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- [00:04]
A
Yeah.
- [00:14]
B
I don't even know where we should begin.
- [00:15]
A
I. I wasn't anything. I was hoping you'd have questions for me to sort of.
- [00:21]
B
Well, I was thinking about some of the pivotal things that you've worked through since we last recorded. And there's been a lot of healing with your mother. But what is front and center for you now?
- [00:37]
A
I would have to say right now, what is front and center is what I could call the melding of the world and the spirit. And as a result of my childhood traumas, I was very, very rooted in. In the world, in the physical, and I used that as a measure of how I should control and shape my life. So when I started with you, I mean, the idea of a higher self completely alien to me, and where I was in my head, I had a lot of dysfunctional, angry, isolated, alienated parts that I was always trying to corral or understand, but I didn't. And it wasn't until doing the adult child work that I realized that my alcoholism was vastly more than willpower, than a bad choice. It's ultimately what saved me, and I'll explain that because it sounds contradictory. So the melding of the spirit and the now, the physical. And I've said several times in group, and I've heard other people say it, that one way to view our experience, and I view my experience in this way, is earth is a school. The all in all is spirit. And I come in this physical body to learn and build spirit. That is, when I move from ultimately from the physical to the purely spiritual, I will be able to sit up and say, you know, from that journey, that experience, these are the things I've learned. These are the things that I'm committed to. So back to the shift from just purely being a catastrophizer, that everything is going out to hurt me. Everything, everything will fail. I have included gradually, gradually, the spirit part. One thing that's happened in the melding of these two is a term, radical acceptance. Okay. My therapist. When I first entered dual diagnosis therapy, one of the things in the midst of the program, because I was just struggling, struggling. I was participating, but I couldn't bring anything together. And she introduced the notion of radical acceptance. I'm not a cursor, as you well know. And the word out of my mouth was bullshit. That is absolutely bullshit. There is no way at that time in my head, I could see achieving any kind of reconciliation between the multiple acts of child sexual abuse by different people, my father's brutality in seeing beating, battering, not as A way to control my mother. That was part of it. But that's his idea of how you treat a misbehaving woman. His deep, deep, serious alcoholism throughout my whole life. And his alcoholism put us not. It was the violence, it was the strangers in the house. And his alcoholism put us in a. Always in a state of unsafety, jeopardy, scarcity, times when there was no food. Because when he got his paycheck, he escaped. He disappeared for two or three days, came back sick as hell, looking like hell, but he'd been out spending his check. So I viewed my childhood through that lens. It was a nightmare. It was something that caused me pain and distress every single moment of the day. And when I started the ACA work, I was horrified because minerals were coming back. It puts me in a point where, where I wonder how I even survive.
- [05:03]
B
How, how do they come to you? Is it like gradually, over time? Does it hit you with a flash? Is it visual? Is it a felt sense?
- [05:12]
A
You know what, it's all of those. And I think that's what makes this whole process so incredibly complex. Individualize the way it has moved for me. So sometimes it's that quiet voice, sometimes it's a very direct, pointed voice. Sometimes I'm able to pull together random pieces that I thought had no connection to one another, but behaviors that evolved out of my trauma and as a way to survive. So as I adopted and try to understand and build into my life's radical acceptance, my vision of the world has changed. One on the spiritual I can, I can now see myself as a part of the universe. I'm actually a part of the universe if the entire universe or one aspect of it is energy, and that that energy is eternal. I'm energy. I'm energy in this form. And at some point I'll be energy in another, but I'll always be. And I have faith in that also. The complexity of adopting radical acceptance, it requires something so simple that it escaped me. Radical acceptance requirements. 1 A great amount of stillness. And there was always a wreck in my head, always a storm, a thunderstorm. So it's required me stillness. It's required faith and faith in a way that I never understood it. One part of this process for me is defining for myself the things. So for me growing up as a 75 year old black American woman, for me growing up, God was a white man sitting on a throne with long gray hair and a beard. And based on my ancestral experience, my current experience, I couldn't see how that fit in. And I developed the idea That I was not an atheist is that I'm excluded from God. I'm on the fringe, I'm on everyone else has access to that God. But I'm. I'm shut out. And I'm shut out because adults raped me when I was a toddler. And that's shame that I think I. Shame and fear ruled my life. And there are two things that I've gotten control of. Shame. I am not less than because of the way I grew up, because of the circumstances of my life. I am part of the all that is. I am part of the one and that there. And it takes mindfulness for me to recognize that. As I sit here with you, I can shift to a place where on one hand, I can imagine. I love the seeing the photos that have come back from the Webb telescope, but I can imagine the planets. And for more than I can ever imagine, more time they've moved that there are parts of the universe where stars are born. And I can move from that place to my interior and recognize that my interior in many respects is infinite, like the universe. The more we learn about quantum physics, et cetera, the smaller the particles. And those particles are me. So when I go inward, I can. Okay, I read about neutrinos. Maybe there's something, a smaller particle now that's been discovered. But for me, it was new. And in my lovely gazebo that I treated myself to since starting with your community is I go outside and I have what I call a neutrino bathe neutrinos, as I understand them, they're this particle that even may have smaller parts, but it passes through every entire thing in the universe, everything on the planet, through me. So I'm this constant energy. I'm alive, and I'm alive in a way that the universe is alive. And. And that has been a big shift for me. The other thing that's happened on the other side the past is it was just a nightmare. I've realized now my childhood requires my rat hole acceptance. Home was hell. That where I found beauty and where I found magic was outside in the country. We lived in a tiny, tiny little town in mountain home, Idaho. The last time I went there, it was 15 or 16,000. Wow. And I don't even. I can't even imagine what it was in 1950. But for me, it was the outside is where I saw the magic. And I say, I can see now that it was idyllic. It was hell and it was idyllic. And I have very fond memories of being a child rather Than when I looked at home, I saw myself as some kind of an adult child, child's body. And that it was my fault, that my parents fault. It was my fault that my father drank. I remember asking him like. And I, a little child standing there and saying, you know, daddy, you know, you, you're so nice when you don't drink. I like it when you don't drink. Why don't you, you know, I mean that conversation. But I. I have fond memories of climbing apple trees and biting into a green apple and running upon a worm in it. I have memories of walking down long country road, walking and walking. Because I saw a rainbow in the distance. And I believed that I could walk through it, walk toward it and chew it and like a child, the same experience. When I understood that you could dig your way to China. You dig for a while, you walk for a while, and then your mind, you're doing something else. It's just. That's the beauty of being a child. One memory. And I didn't have a positive memory of it because of my mother scolding. When I got home, I was always seemed to be falling out of a tree or getting caught up in tumbleweeds and things. And that wasn't girly to her. And I remember being scolded. We decided, okay, mountain home is at. It's over 3,000ft, but it's kind of dry desert. And there were lots of tumbleweeds. We called them sticker weeds that would roll. You know, you see the old western movie and they show the tumblewee week blowing in the wind. That's how you know you're in the old West. But we would collect these things and build forts. A sign of my personality that I now understand and have come to love was I always had grand ideas. And so I recall building with friends a fort of tumbleweeds. So you get them, no gloves and stack them. So what I designed that day was we were going to build walls in a circle that were taller than me at the time. Not only that, we were going to. I decided we were going to innovate. We were going to make rooms by bringing in more sticker woods so that we would have divisions. Or one of our fun things was to go through garbage cans. And one activity that I truly enjoy is we would go through garbage cans and I would collect cans of food and we would haul them away and set up a store. It was. I say sometimes it's kind of Tom Sawyer ish. So I'm happy for that. And I'm so Grateful that I can experience that now. Now this takes me to my mother. I've shared in the community that my mother was an 8th grader who was impregnated by a 20 year old man. My mother was severely abused to the point of starvation where she would go out in the yard and eat dried chicken.
- [15:15]
B
This is as a kid.
- [15:16]
A
As a kid? Yeah, as a kid. That's how hungry she was.
- [15:21]
B
Was it lack of resources or abuse?
- [15:24]
A
It was abuse. My grandmother was severely abused. So this is a, this is a family generational. It's generational. I mean, it, it's generational. And so when I was born and she would tell me stories of how she would be in bed with me and she would hear the other 8th grade girls walking by her house. And that was the end of her education. Her parents put her out with this alcoholic man who they moved into a small, some kind of small place that had other rooms on side of it. And he beat her so badly, so regularly that the neighbors would come and pound on the door and ask him. They would say, leave the little girl alone, leave the little girl alone. And when I was two months old.
- [16:19]
B
She told you all this?
- [16:21]
A
Oh, absolutely.
- [16:23]
B
How young?
- [16:25]
A
I remember going in the first and second grade, all I did was cry. I would cry, I just cried. And they would sort of put me in a corner somewhere and let me cry. I spent my time crying because I would come to school and I was so depressed because my mother had loaded my head up with her suffering. And the crucial point is, until the day she died, I was the cause of that suffering. And she was very outspoken about it. You know, she would say she wished she never had girls. Well, get this, there are five of us and four of them are boys. She would say things like, boys are so much easier to raise. And that became my responsibility right as an adult child. So I spent my whole life trying to make up to her, trying until the day she died. And I sat with her all night until she passed in the morning. I just wanted her to say, I love you. Throughout my entire life, she never said I love you. And when I would poke and sort of prod or kind of trick her into saying, I love you too, Sandra, the only thing I could get out of her was I loved all of y'. All. So I, I grew up hiding. One is hide from the sexual and the physical violence. I grew up with food issues that as an adult morphed into bouts of bulimia and hairy, bizarre advertised diets that we know now based on health and metabolism were just absolutely ridiculous.
- [18:17]
B
Garbage.
- [18:17]
A
Yeah, garbage. And in some cases damaging. And I'm losing my train of thought. But I go back to the radical acceptance I can now balance. I can say my childhood was deadly and dangerous. And it was beautiful and it was, was idyllic and it was filled with the magic. And it's led me to accept part of myself that I was most ashamed of. And I did not realize it until my, my therapist, my beautiful therapist, until my therapist happened to stumble on it. It impacted me so badly, I, I shut down and we're doing zoom sessions in. And I left. She tried to hold me and in the set, in the session, but I, I was horrified. I. How could anybody possibly discover my secret? Yeah, I had secrets about sexual abuse. His secret was. And it brought me to the spiritual. The secret was, is I'm a little, little girl. I'm magic. And I can see, and I can see it. I can see it. I was coming home from lunch with a friend. And as you enter my community, there are these. And it still wows me because I didn't see it until I was 15. Palm trees that are whatever, 50, 60, those incredible palm trees. And we were coming home and it was windy and the wind was blowing in such a way that, that I call it those kind of locks like hair, palm fronds blowing to one side. And I could see them slashing from green to silver to crystal. And I, and I pointed it out to my friend. That was a sign of my self acceptance because I would never say things like that. My husband hated that part of me. He. I just learned just not to speak. My mother, she just thought, how did I have this child who, as she used to say to me, don't you have common sense? Can't you figure it out? And I recall one time, and my daughter was just a baby, but I was watching, I watched every episode of Mr. Rogers and Sesame street and there was an episode where they were talking about. Essentially they're talking about changing your thoughts and your thoughts, your beliefs create your reality. But for children, they were using the image of a sun and that it's a rainy day. So, so imagine the sun is out and imagine the sun is high in the sky. She was telling me one of her horror stories about her, her past triggering me, reminding me of, oh my God, this happened because I was born. I told her, you know, mom, and I'm an adult. I told her, you know, I've sounded. If you, you can change the way you view things, you can. And I Told her about this sun in the sky. She didn't say anything. So where should we go?
- [21:52]
B
Okay, I've got a couple places. What blows my mind about you is like, okay, you have this like horrendous childhood, but then you, like, you go to college, you become a professor, but then you're in this horrible abuse of marriage at the same time too. You know, it's, it's insane how we can compartmentalize and still function. I mean, you had this horrendous childhood. You're now married to like a malignant narcissist, but you're also a fucking college professor. It's nuts. How did you finally get out of your marriage? I was never heard this story.
- [22:31]
A
Oh, really? I was in my marriage for 25, 20 years. Yeah, yeah. My daughter was born when I was 33, so I was mature. I was teaching already.
- [22:42]
B
Where did you meet him?
- [22:44]
A
I met him at the university. I was an undergrad the very first time. There was no interest at that time, but he was a very politically active, socially active person. And this is in the late 60s, 70s, so time is appropriate. I met him at the university. He, he was teaching there as a part time professor and he did a lot of speaking. So I was aware of him. And it wasn't until I finished my master's, I came back to California and I went to some political event and he was there. So that's when we connected again. I spent the first 20 years of marriage trying to convince him that I was a good person. I tried to convince him that I loved him. I showed him that I would do anything for him. I showed him by putting my head in a gas oven that me getting his approval was so essential and I was afraid of him. I learned that man. I learned when there was a certain tilt to his shoulders, he never ever looked me in the eye. It was always looking down, but appearing to look at me. But he, he wasn't seeing me and he projected. So he was a liar. So I must be a liar and he must find it. He was a serial cheater. He was always projecting on me. And I, I discovered something else in your community. And I read, I read this. I, I was always talking, but my talk was always explained to him. Trying to convince him that I loved him, that I was not dishonest, that I was not cheating. Because he couldn't believe it, that I think that he did those things as part of his life, as part of his professional life. He was the kind of colleague throw you in under the bus without not even considerate, with no hesitation of should I do this or not? That was his way. That was his. His mode of operandi. So leaving 20 years and my daughter is 13, he has started. I discovered, to my horror, he's been beating my daughter. That's her secret. And she could never tell me. And I found out or I was led to discovering it when she started cutting herself. And she would cut herself and she showed me. And shortly after that, something happened. The more I separated from him, mentally, that is. I decided, okay, I'm going to be in this marriage for life because, you know, marriage is forever. So the best way I can survive is to let him do what he wants, spend what he wants, and then I focus on my heaven, which is the classroom. As I became more successful being promoted, I was department chair. He was also a professor and he never moved beyond professor status. Although, anyway, he was always at meetings, always this, always that. So that's how I decided I was going to survive this marriage. But I think his radar or that sixth sense or whatever, the more independent I became, the more brutal he went back from the stubble, which is one of the things he did, was to slam his wrist, slam his fist on a counter just as I said something and of course I would react. Conversation was opener. Whatever I was going to try to convince him of that I was a good hearted person. It went out the window. But the more independent I came, the more physically and obviously physically battering he became. So I learned that he's beating my daughter. And I learned it one time. He lost it. This was in the. The last. Well, it was in the period that's that at that point I decided I was going to divorce him. Is she did something and he would fly off and she said something innocuous and he just flew off. She picked it up, ran upstairs to her room. He ran up after her. I had never seen him do that. He ran up after her and I ran up after him and I saw the child. I saw this look of horror and fear in my daughter's eyes that told me he had done this before. I let her know that I was going to divorce him. I asked him and he paused for a moment and he looked up, not making eye contact. And he said to me, he said, his soft voice, he says, you don't have to worry about me. I'm fine. That was it when he tried to beat me again and I stood my ground and I said, don't you ever touch me again. So I decided, this can't go on my Daughter's cutting herself, he's beating her secretly. It's secret. I'm going to leave. And as the therapist, my therapist pointed me to this. I was talking about, you know, I want to leave. I don't know what to do financially. And she looked at me, she said, don't you have an income? Yeah, I'm. I'm a full professor. Yeah, hey, I have an income. So I got my own checking account. I looked and I found a condo that I rented for several months. I was packing and he would come into my room. Of course we had separate bedrooms. He would come into my room and I would be sitting in front of the TV in my chair, putting stuff in boxes. And I just told him, I'm getting rid of things, I'm cleaning up. So he went to San Francisco on business in the morning. I knew he wasn't going to be back because of his flight until 9 or 10. I scheduled a moving company for that day. They came. I moved everything out except his bedroom, his office and the living room. And I moved into the condo. And the moving people came in, typical moving people. And they were putting stuff out. And then the lady who was sort of in charge, she came over to me and she whispered, she said, if he comes home, we're out of here. She picked up what I was doing. I was running. And the strangest things happened. I had three women who I did not consider friends, who never came over, who showed up on that day. It was bizarre. And one of them was my husband's oldest friend. So they're like 30 years older than me. I mean, this. I'm. I'm the kid in the bunch who criticized me to him. I, I know she did. And I, I just, I didn't, I didn't like her, but I was afraid of her. And I would never say any because that was his special God chosen people who Jody on him. That woman came over. She went in the family room, sat on the sofa with a book. She just sat there. I never told her. I never gave a hint. I realized though, as I've healed, I was so locked up in myself, I don't know what people notice about me. They probably noticed that his bullying because he would do it in front of them. He felt that comfortable.
- [30:59]
B
So was she being supportive?
- [31:02]
A
Was. But she never said a word. Then a woman who was my housekeeper, she came and it was not her day to come. And she showed up and she walked. I mean, this was like she walked in and she looked around and I wasn't. I still Was not telling anybody. I wasn't telling anybody. Oh, I'm leaving. She just. You show up at my house and I'm. There was a big old moving band on the street and she looked around. She also did not engage me in conversation. And I'll say this, she said, you should see what some white women put up with. So people saw things, but I was too locked in myself to even discern that. And so we got out of there by evening and I wrote a note that I put prominently outside on the front door. And I said, you know, read this before you come in. I said, we have not been robbed. I have left you. This is my attorney's phone number. And he. I went and hid until through our attorneys we met and we met. He didn't meet come to meet me. He came to meet Tambu. That. You know how that the child becomes the pawn. And I took her to this parking lot and she walked over to him and they talked. And after that, though, every time she went to visit him, he did something to her where she came back and she wanted to murder me. It was anyway. But you know what I did the next day after I moved in that condo, the next morning I went to this little restaurant for breakfast by myself because I was never allowed to go anywhere by myself. And with my daughter being home at 6 rule. When I said, you know this, it's summertime. And he said to me, he said, well, if you want to go out and whore around in the streets, you're not going to take my daughter. Because that was our outing. But, but it took me a long time to realize that a person can be truly mean. Somehow reading about narcissists and malignant narcissists or serial killers, somehow it's, it's separate. It's, it's, it's, it's over there. And it took me a long time when I did and that it didn't happen until I was in the shit show. I was angry. I was angry. I never got angry while I shoved it in and blamed it on me when the first time he hit me. And he used to brag about when he was a younger man in school, he knew how he was short. He was a short man, shorter than me and I'm five six. He used to tell me about when he was in school, he was bullied and he learned even though he was shorter than most of the other kids, he learned how to sucker punch them when something started. He didn't let. After he understood the bullying, he didn't let it get to that point. He knew how, and he showed me how he could just slam his fist into the side of a person's head and knock them down because they're not expecting it. Well, guess who? I mean, I listened to this as we're telling things about our past. Well, one day I was objecting to something standing in front of him, and he sucker punched me and he knocked me out and I started having seizures. I went to a therapist, of course, to find out what's wrong with me. And when I told the therapist, he said, those are hysterical seizures. You're so frightened. And after that, for a while after that, until he adopted another method. If he saw a glimmer of me giving an opinion, et cetera, I could see his body get into that stance. And for the first few times when he got into that stance, I am not automatically passed out. I automatically fell down and started shaking. I can say these things now, but, but I, I, I hid them. And this adult child, I, I just think there, there are millions of us. And I think it, it, it's also, as we're learning, it's not a bad thing. It's how we look at it. The thing is bad. No, the thing is bad. It's horrible. It's, it's unforgivable. But my control comes from not trying to please him, satisfy him. I would start crying as a defense, and he would say, look at you. You're just crying for yourself. And he would say, what about me? What about me? It took me a long time to grow up, and I've grown up. And the things that we're learning in the shitshow community is I don't have to let everybody in. I talk far less than I used to. I talked a lot all the time because I was always explaining myself before I can say anything, even what we're going to have for dinner. But it was my aces adverse experiences. There was no break in them because I lived at home. At 19, I went from home to a dorm. I lived in my dorm room for four years. And then after I left, got my undergraduate, I went to Iowa City for my master's. And that's two years. And then I met him and he suckered me. If you want to know about the behavior of narcissists. He found out what I needed and what I felt about myself. And he, what do they call it now? Love bombing? He said, you're so smart. My experience was want to take you to bed. One guy that I never would slept with him said, you Know you know what I want. I'm not like the other guys who said, I want to your mind. But he, he took me to places I'd never been before. Places. Restaurants with white tablecloths. I mean, this is a little girl who's coming from. Yeah.
- [38:02]
B
Poverty.
- [38:04]
A
Poverty. And he, he. I just felt like a queen. I just.
- [38:09]
B
When did it turn?
- [38:10]
A
It turned. We went home, his home to meet his family. So within the first month, he has slapped me and I.
- [38:23]
B
Were you already married?
- [38:25]
A
Yes. I'm painting a picture here. He told me that he loved me. The words one time. Wow. All I needed to hear that one time. This guy treats me like a queen. He believes I'm intelligent. This is the man. And I observed him very carefully. He wasn't a drinker. I would advise someone not to marry someone when their primary criteria is that the man doesn't drink. That was it.
- [39:00]
B
I love you and don't drink.
- [39:02]
A
Yeah.
- [39:03]
B
So what was the pro, like when this anger came up for you? Like, what was the process of. In releasing that?
- [39:10]
A
Well, feeling it and realizing that I was angry and realizing I was mistreated, I was abused. I never, ever believed that. If a therapist suggested that I was out of there, I found a new one. I mean, this is. Don't. Don't tell me that. A couple of friends. He hits you, boom, you're not my friend anymore. I mean, I was so conditioned. It's so tangled. But the cure, if I want to use that word, to health, the womb is so simple. That's what's deceptive about it. I'm used to horror, but it's so simple. It requires me to be still. It requires me to be. To put aside fear for just a moment. It only takes a moment for me to put. This is a long, drawn out process. When something challenges me, triggers me. I can be still now instead of being hysterical. And I was hysterical in my mind when I began with you on the shit show. I mean, I had to work myself up so much just to speak that I would just. It was like it was just spewing out of me.
- [40:37]
B
You always shared good shit. Always.
- [40:41]
A
Thank you. And I love it. That's. That takes me to another point. What is unique? There are many things unique, but for me, this the way that I'm going to say, you allow people to talk and you don't interrupt and you don't ask questions and you don't time them. I've never felt like, this guy, he.
- [41:11]
B
Really needs to shut up. I thought it's only happened a Couple times I've felt that way.
- [41:15]
A
Well, yeah, in all honesty, a couple of times I've felt that way too. But it's so, I think infrequent.
- [41:23]
B
It is infrequent.
- [41:25]
A
Yeah, it is infrequent. And I, it was gross in me when the couple of times those people talking, my response was, well, the old enough, but it was, this person needs this and it can be done in your community. People are self selected. I attended ACA meetings. They need the timer because people don't know each other, they don't have a connection. The shit show has revolutionized my life and people enjoy me. And you are very special. What's that?
- [42:02]
B
You're very special. You're inspiring.
- [42:04]
A
You.
- [42:04]
B
Yes, you're.
- [42:05]
A
Thank you for saying that. And you, you are, you are. And you're coming into, you're coming into yourself. That doesn't mean I don't sit and say, oh, now my. I'm in complete bliss. It will be continuous. No, life is about balance because we experience the negative and positive. And I'm coming to believe that we are sources of energy. Love is a form of energy. And love is a form of energy to me, puts us so that we mirror the alignment of the planets and the stars and the galaxies. And when I impact one person, bits of it and I don't know and I can't tell, little flex of light spark off that person onto other people. It's. It spreads and it's beautiful.
- [43:05]
B
Can you talk about, for anybody who might be listening that is estranged from their child, what that process of coming to grips with that is and where. How you feel about it today?
- [43:17]
A
Oh my gosh. Okay. How I feel about it today, and I'll explain has come to me through the work that I've done in the shit show community. Being in a community, something I had never done. I mean, I had been in groups, I led groups, but not been in and felt safe. And I feel safe. These people, how can I feel safe with these people? But my daughter, I was determined my daughter would never experience anything that I went to. I made certain. Both of us, my husband and I were college professors. When she was three, we moved her to a part of town that had upscale houses that had the best elementary and high school, junior high. We moved there so that she would have access to those schools. Whatever she asked for, she asked for. That is, I didn't, I didn't give her or I didn't. I'm out. I think there's a part of me that's guilty because when I say I gave her everything, I envision someone seeing me as kind of a stage mom or something like that. Her. I. Whatever she asked for, I consider it her journey. She wants to be a French horn player. All right. We're renting a French horn. When she goes for an audition and they laugh at her because she has a rental French horn. I buy a horn. She went to a music camp for the summer. Some of these things, I can't even fathom how I paid for them. While my retirement, I kept cashing in my 401k and she said in this place was a year round school, the Idlewild Arts Academy. Big deal. She wanted to go. After that summer, I worked and figured out a way and she went there and she graduated from there. She. When she graduated high school, unknown color. She, she was. We went, we did some of this. And I can talk freely. Some of this was just beyond my imagination. It was like so white. We went to visit colleges. She was accepted to nine music conservators. Wow. She went to Oberlin. I saw another kind of education that was. It was phenomenal. I took one of my students who wanted. She said she wanted to be like me. So I took her to Princeton for a visit. They had a visit program. There's a level of education that nurtures the intellectual. She, she. She worked. She worked in a music store until she wasn't working anymore. And I asked her why. And she says they're doing inventory. I told my hairdresser, oh, she's off for. And she said inventory. Right. She, My daughter would come in her. She wanted to be a rapper. She wrote music. She could read sheet music. I know I sound like a mother, but I am. I'm sorry. She wanted to be a rapper. She started spending a lot of time in LA at the clubs. And she did go to the LA music school and got her AA in music. I'm, I'm. I'm okay in the, in the shit show. One of the things I realized, she's an adult child. I tried so hard. I would never let her alone with people, particularly men, because no one was going to do the, the sneaky sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is not just penis centered. There are touches and looks, et cetera. So it's more than that. But she was not going to be. She was not going to suffer from poverty, from scarcity. She would have what she asked for. And I wanted her to be secure and in love with herself. And it turned out to be the opposite. It turned out to be the opposite. I did not. Now I've thought about it since I talked to you. I thought about it all night. Why didn't I realize that if he was treating me that way, he would treat her the same way? That never connected the two. When she was a baby, he doted. I just said to myself, oh, my God, he can treat me any way he wants, but he loves his daughter and he dotes on her. And he would walk around when she was in a bassinet, walk around the neighborhood, in the neighborhood, saying, he must have eggs in that. In that stroller, because he's so proud. But when she began to reach the age of having an identity in her own opinion, that's when it started. And I had no clue. Just as when she was using drugs in my house, I had no clue. And people knew. Other people knew. My gardener, who was my best friend for 10 years. I was saying how distressed I was just destroyed. I didn't know. I didn't know she was using drugs. And he said to me, I thought you knew. And I started bawling because how could he think that I would support her drug habit if I knew about it? Instead of helping her find treatment? It was so counter to another friend. His wife had a project and had some openings for student health. And so he was going to. He thought my daughter would be a perfect fit to work in this. But when he checked with his wife, whose program it was, her response to him, and he shared it with me, is that she thought she saw track marks on my daughter's arm. I mean, it was a nightmare. So I wanted to kill myself. I wrote her a letter apologizing, saying. Describing my treatment, saying that my intentions were only the best for her. No response. Okay. I had images of going to her and begging. One time with my husband, he flew into a rage. And I got down on my knees and I begged him to forgive me and not be angry with her. I imagined myself. I would. I would get down and I would crawl on my belly to have her forgiveness. Just, just, just. It's okay, Mom. And then the therapist, my beautiful, wonderful therapist. I call her my angel. I tell her I love her, and I do. And she asked me to tell her what I see. When I think of connecting, reconnecting with my daughter, I always go back to the ages when she's 8 and 9 and she's my little mini me. We did everything together. But where I've come to now, let me skip ahead, is. And again, I'm giving gratefulness and blessings to where they belong. Right now is I learned through the shit show, through the Aca. We all have a path to follow. If I believe that, it's not just words I say. If I believe it, am I practicing it? And I realized I wasn't practicing it. The piece that I have come to now is that what she is going through is part of her path. I have to trust and I'm working on it. I have to. I am working on it. I can't say I'm so fully there. I am trusting that just as the universe, just as my higher self and God are guiding me safely, are protecting me, that she has her higher self, her God, her angels that are protecting her. And I have stopped, I guess, fantasizing about concocting ways to reconnect with her. How can I. How. What can I do to show her that I love her, that I meant no harm? Now I'm wrestling with it. I'm still. I'm relying on. Faith was for me, it is. When you're giving up, life is crap. But I have faith it'll be better. But really, in my heart, I believe it'll never change. I believe now in. In. In my heart that she's on her own path. That is best for her. And. And I've stopped chasing her. It's been 10 years. In 10 years, I've only seen her physically one time. And through the shit show, I realized that these traumas and these hurts, they remain. But it's how. Because it's not about erasing, forgetting for me, it's about changing the way I see it and the fact that I am here now and I'm not dead. So I need to let her be on her path and not interrupt it, not derail it because of really what is My ego. My ego said you have the power to make her life perfect. I don't. I don't have that power, nor I didn't have. I don't have that power with myself. I have faith. I have love. I have belief that I am unique in the sense that as a bit of light, a bit of energy, in the universe, I am singular. There is not another like me. And. And where I am now, as I said yesterday, I'm. I'm. This is some. This came to me last night after talking to you. I shared that what I want is. I want to serve. I want someone to. To know that they have the power within them to change the way they see the world and experience the world. And, you know, I went to sleep last night and I woke up this Morning. And I. I realized that when I said that I want to serve, I was saying it with an attitude of deficit. It's something I can't get. I can't have that own thought. I realized I'm doing it now.
- [56:47]
B
You sure as hell are. You sure as hell are you. I mean, you are the epitome of. One can rise from the ashes.
- [57:00]
A
Absolutely. I want.
- [57:02]
B
It is remarkable. You have a remarkable story. It is every. Just the growth that you've experienced in such a short period of time is mindboggling. And you are a. You are.
- [57:17]
A
You are.
- [57:18]
B
One of. You are one of the most remarkable individuals I've ever met in my entire life.
- [57:23]
A
As are you. Our situations and our life experience is so different, yet we connect. We. We understand. We get. We get each other.
- [57:34]
B
Yes.
- [57:35]
A
That's why I talk about being humanized.
- [57:39]
B
Exactly.
- [57:39]
A
Seeing myself as human. Not because we're. We are insulting or. I'm in so many categories. I'm a female. I'm a senior. I'm an old hippie. I'm. You know, I was an actress for 10 years. I traveled around the country doing performances. And I began because one of my areas, African American literature. They chose me as a consultant to. Okay, this. This mode is called chautauqua, which is teaching history in character, but at a mature level. Not this silly stuff you see on TV where the guys in the Benjamin Franklin suit, but. But actual the teaching of history. They asked me to consult. So I would sit and watch these performers as they built their characters and provide historical background and accuracy. One day they asked me to do it. What? I'm the person hiding. The sole person hiding. In hoping not to be noticed, I developed one character. And over the span of 10 years, at their request, I developed six characters. Now, all of these characters are black women who were leaders and change makers. Phyllis Wheatley, Mary McLeod Bassoon, the woman from the 20s. For some reason I can never remember her name. But anyway, so I had. But. But then. Now I can see connections. They are me and I'm them. After I talked to you yesterday, I thought last night about trauma. Use the word ancestral trauma. I thought about that and I counted the generations that I know of of women being abused, sexually abused, battered. That I can count five generations, including me, because now it includes my daughter, me, my mother, her mother and her mother. Just. Anyway, the great. I asked. I asked them because this is a theme that's come up in the group in the shit show. I asked them what they thought about me. A cheer went up, a cheer. A little cheer went up. And then that was it. And then there was Silas.
- [60:54]
B
That was beautiful.
- [60:55]
A
Thank you for what you're doing.
- [60:57]
B
Thank you for staying around.
- [60:59]
A
And I, I, I am. I am.
- [61:03]
B
You bring so much value. It wouldn't be the shit show without you. Seriously. So we'll hunt you down if you leave as you.
- [61:12]
A
As you told me from the beginning when I was so scared.
- [61:14]
B
You're not going anywhere. I love you so much.
- [61:17]
A
I love you, girl. Now don't let it all go. What you got to do? Yeah.
- [61:38]
B
Thanks for selling your car to Carvana.
- [61:39]
A
Here's your check. Whoa. When did I get here? What do you mean? I swear it was just moments ago that I accepted a great offer for from Carvana online.
- [61:46]
B
I must have time traveled to the future. It was just moments ago.
- [61:50]
A
We do same day pickup.
- [61:51]
B
Here's your check for that great offer.
- [61:53]
A
It is the future. It's. It's the present.
- [61:56]
B
And just the convenience of Carvana. Sorry to blow your mind.
- [61:59]
A
It's all good.
- [62:00]
B
Happens all the time.
- [62:02]
A
Sell your car the convenient way to Carvana.
- [62:06]
B
Pick up. Times may vary and fees may apply.