They say there's no place like home for the holidays, and the Hilton family couldn't agree more.
Jana Kramer is opening up about her past trauma and how it continues to affect her today.
On the October 3 episode of her Whine Down podcast, the country singer and actress reflected on the difficult emotions she’s been experiencing whenever her husband, Allan Russell, is out of town.
“It is October, which is Domestic Violence Awareness Month,” Kramer began. “I talked about this in my book, but at 3 a.m. when I was with my first abuser, he would take me out of bed, throw me down on the floor, and beat the living crap out of me. So I was always really terrified, and when we broke up, whenever I was alone at 3 in the morning, my body would have a trauma response to that happening.”
The One Tree Hill alum went on to share that after her divorce from her abuser, she began therapy and started medication to help her heal. She also reflected on how that trauma carried into her marriage with ex-husband Michael Caussin.
“One of the reasons—and this is so silly to admit—but one of the reasons I didn’t want to leave Mike was because I didn’t think I could be home alone,” she said. “I thought, ‘I need to have him there. If I don’t, I won’t be able to sleep.’”
Now, years later, Kramer says she’s learned coping mechanisms for when those old fears resurface. Still, she admitted that the feelings have been especially strong recently.
“When [Allan]’s out of town, I’ll wake up at 3 a.m., and typically I know how to talk myself out of the panic attack,” she said. “I’ll remind myself, ‘You’re not alone,’ and I’ll scroll or look at my little Bible app—just things to get my mind off of it because I know now that I’m good, I’m actually not alone.”
However, Kramer said that lately her usual tools haven’t been working. “I was crying about it last night because I was like, ‘I’m good, but I’m just really tired too.’ But I was literally screaming in my bathroom, ‘God, just go to sleep. You’re fine. No one’s going to hurt you.’”
She continued, telling her co-hosts, “I don’t love that part where the body can make you go back into that place of ‘you’ve got to protect yourself.’ I’m like, there’s nothing to protect myself against.”
As Kramer broke down in tears recounting the experience, her Whine Down co-hosts, Kathryn Woodard and Kristen Brust, comforted her. “I want to hold you,” Brust told Kramer as she sobbed.
In a previous interview with Us Weekly in June, Kramer reflected on her healing process, becoming emotional as she looked back on the woman she used to be.
“I feel sad for the version of myself that I was, that I would accept someone to put their hands on me,” Kramer said. “I wouldn’t say it’s so much shame anymore—I just feel sad. And I feel sad for survivors that are trapped in that shame.”
“I wouldn't say it's so much shame anymore [that I feel], I just feel sad,” she continued.Kramer’s first husband, Michael Gambino, whom she married in 2004, was convicted of attempted murder in 2005 for severe domestic abuse towards Kramer. He was sentenced to six years in prison and later died in 2012.
