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Lee McGowan
This is one of the things I'm hoping for for our country, that in stripping everything from us, we learn who we are, what is important to us, and we work our asses off to return to a place where we can hold up our heads high again. Hello and welcome to the Politics Girl Podcast. I'm your host, Lee McGowan. Let's get into it. I am recording this New Year's episode from my hometown of Toronto, the city where I was raised and the country that gave me the perspective on America I still have to this day. I'm recording it from a rental house. This is not my childhood home. This is not the place where I grew up and became a person. Believe me, I wish I could do this podcast from beside my mother's tree in her beautiful white living room, in the house that I was raised. But unfortunately, after my mother's sudden death in 2018, everything I thought I knew about the security of my life, about who I was, about how my family worked, fell apart around me. In the wake of my mother's death, I discovered that few things in my family were as they had seemed, and that in many ways I had been living in a kind of mirage that when my mom died, disappeared. That the safety and comfort I had always taken for granted were, in many ways due to her, and without her, they were gone. I'm telling you about this not because I just love sharing personal, difficult stories about my life. I already told you about my terminal diagnosis back in November, but because I've learned that we can extrapolate so much about the big picture from small picture things, that sometimes a deeply personal experience can have universal lessons and someone else's trauma shared can offer insight without others having to experience the same pain. Now, I'm not sure how many of you have lost a parent or how many of you have lost a beloved parent, because those are two different things. But in 2018, much like 2008, when I was diagnosed with my disease was a rug pulled out from under me kind of year the ground I thought I built my life on shifted and I found I was no longer stable or safe with my place in the world within my family dynamics. And everything changed drastically. Not only had I lost my number one fan, the person who had my back and believed in me more than anyone else, but her death revealed that she had been protecting me from a lot of truths. And those truths came hard and fast. The person who had been looking out for me was gone, and suddenly I was responsible for everyone else. And it was completely overwhelming. The Year my mom died. It was actually me who had been incredibly sick. I had contracted, of all things, Covid. Not that Covid, but a COVID virus all the same, which became pneumonia. That, with someone like me with a lung disease, was very hard to manage. I was in and out of the hospital for months. 5 Finally living at UCLA for the entire month of May. I had started blacking out. My inflammation was off the charts. They thought I might have cancer. So we were doing PET scans and CAT scans and I had to do a biopsy of my lungs while I was awake because it was too risky to put me to sleep, which I am not gonna lie, was a total nightmare. I was skeletal thin, out of breath, and constantly and deeply depressed. My husband was an angel, basically living with me at the hospital while my mom took care of our son. My mom lived with us for six months that year, similar to what she'd done when I was first sick. And she was absolutely instrumental in my recovery and the overall health of my entire family. When I was finally able to come home from the hospital, she doted on me and took the brunt of a fair amount of the rage I was feeling, but was desperately trying and failing not to direct at anyone else. I am ashamed to say that I lashed out at a lot of people during those days. I felt weak and useless and my body had let me down and I felt trapped inside this broken shell. My mom was so kind and she encouraged me to go outside and see my family swimming or even just go to the living room to watch my son do something. But mostly I just wanted to stay in bed. I didn't want to interact with the world I didn't feel a part of. I didn't want reminders of everything I'd lost or could no longer have. I was a complete mess, Everything was terrible and I was going to endlessly suffer anyway, so what was the point? I even started doing this thing where I would scratch my arms so hard that they would bleed so I could at least see an external pain I could understand rather than just experiencing this internal pain that I couldn't. I'm telling you, I understand people who turn to self harm or even suicide in a crisis because internal anguish coupled with what feels like a total lack of control can be completely debilitating. While my husband tried to give my son a normal life to keep things positive and less scary, my mom dealt with the day to day that was me. And while she did it, she started to get very thin. Now, my mom was never happy with the way she looked. She, like most women, always wanted to be thinner. So for a while she looked great and we gave her lots of compliments, which in retrospect is its own problem. I remember a friend telling me once that there was a period of time where she had been so depressed that she just stopped eating. But everyone kept telling her how great she looked. She said it was so weird. I had never felt worse and everyone was just telling me I had never looked better. But with my mom, what started off as good started to be not so good. She wasn't just thin, she was skinny. Now I may have been self involved at the time, but I noticed it and it worried me. But when I would mention it to her, she would brush it off saying she was fine, just concerned about me and probably not eating enough. But it got to the point where I made her go to a doctor in LA and he made her make an appointment in Toronto. When my mom left Los Angeles just after the fourth of July, I shuffled along beside her as she carried her luggage to the taxi. And honestly, she seemed fine, pleased even that I was well enough for her to be okay to go home. I waved at her chirpy little face at the window and off she went. But my dad said when she got off the plane in Toronto, she could barely walk. When I think back to that time, I think my mom was probably sick for a long time. But her body just hung on long enough to make sure I was better before she fell apart. Apparently once she got home, it was all she could do to get out of bed. Her kidneys were shutting down and although she saw a specialist in Toronto, she chose not to tell me because she didn't want to add to my worry. Every time we spoke she would tell me she wasn't feeling well but that everything was fine. So when I got a call that she was in a coma and might not make it through the night, I was absolutely shocked. Again, I'm not sure how many of you have been on the receiving end of such a call or how many of you were as far away as I was to get this awful news. But it is truly awful to try to get to a faraway loved one in a hurry. And that story is one all to itself. Suffice it to say we arrived in Toronto very late that night. My best friend picked us up at the airport and dropped us off at my parents house and I immediately got into my mom's car and drove to the hospital. I found my mom not only in a coma, but apparently with all of her organs shutting down. My dad was essentially catatonic and couldn't tell me anything that had happened. And the doctors didn't actually seem to know what had caused it. All they could tell me was that she had acquired some form of Legionnaires disease. No one knew how, no one knew where, but she had been stabilized and put into a medically induced coma for her protection. That night, I sent my dad home and I stayed with my mom. And I cried. I cried for so many reasons. First, this was my mom. My best friend, the parent who understood and supported me. The one who cared for my family when I couldn't. And the one that I truly counted on. This was Penny Elliot, a woman beloved by everyone. A lovely, kind, giving soul who gave too much of herself to others and far too little to herself. I cried because she was so devoted in doing what she thought was best for me that she didn't tell me she was this sick. That I hadn't been able to be there to care for her. I know I couldn't have really cared for her. I was too sick. But I thought I'd never even get a chance to say goodbye. And I felt furious at this ridiculous WASP behavior that made her think she had to put out this illusion of perfection and togetherness even when everything was collapsing around her. But I also cried because I knew she didn't want any of this. That my mom had been extremely clear that she didn't want extraordinary life saving measures. She didn't want to be kept alive on machines. I didn't know if my dad didn't know that, if he forgot, if he just wasn't living in reality at the time. But I knew that's most likely why she made me the executor of her will. Why she had named me her legal advocate. I had had that responsibility and I hadn't been there. I hadn't been there to say, don't put her on these machines. She wouldn't want this. Here I was with a woman who had taken care of me so well and I had let her down. Now my mom did eventually come out of the coma and they were able to stabilize her and move her to a different icu, a burn unit, because the ICU she was supposed to be in was under construction and my God, surrounded by all those families and people. Dealing with that kind of crisis made my mother look good in comparison. But her kidneys were still failing and she had had a micro stroke and her legs were swelling with edema. And she was convinced that it was over. We went back and forth on what to do, but in the end, my mom chose palliative care and I was able to be with her every day until she died. If you haven't experienced watching a loved one slip away, it is both traumatizing and intimate. I was honored to be there at the end, honoured to have been able to care for her and bring her comfort until she died. And I was so lucky to know that her end was peaceful and without fear or pain. Because I know not everyone gets that and it's a gift. Not everyone gets a mother like mine either, and that was also a gift. I had the kind of mother that people dream about. But realistically, my mother was also the kind of woman who I'm not sure was ever really happy, nor do I think she ever really saw her happiness as a priority. I think my mom was a product of her time, a product of the patriarchy. A woman who, even with all her privileges, didn't really feel like she had much choice in life. And like many women before and after her, made the best with what she had. My mom lived a life of service, making sure everyone had what they needed, but in many ways, never really making sure that she did. I once did an intake form with a life coach. I was living in LA and I was trying to figure out who I was going to be post my acting career. And I was given a set of questions to answer about who I was and who I wanted to be and what I wanted from life and what I was just tolerating. But when I was done, I had well over 30 pages of answers and I found that I had learned so much about myself. I was actually moved by this experience of self reflection and I wanted to share it. So I called my mom and and I told her that I thought she should answer the questions. She didn't have to work with the life coach, but just complete the form as an exercise. And her response was, oh no, I don't want to know that much about myself. I might find out I'm unhappy. And I was floored. I mean, I teased her about it at the time, but even without reflection, I knew it was about the saddest thing anyone could say. My mom didn't want to look too closely at how she felt about her life or she might have to acknowledge her her actual feelings. In her mind, her life was fine. So there was no point in lifting up that rock and shining a light on what might be beneath it. Sadly, when she died, that rock was removed and it revealed all the things she didn't want to look at. And the person that was left to manage it was me. Now, that wasn't her fault. She did exactly what she was taught to do. To make everything look good, to put a pretty face on an ugly situation, to spare who you can from struggle and pain. But without her to protect me, the facade was removed and I was face to face with reality. Now, I won't go into all the details because they're not all my stories to share. But not only did I lose my mum that year, I lost my family home, my cottage. And my relationship with my father changed dramatically. All I have left of the life I grew up with now lies in an apartment with my dad and in a storage unit in rural Ontario. So I sit here in a rental house in my hometown, talking to you about what happens when the life you know falls apart and everything you thought was stable becomes unstable. And how it's possible to not only live through that kind of trauma, but successfully come out the other side. I can also tell you firsthand that your life can fall apart, but you personally can be better for it. I'd also learned that from getting sick, but I was taught it again with the fallout of losing my mom. Honestly, my husband and I often say, thank you, universe. We have enough perspective now. You can stop sending us lessons, because we got it. One of the things I noticed after my mother's death was how much of my life had been based on expectations. How much of my existence, like her own, was caught up in shoulds. You should do this, you should do that. It should have been like, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I couldn't believe how much of my behavior had been dictated by how I was expected to do or behave. By taking what she would want me to do out of the equation because. Because she clearly wasn't there to care. I found myself making quite different decisions. And it was strange. Liberating, but strange. Was this person who loved me most in the world holding me back? That couldn't be right. She only had my best interests in mind. How would that be possible? I was talking to my therapist about it, and she asked me to remember a time when I had dyed my hair a color my parents didn't want, or when I'd got a piercing or a tattoo as a teenager that they wouldn't have approved of. She was basically asking me, when had I been rebellious in my life, even if it was just how I presented myself to the world. And I was stumped by her question. I had literally never done that. That Was not how our family worked. I was the only child and it was my job to keep everyone happy. And part of doing that was not rocking the boat. Yes, I followed my own dreams, albeit a bit delayed and often in secret until I'd made them a successful. But I hit all those milestones. I checked off all those requirements. And I learned early that my parents were happiest when I was succeeding. So I tried to succeed at everything. I knew they wanted more children, so I tried to be all the children. The jock, the brain, the pretty girl. I strived to win every single award and accolade because I knew that made them happy. I mean, of course it made me happy too. I'm a chronic overachiever. But to this day I'm not entirely sure how much of that was me and how much of that was me trying to please them. But with my mom's death, suddenly I was free of all these expectations. I was no longer responsible for fixing my parents relationship, a job that neither of them would have said was mine, but one as an only child I absolutely believed was I was no longer responsible for presenting my mother's perfect daughter to the world. Which was really a byproduct of presenting her as the perfect daughter to her mother. I'm not sure if I would have even started Politics girl as it is now if my mom was still alive. And I can't tell you how weird that feels to say that because she's the one who encouraged me to find something I really cared about and I picked politics. But when she was alive I was doing civics. It was only after she died that I started the version most people know. The rants, the opinions, the swearing. I'm pretty sure she would not have loved that. I know she would have been worried. Worried about people not liking it, about people not liking me. She would have been concerned with what people thought, I would have been concerned with what she thought. I can handle people being horrible to me online, but it would have made her so uncomfortable. I'm not sure I could have done this with the authenticity it deserved without losing it to self judgment if she had been here. I'm conflicted by that. It's like I had to lose her fear to find my strength and she would hate to know that, and I hate to know that. But it is what it is. Which brings me back to America at the beginning of 2025. As someone who shares my opinions online and interacts with the public, I am hyper aware of how much of my personal information is out there and Let me tell you, it's way more than you'd think. It's your name, your address, your phone number, but even information about your family. Data brokers are collecting it, they're selling it, and they're profiting from it. And it's very unsettling. With the new administration coming in and politically motivated threats on the rise, it's never been more important to take your privacy seriously. Angry, polarized individuals can access personal data for as little as $5. And it's all out there. Over 525 pieces of personal information on the average person. That's why protecting your privacy is so essential. Which is why I'm here recommending Delete Me. Deleteme is a subscription service that removes your personal information from hundreds of data brokers. It turns out a key enabler of the growth of personalized political attacks online is the amount of sensitive personal information available for these people to find. So here's how it sign up, tell Deleteme what information you want removed and their team of experts get to work. They send you regular privacy reports detailing what they found, where they found it, and what they've removed. This is not a one time fix. DeleteMe keeps working for you, constantly monitoring and removing your information to keep it off the Internet. Simply put, Delete Me does the heavy lifting to wipe your and your family's personal information from data broker websites. It's like having your own personal privacy guard. So take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners today. Get 20% off your delete Me plan by texting Politics Girl to 64,000. Text POLITICS GIRL one word to 64000. That's POLITICS GIRL to 64,000. Message and data rates may apply. See terms for details. All right, if you're like me, you bought some clothes for the men in your life over the holidays. You wanted to fill out their wardrobes or replace some tired looking pieces or just kick up their style a notch. But it's not always easy to find things that they'll actually wear or more particularly feel comfortable in. Which is where public rec comes in. Public rec are clothes that are sharp enough for any occasion, but your men will actually feel comfortable in them. I got my dad their bestseller daymaker pants and a polo shirt for golf this Christmas and he says they are total winners. The quality is premium, the fit is perfect, and my dad said they're so comfortable that they were a great gift. Plus, public rec made it easy to find the perfect fit since their pants come in exact waist and length rather than guessing at small, medium or large. The pants come in great colors like navy, dark, olive, stone gray. So you can really choose something that fits the man in your lifestyle. And thanks to their proprietary blend of performance materials, they are breathable, stretchy and they keep their shape. Public Rec has a full line of high quality basics including pants, polos, jackets, vests, bombers, hoodies. So if you're looking to revamp your or the man you love's wardrobe, this might just be the perfect brand for you. So maybe do a little post holiday shopping with Public Rec because for limited time our listeners are getting 20% off when they use the code politicsgirl at checkout. That's 20% off with the code politicsgirl@publicrec.com and after you make your purchase they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that we sent you publicrec.com politicsgirl so spending the holidays at this house in Toronto, I missed a number of things from home. Yes, my dog and my pillow, but also my laundry detergent. And I know that sounds insane, but laundry doesn't stop when you're away. And I wasn't going to buy a big thing of detergent in Canada so I just used what the house came with and I really missed my laundry sauce. Laundry Sauce has been sponsoring the show for a while now and I have to tell you I'm totally hooked. I was already pretty picky with detergent because I like to be good to the environment and I'm not into that chemical smell thing. But Laundry Sauce is the only company partnered with one of the top fragrance houses in the world in order to bring this beautiful complex aromas made from high quality ingredients and put them into powerful stain fighting laundry pods that are not only good for the environment but smell incredible. From Australian sandalwood to Egyptian rose to Siberian pineapple, people are loving it. Me included. Plus, Laundry Sauce doesn't just stop at pods. They've got scent boosters and dryer sheets and dryer balls and fabric softeners. They even have candles to really round out the experience. The scent is fantastic but not overpowering, which in my humble opinion is very important. So if you're ready to elevate your laundry ritual, now is the time. Head to laundrysauce.com politicsgirl and use the promo code politicsgirl at checkout for 15% off. That's laundry sauce.com politicsgirl promo code politicsgirl for 15% off your order one last time. Laundrysauce.com politicsgirl with the code politicsgirl for 15% off I honestly cannot wait to get back to mine. It's like I had to lose her fear to find my strength and she would hate to know that, and I hate to know that. But it is what it is. Which brings me back to America at the beginning of 2025. We are a country in trauma and the reality of how we live and how our country works is about to dissolve around us. This new administration is about to throw our lives into chaos and there is nothing we can do about it. Our reality of living in a democracy with a trusted rule of law and protected constitutional rights might actually be over. Or at least over as we knew it. We're heading into a time where up will be down, wrong will be right, and people we thought we could trust will let us down. What I learned after living through this kind of situation is that you have to protect yourself and you have to learn to compartmentalize. When so much comes at you at once, you're far better off to deal with one problem at a time. In my case, I handled my issues in short, concentrated bursts and then took a break to grieve or work, and then picked another crisis to manage. The truth is, you can't do it all at once. You can't even deal with thinking about it all at once. It will overwhelm you. So pick your battles and save your sanity. Another thing I learned moving from crisis to crisis is that you have to be kind to yourself, to give yourself a break when you need one, to judge yourself and others, and to laugh when you can. In that first year after my mom's death, I often felt like I was being a bad mother because I had to be a good daughter, or I was being a bad daughter because I had to be a good mother. I could have drowned in the constant disappointment I felt in myself, but I had to give myself a break or I would have broken and then I would have let everyone down. I had to accept that I was dealing with a terrible situation as well as I could, and I had to forgive myself for not nailing it every time. I also had to accept my anger and sadness so they wouldn't overwhelm me and find ways to protect myself from external factors that would destroy me if I let them. I became far more self protective and less of a pleaser and I attempted to accept that I could do nothing but learn to live with this new reality where nothing felt secure. I'm not going to lie it was hard. It's still hard. I went from that year into the COVID years, into this obscene reality where we're back into the Trump years. And to this day, I still struggle with the fallout of what happened. But I can say in all honesty that I came out of it knowing exactly who I am and knowing that one of the most important things you can do at a time where everything is suddenly different is to hold on to yourself, to keep returning to who you are, to what you believe, to what you know to be true. The circumstances around you might change, but you cannot. You might even find, as I did, that you learn even more about who you are when everything you know is stripped away. And as painful as that can be, it can also be incredibly powerful and great for growth. This is one of the things I'm hoping for for our country, that in stripping everything from us, we learn who we are, what is important to us, and we work our asses off to return to a place where we can hold up our heads high again. Finally, I can tell you that everything in life, from the best to the very worst, is better if you have community around you. My husband was extraordinary during this time. My friends were everything. When the shit hits the fan, you really find out who your people are. And I got really lucky. My family life might have imploded, but the family I made for myself was absolutely incredible. Now, you might have gone through a crisis and found that the people you are surrounded with were the opposite, that they let you down and left you to struggle. And if that's the case, then I am sorry, because that's devastating. But trauma teaches tough lessons on who to trust and what you need for the people that you bring into your life. We are about to go through a crisis as a country, and who we trust and surround ourselves with is going to be the difference between our survival and our destruction. The human experience is actually won and lost on community. There is a reason loneliness is an epidemic. The incel community thrives and older men living alone are at the highest rate for suicide. We can't exist in a vacuum. We can't do everything alone. Americans are force fed rugged individualism, but it's community that actually got us this far, both as a species and as a country. I would guess one of the reasons we have so much trouble in our country right now is because people with power put a lot of energy into dividing us for their own best interests, when our working together would have actually far better served the common good. The billionaires and the power brokers Seek to keep us apart, because together we're powerful and they want all the power. It's something we need to remember going into this next phase. The divided we will fall. If I was to offer people a New Year's resolution, it would be what I learned with my mom's death, that the world as you know it can fall apart. But if you hold on to who you are and surround yourself with community you trust, you can survive it. We can't allow what's coming to change us. Our country will change, but we have to hold on to what we know to be true, to who we know ourselves to be, to the hope we had for the country when we voted for that other candidate, and for the belief we have that the world can still be a better place. This new administration will reward those who fall in line, who forget who they are and become who they are asked to be. It will encourage people to abandon their community and their values and to look out for themselves. And we will be tempted to look away when we see injustice, to choose not to stir the pot, to allow things to happen, to keep our own lives as normal as possible. But I am here to tell you that normal is gone. And pretending it's not won't work. I heard someone say that we should make a list right now, before it all begins, of what we consider normal things like walking down the street with someone who looks different than you. Same sex couples, mixed race couples, women in the workplace, the ability to protest the press criticizing the government, going places without permission, crossing state lines without checkpoints, not having a military presence on our city streets. Because when those things start to change, we need to not only notice, but be outraged and fight back. Normalizing abnormal behavior is exactly what our new leaders want. That's why knowing ourselves and our values and our morals and holding ourselves accountable with our communities will be so essential. We are about to get that call, and the ground around us is about to get shaky. The country as we know it might be over, but unlike my mother, America has not died. We are still here. And while things might change, the question is, will we? Will we change with the pain? Or will we hold firm to what we know of ourselves and find a stronger, better version of our country in the process? So I'm not going to wish you a happy New Year. I'm going to wish you strength over fear and community over isolation. I want to thank you for joining me today and caring enough about democracy to be here. None of what is coming is normal. But the more of us who refuse to accept, who push back, who hold on to what we know about ourselves and our nation, the better chance we have of not only surviving this crisis, but thriving from it. If this is really who we are, then we can do better. And only from the end of one thing can we begin something new. Until next week. Peachy. Before you go, I just want to say if you're a premium member of this podcast, thank you. I loved talking to so many of you at our holiday drinks and I promise to still get to some of those outstanding questions. If you're not a member, please consider supporting my work. The mainstream media is not going to be your source of information in this new world, which is why it's more essential than ever to support those of us doing this independent work. Right wing extremists have been able to shape the mindset of a fair amount of this nation because they invested in messaging. Our side just didn't back the alternative the same way and we have to fix that now. So if you aren't a member of Politics Girl Premium, please consider going to politicsgirl.com and signing up. I cannot continue this work without your help. The beauty of signing up to support me is that you will get this podcast ad free, along with all of my short rants sent directly to your inbox. So even if my work is silenced on social media, you will still get access to the truth. There's a link to sign up in the bio of this episode, but also on politicsgirl.com thank you again for all your time and support. My very best for the new year. The Politics Girl Podcast is written and performed by me, Leigh McGowan, in partnership with the Midas Media Network and produced and edited by Happy Warrior Entertainment. All rights reserved.