was younger. And not only that, her other brothers were also abusive. They were, you know, sexually abusing other girls, and my abuser had already been abusing other girls that even I knew in my area. Then the next tragedy happened. In the midst of me staying with her, um, in that time frame, I can't remember when, But I end up going to go stay with my great aunt. My great aunt is my mom's aunt, which is my grandmother's sister, um, during everything, because I still couldn't go home because my mom didn't want me to come home. At this point, my abuser was in jail. I was having to go to court to testify against him, you guys. Like, I had to look him in the eye, ball to eyeball, in the courtroom, in the stand, and tell them what, what he did to me while he's looking right at me. But I remember what I had on. I had on a brown long sleeve brown shirt. I had on some jeans. And I mean, I remember most of the details of that. And so as I was saying before, the next tragedy happened. My mom had died in a house fire. I'm not sure exactly what happened, detail for detail. But my mother had put gas in the kerosene heater, and she had been drinking, and she put the gas in the kerosene heater, and when she did, the heater blew up and caught her hair on fire, her hands on fire, everything. Now I know you wondering, where are the other children? Well, my oldest brother and my other— and the youngest brother had both rode their bikes to the grocery store down the street at the time called Piggly Wiggly. And my little sister at the time, she was 4, she was at daycare. And so from my understanding, how my brother told me the story is that he remember, you know, riding a bike back home and he can see smoke coming from our house, a 2-bedroom home. It was a greenhouse. And at this point, ambulance was there, the cops were there, and he said, "My mom, my mom!" He got the bike, he ran to the front door, tried to run inside, but he said it was just so much smoke broke in there that he couldn't breathe. And so one of the firefighters came in there and grabbed him and pulled him out, and he was crying and screaming. He said that he could hear her screaming. Uh, you guys, like, my brother didn't tell me that story until we were older. Just thinking about that at times, I definitely do cry still at times thinking about, you know, because he told me everything that he experienced, and I never knew, as I was saying before, um, that, that was, um, he was the only person that experienced it out of the four of us. And so, um, my mom ended up dying. The smoke actually killed her. And then at that point, um, my three siblings ended up coming to stay with us, like me, my great aunt, and her family. Okay, here's the next trauma, series of trauma. My, um, my great aunt was horrible. She was, she was the devil. She was very, um, manipulative, very controlling. We didn't get much money for us each month. I understand, I know that, but some of my family members did pitch in to help out financially, but the money never went to us. All the money went to her and her grandchildren and her daughter and her son. So she treated us like slaves, to be honest. She really did. She did not do right by us. And, you know, I hate to say it, but she suffered for what she did. And, you know, from my understanding, she, you know, did the same thing to her siblings and to my grandmother's children, which is my aunts and uncles. She treated them like crap. And so I pray that she got it right before she left this earth. But she really did suffer the last few years of her life. Um, I'll get into that story in a different podcast. That's a long story by itself. Um, but I do want to share that, um, in the future about what happened with her, you know, forgiveness and all that good stuff. Um, so, you know, I stayed there with her, my great aunt, for a few years, and then I transitioned on to, um, other family members. And so I share my story because I want people to truly, you know, understand, you know, my history and where I've come from. And I am very familiar with grief, very familiar with trauma, very familiar with anxiety, depression, rejection, low self-esteem, passivity, not understanding your worth, not understanding your value, not understanding that God has a purpose for you, not understanding that, you know, I am fearfully and wonderfully made and so many things. And so I had to overcome a lot, a lot of stuff to be where I am today, and I owe it all to God. I really do. I cannot give credit to anybody else. Yes, God has used other people to sow seeds in my life and to water seeds along the way, but ultimately he is the one that has brought increase into my life because of those seeds that were sown. And I'm so grateful, so grateful that I took out time to heal and I allowed God into my life. Now mind you, you know, when I got into, you know, my young adult years, you know, I was out there living my life, partying, you know, doing what I wanted to do. You know, I'm not perfect by far, you know, but even in my mess, God was patient with me. God waited on me, and there was a set time and set day that God wanted me to surrender my full life to him. My full entire life. No, you know, being double-minded, no back and forth, no vacillating, no playing with fire. But when I finally decided to answer, you know, God and give him my life in 2008, my— I began a healing process. Like, immediately God began to deal with my heart. He began to deal with my pain. He began to deal with, you know, everything that I had been through. He did it bit by bit, and God himself walked me through that process. Like, you know, I, I can't even put it into words. And so I understand what it takes to heal. I understand what it takes to, you know, really just be vulnerable and to, you know, talk to a professional, you know, talk to someone, you know. And oh my gosh, Lord Jesus, Lord. I mean, like I said, this is just a— in this 10-15 minute podcast, there's no way I can share everything. But, um, as I was saying, I wanted to really share with you guys just the synopsis of my story. So thank you so much for listening. I look forward to sharing more with you all. My next podcast is going to be about passion. If you have any questions or anything you want me to answer, just feel free to send me a message and I'll try my best to answer your question on my podcast. Talk to you soon.
Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. Our prayer is that this podcast episode has blessed you. Don't forget to go and subscribe and leave us a raving review. If you would like to sow into this ministry or to this podcast, Pain, Passion, and Purpose, You can do so at anchor.fm/painpassionandpurpose or Cash App $Shakeeta Torres. Thank you so much, and I will talk to you next time.
