April 23, 2025
Discarded But Not Broken: Autumn Starr Canterbury Story of Survival Part 1
What happens when the people meant to love you become the source of your deepest wounds? In this unforgettable episode, one woman shares her powerful journey through a childhood shaped by betrayal, abandonment, and unthinkable loss—yet somehow, she never gave up.
Her story is raw, riveting, and at times, almost too painful to believe. But it’s also one of grit, transformation, and an inner strength that refused to break. Through every heartbreak, she discovered something stronger than pain: purpose.
This is a conversation you won’t forget—and one that just might shift how you see your own story.
🎧 Tune in and listen closely. Because survival is just the beginning.
@Real Talk with Tina and Ann
Chapters
00:08 - Welcome to Autumn's Powerful Story
02:45 - Losing Innocence: Mother's Tragic Death
08:52 - Silent Alcoholism and Family Instability
17:20 - Traded Away: Given to a Stranger
32:39 - Finding Shelter and Foster Care Years
38:16 - Marriage, Children and New Patterns of Abuse
48:28 - Breaking Free and Fighting for Her Children
57:18 - Faith, Healing and Children's Resilience
Transcript
WEBVTT
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Welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne.
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I am Anne, and before we dive in, I want to say this While today's story includes unimaginable pain, it is not defined by tragedy.
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It is a story of resilience, of strength born from suffering and of a spirit that refused to break.
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Today's guest is Autumn Starr Canterbury, and I am honored to have you on today.
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Thank you so much for joining us.
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It's an honor to be here.
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I'm so excited to meet you guys.
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Now, this might seem like an unusual place to begin, but I read your story and I have to start here because it stopped me in my tracks.
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I mean, I just want to say you were given away by your family with a horse and let me just say this again, you were given away without any warning and I can't even imagine where that sits with you.
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But that moment alone says so much about the rest of your story, your childhood and the level of instability and heartbreak that you endured.
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And yet all that you really longed for, all that you really wanted, is what most people would want, and that's love.
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To our listeners, this conversation will move you, challenge you and remind you just how powerful the human spirit can be.
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Autumn.
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Your story matters and you will be heard.
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Let's begin where it all started, because I think this is one of the most important things.
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The loss of innocence is the hardest place.
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A lifetime of hardship is awful, but I think that there's a place where innocence is lost, and in that very moment is where this story begins, and you wrote me the words.
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Before the storms of life raged, before the battles of survival became my reality, there was a time of innocence.
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My childhood held glimpses of freedom, moments of untamed joy.
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Yet lurking beneath the surface was the inevitable struggle that would shape me into who I am today, that moment when the life you knew was ripped from you and is forever etched in your soul as that last time that you felt safe.
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Can you tell me more about before and that moment that divided time for you?
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Yeah, that moment in time that really divided me.
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I was 10 years old.
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Okay.
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And it was my mother's death.
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She had fallen off of a horse and she crushed her skull.
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I have witnessed an accident, her school.
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I have witnessed an accident and that moment is really what started to diverse me away from kind of, I would say, reality of fun and childhood.
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You know, glamour, excitement, things that kept me, you know, as a child that went away at 10 years old.
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Okay, so I just want to tell you, you know, my dad died when I was 11.
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Not in a way that was as graphic as that, but it was in a moment of time where things were really great for me, just like what you were talking about.
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I mean, you were living on a buffalo ranch and things seemed pretty wonderful at that time.
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It sounded like, and then in an instant your entire life changes, so maybe you could talk more about what it was kind of like right before and right when everything changed for you.
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Yeah, totally so.
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My parents.
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When I first was born, they started off working at a Buffalo ranch in Colorado and they worked for the ambassador of Austria and it was really a wonderful home.
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We had order, we had organization.
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Home, we had order, we had organization.
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That's where I first started going to school.
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At five years old, my mom and dad were together and everything seemed to be really put in place.
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Well, from what I did not understand, my dad was what I call a silent alcoholic.
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I had no idea that he was a drinker.
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And my mom and my dad, they argued a lot, they fought a lot and then my dad had ended up leaving the Buffalo Ranch, had a really bad accident and several of the buffalo got killed on the highway from a snowstorm.
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Several of the buffalo got killed on the highway from a snowstorm and through that process, my parents had to leave the buffalo ranch and they were transferred to a cattle ranch a couple miles from there.
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So they worked on the cattle ranch but the fighting continued.
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It kind of magnified, and I was around six years old when that all occurred.
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Well, I had left the cattle ranch, leaving my mom at this place alone to take care of the place.
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I don't know where he went.
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He just up and disappeared.
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And then my mom had met this other man and he started to come help.
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But he was a horrible alcoholic.
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Drinking with my mom On Christmas Eve he attempted to try to kill her.
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My mom left me with my aunt and my uncle and we stayed there while she went.
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She ended up going to New Mexico to find my father.
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My father was working at the racetracks in Albuquerque, new Mexico.
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He was a farrier working there.
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My mom jumped in to help During that process.
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My mom was going to rehab.
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I didn't know my father was an alcoholic going to rehab.
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I didn't know my father was an alcoholic and it was actually the day that we brought her home from rehab.
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She jumped on her horse at the ranch we were living and three runs around the track and the horse tripped and she flew and hit the starting gates.
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Oh my, there was a lot of a lot of shambling on before that.
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I learned how to survive back and forth with you know the adversity of where's dad.
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Now, all of a sudden, we're not together anymore.
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Now, all of a sudden, I'm not running around the barn chasing the cats and feeding the buffalo with my father, right, yeah, you had made a comment that the moment that you took your first breath, adversity stood at your doorstep ready to test your spirit.
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It sounds like that you had a lot going on from the very beginning, like you just always were having to adjust and pivot and figure it out, even though you were so small.
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Correct.
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Yes, I did.
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When your mother went back to your dad, you said there was some drinking, and you really didn't even know that.
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But you said that the drinking became the bitter lullaby that rocked you through the sleepless nights of uncertainty.
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What did that mean?
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So what that means is my mother became an habitual alcoholic herself and my father I was unaware of it that he was, you know, going behind the bar, the you know the barns, and drinking and but my mother, she was drinking constantly.
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You know, we lived anywhere there was alcohol basically, and that was just kind of what I knew at a very young age was alcoholism is the way adults deal with their problems.
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You did say and I found this very interesting because I grew up in a household that was this very same thing, where I believed that after my dad passed away, there was a lot that happened.
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There was a lot of abuse that happened and my mom spent the rest of our lives running from something unseen.
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And you actually made that statement to me.
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You said that you know your family was running from something unseen.
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How did you know that?
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How did you feel that?
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Well, I kind of knew a little bit in the back of my mind as a young child, because in the beginning of the Buffalo Ranch we got on the school bus, we went to school, we had stability, we had structure, we had order, you know.
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We had meals, we prayed at the dinner table.
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We did a lot of things together in the short time of childhood and it seemed to me, you know, as a child you're, you're wondering well, why can't I go play sports with the other kids?
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You know, why are my parents arguing all the time?
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But yet that family over there looks so well put together.
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Okay, so you were aware, okay.
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Yeah, so the the unseen, like chasing the unseen to me in a way.
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I look at it as because my parents were very talented but they were never satisfied, and so they were always going somewhere, thinking something was better.
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Oh, wow, okay, that is really sad.
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And trying to be satisfied, to live right where you are to be present, where you are to be happy, right where you are to be present, where you are to be happy, right where you are.
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I think that that's the most beautiful place to be, and it's really sad when people are really searching.
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They're constantly searching for something, even though happiness is right in front of them.
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Right it is.
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And when you're young, you know your mind thinks of the little things that become big important things.
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You know we always go back to those little moments of being home and just having a meal together as a family means a lot.
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So I was definitely aware of those structures but I knew I just I was out of control of having them.
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Yeah, you said also, a child burdened with grief is too heavy to bear.
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You know that to me is where I lived, I would say the majority of my life after I was 11 years old when my dad passed away.
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You know a child that feels such heavy grief for years.
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I think it's just too much for children to bear.
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It really deeply affects who they are.
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How would you say that carrying that grief throughout the rest of your childhood affected you and even in school and relationships and everything I mean?
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How do you think it affected you?
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Well, it affected me, and impacted me as who I am immensely, because I totally, when I witnessed my mother's death, I didn't focus at all on my education.
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But very, very shortly after that death, my father completely quit taking me to school.
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I worked on the ranch, I worked horses, I was a workhorse.
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So what really impacted me was fear.
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I learned how to live in fear all the time like yes sir, yes ma'am, yes sir to everything and everyone, and I lost my own confidence of who I was because of those patterns.
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Grief, fear.
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Those things are so encompassing and when they're in you there is hardly any room for anything else.
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I mean, it's hard to let the love in the joy in when especially when you're so young and you're always waiting for something else to happen.
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Yeah, you kind of put in first gear how to survive.
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All right, I've got to get through this.
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How much longer you start to disconnect from things of feel, love, excitement?
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I lost birthdays, I lost holidays.
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You know, christmas, thanksgiving, a lot of it was just gone.
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Did anybody notice that you weren't in school?
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It was back and forth.
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We had social services show up a time or two, but I was threatened.
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You know, if you say anything I will kill you, you will keep your mouth shut.
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And so you learn fear at a very young age.
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My father could not.
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You know, I have to go backtrack a little bit here, because my father was a very talented person.
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He was a horse trainer, a farrier, an artist.
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He was a cowboy through and through and he cherished me and my sister when we were very young.
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But after my mom's death it seemed like he didn't handle things very well and that's when the abuse really came into play.
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And then I was introduced to my stepmother, which was the massive corporate of my abuse.
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Yeah, if you could talk more about your stepmom, because it seemed like things really got a lot worse after she came into your life.
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Yeah, so it was something like six months after my mom had died.
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Six months.
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Not very long and my dad had introduced us to a woman and she hung out a little bit.
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She seemed okay but my guts, you know, I'm not ready to have another mom.
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I don't want somebody, you know, bombarding our family.
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But I accepted it and she moved in.
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My father had bought 80 acres out in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico and started putting horses on there, and we lived on that property in a tent for a while and she always seemed very jealous of the fact that my dad was close to me and so she would argue a lot.
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She would cause a lot of conflict and moving forward in the years, and moving forward in the years, it became abuse to the point where I was not allowed to eat.
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She would feed me one time out of the day, if that.
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She had two twin daughters.
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They were both disabled and blind and she blamed me for their disability.
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Were they with your father or before?
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Yeah, they were my sisters with this new woman, but they kind of took place of me and my sister and me and my sister kind of started to disappear from having a family.
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We became the workers.
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We chopped weeds, we cleaned horse pens, we watered horses.
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We worked day in, day out, day in, day out.
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We had to earn our food and then after a time we were no longer allowed to eat.
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So I lived on horse feed, I lived on grain alfalfa whatever I could find.
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I lived on grain alfalfa, whatever I could find.
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And then, with the social services coming in and out from school, he would put us in school for a bit, but then we'd be back home and so there was a lot of questions in there.
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But he seemed to do really good at putting us in just long enough to keep us out of trouble with the services.
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But I didn't focus in school.
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I didn't know how, you know I just I was so far behind by then.
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Well, you know, if things are not in place at home, it's really hard for a child to be able to pay attention and learn in school period.
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Yes, oh yeah, you can't focus.
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You know when you're going through any kind of heavy trauma as a child.
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Yeah, Now this is about when, and I'm not sure what was going on with your family at the time when your dad got to the point that it did.
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Maybe that you could talk more about that.
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So I was about 14 and a half I believe I was somewhere in that age and we were working at the ranch.
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My dad had somewhere along 100 head of horses that he was training for other people and ferrying, and I remember it was monsoon season cause it was raining really hard.
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Driveway and parks in front of the house and they're talking and I assumed it was some cowboy that my dad had knew from a long time ago, but I didn't know who he was.
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And well, anyway, my father goes up to the horse pen where I'm working and he says you're going to go with this man.
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He's going to need you to help clean his house and take care of things.
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So go, get your jacket and load up in the truck.
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And so they did some talking and I jumped in the truck, didn't know who this man was, and they loaded up this Mustang that this guy supposedly needed for the feedlot that he was working at and we hauled off to Texas and my dad never said goodbye, nothing, never explained anything.
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I just stared out that window as it's raining the whole way to Texas and I was hungry, I was scared, I was petrified actually.
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So I never said a word.
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And he pulls over at a gas station and buys me a soda pop and a candy bar and I tell him thank you, and um, we end up in Demet, texas, and we dropped the horse off at the feedlot.
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Well, long story short, this I had to adapt once again to a new environment, a new person, a new situation and I'm just going with the flow.
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I'm 14 and a half somewhere in there and I'm not in school.
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I have no education, but I'm just kind of roaming and hanging out cleaning this house.
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Well, it turned out where some other cowboy and his wife knew this cowboy I'm living with and we go to have dinner with them and stuff.
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And they start telling me are you doing all right, autumn?
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And I'm like, yeah, I'm doing just fine.
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And they said well, we're worried about you, hon, because he's going around work saying that you're his girlfriend, hun, because he's going around work saying that you're his girlfriend.
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And so I got a little nervous, but I, you know my instincts kick in and I pay attention and I kind of go with the flow because I got no other choice.
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And time progresses and he starts to flirt, and then he starts to flirt, and then he starts to touch me a lot more, and so I immediately knew the warning signs and I ran to the friend's house that had informed me of this and I told him what he was about ready to do, and they immediately, you know, took me to the sheriff's office to get me out of that situation.
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But the situation was going back to my dad and my stepmom, and so they came to Texas that night, picked me up and just beat the crud out of me, telling me I was a liar.
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Crud out of me, telling me I was a liar.
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How could I accuse a man of such a thing?
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I had just started, you know, developing and had my first menstrual cycle and I developed an infection and my father kicked all of the antibiotics that the doctors had given me out the window and he said you're a liar and you will be punished for what you have done.
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And that's when the beatings got worse, the meals got way less and I was placed on a center block in the backyard for three months for punishment and everything that I owned, my mother's belongings and everything were burnt to the ground and I slept in a floor with nothing but a blanket.
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You know, that was it on the floor and then I was out every morning before the sun came up, sitting on this block, and then every night it just depended, you know, 11, 2 o'clock in the morning in my room to sleep and then back out and I got to the point where I was so angry I would steal food, you know.
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I just didn't care, I was hungry, I had to survive.
00:21:59.430 --> 00:22:09.329
And I sat there on the center block one evening and my father had said we're going to take you somewhere where you can get some help.
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And it was about two hours after he had informed me of that and he drove me all the way to Albuquerque, new Mexico, and dropped me off at a homeless shelter and I have never seen him since.
00:22:23.344 --> 00:22:25.507
Really yes.
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Have you heard anything about him or anything Like how he's doing?
00:22:33.208 --> 00:22:34.191
I've heard in and out.
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You know he's somewhere working at railroads.
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He's still bouncing and still trying to chase whatever is unknown or unseen.
00:22:43.858 --> 00:22:49.297
I don't know if he's any longer with my evil stepmom.
00:22:49.297 --> 00:22:51.226
I don't know if he's any longer with my evil stepmom.
00:22:51.226 --> 00:23:01.151
I do know that one of my twin half-sisters had passed away at age 19, and I do not know where the other one is or what she's doing.
00:23:01.290 --> 00:23:13.977
But yeah, so you never got the chance to ask your dad what the heck, why did you give me away Not once, but twice?
00:23:13.977 --> 00:23:24.323
I mean, that would be, I think, a question I would want to know the answer to, because, I mean, you were just a child.
00:23:27.904 --> 00:23:30.151
Yes, I have been curious, you know, I have wanted to know why.
00:23:30.151 --> 00:23:36.532
But at the same time I've had to move forward and find that's.
00:23:36.532 --> 00:23:41.086
You know where the silent gift of my book comes into play is.
00:23:41.086 --> 00:23:45.432
I've had to walk by faith my whole life and believe in that.
00:23:46.012 --> 00:23:53.628
The other part of that is, though, in a way you know it, you wouldn't want to live in a place like that.
00:23:53.628 --> 00:23:56.012
You know, I mean, it would have been.
00:23:56.012 --> 00:24:04.392
It would have been like bittersweet, you know, kind of glad that you're not maybe getting that abuse.
00:24:04.392 --> 00:24:19.039
But yet you know, the unknown sometimes can be the scariest part, and it never, it seems like it never felt like you really were able to find that love that you needed.
00:24:19.039 --> 00:24:26.118
Now you at some point did go looking for your biological family, correct?
00:24:27.165 --> 00:24:34.646
Well, I did family correct.
00:24:34.646 --> 00:24:35.007
Well, I did.
00:24:35.007 --> 00:24:41.799
I was in the homeless shelter for a while and then they had placed me in foster care and I lived in a couple different family with a couple different families.
00:24:41.799 --> 00:24:53.854
And then I was about, well, I was 16 years old and I got myself a job working at a nursing home because I found love there.
00:24:53.854 --> 00:25:09.619
A lot of grandparents, you know, they just put me in and I worked super hard, I loved it and then at nighttime I would walk to the college to get GD classes at 16.
00:25:13.605 --> 00:25:16.711
But I was so far behind in my education I didn't even really know where to begin, but I still I tried.
00:25:16.711 --> 00:25:41.211
Well, during that time I went on people search, you know, to look for my mom's brother, my uncle that was living in Colorado, and I found him uncle that was living in Colorado, and I found him and I called him right away and, of course, because he had known nowhere where I was at my dad, you know, totally disconnected from every one.
00:25:41.211 --> 00:25:49.535
Um, they came all the way to Albuquerque to pick me up and hauled me back to Colorado and tried to put me back into school.
00:25:49.535 --> 00:25:53.388
They flooded me with love, you know.
00:25:53.388 --> 00:25:56.537
They just oh, that's so great, they were amazing.
00:25:56.537 --> 00:26:01.726
They tried so hard to help me.
00:26:01.726 --> 00:26:10.451
You know heal but we didn't talk about the things that had happened, we just tried to work on moving forward.
00:26:11.252 --> 00:26:24.667
Well, I tried to go to school once again, but I was so far behind on credits and just didn't understand just some of the basic terminology of any education really.
00:26:24.667 --> 00:26:28.009
So I ended up dropping out.
00:26:28.009 --> 00:26:34.055
And that's when I decided, well, maybe I'm going to sign up for the Navy.
00:26:34.055 --> 00:26:52.006
And I went ahead and tried to become a US Naval Sea Cadet for the Corps so that I could, you know, get, get some education and have some stability and have some stability.
00:26:52.006 --> 00:26:54.871
But they said you need to get your high school education, sweetheart, in order to make it this far.
00:26:54.871 --> 00:26:57.836
I quit because I didn't know where to find help.
00:26:57.836 --> 00:27:12.567
And that's when I started to look towards finding love and affection through a family and I was like, well, maybe I need to get married and have children.
00:27:12.567 --> 00:27:23.810
And so I met a rancher and, of course, we didn't hesitate at all or take any time getting to know each other.
00:27:23.810 --> 00:27:37.349
We jumped right in at 19 years old, in at 19 years old, and I wanted to have a family and have a perfect, you know little house on the prairie life.
00:27:37.390 --> 00:27:53.457
Yeah, I mean, I would think that at that point in your life you had not, except for the little bit of time that you did get to know love, which I'm so glad that you got to understand and feel that for even a short period of time.
00:27:53.457 --> 00:27:56.621
I mean that just that's such a blessing.
00:27:56.621 --> 00:28:01.435
I didn't realize that you actually had experienced that.
00:28:01.435 --> 00:28:09.554
Could you tell me a little bit more about the foster care system and how that went for you?
00:28:09.554 --> 00:28:12.318
I mean, were you in more than one home?
00:28:12.318 --> 00:28:14.228
Were you in different ones?
00:28:14.228 --> 00:28:15.671
I mean, how was that?
00:28:16.471 --> 00:28:24.547
So I was in two Okay, and I lived with the most beautiful African-American family.
00:28:24.547 --> 00:28:32.852
They took me in, they hauled me to church, we did activities together.
00:28:32.852 --> 00:28:36.473
My foster mom had four children, they were all boys.
00:28:36.473 --> 00:28:38.335
We played basketball together.
00:28:38.335 --> 00:28:53.683
I went from in the shelter trying to fight and survive, because there were like gangsters in there and they'd beat you up to living with a Black family, learning their ways, and it was so wonderful.
00:28:53.984 --> 00:29:00.759
But something happened there and I had to be moved into a different foster home.
00:29:00.759 --> 00:29:02.330
It was due to my father.
00:29:02.330 --> 00:29:18.307
He was forging money that we were still living with him for the Social Security money of my mother, that we were still living with him for the social security money of my mother, and so he had threatened the family and they had to place me in a different home.
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