Coercive Control: The Emotional Abuse You Don’t See with Eva Levina I Ep. 144

Welcome And Series Context

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Hi Warriors, welcome to Beyond Statistics. I'm your host, Incredible, and welcome back to our third episode in our domestic violence awareness series. Today I'm joined by Eva Levina to share her story of domestic abuse. Abuse that didn't leave marks on her skin, but both figuratively and literally hurt her heart. Eva also shares how she turned her experience into a two-part memoir series. Death is no reason to stop living. Here is Eva. Hi, Eva. Thank you for joining me and welcome to Beyond the Statistics.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Hi, Ingrid. It's my pleasure, and I really appreciate you having me on your podcast. It's wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Well, thank you. And before we get started, before you start chatting about anything, do you mind just sharing a little bit about yourself with listeners?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

I am Eva Levina. I am Ukrainian-born author, lived in the United States for 48 years, and uh traveled the world, lived abroad, lived in Europe, in Germany, in Switzerland, in New York, all over the place. Anyways, um, my life was a little crazy, and when my past life ended and the new one started.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Yeah, so okay, I'm gonna I'm going to start backwards here. So you said you're an author. What book books have you written?

SPEAKER_01 1:55

I have written two books. It's Death is No Reason to Stop Living, book number one, and Death is no living to start, uh, Death Is No Reason to Stop Living, book number two. And uh both of those books are now been published. They're on Amazon as well. And um those books covered um about 30 years of my life. 30 years, 25 years of emotional abuse and four years of recovery.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Yes, and just a side note in case you order the wrong book on Amazon, like me, I accidentally ordered two of the same copy. It's it's Amazon, you can always easily return it and exchange it. So without giving away too many details of the book, because obviously we want people to read the book, do you mind just walking us through some of what you did put in there?

SPEAKER_01 2:51

So I met my husband when I was living in Ukraine, another one of my moves. Um, it's my second husband, my second marriage. I have two adult children, five grandchildren, and a great-grandbaby at this point, who's two years old. So when I

Eva’s Story And Two Memoirs

SPEAKER_01 3:07

met my second husband 30 years ago, I absolutely fell in love. And um I'm old school, brought up in Ukraine, raised by Ukrainian parents, um, very traditional family. And uh I really believe that a man is ahead of the household, and he can basically do whatever to keep the family um together, should I say, right? To keep it um secured and safe and financially sane and safe. And um when little red flags of control and emotional abuse had started, I kind of let them be because I felt like, well, he's a man at the house, he should, he can, he's allowed to. So I basically allowed him to emotionally abuse and control me for 25 years until I completely lost myself and I had no clue who I was anymore. Because before we met, I was a businesswoman, I owned a chain of 11 pet shops and a lot of other things back in Ukraine, but slowly over the years I've given up everything for him, chasing his career, supporting his career, um, bringing him up while he was destroying mine and me.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

That kind of abuse is is always difficult to really wrap your head around to understand that is abuse. When when did you start realizing that what was happening was not normal, was not okay?

SPEAKER_01 4:56

It was extremely difficult for me to realize that something wasn't normal. I was looking at families of our acquaintances, friends, and I always thought that my relationship was better than theirs because some of them were physically abusive, and some of them were um on drugs and dependent on various things. And I thought in my family there's no physical abuse, there's it's just perfect, it's ideal marriage. I was extreme, I thought I was extremely happy. And then I started noticing things from other people. Like other women were not as strictly controlled financially as I was. They were allowed a lot of things that I wasn't allowed in terms of I had to ask permission, they didn't have to ask permission. Um other women were not criticized as much as I was, and I saw that. Um some of the husbands were literally putting their wives on pedestal and showing how beautiful they are and saying that I was never I was never complimented one single time in my marriage. His compliments were usually to things that he had bought me, so it would be, oh, that scarf looks so beautiful on you, or oh, that bag looks amazing with that outfit, or something of the sort. I was never complimented as a woman. And with that said, I kind of started thinking, well, something's not right here. You know, things are not adding up. Why is she allowed and I'm not? She's not working, I'm not working, but I bring a lot more to the family

How Control Became Normal

SPEAKER_01 6:57

than she does. Then why is she allowed and I am not? And the excuse oh, well, well, they make a lot of money. Well, you make a lot of money, you know, or she has children, you don't. Well, I don't have children because you don't want any, or didn't want any when I offered you. So that was always my fault, no matter what. And I started realizing, I don't know, probably about 20 years into the marriage, that I need to stand my ground and try to negotiate things for myself.

SPEAKER_02 7:32

Um how did that go over?

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Didn't go well with him because he was really not happy with me trying to get anything um negotiated. Um, he promised to do things which he never delivered, and I think at that point he decided to end the marriage. He just didn't know how to. Uh so it took him a year or so to figure out how to get rid of me.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

You know, you were describing how he complimented the things that he gave you, and I think that's something that's very common, but it's also very easy to misinterpret as a compliment to you. And I could imagine that would take a long time to come to the realization of wait, wait a second, he's not complimenting me. He's actually complimenting himself by what he bought me.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Yeah, that came later when I had a childhood friend when we lived in Germany, a male friend who was married at the time, but we became again very good friends after many, many years. And uh he was awesome at complimenting me. I mean, I would come home, I would go on a trip and visit him while my ex-husband was going with his friends, skiing or whatever, meeting with somebody in you know in a different country and um whatever he was doing there. And I'd come home and I'd say, look, this person, his name in the book is Igor. He does amazing compliments. I mean, I am just, you know, why can't you do that? Why don't you go and learn from him? And my ex would say, well, I don't know how to do that. And many, many years later I realized when you don't like yourself, you can't like anybody else. When you don't accept compliments yourself, you don't know how to compliment everybody else. And yeah, he was bringing himself up with those compliments. It's just I didn't realize it at the time.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Did you have any friends or family that saw the same thing you did that brought it to your attention or agreed with you at all?

SPEAKER_01 9:54

No, nobody saw it. Not my friends, not my family, even um public humiliation that sometimes I endure in terms of let's say we're sitting with friends at the dinner table, and uh the conversation starts about them thing, and she'd say, Oh, Eva knows all about it. She would be an amazing storyteller because she is, and I would start telling the or discussing the subject, and he would abruptly stop me and say, Um, you don't know what you're talking about, and then it would be 45 minutes of his monologue about the subject. Nobody noticed it. Only after the breakup, when I mentioned something like that to my friend, she says, Oh, yeah, I do remember that. But I didn't really pay attention to that because you had an amazing marriage.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Right. So let's talk about a little bit getting out of the relationship. Did you did you run into any individuals where you would, if they asked why the relationship was ending, why the marriage was ending, you explaining your side of the story where they did not believe you?

SPEAKER_01 11:17

You see, the thing with my marriage is that I had no idea it was ending. He never he did it, he never discussed ending the relationship with me. In fact, a day before, the last day of our relationship, we were in bed in each other's arms, buying a villa on a Greek island where we would uh be able to have a private beach, enjoy ourselves and each other under the Greek sun. So the end of the marriage conversation never happened until the very last.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

So for me it was a complete surprise. Did he tell you? Did he just have you served with papers? Was there any conversation about it at all?

SPEAKER_01 12:11

So the last day, the last night, should I say, um, I walked into the kitchen and he was doing something on his laptop. And I was upset because he was he promised to be in bed with me. We we have things to do, you know. And uh um, we were planning a vacation for my birthday, which was two weeks down the road, and uh we had to deal with the birds and event certificates and boarding, and we were doing remodeling on the house, and everything was just rolling. It it was not something that we would stop or talk about, ending the relationship. And I he said, Yeah, I'll be there like in 15 minutes, and then two hours later, he was still in the kitchen. I walked out and I am like, What are you still doing here? And um I'm listening to the podcast so I can fix my our marriage. And I said, Don't do this because our um therapist said you're not supposed to listen to anybody. We have a therapist, we have a professional, he's helping us. And uh we had a fight, we had an argument which he provoked about every night. There were arguments, and um I wasn't feeling well because I hated to argue. The story was that yeah, I can argue, I just choose not to, I don't want to. It's too much stress, it's too emotional for me, I can't deal with that. So, and in the midst of an argument, um, he just said, Um, you've gotten too old, I'm sick and tired of taking care of you. I have no feelings for you, I never wanted to marry you. And I was trying to argue that point, like we lived together for 25 years. How can you say that? You know, what did I hold the gun to your head, or um, they make you to me marry me? Or

The Night Everything Collapsed

SPEAKER_01 14:07

I mean, I couldn't understand what was happening at that particular moment. And when she said, I have no feelings for you, I had uh um this incredible painful emotional reaction in my body, where I my chest exploded with pain, my arms and back, and I started crying and screaming, and I ran into the bathroom and I was sick to my stomach, and I passed out on the floor in the bathroom. Um, then I came to I couldn't really walk very well after that. I I was just, I barely made it to the kitchen where he still was in the kitchen, so I don't know how much time passed. And uh I said, take me to the hospital because I'm not feeling well. Why didn't I call the ambulance at this point? Sometimes I wonder why didn't I do certain things? Why didn't I run out and scream? Why didn't I call the police? Why didn't I do all of those things? But at the time I couldn't understand what was going on.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

I still relied on him, and uh he didn't even respond to anything.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

And I said, Do you want me dead? Because I feel like I'm dying. And he looked at me. I said, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna grab my phone and I'm gonna tell my friends that you want me dead. And he took my phone and put it away so I can't contact anybody. Um and about probably 15 minutes later, I started slurring my because we were still arguing, I started slurring my words, and um my legs were giving up from under me, and he finally realized that something's really wrong with me. And I'm not just as he said in court, she was uh faking it to man manipulate me. That's what he said. And uh he put me in a car, and uh to this day I don't know if I remember that, or that was he saved uh security camera footage, how he puts me in the car and takes me to the hospital. So I don't know if I remember that from the footage, or I actually remember the moment. And uh supposedly before they willed me, it's about 15-minute drive to to the hospital. Before they wheeled me into the emergency room, I um my heart died already. Um I was told. So that was the end of the world.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Well, first of all, what happened? Did you have a heart attack or anything, or did they did everything come out okay?

SPEAKER_01 17:04

I had a cardiac arrest. To this day, nobody knows why. My cardiologist doesn't understand why. The only thing that we have come up with is that at the time I had a very high blood pressure, and maybe I had a um hypertension crisis, which ended in the cardiac arrest versus um versus a stroke because that was another item, and um it took them about 15-20 minutes to bring me back, they finally did. They've worked on me for a long time, and um I was in the coma and he asked for a couple of days, and on the ventilator, he told everybody that I overdosed, I tried to kill myself, they didn't find anything in my blood that would support that, but nevertheless, a lot of the drugs disappeared too fast from the bloodstream. So, um, yeah, I never saw him again. Let's put it this way. The first time I saw him was in court, in divorce court.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

So that's that's a very traumatic uh well, the whole thing was actually very traumatic, but it's also very traumatic when you have to face this person again in court. How did you get through that? Because I know that's a for a lot of listeners right now, I think that's a very common uh thread amongst them is having to see their ex in court again and how awful that can be.

SPEAKER_02 18:49

Yeah. So I was literally dying in child, and I couldn't look at it.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

My attorney did the right thing for me at that point. He said, You have to look like a million bucks, and I did. I at that point through stress, I lost 50 pounds in a couple of weeks. I was size four. I looked incredible. I looked incredible. I was younger, more healthy, better looking than I have ever been in during the marriage. Even with all the stress and all the sorrow that I had experienced, I pulled myself together and I walked in an extremely expensive dress and shoes and hair, done, makeup.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

Um, and I think that kind of picked me up a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

That kind of gave me the

Coma Claims And Courtroom Reality

SPEAKER_01 19:57

confidence to step into that courtroom with my head held high. And by that time we had all the evidence that he had lied to his teeth on every allegation against me, uh, because he filed the restraining order uh against me. Yeah, saying that um he was scared for his life, that I threatened to kill him, that I was throwing knives at him and kitchen metal objects, and um we found evidence for every life he said, every single one. And I had extremely high confidence when I walked into that, even though I was I was literally shaking inside, I had tremors for months that I couldn't I couldn't get rid of.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Um, but I looked very confident, yeah. It's crazy that he would come up with these allegations with the potential of you being able to prove that they're untrue.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

A lot of my friends don't understand his logic, just as well as a lot of people who live with emotional abusers don't understand their logic. And there is a very simple explanation to that. They're missing a part of their brain, which has underdeveloped the frontal cortex, which is responsible for logic and um empathy, is not developed because of their childhood traumas, and my ex had plenty of childhood traumas. Um and how can they be logical? They can they create their own reality. It's a one-man show where they are the writer, they are the producer, they are the director, and they are the actor, and they truly believe that reality and that way. So there's no way they have logic, and thank God some people do have logic, you know, like myself and my attorney, and we if we created that logical string of events that prove that he was a liar. Um And for example, I mean it's like it's like so crazy. He testified in court that the first three days after he put me in the hospital, he didn't eat, drink, or sleep and lost him. And the judge literally cried when she heard that. Oh my gosh. The judge in family court, well, I had evidence that he lied because he went twice the next day and the day after to our favorite sushi restaurant with a bunch of friends and charged on my credit card.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Oh, he put it on your credit card. That's what he's not even trying, like not even trying to be smart about it. Oh my gosh. But it it's really amazing, though, how they can go into any situation and just lie, blatantly lie, and it doesn't seem to faze them whatsoever. And in that, like you said, you had sense and your attorney had sense, but so many times the person, the victim, the survivor going into that courtroom is still very traumatized by that other person. And their shaking and their reality is still questionable. They're still not sure exactly what happened, and they go in without representation sometimes, or if they do, it's not a great attorney. And their abuser gets to sit there with that false confidence based on all of their lies.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

That's why it's extremely important to try. And if you see any kind of behavior that you might think that is harmful, learn about it, talk to somebody, collect evidence, all the text. For example, my ads had erased all of the messages that ever exchanged between us. Because when I was in the hospital, he had a hold of my laptop and my phone, and our entire conversation and bunch of emails were erased. For most people, it doesn't happen this way. Most people have those exchanges. Collect evidence. In my case, my aunt took pictures because I smashed a plate. But she started telling me I you've gotten too old. I mean, honestly, I'm 66, but I'm not really 66. I mean, I am mentally, physically, and visually not more than 45. I take care of myself. I have a great, I don't know, DNA, probably from my parents, where I am not 66, I'm not my age. Let's put it. I'm not my age. So to tell me that you've gotten too old and I am sick and tired of taking care of you. But he never never took care of me. Every surgery that I had, I had to take care of myself because he couldn't, he didn't have any empathy. So I smashed the plate. I needed to stop this. I wanted to stop this. Um, and he said that I smashed a bunch of dishes, and he took a picture of a smashed plate where every plate has a signature on the bottom, right? Sometimes the date, the name of the company, sometimes whatever other information.

Manipulation Logic And Gathering Proof

SPEAKER_01 26:07

And those are pretty visible. They don't smash as easily as the rest of the plates, right? So in my case, I was able to prove that there's only one of those little shards on the floor in this picture that belongs to a plane. So, how many plates did I smash? Oh, I don't remember exactly. Maybe five, six, or seven. Well, no, sir, it was only one. Where did you come up with six and seven? You can find evidence in even in his, in their um, whatever they take, like either it's pictures or videos of you being acting crazy because of the reactional abuse, right? Because they they get you to the point where you just can't help it. You start yelling, you start screaming, you're crying, you're maybe breaking dishes, or maybe throwing furniture around, maybe you're trying to get away with it from him or her. I mean, there's a lot of things that you do, but that's reactive because they got you to this point. So even in those videos, if they take it, you can find the spot where it shows how he um or she um got you to this point of behaving like a crazy person, right? Um, should be prepared. Um some crazy crazy texts or emails or threats or critique or blaming you for things that you haven't done. I mean, all of those can be used as evidence, even something they consider to be evidence against you because they have no.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

Yes, I actually used to discreetly record mine, and then I would send those to my sister because I was afraid he would look through my phone and find it. So she would have the copy. And I'm glad that you brought up reactional abuse because that is a thing. And I think that a lot of abusers do turn that and they use that on their victims. And sometimes I'll take a video, like you said, of them acting crazy and say, look at look at you, look what you've done. This is what I have to live with. And if you're not in the right headspace, which a lot of times you're not, and rightfully, I understandably so, uh, you can look at it and think, oh my God, there is something wrong with me. Look what I did. And it's it's good to reflect on it if you can, if you can document it, if you can journal or write about what happened, so then when you go back to remember the events, you can say, actually, that's not how it happened. What he's telling me or what she's telling me is not accurate. This is what happened.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Exactly. Exactly. Try to protect yourself. First of all, before you would even be protecting yourself, why would you want to stay in a relationship where you're being abused, whether emotional or physically? A lot of people say, Oh, I didn't recognize it, which is true. I didn't recognize it for 25 years, because not a single therapist that I had contacted or I have been with had told me those, you know, those sound like little signs of emotional abuse, of personality disorder, of you know, other things, but nobody told me. And now a lot of people out there, including myself, I am I've started doing um coaching. Not um, yeah, somebody, one of the actually hosts from um one of the podcasts had said, why don't you do coaching? You know the little signs, you can recognize it in other people. That's what your book does. And I said, I don't want to do that, but then I thought about it. I mean, if I can save one person from being in um an abusive relationship, why wouldn't I? So I started doing and I already had very good reviews from you know people who contacted me, and it's difficult to see from the inside, but it's not difficult to see from the outside.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

I had a conversation with someone where it's almost like you develop this superpower. Once you've been through it, it's it's like you can see the true personality of other people where others may not see it yet.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

I uh in my case, um not only did I study personality disorders and emotional abuse, um, because I myself couldn't understand. I had a lot of questions. Why? Why me? How did I deserve this? A lot of people have the same questions after discouraged, after a breakup, after abuse, people ask, people still think it's their fault. I thought it was my fault. I thought I can get down on my knees and and and beg my ex-husband to take me back, and that would do the trick. Um, I didn't have the opportunity to do that, and I'm grateful for not having that opportunity to do that because that would have been a disaster. But um I I dated a lot. My children, my kids in California put me on a dating site, they put me on hinge, and they said, Mom, you have to try out every man out there and see what fits you. And I actually literally took it because I didn't know what the hell I was doing. And with dating, that's by the way, one of my next books. I have a book coming out in a few months, which is called 251 First Dates. Which um I love it, which uh yeah, in which I uh show how by dating, I actually learned things about myself and little red flags that come out that I started to recognize a lot faster than I did at the beginning of the dating period, right? And then by the end of a dating period. And by now I I look, I'm not even on the dating app, but when somebody says, Oh, I'm gonna introduce you to, I am like, oh, I'm not sure I want to deal with that again. I'm sure I'm gonna be able to see all the red flags, like right after the first dates.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

Yeah. It it's hard because I think like at one point I started having to question myself and think, am I just looking for red flags? Am I purposely trying to create this bad guy narrative for this person? Or am I actually seeing some because it happens so often, but I think this was another conversation with someone else, but it's it's your intuition, your gut is telling you this is not a comfortable situation. So whether or not it's a true red flag, or if they're really a you know, a bad person, a covert narcissist, uh sociopology, whatever term you want to think it might be, it doesn't matter if they are or not, your gut's telling you this is not a right fit, so it's not a right fit. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

You learn to trust your intuition, you learn to trust yourself, and number one, you learn to respect yourself enough to say to yourself, no, I don't want to deal with that shit anymore. I am done, I live in a comfortable, quiet life, and if I want some excitement, I go dancing. If I don't want any excitement, in my case, if I want some excitement, I have surgery, but I mean that's yeah, it was so calm until I wanted some excitement, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

Anyways, um, that's another story. I'll have to come visit. We'll have

Recovery Tools Trusting Yourself Again

SPEAKER_00 34:47

some excitement, we'll go dancing. Okay, I want to talk about your books a little bit. So let's go back to uh the first book. And you said that one is about the story of getting through and and the cover of the book. It's a really beautiful cover. Can you talk about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 35:04

Yes, the covers of my books. I had I had an idea. So this is that's how people who abuse others live, they live under the mask, and at some point the mask falls off, it cracks, and from the cracks comes out not a person, but a silhouette. And in my case, this one is holding the knife behind his back. And in this case, me. I didn't know what was happening. I couldn't recognize the man behind the mask. It was not my ex-husband anymore. I mean, it was not my husband anymore, it was not the man I loved for 25 years. So that was the idea behind this book cover. And um I had four different, I wanted it to be custom, I didn't want it to be digital. So I've hired several artists to to do this for me, to paint it for me. And I finally found this fantastic artist from Ukraine, and she did this amazing job for the book one, but she really literally saw my soul. She saw what I feel. I didn't have to explain it long, I just gave her an idea, and she came up with this cover, and I have the painting, the original, hanging in my living room. It's um, yeah, she's amazing. I just a couple of days ago I gave her the books, and she's just so happy. I'm I'm just so glad that she's so happy with how it turned out. And then I put it through Photoshop and uh made a cover out of it.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

Love that you have the original. That is so cool. Okay, book number two. Let's talk about the what that's all about and the cover.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

Book number two. Again, I put it through several artists, and I'll show you. Um, my daughter's 16-year-old, my I'm sorry, my best friend's 16-year-old daughter did this for me. This is the original. Again, she felt my soul, and from this, I had a painting done. So, um this is Kinzugi art, which is Kinzugi is a Japanese uh art of mending things that were broken, mostly dishes, and the slogan is it's more valuable and better now because it broke, because they mend it with pure gold, it's got glued by it's they glue it with the special substance and then they cover it with gold, it looks amazing and it cost a fortune. So, in my case, and the case of other survivors, our hearts were broken in million pieces because the discard came so abrupt, and it was so cruel that my heart literally broke. Um, and the hands are tired of putting it together. This is a lifelong project of keep putting those shards back in the heart, but it's no reason to stop leaving for all the victims out there who are going right now through a very hard time of understanding, forgiving themselves, blaming themselves for what happened, uh grieving for years, not realizing that they're just wasting their time away because their abusers don't think about that. They're just leading their best life for most part until that boomerang comes back and hits them, you know. But in the meantime, people are wasting their life away, um, still loving the abuser or thinking about them, um, playing into their manipulations for years after the breakup. And why would you want to waste your life on somebody who's abusing you? Life doesn't stop. Go live your best life, go finally do what you've always wanted to do but never been able to, like in my case. Um enjoy the quiet of your home. Enjoy I enjoy that bath at night where I know I'm gonna wake up and it's not going to be a fight before I go to bed. I enjoy singing because I know nobody is going to criticize me. Um I wrote books and I'm gonna keep on writing. I have two more that are uh in the process. I know that's nobody gonna criticize me. People are gonna read these books and they're gonna say, and they already do, I see myself and my ex-husband, or you help me recognize that I am right now in a narcissistic relationship, even subtle. That's the email that's the email I got yesterday, even though it's subtle, but the idea after reading the book one, now I see the idea, and I'm gonna stop it, I am going to get out of it, and that's the purpose of it all. Um and if somebody criticized me, okay, I don't care. You know, so um enjoy. Just enjoy. Enjoy what you do, enjoy yourself.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

Is there is there something in particular that helped you in your healing process?

SPEAKER_02 41:33

Um something in particular. Well, first of all, I had a fantastic therapist.

SPEAKER_01 41:42

I had three fantastic therapists um who not only taught me to feel whatever I feel and allow myself to feel it, but also gave me a tool that helped me get out of that never-ending cycle of greed that I did not allow myself to feel. I need to be strong enough not to grieve, not to wallow, not to stay in

Kintsugi Healing And Living Fully

SPEAKER_01 42:17

bed all day. I felt like I had to be strong enough, and they taught me that strength is in different things. So um, one of the most important tools that I got was yeah, allow, embrace your feelings, allow them to consume you, but then make a contract with yourself where you literally tell yourself, I'm going to allow, or write it down, I am going to allow myself to grieve and cry for one day, and the next day I'm gonna get up in the morning, make my bed, and go on about my day, no matter how difficult it is. And eventually, this one step forward and three steps back falling on your ass situation, it becomes um more seldom. It becomes not as difficult to get up in the morning the next day, and the periods of grieving and crying and um whatever you do, you go, you know, I don't know, shoot guns or whatever, you know, you go to the range and and shoot and pretend like it's your ex out there, right? On right on that bullseye, it's his picture or her picture, and do whatever, but those periods of that grieving moment, and I call it all grief, anger, right? Um, they become shorter, and the contracts with yourself become also shorter from one week to one day, and then to two hours, and then one hour, and then eventually you realize why am I wasting my life away grieving over something or somebody that's not even worth my thoughts, let alone my time, my life. In my case, God would have taken me that night, right? If he felt like my life was over, he would have taken me. After 15 or 20 minutes, he brought me back and he said, Go live your life. I owe him that. We all owe him that to live our lives that was given to us once or twice in my case, and um, you have a purpose, girl, he told me. Go help people. That's what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

Yeah, you are okay. So if people want to follow you because you are so interesting, and you have a million books that are coming down the road, how do you have a website? Do you have social media links? How can they follow you?

SPEAKER_01 45:14

Yes, Eva Levina, if you write down uh links, and you know, for me, the name, you can find Eva Levina on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook. Um, I have a website, eva levinabooks.com. There is my email. Uh, there is a link to the coaching sessions, there's links to my books on Amazon. Just write Eva Levina and you will have all the information out there about me and contact information, and I will be absolutely grateful for the opportunity to help another person.

SPEAKER_00 45:56

Perfect. And then finally, in closing, you've already said such incredibly helpful information. But do you have any parting words of wisdom or encouragement you would like to leave with listeners?

SPEAKER_01 46:10

I always usually say nothing is the reason to stop living.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

You are the only reason to continue living. Perfect. Thank you so much, Eva.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Thank you, Ingrid. It was such a great opportunity to meet you and you know, speak with you a couple of times. I mean I I thoroughly enjoyed it. Absolutely. So insightful and uh yeah, amazing person. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 46:43

Thank you again, Eva, for joining me today. And thank you, Warriors, for listening. You can find the links that Eva was referring to as well as her Beyond the Statistics profile in the show notes. I will be back next week with another episode for you. Until then, stay strong. And wherever you are in your journey, always remember you are not alone. To learn more, explore episode resources,

Where To Follow And Final Words

SPEAKER_00 47:07

browse the collections, or register as a guest, visit Beyondthatistics Podcast.com. If today's episode meant something to you, please share it with someone who may need it. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and follow Beyond the Statistics on social media. Beyond the Statistics is a.5 Panoy production. Music written and performed by Tim Kraut.