The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Mikayla Matthews is getting candid about her healing journey after she said she experienced childhood sexual abuse.
The MomTok star, 25, recently opened up about what she described as “sexual trauma” on “The Squeeze” podcast and also filmed scenes with a therapist for season 2 of the hit Hulu reality show to help her overcome her past.
“Just wanted to thank EACH and everyone one of [you] for all the support and love I have been receiving after my podcast with @thesqueeze,” Matthews shared via her Instagram Story on Monday, May 26, responding to the reaction to her podcast interview.
Matthews went on to give more details about how she is moving forward with the help of therapy. Matthews noted that she has felt moments of “anger” while reliving past events as she continues to heal.
“As everyone saw on the show, I opened up about something that was really hard and traumatic for me to talk about,” Matthews wrote. “It was the first time I had spoken about it in over 9 years, and I’ve been doing all that therapy while filming this show and to this day.”
Matthews continued, “I’ve felt a lot of anger while unraveling these traumatic events that happened to me in my childhood, some I have yet to open up about. I think under all that anger are the wounds I’ve yet to heal.”
“Can I be bitchy and want to stick up for myself for the things people have done to me, absolutely, and I’ll continue to do so,” Matthews went on. “But I can admit I need to work on not projecting that hurt in unhealthy ways and wish I would’ve handled a lot of situations both in my real life and while filming along the way with more understanding and not at the expense of other peoples feelings. I’m human, I’m learning and growing.”
“If you have been through something similar, I’m sorry and I see you, I love you,” she concluded.
Speaking on the Wednesday, May 21, episode of “The Squeeze,” Matthews said she was sexually abused from a young age.
“I feel like it’s hard … to pinpoint an age of where it all started because I did open up [during season 2 of Mormon Wives] about being sexually abused, and that happened before we moved to Utah,” the reality star said. “I don’t know what age I was, anywhere from, I’m guessing 6, 7 [or] 8.”
Matthews and her six siblings were raised in California until their parents divorced and her now-estranged mother moved them to Utah. (The reality TV star has not publicly shared who allegedly assaulted her in her early childhood.)
According to Matthews, another incident occurred after she moved to Utah with an unidentified man she claimed was “definitely touchy with [her].”
“Now thinking back, I was already being sexually abused before, and so I didn’t quite get it,” she recalled. “I was still pretty young. I think when I was probably 11 or 12, I started to notice a little bit more that it wasn’t OK, but I still hadn’t told anybody about it.”
According to Matthews, “a lot of” the abuse occurred when her mom would go to work.
“She worked late and early, so she would go to the back room and take a nap or whatever,” Matthews claimed. “And I would be left alone with [this man] … or we would come over to ride his four-wheelers and he’d be like, ‘If you want to ride the four-wheeler, you have to do this first for me.’ She never saw any of that, and I never told her.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
