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Tangentially Speaking

324 – Rayanne Irving (Horse Trainer / Former Child Prostitute / Kickboxer)

By June 4, 2018June 7th, 20227 Comments

Rayanne Irving is an accomplished kickboxer, writer, horse trainer, public speaker, and all-around badass. As a homeless teenager, she was drawn into prostitution in Vancouver, Canada. Her understanding of her own decisions and the behavior of the people who have crossed her path is one of compassion, forgiveness, and hard-won wisdom.

From Rayanne’s website:

In the spring of 2015, my partner committed suicide in a horse barn. In a sense by doing so, he killed us both that day; turning my safe haven into an inferno of agony. The absence of his love and support stripped me bare of the two demential character I had been hiding behind for seventeen years. Naked of all attachments to the persona and life I had created as a cowgirl and horse trainer, what I discovered at the bottom of the rubble – was a promise I had made to the universe in the fall of 1998.

I was just a sixteen-year-old girl then, on the run from pimps, hookers, and gangs alike. During the days and nights when I should have been reveling in my youth, instead, I was hiding from the world in dark spaces. Both literally and figuratively. My attempt to reach out for support was met with fear and . Which only reinforced the fear conditioning I had been subjected to by pimps and police alike during my indenture to the streets. Mine was a pain that no one wanted to acknowledge. A pain that no one was prepared to understand – not even my family who turned their heads in denial, content to allow me to carry the burden of blame in silence.

The price of freedom for my young body, had come at a cost that was too steep for my child mind to bare. On the verge of running back to my enslavors, out of my mind in pain, I went to bed each night grasping a bloody chef’s knife in one hand and a box of chocolates in the other; begging a god I didn’t believe in for the courage to slice open my own veins.

Instead, a magazine found its way into my hands. In less than 800 words, a girl whose name I will never know, explained her decision to leave prostitution. Although her’s and mine stories were dissimilar in how we managed to escape the streets, she instilled me with a feeling of connection and hope. I knew right then and there, that someone else knew the truth about the terrors of being a hostage to another’s greed and desires. I was not alone in my darkness. I made a promise, that one day – I would do the same for another.

Over the years and on the rare occasion the death or arrest of a child prostitute did make social media – I recognized, as I aged and healed, that their reporting accomplished little more than scratching the surface of a growing epidemic. Unintentionally social media was helping the pimps to glamorize the public myth of drug-addled Lolita’s and the teenage succubus. (continue)

A powerful essay by Rayanne.

Music: “Wa Tye E Yoo,” by MC Twitch. Help her fund music education in Uganda here.

To listen to this episode, plus get access to bonus content including bonus episodes, newsletters, and exclusive blog posts, please head over to Substack.

7 Comments

  • stevesoraci says:

    This was a heavy episode. Thankfully she appears to have healed from the abuse. All the best Rayanne!

  • Anon says:

    This podcast is incredible. This is the only thing I have ever found (and I have been looking) which has ever resonated with my experiences. This kind of conversation should absolutely be a part of the general discussion, its extremely valuable narrative for truth and sanity. Thanks so much to Chris for giving this a platform. I always mistrusted the analysis of charities/therapists aimed at people who have gone through these type of situations and now I finally understand why

  • Man…

    This was certainly NOT an easy conversation to listen to. Just a tenth of Rayanne’s experiences would be enough to scar a person for life, yet her laughter sounds like all those wounds were properly healed. All I know is that I wouldn’t want to get up on a ring with her, because this lady is definitely a fighter, and one that is willing to fight to the death if need be.

    But the podcast was also difficult to me for my own personal reasons. The last few months have been hard for me, and I see myself desperate to "get back with my pimp" –the Design industry that exploited me, abused me and left a lot of anxieties and traumas on my psyche for over 20 years or so; but if it’s the only thing you know how to do, and the bills keep piling in, exploitation begins to look idyllic after a while…

  • Ashley says:

    So happy that this conversation was recorded and shared! I got so much more out of this episode than I could have anticipated and I’m so grateful to you for having her on. And, of course, to her for sharing.

  • Lucky middle class kid says:

    The news regularly reports gang shootings in Surrey and elsewhere around Vancouver. I have spent a lot of time in the Downtown East Side, I’ve seen the women standing on street corners, looking like Hell frozen over. It was fascinating to hear what really goes on around me while I walked innocently to work in the morning. That she escaped William Pickton is just fucking unbelievable.

    I witnessed a girl being pulled into a red car one time, couldn’t see the plates in time to be of any help. That was much later, perhaps it wasn’t him.

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