Hallmark's Nikki DeLoach Opens Up About Childhood Abuse

Nikki DeLoach is getting candid about her past.

The 46-year-old Hallmark Channel staple made an appearance on the latest episode of Syndicate X Library’s Books That Changed My Life.

During the conversation, she revealed her experience with childhood abuse, her connection to those who have passed on, and how Glennon Doyle’s Untamed changed her life.

Keep reading to find out more…

An important piece of advice she wants to share with young men:

“My biggest advice to any young man – and I tell my boys this all the time – there is nothing sexier than seeing a man with a book in his hands reading.”

On the abuse she faced in childhood and how she saw that reflected in Untamed:

“The first chapter in [Untamed]…[Glennon] talks about being 10 years old and at 10 years old that’s when we’re taught what it looks like to be a ‘good girl.’ At 10 years old is when [the sexual abuse] happened to me, and I was silenced, and wasn’t allowed to actually say what happened to me. And so at 10 years old, I was told that being a ‘good girl’ was letting boys do anything to you and keeping your mouth shut, letting adults do anything to you and keeping your mouth shut, that my life was not worthy of protection, that there was something so deeply broken and unloveable about me that I didn’t deserve that. That’s when the disordered eating started – just like Glennon. I just began to disappear. Man, did it take me decades to untangle that and learn to love myself, and this book was such a huge part of me being able to do that.”

On knowing she needed to save herself after a stretch of making bad decisions:

“I woke up that morning and looked myself in the mirror – I’m a big faith person – and I just did not see God in myself anymore. We are created in the image of likeness and I did not recognize myself. The first book I picked up after that was Anatomy of a Spirit and just kept reading and reading and reading and got into much needed recovery for disordered eating. That’s where [that thinking] began – “I have to save myself because nobody’s coming to save me.”

On not believing in marriage before 30:

“I don’t really believe in marriage before the age of 30. People who get married in their 20s, I’m like, how?? Maybe they weren’t the mess that I was in my 20s but… ”

On feeling the soul of her child around her before he was born:

“I didn’t know if I wanted kids because everything I had gone through when I was a kid…but then something came over me at 33 and I could feel this little soul floating around me and I knew it belonged to me – I was supposed to help bring this soul into the world.”

“When I was a kid, I communicated with the other side all the time…Conversations about what it felt like to be on the other side. That was so much of my childhood and when this incident happened to me at 10, it just went away. Until, one day, I’m 33 and I’m like, I feel this energy, this soul, around me and i just kept sitting with it. I think it’s supposed to be my baby.”

On discovering Glennon Doyle and Untamed:

“I had been following Glennon…when she began to post about this I was like, ‘oh this is different.’ I would read anything that she wrote. I think I devoured the book in two days. I could not stop. I read it again and again and bought it on Audible and I just kept listening to it until I could repeat the words back to myself. And then I proceeded to buy it for every woman on every set I was on for years. I’ve probably bought between 60 and 70 copies of this book for people.”

“I love to find that perfect book for somebody and give it to them at that perfect time. Because books have changed my life throughout my life in so many ways.”

On how Untamed changed her life:

“I’m so grateful to [Glennon Doyle]. I have full acceptance of who I am, flaws and all. I don’t beat myself up for mistakes. I know how to repair with myself, I know how to repair with others. I don’t betray myself or abandon myself, anymore. I know the safest place I can possibly be is in this body. I finally, after so long, love myself.”

On finally agreeing to write a book herself:

“I’m chipping away at it. It took me two years to say yes.” Watch above.

Nikki DeLoach and Kristoffer Polaha star in the new Hallmark Channel movie A Grand Ole Opry Christmas and they actually first worked together 21 years ago!