At the tender age of 14, Montrella Cowan experienced one of the deepest, darkest horrors any human being can endure—sexual abuse. And the trauma of that experience haunted her for a very long time.
But fortunately for Cowan, God intervened. While volunteering at the Washington, D.C., Rape Crisis Center, Cowan encountered others who had a similar journey, and through their loving care she was able to discover the healing she so desperately needed to become whole again.
A psychotherapist, Cowan, the founder and CEO of Affinity Health Affairs, now inspires women to overcome their past hurts and step into the greatness and destiny for which God has ordained them.
“I’m big on paying it forward and helping others because there is so many blessings in that,” Cowan told Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of Greenelines on the Charisma Podcast Network. “And that’s what God now has me doing.
“One of the biggest impacts of trauma is that it will leave you believing a whole bunch of lies about yourself. No. 1 is being a victim. If you walk around thinking you’re a victim, you will go into one bad relationship after the next, and you really just buy into this idea that you deserve it. For a long time, I felt I deserved everything I got—the emotional abuse, the physical abuse. I felt unlovable, and that there was something wrong with me. We hold onto stuff.
“But when you come to the point when you lose your baggage … people come to a very dark point in their life where they can’t even see the other side. And that’s why I get so excited about what I do because I can help them cross over to the other side and see the light again. The work of the Holy Spirit comes in and drives that out.”
For more about healing from traumatic experiences with Montrella Cowan, listen to this entire podcast.
