Meet Sashauni Aaeliyae of The Pretty Girl Foundation

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sashauni Aaeliyae. 

Hi Sashauni, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I was molested from the age of 2 until 17 years old. 

From birth to 12, I lived in numerous households and did not live with a biological parent until I was 12 years old; and as a result, my relationship with both parents was tumultuous. 

When I was 17, I went to college and met a guy. He was my first boyfriend and I ultimately fell in love with him. He was the first male that ever told me he loved me. 

Ten months later he proposed the day after I found messages, he shared with other girls that were sexual in nature. 

While I had broken up with him the day before, he still proposed in front of a church full of people and I felt pressured to say yes. 

At the time, there was nothing that I wanted more than creating the family that I never had. I desperately wanted to be loved and as a result of the physical and sexual abuse that I endured as a child, I had labeled myself unworthy of real love and ultimately got lost in the idea that someone actually wanted to marry me, that I was married six months later, never addressing his infidelity. 

The moment after I said “I do” I began to sober up and knew that I had made a grave mistake; but reasoned that due to the abuse and neglect I had experienced throughout my childhood, somehow a broken love was the best that God had to offer. 

The marriage was tumultuous, filled with lies, manipulation, deceit, infidelity, and physical, mental, spiritual, and financial abuse. I kept leaving, but he had a serpent’s tongue and knew how to speak to the broken girl in me that just wanted to be loved.

He isolated me from my friends and family so ultimately, he became my family and my world. 

The marriage was physically abusive in nature from the beginning and I suffered a miscarriage. Unbeknownst to me, I had always struggled with depression due to my own childhood traumas but the marriage drove me further into depression and I began struggling with suicide. His response to these struggles was to continue to have multiple affairs and to become more violent and manipulative. 

I left him so many times during that marriage, I stopped keeping count, but always ended up going back. 

After 7 years, I finally had the strength and the courage to leave him for good, and in the next three years following, I finally decided to prioritize myself and began dealing with my childhood wounds and began confronting the parts of myself that felt I deserved love that hurt. 

Very quickly in my healing journey I grasped that true healing requires me to love myself enough to abandon any and everything that didn’t appreciate my value, and I began to understand that in order to evolve into the woman God had created for me to be, I had to separate myself from people, places, and things that would hurt my heart, but calm my soul.

I began weekly therapy sessions, began taking medication to help manage my depression and anxiety and began to take a good look at my broken pieces so I could ultimately find peace. 

After a while, I found the determination within myself to step out on faith and began living the life I always wanted but had made myself believe that my past had disqualified me from having. 

I become an entrepreneur and founded multiple businesses including a nonprofit to help survivors of domestic abuse. 

During the most intense part of my healing journey, God inspired me to use my test as a testimony, and The Pretty Girl Foundation was born; a nonprofit organization that is determined to make an impact by creating programs and activities designed to be a catalyst to help keep the public informed and educated on how we can help create a world free of violence. 

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Ultimately, I think the hardest part of my journey has been accepting that my healing required me to let go of some of the people that I loved; and required me to create, define, and be firm with my boundaries with the people that were still okay to be apart of my life. For me, when your primary existence has been consumed by so much trauma, you have an innate ability to understand why people behave the way that they do. However, as you begin to heal, you begin to learn and understand accountability, which forces you to not only become aware of your actions, but compels you to develop an ability to understand the why behind your behavior, while also helping you to find the motivation to make positive behavior changes.

We’ve been impressed with The Pretty Girl Foundation, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
The Pretty Girl Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending domestic violence. To achieve this feat, we have three pillars: community outreach, community education, and awareness, and community partnerships and collaboration. We believe that with awareness, accountability, and action, we all can play our part in creating a world free of violence. We currently have two major initiatives: The Pretty Project, an initiative that promotes hygiene equality by helping to ease the shame and guilt that is often felt by those who are less fortunate and struggle to provide for their own basic needs by providing survivors with pretty kits, or personal hygiene and toiletry kits. We are constantly in need of in-kind and monetary donations to help keep up with the demand to fill this basic need. We also have The Equal Opportunity Housing Project, an initiative that aims to end housing discrimination against survivors of domestic abuse through community building, education, and advocacy. This initiative provides survivors with housing, employment coaching, therapy, and case management services while also holding institutions and systems accountable for perpetuating homelessness among survivors. We are currently in the beginning stages of this project and are currently trying to fundraise and explore funding options to get this project off the ground. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 

What are your plans for the future?
I am really looking forward to getting our Equal Opportunity Project off the ground! Housing discrimination against survivors isn’t a subject that is often talked about. This initiative addresses this inequality while also caring for the holistic needs of the survivor. My plan is to have multiple foundation chapters across the country and the world! 

Contact Info:

• Email: info@theprettygirlfoundation.org
• Website: https://www.theprettygirlfoundation.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theprettygirlfoundation
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theprettygirlfoundation