'After my husband died, I spiralled into alcoholism. Then I made a plan to change my life.'

Erika Cramer was two years old when her father left her — a decision that would scar her in ways she couldn't predict.

"It really shaped my belief around being abandoned or not being good enough to stay for," she told Mamamia.

Left with a mum who was in and out of hospital due to Bipolar Disorder, her childhood grew tumultuous.

"I didn't really have the role models or the support, or the family, and I was just raised in foster care," she told us. "I think it impacted my view of the world. [I thought], 'The world's a cold place; nobody cares about you, you're not good enough to be chosen.'"

As a result, Erika became "a very angry kid". 

"Angry at the system, angry at my social worker, angry at my schools. I think I went to five different schools, and I was a real chip-on-my-shoulder kind of kid."

Watch: Mindset coach Erika Cramer on the lies we tell ourselves that keep us stuck. Post continues after video.

When she was seven years old, Erika's mum took her on a holiday to Puerto Rico. Here, her mother's bipolar caused her to have a manic episode.

"I didn't know as a kid when she would be getting sick," Erika said, adding that she started to recognise the signs in her mother when she was 11 years old.

"She got really angry at someone we were with, and just jumped in the car," Erika recalled of their trip to Puerto Rico. "It was raining, and she was driving really fast, thinking that somebody was chasing her.

"Obviously, she was in a moment of bipolar. Nobody was chasing us, I don't believe. Then we crashed into a massive tree, flipped our car three times and were looking for help. Then she got scared — she was very paranoid when she was sick."

Having escaped death, the mother and daughter exited the car and left the scene.

"We walked for three days and three nights, and slept on patios and slept in cars," Erika, now 41, said.

Eventually, the police found the duo and took them to stay with family that lived in the area.

Little did the seven-year-old know that this would be the last time she saw her mum for a year.

Her father, who had left five years prior, had been informed of the accident via a family member. And he decided to come back into Erika's life.

"He came to the house where we ended up, and he took me," Erika said. "He covered my mouth, literally threw me in a car, and I opened my eyes, and it's my dad, and he kept me for a year."

Still in Puerto Rico, Erika didn't speak a word of Spanish. Twenty years later, she confronted her parents about the incident.

"I flew my dad to Australia. My mum was here in Australia. They live in America, and my mum didn't know he was coming," Erika recalled. "We had this reunion where he told me the story, his point of view, and he was like, 'I was trying to save you, because your mum almost killed you in that accident.'"

A decade after being taken by her father, Erika was 17 and back with her mum. They were struggling financially, using food stamps in a marginalised community.

"You can imagine a kid with my upbringing had terrible grades," said Erika. "I was always in detention, so I wasn't going to win a scholarship, and [mum] was poor."

The thought of a university education seemed impossible for Erika. That was until the military visited her school and gave her an offer she couldn't refuse — four years free at any State College, provided you sign up to serve the country.

Wanting a marketing degree, Erika joined the military with her first love — Jeovanni. The high school sweethearts even married before he was deployed to Iraq.

"I was a kid that graduated basically before I was 18, so I had to get my mum's signature, and she was not impressed that I had signed up to the US Army."

Nevertheless, Erika left school, donned her service uniform and set off for boot camp. She was in the middle of training when her confidence was rocked. 

"Halfway through boot camp, the second tower got hit, and 9/11 happened," she shared. "It got very real when that happened, it was pretty hectic."

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She eventually returned home. And, 12 months after he was deployed, so did Jeovanni. Finally, he and Erika could start their life together as a married couple.

Then, five years later, tragedy struck.

Erika was 23 when she woke up disoriented in hospital, having narrowly survived a drink-driving accident with her husband at the wheel.

"I fell asleep in the back and I didn't have a seat belt," she shared. "I think a lot of women look after other people and don't worry about themselves. And so I was like, 'Everybody else put a seat belt on'. Then everybody fell asleep.

"My husband, at the time, was driving, and he fell asleep in fifth gear. The car was like a Fast & Furious car. We crashed at 240 kilometres an hour, and I was ejected out of the car and landed on the wing and halfway in a van. We hit a tree and a convenience store and a ditch."

The passengers were helicoptered out of the scene and into urgent care. Erika spent 30 days in hospital attached to a morphine pump. She had broken her back.

"I had to learn how to walk again, pee without a catheter. It was brutal. But I was also 23 years old, so I was lucky. I think if you're 40, that's not the same healing. It was a crazy process, a bit of a wake-up call. That was my first wake-up call."

One year later, Erika would find herself back in hospital. This time as a widow.

She and Jeovanni — whom she affectionately calls Jeo — had been at a house party the night before. She had gone to work the next morning like any other day, but Jeo was nowhere to be seen. The hours ticked on and Erika grew more panicked. Then, she was called into hospital and told her husband had been in a drink-driving accident. This time, he hadn't survived.

"I hadn't experienced anybody that I cared about dying, and so to have my husband be the first person that passed away was really…" Erika paused.

"You know, death. It cannot be nice. I didn't even have a pet die; nothing had happened to me with regards to death. When Jeo passed away, it was… it was a lot. It was definitely a lot."

Struggling to cope with her grief, the now-41-year-old started to self-medicate.

"I had a really unhealthy relationship with alcohol because I wanted to numb out of my pain," she said. "Some people scroll, some people Netflix, some people porn. I was drinking, and the drinking was not good for me, because it obviously made me angry.

"I think that a lot of us who go through trauma or hard experiences… we think that our past stays in our past, and it doesn't, unfortunately. If we just push it to the side and don't work on it, you end up creating similar outcomes in the future. So I would get into toxic relationships, or I would get with men who were going to prove to me that I wasn't good enough."

Erika was successfully numbing the pain, but making matters worse in the process.

Suddenly, something happened that would turn her life around. She decided to move from Miami, where she was modelling at the time, to Mount Druitt, with a guy she had met in Las Vegas.

"He was not a nice man," Erika told us. "And then I met another man in Melbourne, and he was not a nice man. There's a pattern happening here."

When she got broken up with on her birthday, Erika had a moment of reflection.

"I really looked in the mirror — we look in the mirror all the time as women — but I looked and I saw that I was the common denominator in my hot mess of a life. It had always been me. I had always been there.

"I couldn't keep pointing the finger and blaming my life, my circumstances, my trauma, my sexual abuse, all that. I really vowed in that moment, 'I have to take radical responsibility for my life. I'm in another country. I have no friends, I know nothing.' I tried to escape America, to leave my past back there, but it doesn't go away, it follows you."

Then, Erika met a man who worked at her gym. His name was Hamish. He was into meditation, breath work, and self-help. She had no idea what any of this meant, but she knew she needed help.

Erika and Hamish. Image: Instagram/@thequeenofconfidence

"So, it was really my personal trainer who helped me to start unravelling my past. I got sessions, I did therapy, I did everything. And we fell in love, and we got married and had babies," Erika shared.

"I don't drink alcohol anymore, and I have two beautiful children.

Having gone through her own healing journey, Erika now spends her days as a mindset coach, helping women who have gone through their own trauma to regain their confidence and worth.

The mindset coach's most recent project is a self-help book called Becoming Magnetic, which is a roadmap for women to attract what they want in their career, relationships, etc.

"I go deep into the book on how you can actually own your presence, step into confidence and start attracting everything you desire. No fluff, no, 'Put crystals in your bra and burn the sage, girl!', that's not going to work. Chanting affirmations does not work when you don't believe them. So it's kind of an anti-affirmation guide to actually attracting what you want," she said.

With her hardest days hopefully behind her, Erika doesn't look back in regret or self-pity, but rather gratitude. 

"It's made me who I am," she said. "I'm blessed that I get to do this beautiful work, and I have the street cred to say, 'Hey, don't tell me you can't, because I did, and many other women we've coached have done it'. We just need encouragement, and we need an ass kicking sometimes."

Becoming Magnetic by Erika Cramer comes out on the 14th January 2025. You can preorder it here.

Feature Image: Instagram/@thequeenofconfidence