Told You So

Have you ever carried a story you were sure would make people turn away—only to find it becomes the very thing that sets you free? In Told You So, Mayci Neeley argues that the path from trauma to wholeness runs straight through truth-telling. She contends that shame thrives in secrecy, and that reclaiming your voice—on the page, online, and in person—is both a personal act of healing and a public act of service. But to do that, you have to recognize coercive control, renegotiate faith and identity, and learn to build a life on self-trust rather than other people’s judgments.

Across a propulsive memoir that spans elite college athletics, Mormon purity culture, an abusive relationship, teen pregnancy, devastating grief, and a second act as a creator and entrepreneur, Neeley shows how you rebuild when you’ve been told you’re ruined. She insists there is no such thing as a “ruined life”—just an untold one.

What The Book Argues

At its core, Told You So argues that the antidote to shame is sunlight. Mayci anchors this in three overlapping claims: (1) trauma hides inside cultural scripts—like purity codes and honor systems—that can be weaponized by abusers; (2) institutions and people can either intensify harm (a shaming bishop) or become lifelines (BYU’s AD Tom Holmoe and Dean Vern Heperi); and (3) agency returns when you name what happened, choose safe people, and build forward—sometimes one small decision at a time (journaling, therapy, asking for help, returning to tennis, later launching a business).

What You’ll Learn In This Summary

You’ll see, in vivid scenes, the dynamics of coercive control: how “Dick” isolates, love-bombs, records incriminating photos, threatens self-harm, and literally chokes Mayci to keep her quiet, even exploiting BYU’s honor code to trap her. You’ll watch her fall in love with Arik Mack—another imperfect, magnetic boy who texts “I love you” minutes before he dies in a car crash, leaving her 13 weeks pregnant. You’ll ride along as she keeps practicing, competes postpartum at number one, then tears her ACL and claws back again. You’ll learn how speaking online (the blog, TikTok) transforms private pain into communal power, and how she navigates new visibility in “MomTok,” the soft-swinging scandal, and a Hulu reality series.

Why It Matters Beyond One Life

If you’ve ever been told “you knew what you were doing,” “you’re exaggerating,” or “just repent,” this book is a counterspell. It fits alongside Brené Brown’s research on shame resilience (naming, normalizing, and moving through), Chanel Miller’s insistence on naming rape (Know My Name), and Judith Herman’s triad of trauma recovery (safety, remembrance, reconnection). Neeley puts flesh on those frameworks with game-day details, late-night texts, and scary drives where a jealous partner floors it to 100 mph.

Practically, this memoir offers a map: how to spot red flags early; how to survive institutional contradictions (purity culture vs. reality); why the first kind adult after harm can change your life; how motherhood can become an anchor rather than a sentence; how sport, craft, and work can be recovery; why therapy (EMDR) matters; and how to build an honest online career without letting it hollow you out.

A Story Told In Turning Points

This is a book of sharp pivots. A Halloween elevator assault at BYU foreshadows what she can’t yet name. Lake Havasu becomes a first drink and first sexual pressure. A bishop’s finger-counting of sins is answered months later by a dean’s open-armed, “A baby is never a mistake.” A breakup text yields a funeral. A C-section scar returns to a tennis court. Nine eggs become one embryo and, later, a filmed heartbeat.

Anchor Quote

“The tragedies and trauma I’ve experienced won’t define me. There’s no reason to feel shame about mistakes—the only shame is in hiding them.”

By the end, you’ll see how a young woman who nearly jumped off a cruise-ship deck becomes a mother of three, a CEO (Babymama), and a reality TV narrator of her own story. And you’ll be invited—gently, insistently—to turn on the light in your own hardest room.

Neeley grows up inside a set of rules that are supposed to keep you safe—no sex, no alcohol, no drugs, honor codes with teeth. But those rules can become a trap when wielded by abusers or interpreted without compassion. Told You So dissects how purity culture and BYU’s honor code both protect and imperil students, especially women.

When Rules Become Weapons

At BYU, any student can report you for drinking or sex. “Dick” knows this and uses it as leverage: he photographs Mayci drinking, threatens to turn the evidence in whenever she tries to leave, and even chases her with scissors after she talks to his brother‑in‑law. In one horrific night, he locks her in a cycle—assault, manipulation, and the constant threat of institutional punishment—so that reporting him would punish her too.

Contrast that with the night BYU’s AD Tom Holmoe tells her, “A baby is never a mistake,” and suggests a safe withdrawal so she can keep her eligibility and return later. Dean Vern Heperi echoes: “When you get back here, I want to give you a hug.” The rules didn’t change. The tone did. And tone—kindness vs. condemnation—determines whether guardrails become razor wire.

Bishops, Gatekeeping, And Spiritual Injury

Before college, a bishop applauds her tears as proof of “remorse.” Later, another bishop grills her—“Have you had tea?”—and implies that because she stayed with her abuser, she consented to the initial rape. He threatens her ecclesiastical endorsement. She describes leaving that office shaking—not from conviction, but from spiritual injury. (Compare Tara Westover’s Educated for how religious authority can alternately heal and harm.)

By contrast, campus therapist Tom calmly names it: “You were raped.” Naming restores reality. It also maps to Judith Herman’s first stage of recovery—safety and truth.

Honor Code vs. Human Reality

If you’ve lived under a strict code, you know the split-screen life: a pristine front-stage and a frantic backstage. Neeley shows how students hide drinks in Swig cups, how parties shift to off‑campus warehouses, how sex is negotiated in loopholes—until secrecy incubates harm. The “code” no longer forms conscience; it becomes a cat‑and‑mouse game that incentivizes silence, which abusers exploit.

The fix isn’t cynicism. It’s aligning rules with compassionate enforcement and amnesty for victims (a best practice many campuses now adopt). Institutions preach virtue; they must also practice sanctuary.

A Double Standard, Named

Neeley clocks the gendered double bind early: boys’ missteps are “phases;” girls’ bodies carry the community’s honor. At one point, she’s literally asked to say the opening prayer at dinner immediately after being caught half‑undressed in Dick’s bedroom, a ritual humiliation disguised as righteousness. (See Kate Manne’s work on policing female virtue.)

Takeaway

Codes without compassion become cover for coercion. If your community prizes chastity or sobriety, advocate fiercely for survivor‑centered amnesty and trauma‑informed leaders.

(Context: Brené Brown notes that shame corrodes the part of us that believes we can change. Neeley’s story shows how compassion from gatekeepers rewires that belief.)

How do you know when a relationship has crossed from messy to dangerous? Neeley’s portrait of “Dick” becomes a checklist of red flags you can memorize. If you spot three or more of these early, take distance. If you spot most of them, make a safety plan.

The Playbook In Plain Sight

• Isolation masked as devotion: picking her up from practice so she can’t see friends; sulking or raging if she goes to Swig without him.
• Jealous surveillance: exploding over a classmate’s Facebook add; insisting she delete texts; demanding graphic “confessions” then weaponizing them.
• Sexual boundary violations: unwanted touching escalating to drug-facilitated rape (“I don’t want to…I don’t want to”); pressuring porn‑style acts; public groping during Edge of Tomorrow.
• Self‑harm threats: cutting his wrists in front of her; later slicing her thigh when she tries to stop him—manufacturing crises to regain control.
• Weaponized systems: photos of alcohol and weed to hold over her; the ever‑present threat of an Honor Code report.
• Violence and escalation: choking, throwing her onto the bed, chasing her with scissors, driving 100 mph to terrify her.

In one of the most chilling reveals, Mayci realizes that reporting him would mean reporting herself—and she might be expelled. This is how abusers launder harm through rule sets; they turn every exit into a trapdoor.

The Grooming Arc

It starts with love-bombing (Tiffany necklace traced with “I love you” on foggy glass), then accelerates through pressure (nudes, hand jobs), then flips to control (rage at male friends), then punishment (humiliation, threats), then “rescue” (he’s the only one who will still want the “slut”). Lundy Bancroft (Why Does He Do That?) charts a nearly identical cycle. What’s valuable here is the texture: the Edge of Tomorrow fingernail, the jingling belt when his mom walks in, the sick feeling before road trips you shouldn’t take.

Why She Stayed (And Why That’s Rational)

Shame. Honor codes. A warped bishop. And the belief that she’d already “messed up,” so who else would want her? When you add threats of exposure and real violence, “staying” is often survival—not consent. This is why survivor‑informed amnesty and supportive first responders matter so much.

Escape Hatches That Actually Help

• A kind authority: Tom Holmoe reframes the pregnancy and routes a safe withdrawal.
• A literal bystander: Ben, the brother‑in‑law, physically steps in and ejects Dick from a party.
• Documentation: she photographs the slice on her thigh (evidence you may need later).
• Therapy that names it: BYU therapist Tom and later EMDR with Heidi shift the narrative from “my fault” to “what happened to me.”

Red‑Flag Rule

If someone threatens to harm themselves if you leave, they’re not declaring love—they’re declaring a hostage situation. Loop in a trusted adult immediately.

(Note: Chanel Miller’s memoir similarly shows how precision of language—rape, not “messing up”—reintegrates agency.)

At 13.5 weeks pregnant, Mayci reads “RIP Arik Mack” on Instagram. Minutes earlier, she’d confronted him for cheating; now she’s calling his father, learning Arik died in a crash while texting her—his final message ending with a dangling “J.” The memoir’s center of gravity is what happens next: how do you carry a baby and a grief this big?

When The World Collapses

The book doesn’t flinch: she faints in the OB office after learning it’s a boy; her mom awkwardly asks for STD testing; she spends nights scrolling posts from girls who publicly adored the same boy who betrayed her. She journals because her dad tells her to: “Write everything down; one day it will help someone.” The Ellen Mother’s Day Giveaway furnishes a crib, diapers, and—more importantly—proof that help is real.

Then come the institutional choices that matter: BYU administrators protect her eligibility and dignity. A bishop leaks her pregnancy to the ward. These forks are instructional. People can make your grief heavier—or bearable.

Pregnancy As Isolation, Birth As Anchor

She’s massively pregnant, depressed on a family cruise, tempted to step off the deck—and then Hudson kicks. On delivery day (a C‑section, not the v‑birth she hoped), she hears the raspy cough and watches the OB wave a tiny hand: “Hello, Mama.” CPS checks that she’s safe to parent; she is. Back home, her incision opens; she packs it with gauze. It’s gory, human, and holy. Motherhood doesn’t erase grief. It gives it somewhere to rest.

Playing #1 After A Baby (And Again After An ACL)

Four weeks postpartum, she signs paperwork to return; months later, she’s back at #1 singles. Whispers of nepotism sting—Lauren is her coach and sister—but she beats back doubts on courts from Denver to Charlottesville. Then, on a sticky‑new shoe, she plants, hears the pop, and tears her ACL and meniscus. She chooses the top surgeon, grinds through football‑level rehab, and returns to anchor senior day in a tiebreak. It’s a testament: bodies break; commitments don’t have to.

The Grief Work Behind The Scenes

She visits Arik’s open casket, collapses across it, whispers that it’s a boy. She maintains relationship with his parents and brother. When it’s time, she tells Hudson—on a couch, with simple words—that he has two dads. Trauma researchers call this “meaning making.” Here, it looks like tenderness across former fault lines.

Grief Practice

Build rituals (letters, dog tags, dinners) and relationships (in‑laws, coaches) that let love continue after loss. Healing is rarely solitary work.

(Context: Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking chronicles a similar need for shared containers for grief. Neeley’s “containers” are courts, blogs, and family tables.)

After years of pressure and rape, how do you relearn your body? Neeley charts an arc from dissociation (“I’m dry as the Mojave Desert”) to negotiated, joyful intimacy—with a critical middle step: naming.

Naming What Happened

It takes a campus therapist looking her in the eye to say, “You were raped.” That sentence reorganizes her memories. Assault isn’t a “first time gone wrong.” It’s a crime. This shift matters because you cannot set healthy boundaries around a lie. Once she re‑labels the event, she stops bargaining with shame. (Chanel Miller’s memoir underscores this exact power of naming.)

Gentle Exposure With Safe Partners

With Arik, then later with Jacob, she rehearses safety: cuddling without rushing, stopping when her body says stop, laughing, even choosing code words (“Peaches”) to signal desire. After marriage, she learns that certain conditions help—not too dark, less prolonged foreplay (counterintuitive but trauma‑wise), and her initiating when possible. It’s customized consent, not a script.

Therapy That Targets Body Memory

EMDR with Heidi becomes a lab for unpairing triggers from meaning. She holds buzzers, recalls events, chooses a card that names the stuck belief (“I can’t forgive myself”), and works it until a truer sentence lands (“I did the best I could with what I knew”). When she later speeds to 100 mph after a trigger song, the memory of that session helps her slow down—literally and narratively.

Faith, Sex, And Honest Rules

She recommits to temple covenants and garments, but with eyes open: rules are not shields; they’re tools. She no longer mistakes compliance for safety. Instead, she builds a consent practice that integrates faith and physiology.

Relearning Your Body

Write a trigger playbook: what helps (light on, initiate yourself), what hurts (surprise, darkness, extended foreplay). Share it with your partner as a living document.

(Context: Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are emphasizes tuning conditions of arousal/brakes; Neeley shows a trauma‑informed version of that re‑tuning.)

From a black journal on her childhood desk to a Hulu billboard on Sunset, Neeley’s core tool is storytelling. Told You So doubles as a primer on how to share publicly without losing yourself.

Start Small, Tell The Truth

It begins with a dad’s nudge—“write everything down”—and a blog post that grows her Instagram from 2,000 to 10,000. DMs pour in: this happened to me. She learns to hold both the gratitude (she’s helping) and the backlash (an ex’s sister rages, burner accounts minimize her struggle). She keeps posting, because the point isn’t consensus—it’s clarity.

Learn The Craft And The Business

She teaches herself Lightroom, WordPress, and contract basics (and learns—painfully—to never give 50 photos away royalty‑free). A toddler’s viral “you bitch!” baseball video explodes her TikTok. She lands early brand deals (Hostess, a coveted Nuna stroller), then signs with a manager who sees the long game: a book, not just sponcon. This is the creator economy done deliberately.

Community, Not Just Audience

She finds “MomTok” peers—Mikayla, Whitney, later Taylor and Miranda—and learns the difference between filming partners and friends. The “soft‑swinging” scandal (and a related arrest) spotlights parasocial pressure: rumors make real lives quake. Neeley holds a boundary—this isn’t me—and keeps filming. Then comes The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives; she lets the show film her IVF injections and heartbeat scan, but also guards privacy in waiting rooms. It’s a dance between openness and protection.

Ethics Of Visibility

She asks what’s hers to tell, especially about faith, sex, and other people’s mistakes. She redacts names (the abuser becomes “Dick”), honors Arik’s family, and is explicit about money when it demystifies the path (WIC vouchers, $30k IVF benefits, and the stress of a single breadwinner season). That candor is rare—and responsible.

Creator Rule

Post from scars, not open wounds. But don’t let “perfect healing” be the bar—share the process and the costs so others can chart their own route.

(Compare Stephanie Land’s Maid for braiding survival, policy, and platform into meaningful change.)

The memoir is a masterclass in iterative reinvention. When one identity cracks—athlete, student, girlfriend—Neeley crafts another: single mom at #1 singles, then ACL comeback, then analyst at Goldman Sachs, then brand founder, then cast member, then pregnant again via IVF.

Comebacks Are A Skill

Returning to form postpartum, then post‑ACL, isn’t a miracle; it’s structure. She hires a trainer (Josh), rebuilds her core, plays mini‑tennis with her mom before opening it up, and accepts that her forehand might feel alien before it returns. On senior day, she wins a 3rd‑set tiebreak with the entire season on her racket. That’s not talent; that’s daily courage.

Careers Are Built, Not Fallen Into

She interns at ABC’s Good Things Utah, learns she prefers “warm” stories, then pivots to Fusion 360 and later lands at Goldman. There she studies competitors, deposits, and loans—and studies her boss’s boss, a peer‑aged woman who “holds her own.” That sightline matters. When the time comes, she swaps W‑2 security for platform entrepreneurship, all while tracking childcare, rent, and $1,600/month in babysitters.

IVF: Money, Medicine, And Mindset

She documents the whole, messy truth: nine eggs (not 19), five fertilized, three blastocysts, one genetic pass. The bills are disorienting, even with $30k in coverage. She heats progesterone in oil, bruises her hips, miscarries fears at the ER, and then watches a pixel blink: heartbeat. Later, she partners with a new clinic in OC for a comped cycle (minus meds/testing) in exchange for content, while also minding ethics and privacy.

Building Babymama

Frustrated by generic prenatals, she cofounds Babymama with a supplements veteran from New U Life—bootstrapped, not VC‑funded. It’s risky with one income and a show in flux, but aligned: a product born from lived gaps (trying to conceive, postpartum, IVF). Entrepreneurship here isn’t an ego play; it’s solving her own former problems at scale.

Reinvention Playbook

Stack small edges: a trainer, a new boss to model, a lens you own, a manager who assumes the sale, a product that solves your yesterday. Courage compounds.

(Note: This “small edges” method echoes James Clear’s atomic habits, but applied to life rebuilds.)