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August 18, 2024 23 mins

In this powerful episode of Bleeding Daylight, host Rodney Olsen welcomes Tanya Nemley, an inspiring woman who has faced immense challenges throughout her life. From a difficult childhood marked by emotional neglect and bullying, to surviving domestic violence, health issues, and cancer, Tanya’s journey is a testament to resilience and faith. Despite ongoing hardships, including raising six children, Tanya's unwavering commitment to her faith has guided her through even the darkest moments.

 

Tanya shares her personal story of healing and hope, offering listeners insight into her latest book, A Handbook for Surviving Suffering. Through her faith in God, Tanya found the strength to overcome overwhelming adversity and now devotes herself to helping others in their own struggles. Her story is a reminder that, no matter how deep the pain, there is always light to be found.

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Episode Transcript

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(00:08):
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thanks for listening.
Have your own say on this and other episodes by connecting with Bleeding Daylight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or other social media platforms.

(00:31):
You'll find all the links at bleedingdaylight.net.
That's also where you'll find dozens of other episodes of Bleeding Daylight.
They're all waiting for you there with some remarkable and inspirational people and stories.
From physical, emotional, and mental struggles, to freedom and joy, today's guest tells her own story of surviving suffering.

(01:03):
Today, I'm honoured to welcome Tanya Nemley, whose story is a testament to resilience and unwavering faith.
Tanya has faced a challenging childhood, domestic violence, cancer, and more.
Despite ongoing health issues, Tanya has raised six children.
Her profound faith journey has fuelled her passion for sharing his love and encouragement.

(01:26):
Tanya's new book, A Handbook for Surviving Suffering, encapsulates her life's purpose, offering tools and scriptures to help others in their times of trouble.
Tanya, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you so much, Rodney, for inviting me on.
I'm excited to be on Bleeding Daylight.
Our earliest years often shape a large part of our lives.

(01:51):
Help me understand what life was like for you growing up.
It was extremely difficult because I had problems with my parents.
I wasn't beaten or anything.
I had a wonderful home, beautiful home, and was well provided for physically.
Emotionally, I was just left out there really by myself from both of my parents, which made my life extremely difficult as a child.

(02:21):
And then on top of that, I had a lot of medical issues as a child.
Also, when I started school, I was bullied really bad and I didn't do well in school.
I didn't know at the time that my parents didn't know that I had a learning disability.
They told my parents that I was a lazy child and that just infuriated them even more as if I needed that.

(02:43):
By 12 years old, I had just had enough of life and I decided to take my own life at 12 years old.
That's a fairly harsh thing to happen for a 12-year-old.
I know that we hear more and more these days that children and young people are attempting and sometimes succeeding, unfortunately, in taking their own lives.

(03:06):
What was that moment like for you?
What was it that was the final straw that drove you to say, I need to end this now?
I was thinking about this the other day.
I had time to sit and think about what I was going to say and talk about.
I was thinking about myself at that time.
What in the world was I thinking?

(03:27):
Where did I get that information?
Because back then, we didn't have social media or the things that we watched on TV was like Father Knows Best and family shows and comedy.
Where in the world did I get that thought to even do something like that?
I had a bunch of allergy pills.
I had a lot of allergies.

(03:48):
I just was crying and started taking them.
I just could not figure out that the sadness would be so great that I would think about doing something like that.
I thought about some other reports that I had heard where children, very young children too, took their lives.
I said to myself, where did we get this information to end our lives?

(04:11):
Where did this come from?
I think it's just so much sadness that you just want to be out of the pain.
I felt that I was a mistake to be born.
I even said that to myself that babies are born blind and missing arms and legs.
I was born with a bad brain.
I must be a failure if both of my parents wasn't really accepting me.

(04:35):
That's what I came to this conclusion to do that.
I took a bunch of pills.
I was crying and I went downstairs to my parents room to tell them what I did.
They told me to go from my room that was between me and God.
That's what I did.
When I woke up the next morning, I was very angry that I was still here.

(04:55):
That was the beginning of my childhood.
A lot of internal pain and not any support.
I have forgiven my parents and I love them.
I asked my mom years later, why didn't she get me any help?
She said because she didn't want it on my record.
I couldn't understand that answer, but I have forgiven them.

(05:18):
Then you have to look at why were they like that?
The old saying goes, hurt people hurt people.
My parents both had traumatic childhoods themselves.
After they got married, they lost their first child before me.
They were in a period of grieving and the way that they were raised.

(05:40):
I get it and I understand it, but I just want to say to any parents listening, be very, very careful.
The support that you give your children, the things that you say to your children, it sticks with us.
I'm 71 years old and I'm still really hurt by my parents not giving me the love that I needed because it shaped my whole life.

(06:03):
It shaped everything that I was, everything that I did, what I thought of myself.
It shaped my whole life.
I talk to people sometimes who have had a difficult life at home and yet they have friends that are there for them even at a young age and other people where maybe their school life or outside of home life is difficult and yet there's solace at home.

(06:26):
Yet what you're describing here is that there was no support or help at home and then when you went to school, there was nothing there as well.
This must have made it doubly difficult in that there was actually nowhere for you to turn at this stage.
Did you find anyone in the midst of that, that you could turn to?
I did.

(06:46):
One thing that my earthly father did for me, which was the best thing that he could have done for me, is that he took me to church.
My parents took me to church.
I was introduced to God at an early age and after the whole suicidal thing, God became the person that I talked to all the time.
I guess I developed a prayer life very early on and learning how to talk to Father God.

(07:12):
I accepted Christ when I was really young also.
Watching Billy Graham.
I was watching TV and I accepted him and I learned a lot in church.
I did have that support.
Thank the Lord for that and like you said about having other people in your life, we had very good neighbors in our neighborhood.
I had some neighborhood friends that were just as quirky as I was.

(07:36):
I had a bar with my neighborhood friends and they were going through family stuff the same as I was.
I did have that little camaraderie there, which helped me, but I was truly, truly alone emotionally.
I was just lost.
I continued with the suicidal ideations.
I never attempted it again as a child.

(07:57):
I did as an adult, but I didn't as a child.
When you're a young girl and you go through these things, you look for love in all the wrong places.
I really did need that support.
You mentioned that along the way that you had some health issues as well, which would have played into that.
What were the sort of issues that you were dealing with in those years?

(08:19):
Now I know as an adult about my health issues and how it affected me as a child.
I was extremely tired as a child.
I had a lot of leg pains and headaches.
My mother did take me to the doctor and the doctor says, oh, those pains in your legs are just growing pains.
Oh, the headaches is because you are turning into a teenager and you have hormones and that I believe played a major, major part because I was extremely tired as a child and I had night terrors.

(08:52):
The medical problems I had to struggle with on my own.
It just made my life even harder because I didn't understand what was happening to me medically.
As life progressed, where did it start to turn a corner for you?
Where did you start to see that there may be some light at the end of the tunnel?
You mentioned that your father had taken you along to church, that there were some people there.

(09:16):
Did that start a road for you?
Spiritually, it did.
The church that we went to was just the most wonderful church ever.
We went as a family.
I sang in the choir, which meant a lot to me.
As a teenager, I became a Sunday school teacher.
I just loved doing that and teaching my class and doing the bulletin board and giving little handouts, which has followed me my whole life.

(09:42):
But then when I turned 18, I needed to get out of the house.
I went into a marriage as a teenager.
It was disastrous.
That involved domestic violence.
My ex-husband, he didn't understand my medical problems.
I didn't really understand it.
It was extremely heartbreaking the four years that I stayed with him.

(10:05):
Because of all the hurt that I had in the past, I didn't even know how to function really as an adult.
Then getting married early just made things worse.
Getting married and having a domestic violence situation, my life was just messed up.
Except I did love the Lord.
I always loved him.
That saved my life.
You hadn't seen a good example of marriage played out before you or family life played out before you.

(10:30):
So I guess in your mind, you were doing what was normal in the way that you were marrying someone.
How long did it take you to realize that this was not a marriage that could go on, that this was just a case of abuse?
The last time that I was with my ex-husband, he actually tried to kill me.
I woke up the next morning after he had abused me really bad and I couldn't believe that I was still alive.

(10:56):
That was my ticket out to get away from him.
The reason why I didn't tell my parents and try to get help from them is because I didn't want to go back to that situation with being with them.
I'd rather have stayed in the abuse than to go back home.
But eventually, the abuse almost took my life.
I also had a daughter out of that marriage.

(11:18):
For her safety and for my safety, I temporarily went back home.
Then I went right from that marriage to another marriage of a man who started out to be what I didn't know, an alcoholic.
He didn't do any mental or physical things to me.
He just was hurting himself in his alcoholism.

(11:40):
He was a weekend alcoholic.
I tell him I couldn't take any more of that and if he continued, that I would leave him.
He abruptly just stopped drinking.
To make a long story short, he became a minister, an ordained minister.
He's a wonderful man, a great supporter.
In my life, he was very patient with me with the tremendous amount of baggage that I brought to the marriage.

(12:04):
Unfortunately, the suicidal ideations and the depression still continued.
You've seen this wonderful story of redemption in your husband, thinking that maybe this is a second marriage that is going to fail.
Yet, God turns this around and turns it into something absolutely beautiful.
You start to get the support that I suppose you've always yearned for.

(12:29):
Was that a turning point for you as well?
Did you start to actually change your mindset?
How far did those suicidal ideations continue to go?
What was the point at which you said, no, this needs to stop and I need to seek help?
The suicidal ideations continued and the severe clinical depression continued.

(12:51):
Thank God my husband at that time was working in a psychiatric institution himself.
He's a very patient man, a very kind man.
He knew exactly how to deal with me.
My husband has been so patient and so kind and so understanding.
What ended the suicide and depression, this is the most amazing story.

(13:15):
It doesn't happen for everybody, but it happened for me.
I had three children at the time, three little girls.
Two of the daughters were in school and I put the third daughter who was about two or three years old in her crib.
I was in a trance.
I went downstairs in the kitchen.
I got a knife and I was actually going to take my own life.

(13:36):
I turned it backwards and I was about to take my own life because at that point when you're depressed, the pain is so bad.
You just want to be out of the pain and you're like in a trance.
You don't even realize what you're doing to tell you the truth.
As I was starting to stick the knife in, I didn't hear my daughter come down the stairs.

(13:56):
She came down and she pulled on my clothes and said, mommy, mommy.
I dropped the knife and I picked her up and hugged her.
I called my husband up at work and he came home.
I decided to sign myself into a mental institution.
As a matter of fact, the one that he had worked at for all those years.
While I was in there, the psychiatrist tried to find where was my pain coming from.

(14:20):
Then when he asked me about my parents, it all just came flooding out.
He just helped me to understand that it wasn't me because that was part of my problem.
I was thinking it was me.
He let me know that indeed I had a lot of heartache with that.
My parents came to visit me and I wrote out a little thing of everything that I ever wanted to tell them.

(14:44):
When I read it to them, I told my father, I said, I don't even know who you are.
I don't even know what branch of the service you were in.
I don't know anything about you, your family, nothing because you've never talked to me at all.
Just hello, good morning, and good night.
That was it.
No relationship whatsoever.
Then I told my mother that she was controlling.

(15:06):
She controlled my life.
She controlled me.
They were so shocked they could barely even walk out.
They just walked out in silence.
After I got out of the hospital, I was still depressed.
I was like, oh my goodness, the suicidal ideations were still there.
I still felt not whole inside.
Someone had given me a Bible many years ago.

(15:27):
They tried to witness to me.
They kind of beat me over the head with the Bible.
I just had this beautiful Bible.
I never touched it, but this day I picked it up and I turned to one of the Psalms.
I cried over that Psalm and I cried to God and I said, look, God, this is it.
If you don't help me now, you know, because you're all wise that I'm not going to be here anymore.

(15:52):
I need you to take away the sadness and this pain.
I cried all over the Bible.
It was all sopping wet.
This is so amazing.
I was always creative and someone had given me a dozen of roses while I was in the hospital, silk roses.
I started making corsages with them and I sold them all.
Then I made a little nose gate for my daughter who was making her first communion.

(16:18):
Then a neighbor asked me to do her wedding flowers.
I got some books and I studied.
I made her whole wedding flowers for the bridesmaids and everything.
Then I started just making flowers and making arrangements and buying more flowers and making arrangements in my whole house.
Every room was filled with arrangements.

(16:39):
I said, what am I going to do with all these flowers?
Then I started selling them at local fairs.
We were having a great time as a family, putting up the shelves and selling the flowers.
I was selling very well.
I decided to start a business called Flowers to Go.
That took off.
Then one day I thought to myself and I said, I'm not sad anymore.

(17:01):
There was no more thoughts of suicide.
There was no more depression.
I was happy with the first time in my life and it hit me.
I'm happy.
I didn't even know what happiness was.
I didn't know what it was like inside of your body to have happiness.
I never had another drop of depression and suicide ever, ever, ever again.

(17:27):
Because of that, I became obsessed with God.
I wrote a book called Obsessed with God.
He healed my mind and to have that kind of happiness in my life, I told God, I am going to serve you.
I am going to make you the head of my life.
I'm going to do everything because I couldn't believe that God did this.

(17:52):
I didn't know he could do stuff like that.
So I just started searching everything out about God and praying to him.
I prayed every day, almost the entire day.
He started giving me vision and things in my sleep, revealing himself in ways that were incredible.
It was a struggle to have a relationship with him because I didn't have a relationship with my earthly father.

(18:15):
It took me years to believe that God really loved me.
Then I learned how to love him back.
It's been an ongoing process.
I'm 71 years old now.
He helped me to get through all of the years because I have such a long story because the emotional part, I told you, but the physical part continued and has been extremely devastating in my life.

(18:36):
That comes to my next book that I wrote called The Handbook for Suffering, which is how God got me through this 34 years of having a mystery illness, as well as I'm a cancer survivor and many other medical problems that I have.
I couldn't have gone through all of this without the help of the Lord.

(19:01):
When I wrote this recent book, I cried writing the entire book with the scriptures, with the things that God has promised in his Bible, and then writing them out.
My book is not just about my little sad story.
The majority of the book is how God did all of this in my life.

(19:21):
The tools that he gave me, every tool that he gave me, every scripture verse he gave me to get through this.
It's in my book, along with my story of how he used his word to bring me along 34 years of having a mystery illness, as well as all the other pain that I told you about.
Every day I'm grateful for every scrap of time that he's allowed me to continue to be here on earth.

(19:48):
Every day I'm being renewed in me.
I have maturity now.
I understand the word of God.
The trials have brought me closer to God.
I know how to get through them now.
I just want to say this real quick.
Four of my children were born premature and they were in intensive care.
I have a handicapped son.
He has cerebral palsy.
I have a daughter blinding one eye.

(20:09):
When I tell you I've been through something and have seen the power of God, all my children are fine now.
They are adults.
They have good jobs.
They went to college.
Some of them graduated valedictorian.
My son, who they say would never walk or talk, he walked across his stage himself and he graduated valedictorian from college.

(20:29):
I've seen a lot of miracles in my life.
I'm a miracle.
I'm a cancer survivor.
God healed me of that.
Even though I'm telling you a lot of negative things that have happened to me, the positive things are overwhelming and that's what I hold on to to help to get me to my goal, which is to be with Father God one day and to see His face.

(20:51):
That is my goal and I will get there.
That most recent book, A Handbook for Surviving Suffering, has been a great solace for people that are going through their own suffering.
What sort of feedback have you had from people who have read the book?
The feedback that I've been getting so far is that it's like a real-time story of what I've been through.

(21:15):
I'm just like, tell it straight from the heart, natural to in-your-face kind of person.
So that's the way my book is written.
The theological part of my book is all the scripture verses that I used, but I'm no great theologian, so it's coming from more of a personal view of how I have gotten through my trials.

(21:38):
This is my third and final book.
The other books, I got great feedback on them, but this book is different because it's my life.
It's my story and I've been very emotional about it.
I feel like my whole life has been to write this book to help other people to get through their trials.

(21:59):
This is God's miracle that he has done in my life to allow me to live to 71 years old, to allow me to tell my story.
The goal is to help people to get through their, not only trials, this book is about hard core trials.
The type of book that will give you some real things to use, real tools to use, to help you to get through every step of what it feels like to go through really hard trials.

(22:29):
Tanya, I'm sure there are many people who do want to get hold of your book and to have a look at some of your other writings, to check out your other books.
Where's the easiest place for people to find you?
The easiest place is Amazon.
Most bookstores from Amazon to Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Target.

(22:50):
From my other books, I've noticed they're around the languages I don't even know and I Google my own books.
If you look for it, I'm sure you'll be able to find it in your country.
I will put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find the book.
But Tanya, I just want to say thank you for being so open with your story and for sharing your time today on Bleeding Daylight.

(23:14):
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me here.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.
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