Our Dead Dads
The concept of Our Dead Dads was born through the daily discussions of seven men who share bonds of blood, friendship and all having lost their fathers. Nick Gaylord, the show’s host, shares his life experiences with his deceased father while exploring the complications and realities of that relationship. Life is intense, grief and loss come in many forms, and no parent-child relationship is black and white, which is why this show touches on all shades of grey.
Join Nick for candid conversations with his three brothers and three of his lifelong friends, along with other special guests who discuss their experiences with loss, grief, laughter, and moving forward. Nothing is off-limits here. Nick learned after his father's passing that he couldn't process what he was going through alone and sought the help of a therapist, who helped him to let go of his anger toward his father. Looking back, he realized just how many people are being crushed under the weight of grief, loss, and in some cases, anger.
Nick's mission through Our Dead Dads is to offer a platform for anyone who needs or wants to tell their story, to have that opportunity. He also hopes to reach many more who need to talk but don't know how to start the conversation, hopeful that by listening to these stories, they will be able to start talking with someone.
Nick has always sought to help others and to make everyone around him laugh. Along with his brothers and friends, he has frequently used humor to get through the hardest times in their lives, and hopefully, you will permit yourself to do the same. Get ready for an emotional deep dive. Nick has a lot to say and so do his guests. He's here for you and ready to help. Everyone has been through trauma, grief, and loss. Now, along with Nick and his guests, everyone will get through it together.
Nick is changing the world one damaged soul at a time. Welcome to Our Dead Dads.
Our Dead Dads
025 - Overcoming Childhood Trauma and Domestic Violence - The Journey of Mel Mosier
What does it take to turn a life filled with grief and tumultuous family experiences into one of healing and transformation? Our latest episode gives you an intimate look at the journey of Mel Mosier, marked by the loss of her father, time spent in foster care, and the enduring impact of childhood trauma. Mel shares her story publicly for the first time, reflecting on a difficult past and the power of storytelling as a means of finding solace and connecting with others who feel alone in their struggles. Join us as we unravel the complexities of grief and the indomitable human spirit that seeks to rise above it.
From navigating a childhood steeped in neglect and abuse to finding refuge with a loving foster family, Mel sheds light on the harsh realities and the moments of profound hope that shaped her life. We explore the clash between the facade of family harmony and the persistent scars left by past abuses, while also touching on her father's genuine attempts at reconciliation. Amidst the chaos, we witness the strength required to break free from generational trauma, offering insights into the ongoing battle of mending emotional wounds and pursuing dreams against all odds.
As the episode unfolds, the focus shifts to the power of community support and positive change. Mel shares her inspiring efforts in creating The Faithful Sparrow, a non-profit organization aimed at providing resources and support for those in crisis. By offering a lifeline through virtual support groups and personal assistance, she strives to empower others to reclaim their lives. This episode stands as a testament to resilience, the possibility of healing through connection, and the boundless potential for growth when individuals are committed to nurturing not only themselves but also future generations.
CONTACT MEL: mel@thefaithfulsparrow.com
WEBSITE: www.thefaithfulsparrow.com
IF YOU ARE IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP, YOU HAVE RESOURCES AVAILABLE TO YOU! DO NOT EVER SETTLE FOR ABUSE. YOU DO NOT DESERVE IT! NO ONE DOES!!!
IF YOU ARE IN IMMEDIATE DANGER, IF FEASIBLE, CONTACT YOUR LOCAL AUTHORITIES OR CALL 911. IF YOU NEED TO BE MORE DISCRETE AND NEED MORE INVOLVED HELP, PLEASE CONTACT MEL AT THE EMAIL ADDRESS ABOVE. HER MISSION IS TO HELP ALL VICTIMS OF DV AND IPV.
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Was it giving you trouble getting in?
Speaker 2:Well, sometimes it wouldn't put the Zoom thing in there, so I had to reinstall the installer for Zoom real quick.
Speaker 1:That's weird. All of a sudden your audio sounds a little bit weird now. It almost sounds like a little bit muffled. Let me see if it connects.
Speaker 2:That's why it didn't connect. Is that better?
Speaker 1:Light years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's because it wasn't connected to my microphone. You can't see, but I have a similar microphone.
Speaker 1:All right, ready to have a little bit of fun here. I mean, I don't know how much fun we're going to have, but we're going to try. First of all, thank you so much for taking the time and joining me today. I am very excited to have this conversation, as I am with all the conversations, and I always use the disclaimer of. It's not that I'm excited because we're going to be talking about what we will be talking about, but I'm just excited to get to have another conversation with an amazing person and to dive into the depths of grief and loss that we are all here to talk about, because everybody goes through it, and the only way that we're going to make this world better for those of us who can't figure out how to process it is by telling these stories and letting them know that they're not alone. And actually you're going to tell your story for the first time as well. You have a podcast of your own, but this is not a story that you have really gone overly public with.
Speaker 2:You're correct. Thank you for having me, Nick. The basis of my story is I've kept it very close chest because once you start to tell it, it kind of transpires the way it's supposed to. But that means you're being very vulnerable, and so when I created my podcast, it was for the other side to listen to other stories, to help me have courage to grow and tell mine. So I have yet on my podcast to answer the same questions.
Speaker 2:I asked my guests you know and it has nothing to do with grief and loss, which anyone listening in today, you have some story in there of grief and loss. It's whether it how, the level of impact. You know grief is linear, it does its own thing and it never really goes away. You know, when you least expect it. You can be overwhelmed by those feelings and not know what to do with them, and so when I saw your podcast, I was very intrigued by it. I was like who wants to listen to someone on the podcast for however long? About grief? You know, about losing their dad, and some days I don't think I've lost him. You know, I get to looking at my phone and I want to pick it up and call him and then I'm really oh no, he's been gone like six years now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's mind boggling because we didn't have a lot of time together.
Speaker 1:And so, yeah, I have not began to tell the story. Well then, I guess there's no better time than right now to begin. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your dad? What was like growing up with him, how your relationship progressed as a child into adulthood? We'd love to hear it all.
Speaker 2:Oh, here we go.
Speaker 2:I'm an early eighties child, and so when you grow up in the nineties, when you hit your teens in the nineties, basically it was a different way of back then. So hindsight now I know my dad in a different light, but at the time growing up was no other way to say but hell, you know, it was a harsh childhood, not just with my dad but also with my mom, and there was four of us in that house and we moved quite a bit because my dad wasn't very good taking care of the money. He was technically the breadwinner but he was horrible at managing money. And so before the age of five, of course you don't really remember too much, but you kind of remember the trauma as I've learned in therapy of why I can't stand to talk about my childhood. And so at the very age of nine almost nine, I'd say I was removed from that house and put into foster care.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:To give a little series of the situation. I'm not saying that the hell is any different. Someone else's hell, that's not what I'm saying today. I'm saying for what we were going through all siblings. It was bad. It was so bad that we didn't know it was bad because we just thought it was the way they loved us, but there was neglect. It was so bad that we didn't know it was bad because we just thought it was the way they loved us, but there was neglect. There was physical abuse, mainly from my father, and then there was emotional and mental abuse from my mother that I still struggle with today, more than I do with my dad.
Speaker 2:So he's a 60s child, or was you know, and so his family raised him the way they were before that. So there's a generational way of how you handle your children, and it was you know. Children should be seen and not heard. Children should do as I say, not as I do. My mom led a lot of it with him that if we were not these obedient, perfect children, he came in as discipliner and didn't even ask if he did the things she was accusing of us. She just didn't want to parent or be mom that day and she blamed everything on us kids and me. Being the oldest of my brothers, I got a lot of it, more than they did. My sister, who is my half sister, she got the brunt of it too, which is unfortunate because that was even his kid, so her story is different than mine. So it was brutal. I did not come back home until the day before my 12th birthday.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:In that timeframe we had our stages of where we had to go, do weekly visits or whatever, and I didn't want to go back home. I had fallen in love, or learned how to love, with a great foster family of they had three younger children, so I was the oldest. They showed me faith, you know God, they were just this ordinary, nothing spectacular family, but they were absolutely amazing, and so I was in a tug of war of why they were so different than my own parents. You know what's real, what's fake. Did my parents even love me, type of thing? And it wreaked havoc on a little girl's mindset to where I wanted to stay invisible and I didn't ever really voice to my biological parents that I didn't want to come back home. I was too scared to. You know, my foster family knew. They knew that they were preparing to adopt me if they could. You know they taught me that hugs didn't have to be violent or didn't come after someone being violent. They taught me that some of the medical issues that I was having were actually medical issues and not me being a lazy good for nothing. I mean, it reminds you, guys, I'm just nine years old when I was taken, but from nine years. I was probably about 45 pounds and about five foot tall, so I wasn't eating right, I wasn't. There was so much underlining issues that I just thought were normal. And I was bullied at school because I was so tiny and lanky and smelled like cigarette smoke and I wet the bed chronically because of fear in my home. And so, again, I wasn't making friends. I didn't want to have people over because my parents fought all the time, and in this journey of my dad I could see he had his own little warfare at that time. You know, like he didn't want to be who he was, but he didn't know how to be anything else. So in foster care we have to do court ordered counseling, family counseling, and this didn't happen right away.
Speaker 2:It's probably almost into a year of living with the foster family that my parents and I began to do this, and my mom kept the same narrative that they weren't abusive, that their house was fine, that this is ridiculous. And my dad was the one that was staying quiet and sometimes I saw him cry like he was hurting in this. I mean, all his kids were moved. That has to be an experience, right? He wrote a letter to me about seven pages long before I came home, and it was an apology letter. He took accountability. He didn't want to be this man that he had been in all his life and he was explosive anger, like he was the life of the party. Everyone wanted to be around him, you know, everyone loved him. He was a good teddy bear of a guy but he was huge to his little girl, right, and he was. You know, when he got angry he didn't deal with it with his words or whatever. He dealt it with his fist and his belt and his paddle. And then you got my mom doing it with the words. So on both sides of it, I was just messed up. So, reading this letter of him showing me that, no, he wasn't supposed to be disciplining us the way he was, you know, he wasn't supposed to be listening to everything mom said as a way to discipline us. There was a better way of doing it. He also explained that's how his parents raised him and that's probably how his parents were raised and he wanted it to change. And so that's what I got out of that letter in such.
Speaker 2:I think I was at that point I was 11, but time 12, the day before my 12th birthday. I'm back home and here's in the mindset of preteen teenager girls. Here comes our hormones. You know I'm a mess as a female. I'm no longer tiny. I have all these other issues. My mom has to deal with her mom getting diagnosed with cancer and we have six months to show CPS that we can be a family. So we're under the monitor at this point.
Speaker 2:So, everything was peachy.
Speaker 1:Nick.
Speaker 2:They were on their best behavior.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:These people are met. This mother of mine, like I, was like okay, maybe they have changed, this is going to be good. So you get this love bubble with your own parents and then you're going through the therapist and you're answering all their questions boxes and it becomes legal. They have full custody of us again and cps is out of the out of their lives. And it may have been about six weeks after that honeymoon phase or whatever. Here it comes and I'm bigger now, you know. So it takes a lot more for discipline to happen and I was like they're such liars, they're such liars, they. They faked it till they made it. And now who's going to believe the teenager who has attitude issues? So I became a habitual runaway.
Speaker 1:When did you run away for the first time?
Speaker 2:I started running away all the time. I had friends in the schools. I met their mothers and dads Like I was BFS with every girl I could at school that would take this little nothing of a miserable woman or girl in, and so I had surrogate parents all over the city. I ran away once back to my foster family but they did the right thing and they sent me back because of the law, you know, and it killed my foster mom Like she didn't want to do it at all. But there was a point in my biggest point of my thing. When I was about 13, almost 14 years old, I had disappeared from my home for two weeks and my dad did not know because he worked as a night store broker, so he slept during the day, he was gone at night and she hid it from him for about two weeks and I am a straight, a smart student no one knows what's going on behind closed doors, except my close friends, because I'm sleeping on their couch.
Speaker 2:I'm going home on the bus with them. I forged the form, the sign that my daughter's allowed to ride home with so-and-so, with my dad's signature. I couldn't do my mom's, but I could surely do my dad's. And I lived out of a backpack, I still kept up with my grades, I acted like none of it bugged me that. This is just what it is. I was happier almost living on the streets than I was living underneath that house.
Speaker 2:And what had happened was that my mom was in a mood and I had a. I was a stray collector I'm an animal lover to this day and I took home a cat that apparently you know. My mom was furious that I had her, or whatever. I can't remember all the details, but the cat was in my hands and my mom slapped me across the face for something I had not done or didn't do or whatever. So the cat crawls up me, scratches me to death, scratches her to get out because we're this close together. I slap her back. I'm taller than her at this point, you know, I'm bigger than her at this point and I just reacted is this the first time that you retaliated toward your yes?
Speaker 2:yes, because it was from what I remember. In my emotions and talking about it, what she was mad about was something that wasn't I didn't do, you know, and I was just trying to take care of this cat. It was in kitchen. She pinned me against the wall and she's just going at me, so I'm taller than her, so she's looking up at me and she's just screaming. I did not see that slap coming and it hurt. It was a big slap. She used all her anger and so my anger unleashed too and I hit her and I hit her hard. She went back, you know, and I just grabbed my backpack with what I was wearing and I bolted. At this point I wasn't afraid of, you know, being on the streets or figuring out where I was going to sleep. I knew I was dead. She was going to tell my dad that I hit her and I was dead.
Speaker 2:So we fast forward to this pivotal moment that it took my dad to. He used to realize his little girl wasn't in that house, and so he shows up at school realizing that his daughter is somewhere and he doesn't know whose house I'm staying at. I'm not calling in, I'm not. There's no cell phones at this time and age. You know, and none of my friends moms give a dang to call my mom and tell her hey, we got her. They might have, maybe they did, I don't know. They didn't let me know that information. All I know is my mom didn't tell my dad until he had a day off and he's like where's Mel? And she's like well about that.
Speaker 2:And so he gets up to school and I get called into the principal's office and I didn't think I was in trouble. Literally I was teacher's pet straight student, national Honor Society. I thought I was getting some type of award or they needed help in the office because we did those type of things back then. I had no idea that my dad was going to be in that room. And when I got there and I saw my dad, I was prepared, like I could hear that rest in peace and like I was dead, like this is going to go down.
Speaker 2:And he looked like a broken man when I walked in there and the vibe was just different. My mom wasn't there, she didn't come up there to deal with it, and he gets in the car with me and he says so tell me your side of things. And I told him the truth. And he says and you don't know why. I said I do not understand why she hit me. I don't understand what I did wrong. She was sleeping all day and she was in a bad mood and she took it out on me and I showed him the scratch marks. You know like I still had some evidence of the scratching of the cat and I said I I don't understand her and I I think she just hates me and it's just getting worse and I don't want to be home with y'all. And so he surprised me that day.
Speaker 1:He did not beat me okay, what did he do?
Speaker 2:he hugged you and he said he was sorry that he did not know. And he told me at that point that when things are too hard with mom to tell him he doesn't really know how to be a girl dad and what girls do or I'm his oldest too but if it's too much, come to him and just let it out, you know, don't hit her again, right? But that he was going to be a safe landing place for me and I never saw my dad as that, you know. I thought it was them against us and they were always going to win because they're the parents. There was no nurturing in our house. My mom didn't have a nurturing bone in her body, you know. She's military in her mindset, you know. And so I got punished for running away. My mom alerted my probation officer because I got on probation for hanging out with a friend and we stole things or whatever. We put stuff in our purse and we walked out and hindsight 2020 looking for the wrong intention.
Speaker 2:I paid the cost right you know, I was locked up and my dad couldn't get to me so I had to spend the night. The girl's parents were able to get her immediately. I can't remember whose idea it was or whatnot, but we were stupid for stupidness. But the judge saw that I wasn't you know. You know I was an accomplice basically, and they were very lean on me and I appreciated that because I was a goody two-shoe and that hurt my. That hurt me. Like what did I do? What was I doing? And but my mom alerted my PO that I had run away. That's what she did. That's how she got back from my dad not disciplining me.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So I was sentenced to a 12 hour physical PT day at the juvenile place or whatever, and I had to exercise for 12 hours basically. You know, from six to six you get like two 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch break, that's it. And it had to be a sack lunch and I was the only white female. We had a. Our city was full of gangs and stuff and there was two other girls, but they were definitely gang related. And here I am, this prim and proper, scared out of her freaking mind. Good thing is, you know, I was 13, 14 and I could exercise. I couldn't do that today.
Speaker 2:This is where mentors come into play. You know, I look like the odd man out because I am the odd man out. Something behind me is my story and this sergeant who's screaming at my face and he's going to everyone asking them why they're there. I didn't go with the shoplifting thing. I wasn't there because I shoplifted. I was there because I ran away from home, and that's what I said.
Speaker 2:And he stopped dead in his tracks and he was like what did you just say? Cause all these other ones were like. You know, they had robbed a convenience store, they had harmed someone. They had graffiti, something they are true it from school. And here I am. I ran away from home. So the next break he comes back with some Gatorade or whatever and he sits down with me and he begins to talk with me and he says tell me more about this. And I told him in that 15 minutes that I lived in hell with my mom. And you know my dad's no better. He's trying, but I feel like something bad's to happen with me because I need to get out of there you know, and he just continued on.
Speaker 2:As he was a Sergeant. He still made me work my butt off the rest of the day, but he would be encouraging me along the way to this Mosier, you got this versus you, Ingrid's. You know Ingrid's doing this and he changed his tune with me and when I finished this is where I know I'm not insane about my mother. So my mom was a state's guardsman. She showed up in full gear to pick me up, so the people knew she had authority. All these other moms and dads are coming to get their kids in just their plain day clothes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, whatever they were wearing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my mom full BDUs.
Speaker 1:She wanted to make a statement.
Speaker 2:She had to be. You know, they had to do the. You know salute to her. She outranked them and I was just like, are you kidding me? You know, this is my mom, you know. But she towed up to the sergeant and another guy there and the sergeant went above and beyond for me. At that point he says you have a heck of a daughter. You need to understand that. She was the best cadet we had here today and we would love to have her back as a volunteer.
Speaker 2:So now, instead of going because I'm in trouble, they wanted me back because I was good and that got me out of the house more. So I started learning the more I put into volunteering, doing things I didn't have to be home. So I was an overachiever. I was a perfectionist. I hid every trauma I could in school. It was my refuge. I did everything I possibly could to never go home and I didn't.
Speaker 2:For the next two years I excelled in everything I put my mind to and my dad and I fell apart. You know like I was so busy that before I was 16, you know he didn't know who I was. So at 16, I started dating an older guy that I met through working as a hostess where my mom was the bartender, and I didn't think nothing of it. Of his age, my parents didn't see my problem with it, so why should I? I thought it was cool that an older man liked me and I needed love in all the wrong places, like that country song. And I was vulnerable and I was naive. I didn't know what love was. I had never witnessed it, except for glimmers in foster care. I didn't see love between my parents.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:You know, I didn't see love between any of my grandparents.
Speaker 2:They were all divorced. Every single one in my family has been divorced. So this younger, older guy giving me all I mean he's not he's love. Bombing me is what he's doing, cause he's buying me things, he's making sure I'm eating, he's calling all the time to check in with me and I didn't see those things as controlling one bit. I thought, oh, it's amazing. So I started spending more time with him and work and school. I didn't really see my parents and then I was still there time and time.
Speaker 2:But the camel that broke its back was when my dad abused me at 16. He was in a moon, my mom was still working at the restaurant and I suspected my mom was having an affair. I witnessed something one night when they were all going out and I was allowed to go there too, and that's nothing. When my mom was a bartender doing things I was drinking, like with permission, so I was up past my bedtime. I was at different bars and I didn't get drunk, I, but I was allowed to have a few drinks. I would put that out there.
Speaker 2:She didn't let me get drunk, but I was allowed to have a few drinks. I'll put that out there. She didn't let me get drunk, but she would serve me, you know, and she would be like here I make this new drink taste it. And so I'm hanging out with her when she is being the best customer service bartender on the planet and she's making all different types of friends. And so we go to another bar waiting on dad to come pick us up or something I don't remember, and I see her kiss a guy full off. My boyfriend at the time saw it too. It was not in my mind, but no one said anything Like she didn't come to me and says to keep this between us, she just gave me that look.
Speaker 1:She saw that, you saw it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like she. Well, they did it real quick when I was coming back from the bathroom and you know I asked my boyfriend at the time. I said do you did back from the bathroom? Okay, and you know I asked my boyfriend at the time. I said do you did? You see what I think I saw? And he says, oh yeah, they've been doing the whole time you were in the bathroom.
Speaker 1:Wow, and I was like okay.
Speaker 2:and so she just gives me this look like to see if I saw it or not. And I just began to giggle and you know, we were playing darts or whatever. I took a swig of a beer or whatever and I pretended like I didn't see it. But my dad that day I don't know what was going on, it was a bad day. I don't remember all the logistics of it all, but I do remember what he was angry and I said something. I said you can't even control your wife. Why do you think you should control me? He came in and he just hit me so hard. I felt that little snap in my jaw Like it was hard, yeah. And I he's like, what do you mean by that? And I told him I said your wife is having an affair and I know it, but you're over here beating your daughter, who's here cooking and cleaning and helping you keep up with the bills.
Speaker 2:All my money that I made at that restaurant went to them. They didn't go to me. I had to lie on my tips, you know, because my mom would count my money and if she saw I made $400 that weekend or whatever. I actually made like six and I pocketed two so that she would get the four. She would take all of it. You know there was no percentage or whatever, but yet they were still moving from rental homes and the power was still being turned off, that my dad had to have my boyfriend put the power in his name. So it was chaos.
Speaker 2:that's all you could explain is chaos yeah well, after I've been beaten and he's now sitting at the dining room table pissed at his wife for possibly having an affair. My boyfriend shows up with McDonald's and he notices that I'm back in blue, like forming on my face and neck, and before I knew it they were at it. My dad and my boyfriend are fighting.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I go to my room and I pack up what I can and I'm out. We get in his truck and I'm now staying over at his place. More than four weeks later I get a call from my sister saying come get your stuff. It's at the trash area. You don't get here by morning. All your stuff's going to be thrown away. So I took that as they kicked me out. Yeah, I'm good, I'm golden.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so he called his parents and explain what was going on, that I'd be living with him permanently now, and I went and got my childhood belongings and his pickup truck. So now I'm going to start my junior year living with a 23-year-old man.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And you know it wasn't too long after that that I got pregnant. You know you don't live with someone older and not figure things out. You know, right, I had asked my mom for help for the BC and she refused. But she did offer to pay for my abortion. You know, here's the straight A student going places, you know, even to a scholarship for University of Texas and Senatone. And now I'm repeating the same cycles that my mom did in her and so forth. So I'm no better now. Now, it doesn't turn on them, turns towards me that, okay, this is as good as my life's ever going to be.
Speaker 2:This is what the Mosher family is. We get young, we marry young, we get pregnant. We stayed miserable, we don't succeed or whatever, and I fell into that mindset. Meanwhile my dad is, you know, my dad. I guess I have to rewind here to explain something, because my to say why I forgive my dad today is in the early eighties the eight ladies he was hit by a drunk driver that changed my dad. It broke his back, broke one of his ankles or legs, I can't quite remember and he fell into the black market of opiates. So they were treating it back then after surgery with Vicodin and Soma and he became addicted to that to the point where he's blacklisted from doctors to get that prescription refilled. So he had to get it black market. So he was spitting some of that money on that and not rent, not the lights, not the cars, not the house.
Speaker 1:Know, one of our homes got foreclosed on was that part of why there was so much movement of your family early on?
Speaker 2:oh yeah, all of 90s. Well, we moved into that, our beautiful home out of a trailer park. You know we were definitely considered poverty level. And then he, he had that wreck. We won some type of settlement I don't remember how much it was, but I do know our life got better. We moved into a nice subdivision. My dad had a new truck, my mom had a new car, we got all new furniture. We got new clothes. I didn't have hand-me-downs for like for the first time for my sister and they were there the whole time.
Speaker 2:We were taken into foster care when I got back it was about a year or so after I got back that they lost that house, maybe two years, because I knew then that my dad was arrested for food stamp fraud. So suddenly on there he was the one that got arrested for it. I had to go pick up my brother from school and my aunt took us for a little bit during the summer when he was in jail. That got all worked out when he got out of jail. I guess he missed a few mortgage payments because my mom wasn't in Texas, she was in North Carolina. He thought he had submitted the payment by the due date and he didn't and they foreclosed. And that's when my mom's marriage with him started to dissolve very rapidly, because that was her home, that was her baby, that made her that she had arrived, that she wasn't in a mobile home. Luckily we got to go rent a good home in another area. But then they decided to sell that home during a divorce. The owners and we had to move again. Okay, at that point we're moving crazily Like I didn't even unpack my some of my boxes at that point.
Speaker 2:How bad of his addiction I did not understand at that time I didn't even know. I did see him take a lot of pills but I didn't know that those are like, you know, form. A day I just knew he was in a lot of pain. I saw his back look put together like like a modge podge. You know it was horrible looking and he was no longer the guy that could run after us and pick us up and throw us in the air and make us scared death. He could barely walk someday. I was actually quite amazed that he could walk. You know, being as tall and overweight as he was, you know, his legs still made him move and I just like, how does that work? Like your back looks like you'd be in a wheelchair. But as I got older so I'm now officially on my own living with this man I started seeing my parents differently. They were still married up until the point I was 18, actually 21. She finally left him after I had turned 18 and had my son.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Her mother finally passed away. Her cancer had came back and it spread and they had made me a week or two notice and my mom used that as a way of staying up in North Carolina and never coming back home. So she didn't abandon me, but she did abandon my two brothers. They were younger. They were at that point I think like 14 and 12, maybe younger than that, I'm not quite sure and she never looked back and I was happy for her. Can you believe that Like it makes sense.
Speaker 2:They were so volatile to one another and toxic and I know how bad she wanted to leave him, and don't get me wrong. Yet she was hard to live with and she is reason why I have no contact today. But they were not a good pair, like he was miserable to her and she was miserable to him, because she needed stability and he didn't provide that.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:She was probably mainly depressed the whole marriage and stuff, because he locked her, loaded her what her potential was, you know, and how I know that is because my first marriage was the same way. You know. He was great with money because his mom controlled it, but he was controlling on other aspects. It was so amazing how I'm in that same cycle but I didn't stay married long. One thing I did learn is it's okay to divorce. So we divorce, we have two kids under the age of four and my life begins to change dramatically.
Speaker 2:In this I meet another man, we. He swept me off my feet. He showed that he could love my two kids and me. We get married, we're pregnant, you know. So now I'm having our third kid and it's just this cycle. You know, we were married happily for quite a long time and then by year nine, because of the first marriage changing the second, the second marriage I'm I'm now dealing with my own issues with parenting and stuff like that between you know weekend schedules and you know my oldest son now is got schizoaffective disorder and we were dealing with that in the younger days and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:So all of this traumatic roller coaster, chaos is all I knew when things were good. I was paranoid because I only known one level of life.
Speaker 1:You're waiting for the bottom to fall out.
Speaker 2:When it was good and my husband was like we had bills pay, life's good, he's loving me I felt like I had to do something. It's crazy Like self-sabotage. Because of my dad's depression and pain and meds. It started making sense where he didn't. He was never really invested in life, he was just always coping with his addiction. So now I'm probably we'll fast forward quite a bit. I think it's probably about 28 he has to move in with us.
Speaker 2:He had another episode of him trying to kill himself. You know his diabetes make a mess out of him. You know he's hurting all the time he has. He's lost his balance on what he wants to be when he grows up, type of thing. And my younger brother and him were like I think they were living together or something like that. My brother calls me and says I can't deal with him right now anymore. My wife says that's it, because I guess they found him and so he's in a mental hospital and he moves in with me and I have a newborn baby he's a few months old at this point and then my husband, who works quite a bit in the oil field, so he's not always there. At that point life began to change for the both of us. I had just experienced a very hard few years myself and I had attempted suicide in January of 2012. So mental fighting, keeping things a secret, not wanting to rip off that bandaid was that's our way of dealing with things. We just hush, hush.
Speaker 1:Ignore it until it goes away.
Speaker 2:Yep, ignore it until it, or a surface, it blows up in your face. And that's what it had done for me, and that's what I had done for me, and that's what it had done for him. Now we have this morning ritual where we're out on the front porch of my house and we're, you know, having a cigarette and having our coffee. And we just started doing that and he would just start talking and before I knew it, I was talking back with him and you know we realized just how effed up we are because of things, life, whatever.
Speaker 2:Try not to hold anyone accountable or blame anyone, but I remember he said something in one of those morning conversations and I turned around and I said and where's the ownership? When are you going to grow up when people are looking at you as their role model? You know, I'm holding my you know his grandson in my arms and I was like you want him to see you like this, or do you want to do right by your grandkids? Maybe it's too late for your kids, but is it too late for your grandkids to see that grandpa is this cool dude? You know, with all the baggage, throw it away, put it in the dumpster and just let it be hold on walk away from it yes, and I said you know you're just bashing mom, you're bashing everyone else in this and you and I don't hear any accountability.
Speaker 2:And I do the same. I bash myself more than I bash anyone. I'm a self-lover and you blame everyone. There's the difference between the two of us. You can't. I think he was trying to compare him and me and I was like I ain't doing this. When I have messed up in my life, I have messed up with what I knew, messed up with what I knew. I was doing what I knew, but what I know better, I do better. You know better at 50 and you still aren't doing better. And he took it. He took the beating that I gave him and you know he was finishing a cigarette and taking another. He goes. So what's the next step?
Speaker 2:Mel and I said well, what's one thing you've always kind of wanted to do is for a career that you could, that you would qualify for, or maybe go back to school. You know you're unemployed, you're living with your daughter. What's something that you want to do for you? No wife, no kids, no, nothing. And he's like I've always been interested in, maybe being a truck driver. I think it's something that I could qualify for and I like to be on the road and just go and I'm like, well, let's figure that out. So we did, we got him registered. You know, I think he was already in the works for that before he got, you know, whatever. So he just picked it back up, he qualified for one of the companies and I dropped him off at a Greyhound and he went for orientation and he did it. He became a truck driver and we saw each other periodically for a little bit and then it stopped. You know, like he's on the road too much and we didn't make it a priority.
Speaker 2:So then when I had my last and final kid, he never met her. He died, you know, at 50 years old on my porch talking about this. He died right after he turned 56. So I only had him for six years where it was good or we talked almost every day, because he's on the road and he is a codependent nightmare. He needs to talk to people you know and socialize and stuff. So every day we were talking and he was there for me in ways he had never been for me. You know.
Speaker 2:Even it was helping me through my own marriage issues I had with my second husband and he put his the same words I put into him on the front porch. He put back to me Mel, if there's one thing that you could do, what would it be If no one could hold you back for it? And so that kind of you know dissolved my own marriage because I was tired of being stopped from what I really wanted to be, and I moved out to where I am now when I was 33. And that same year I moved to a place I didn't know anyone no family, no ex-husbands. You know, half my kids are with me, the other are not and I got with it to find my own identity that's not attached to a man, not attached to my parents. And then I started dating again and in December of 2018, I get a phone call from the hospital that had been trying to figure out who his next of kin was.
Speaker 2:The companion that he had at the time did not call us that. He was in the hospital and it was bad. He had hurt himself on the ice up there and he had a concussion and they had released him. And then two days, no one could get a hold of him and he confessed that he couldn't feel the lower part of his body. So he was sitting in his house for two days not able to get to a phone or nothing like he had to. Eventually army crawl and ambulance came and got him and they could not correlate the head injury to his mobility issues. So they ambulance him to Kansas City Medical Research Center but there he was in the ICU for nine days before I got this call Before you even knew.
Speaker 2:Before I even knew, before I even knew. In those nine days he improved and he told and I believe her, I do, anyone listening. I believe that he told her do not contact my daughter, I don't need her to worry. He's a very stubborn man, would avoid doctors at all things. And I don't blame him either, because he had 16 back surgeries, two neck surgeries, leg surgeries I mean he, he three. I think he had two heart attacks and one stroke, all before 46. So he did not like hospitals and he wanted to get in and out the best he could after nine days.
Speaker 2:At that point I could figure you know she should have called me anyways because it's going on nine days. But they all thought it was kind of minor because he had improved and they were moving him down to the regular floor from the ICU when a clot bursted in his leg and went straight to his lungs and he had two aneurysms in his brain. They did not know this at the time until I arrived. I got the call. They had been trying to get me since the night before but I didn't see it until about four o'clock in the morning night before. But I didn't see it till about four o'clock in the morning I booked my flight to Dallas.
Speaker 2:Well, from Dallas to Kansas City, by six o'clock that morning I had to drive where I'm from, which is West Texas, to Dallas, which is five hours away. Jump on that plane, get to the Kansas City, get to that hospital. I got there about 11 o'clock. No, I got there about seven o'clock that night. By 11 o'clock that night I was in Kansas City. I was in Kansas City. He's going in for an emergency exploration surgery because his stomach region or whatever, is too big, like they don't know what, if it's fluid or blood or what.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But that's the only noticeable thing that happened to him after they moved him downstairs that, and his skin turned super yellow, jaundice, so they believe something was going on with his liver. I hadn't talked to my oldest younger brother in over a decade, and my baby brother and I were not on good terms either. Like we don't talk hardly ever Our family was so broken in our relationship with their siblings. We don't know how to be siblings to one another. We were never taught how to be siblings to one another, and so I'm relating everything to my mother so she can relate it to my other brother. And then, because they live together, and then my younger brother is also a truck driver, so I have to be very careful with him, because he's on the road with a load trying to get to Kansas City as fast as he can, because he is baby Glenn, he looks like my dad, he acts like my dad, he is my dad in a way Like that is his kid, and there are so many mannerisms between the two of them that this is going to rock his, you know. But graciously, they were going to let me decide on dad's care. They, they truly led everything through me and I did not want that responsibility. I was hoping for a little bit no, don't have the surgery, or yes, have the surgery or yes, have the surgery Like I didn't need to make the decision. But they listened to all the facts from the doctors and from what I was telling them and there'd be like a little pause of silence between text messages or phone calls and both of them like sis, do what you feel like you need to do for this Right, that surgery he may not survive. They said you know it's a risk, but he was going to die without it. So we went with the surgery, so we did. They came back after his surgery to tell us to go to the hotel, just myself and the companion that was with him, because he won't come out of that sedation until the morning. They did not sew him back up because they found in that surgery was that it was a clot that had gone up his leg and traveled up to his lungs and stuff like that, possibly even his brain. They couldn't quite tell yet, but 90% of his intestines were dead and they were unsure if his rectum would survive. So that's why they left him open, if they needed to remove that. So his quality of life was already diminishing right then because he would need a colostomy bag and most likely a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Thankfully they did this outside of his room, in the waiting room.
Speaker 2:When they told me this news, checking in about a little after one o'clock in the morning and I'd been up since four and I fell asleep and my phone went off about six something in the morning to get over to the hospital. So we get back over there and his condition had worsened, not improved. It didn't look like there was any more brain activity, so they were just letting his heart do his thing and monitor him and give us time for us to decide if we were going to pull life support. At that point I still hadn't crumbled because I'm still having to relay all the information to several points of communication, to my fiance back home with the kids, to friends and family, to my brothers, to my mother, and I had no idea what I was doing. You know I was there alone, that companion I had removed from the hospital because she just she acted like she had the authority and she was just not in a good headspace. She was 65 years old and her family came and got her because she had been there. She didn't. I thought she'd been there the whole time and she arrived a couple hours before I did so. She left him in that hospital for nine days.
Speaker 2:So all of this was communicated by phone and I began to get furious. That's when I took my anger out on my grief and what was going on with her, because she acted like you can't leave me. This is like she trumped us kids and they weren't together, they didn't live together, they just every time he was in town he'd take her to dinner or a movie, you know, like a companion, like a friend, yeah, but she acted like she was more than and she ticked me off the wrong way and I told her daughter or sister to come get her, like this is enough, he, you know, but not until after he passed away. So he, she, was there up until the moment. You know where his heart did stop and I didn't have to decide to pull the plug. And that's a beautiful story in itself because I know he was with me in that room.
Speaker 2:The nurse's name was Kim and my mom's name is Kim and my brother JK, through my mom, when I can. And the nurse was like you see those monitors. See this heart. This is his heart monitor and you see the level of beats per minute. It's low and we have him on four different beta blocker type of things to keep his heart pumping. But we're no longer going to give him any more Because there is no brain activity and she goes. It's up to him at this point. And if you know, if he continues on by his heart, you know then you would sign these papers and we would turn everything off and let them pass. But we're not going to make that decision until you know you're absolutely ready to do that and I said, well, I need my brother to get here first. You know, that's all. I was just hoping for that, and then I could figure out what I was going to do.
Speaker 2:Next the chaplain arrived and she was really good. She helped me get that lady removed and she held my hand and she's like you're not being selfish, this is not about her, it's about him and the decision you have to make. You know he's passing away sometime today and that's enough. And so I have his cousins call in through FaceTime and they're talking to him. My brother, my oldest brother, hadn't talked to him in years either, and that's when it.
Speaker 2:That's when it declined. He got to talk to his son, he got to talk to his cousins and I told him that Josh was about two, three hours away and you know that he didn't have to keep fighting, that we were going to be okay and maybe been about 40 minutes after that he passed his heart, just went down to nothing, and he knew he wasn't going to make me make that decision to pull life support and I knew he wasn't going to come out of it. There was no miracle in this because he was not going to want to live in a wheelchair. You know that man had, you know he had so much life left at 56 years old to do to not be wheelchair combined and and all of that stuff. He's like no, he's stubborn, german, irish and him he was not going to do this. I immediately called my brother back after we had just spoken and he's like he's gone, as me, and I said yes, because I felt it. You know you call him back so quick and everything. I just I knew this was the phone call.
Speaker 2:So now I'm in the hospital alone with my dad who's passed on, no one there but the chaplain and the doctors and nurses coming in and, you know, unplugging everything and making him look as good as he could for transport, waiting for my little brother to get there to say goodbye, like they did not push us to move nothing. And I still didn't lose it yet, because they're coming to make me sign forms. I'm trying to figure out logistics and getting them back to Texas, all this other stuff. I'm keeping it all together and my brother arrives and you know I'm like, since I'm the oldest mom, the oldest sister, I have a mom feeling to my little brother. Like you know I d like, since I'm the oldest mom, the oldest sister, I have a mom feeling to my little brother. Like you know I dote on him type of thing or whatever it was, and so I'm still keeping it together for him.
Speaker 2:And you know he's in there, I give him some time with dad alone because I had all that time with him, and then he calls me in there and we're holding his hand and we're telling dad how much we love him and that you're in no more pain. And you know we're going to go have some Chinese food in your honor and soon we'll be bowling, because my dad was, he could have been professional bowler. He was that good and he loved his Chinese food and we had a hard time leaving the room. We just couldn't say like goodbye. But when we got to the point of kissing him on the forehead and saying I love you, dad, you know, keep it straight, you're a guardian angel now. So, like we're doing something wrong in life, you got to fix it, you know. And we giggled at that because we both agreed like, hey, now you're up there, you got to protect us better than you did down here. You know, show us that we're not supposed to marry, who we're supposed to marry or whatever.
Speaker 2:And everything was unplugged in that room. There was no wires attached to him, whatever. And that machine that was plugged in earlier it went off. It did this loud beeping sound. It scared the crap out of both me and my brother. We looked around trying to figure out how to shut it off because it's ruining our perfect goodbye moment. That nurse is like we can't figure out why it's doing it. They have to push a button and then like whatever, whatever. And it finally shuts up and it's like it's not plugged in. It shouldn't do that. And so my brother was not kind of spiritual, but I was. I looked dad, dad's in the room and he goes. I believe you, I. There's no other way around it. Dad just told us he's got us, we're good.
Speaker 2:You know, he's where he needs to be. Whatever energy was in that room at that time, it was dad. He made that sound go off.
Speaker 2:I don't know how else we would have left that room without that thing going off. So they were cleared to go. My brother walks out from the curtain and I'm stuck, I'm paralyzed. The moment of knowing that I can't leave him behind to go down to the mortuary I can't do it. So my brother had to basically push me out of the hospital. That's when it hit. But I was leaving him there, gone. There's no more life in him.
Speaker 2:We go have our Chinese food and it was so weird to talk about him in the past. And you know, six years later I still think he's here. He never met his granddaughter, who is now going to be nine, and she looks so much like his mom, my grandma, which means she looks like me in a way too. And there's just so many different things in life that you just go back in the past and you go how unfair was it to lose him at 56? And what we took for granted. And there's not a lot of good memories. There's maybe a handful that we can hold on to remember. He wasn't a bad guy, he just didn't know any better. You know, my mom's not a bad person, she just didn't know any better she didn't.
Speaker 1:They didn't have the tools to be able to be better parents, to raise you guys better. We're all products of our parents and that's probably it sounds like that's probably the situation with both of them, that they did not have good upbringings and they didn't know any better what to do with you guys.
Speaker 2:Exactly so that moves into how I learned who my dad was after he died.
Speaker 1:Tell me about that.
Speaker 2:Because you hit it right there. I learned more about him through people after his memorial. My grandpa was a mean man. Okay, okay he controlled my grandmother to the point where she wasn't getting her diabetes medication. When they divorced in the early or late 90s or early 90s I think it was that's when the you know stuff was coming out more what he was controlling with my brother, my, my dad lost his middle brother, so my dad dad's the baby. Then there's an older brother and a middle brother.
Speaker 2:The middle brother died in 1989 by suicide. That rattled the family, it rattled the area, it rattled everyone in the family, because Uncle Wayne was a very charismatic, outgoing lovely man. I still have some great memories and he died when I was five.
Speaker 2:But yeah, five years old and I still remember that man and his parents got divorced and it stemmed from the loss of Wayne. The truth came out that, you know, grandpa was controlling and my mom actually helped me through some of that too surprisingly, like giving me the backstory of why they divorced and stuff. And I remember living in our little mobile home that grandpa showed up on the property and he was livid and he's just taking out on my dad and I don't know if grandma was there that day or not, but it had to be the fact that my dad was putting his nose where it didn't belong. You know, with grandma, and I was so attached to my grandma and I remember seeing her. She was four foot 11 tops, little tiny thing and I remember her just cowering to him and she had all these big men in her life. All her sons are tall and she was the matriarch, she was the glue of that family and she died at 56 as well. And so my dad always say I'm going to die young too, like he knew he was not going to live long and I don't know how he knew, but he knew Grandpa basically helped quicken the pace for my grandma to die because by the time she got the help she needed, her body was in failure and she was living in a nursing home.
Speaker 2:She needed a tracheotomy in her throat. She had kidney failure galore and her vision had so bad Her vision was like like those Coke glasses and she had a watch on her arm to tell her the time because she couldn't see. So she was put in the nursing home at 53, 54 years old. She didn't stay long when she passed in 56 at the nursing home and stuff, but at the same time she didn't stay long. We should pass through 56 at the nursing home and stuff. But at the same time she didn't know that we were in foster care during that time, because when I came back home at 12, it was August or October of right before I turned 12, she died by the following year before my 13th birthday. So I didn't even have her that long in that condition when I moved back home. So when she was going through it my parents were able to tell them that the kids were just busy with school. She never knew we were in foster care until after we got back.
Speaker 2:But their family was toxic, you know. If anything, he was undiagnosed bipolar and they walked on eggshells in that house those three boys did. Wayne's suicide was because he felt like he was a failure. He was living back home at 29 years old, I think it was. His wife was divorcing him and he was fighting child custody and all this other stuff with his son and his dad wouldn't bail him out of jail from hitchhiking back from the Colorado. I don't know the whole story but but you know grandma wanted to go get her son and her dad did not want to. When he finally gets released from jail for being a hitchhiker, that's what they arrested him for hitchhiking across straight lines because he had no way of getting back. He didn't get paid for that job, like he was promised. Again, this is the late 1980s. So no cell phones, you know, no, none like that. And so, whatever he came to see my dad, like either the day of or the day before about talking and moving in with us, and my dad's like bro, I got you. But something changed from that conversation to going back home where he put a gun to his head and that's all we knew, like I was four or five years old at the point. You know we didn't get to after my dad passes away.
Speaker 2:Here's more of the stories coming up. Yeah, I'm like, oh okay. On my mom's side I knew my papa, you know, six foot seven giant. He was always like a teddy bear to me.
Speaker 2:You know his, her mom, she I knew she was trouble. She was an alcoholic, a raging alcoholic, six foot tall, and my mom's only like five foot six. So these two giants and then my mom's, this short little thing, because my mom had health issues growing up, maybe because her mom drank during pregnancy, I don't know. I don't know when the drinking began, but her other two siblings are tall, my mom's not, you know, but all I knew granny or grammy, I think is what we called her as an alcoholic.
Speaker 2:I didn't know her as a grandma, like she was a mean drunk. So you can imagine you're being raised by a drunk and an absent dad because he's in texas and she's in north carolina. My mom moved to texas and back and forth sometimes throughout her years. She got pregnant at 16 and now she's back in texas and now she's got to graduate high school, which she did. She didn't get a GED, she graduated. My dad graduated. They met in a bar. Dad's on medical leave from the army, he hurt himself and I think he ended up getting medically discharged because of that injury.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And he's just this mean old, you know, not mean, but he just had this arrogance in his early twenties with my mom as the hostess, the bartender type of thing, yellow waitress, and they hit it off. Four months later they're married and nine months later there's me, so they didn't have a lot of time to get to know each other. Back then that was normal. You date to get married, to have kids, and you, just one step in front of the other, you get through it.
Speaker 2:Have kids, to have more kids just one step in front of the other. You get through it. And kids to have more kids. Yeah, they did it for 18 years before my mom finally left. And she left probably not believing she wasn't gonna come home.
Speaker 2:She was leaving because her mom had passed away yeah but when she finally broke free of they weren't in a good season in their life at that point. Yeah, you know where my dad was working, what she was doing, so she probably fell in that loop of that. Her script isn't being written with her own pen, it's being written by other people's pen and she's tired of it. Yeah, and she's at that point. She's 38 years old and I just passed that age. I'm about to hit 40. And so my flip the script came at 33.
Speaker 2:It's my second divorce. I I've been diagnosed with cancer, I have still minor children and an older son with special needs, and I just I had enough. I wasn't angry at anyone, not my dad, not my mom, not my ex-husbands. I was mad at myself, and I think my mom felt that same way at that point, because we have allowed so much to happen and we don't feel like we're in control of any of it. Now it's time for us to be a little selfish and have control. So I don't blame my mom for leaving. I don't blame my mom leaving my boy, my brothers, behind. I hate what happened to both of them in that time period, because they probably felt very alone. My younger brother ended up being in juvie and my older brother just all over the place between my older sister to his foster family, to friends, whatever, like there was no structure for them and they were still in their youth. But when I saw the story unfold of how they were raised and that they did not know any better, it it allowed freedom for forgiveness.
Speaker 2:Because, I'm older now and I know my kids have not come unscathed from things that I have done and I know they have questions for their dad and I mean my kids have no relationship with their dad right now and that's not because of me. If you want to reach out to them, reach out to them. My older ones that are, you know, adult age now, my younger kids. They don't ask about their dad because their dad's not a priority here. You know, when they get older they want to reach out to them. I'm not going to stop them.
Speaker 2:Go the road, travel where you need to. But I hit such a depression after my dad died that I did not expect you know we have such poor memories of being raised in that house together and things that he did not know that I think I just grieved those last eight years or you know, six years that I had with him. But I knew we could have had more. He could have been the grandpa he always wanted to be. He could have been what I needed as a dad in my older years. I mean like I still feel like you need parents forever, no matter how old you are, and I don't have that. You know my mom and I are non-contact.
Speaker 2:I let her back in after the memorial to be a Nana to the kids and it did good at first, and then I started seeing her do the same thing she did with us, with my kids. She picked a favorite and she doted on that favorite and she didn't care less about the other one. And her narrative is very different than mine, like memories I have as a child. She wants to say it never happened and I'm making it up, but I know it happened. They're my memories. You cannot change my narrative. I see it this way. I felt it like this. It happened. It's not good.
Speaker 1:And if you see her doing that with your kids, then that's even more validation that you just do not need her in your life, whether for yourself, whether for your kids, it's time to break the cycle.
Speaker 2:So we did. It was in 2021. Do I have times where I want to call her? Yeah, want to send her a text? Yeah, as any girl to a mom would but I'm not going to get the response that I want from her.
Speaker 2:It's never. I'm proud of you. It's never. You know you look great. It's never. Hey, how's it going? It's always like you could be thinner, you could have done better at that. Oh, it took you long enough. And that was my whole childhood with her. I was when I started putting on weight and becoming a woman. She would remind me how often she stayed a size zero, how she didn't gain any weight pregnant and I was huge in my pregnancy. She didn't. She was very athletic, very talented and, you know, even being young and being a mom, she was able to do things. And yet I'm a single mom for the last seven years on my own, raising these kids. I'm not thin, you know like I'm sorry. My genetics play a part in that and I'm not her and I was never meant to be like her. You take the good and the bad of your parents and you create who you are through those things and other people that influence your life.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But I had horrible cycles growing up which led to my cancer as an adult. And I do remember one nurturing moments in this is that because my cycles were so bad compared to what she was used to, she didn't know what to do for me. You know like it was crazy, but she would always get me up and get me to school. You know, first two days of the cycle and if the nurse called saying it's too much, you need to come get her, she would stop what she was doing and come get me and she would have the meds that I needed and the hot bath and any junk food snacks that I needed to help me through those first two days of just awfulness. And had she known what I was going through, then I think she would have helped more with the doctors and stuff. Be like, hey, there's more going on there and we would have found out a lot of things with my health as a woman earlier on. But back then the doctors were different and it's just, you know the whole mindset was different.
Speaker 2:It was huge, you know. But now it's like, now that you know my medical history and you know I beat cancer, why would you continue to talk about my appearance? You know, you know, you already know that's a fragile point and she would not respect it, right? You know, if I got a. I'm back in college, I finished my bachelor's degree this spring and I want to tell my mom all these things, how good it's going, what I'm learning, and she'd be like, oh, that's nice, you know, and it's just awful. You know that I don't have that. So I get that through other means, through other people who are written for me. But so if I can get that from somewhere else, why would I let someone toxic in? You know? Granted, she's my mom and I love her to a certain extent that she's my mom, but I don't have to let my children be exposed to what I was exposed to. That riddled me handicap the remaining of my life.
Speaker 2:I feel like I've broken some of those bondages now, but I still look in the mirror and I can list everything I hate about me before I fix it and say everything good about me. And it's really key because I have children looking at me while looking in that mirror. So my daughter and I have a morning ritual where we're listening to our worship music and we do our affirmations and she's like you know, I am smart, I am kind, I'm beautiful, I am a daughter of God and I'm the daughter of mom and you know, and all this good stuff first. And so she's like now your turn mom. And I immediately wanted to go into being like no, I don't want to do that, you know. Like no, it's just for you kid. But then no, now she's forcing me to come up with. Oh, I'm smart, I am kind, I am beautiful, and start feeling it. And I caught a picture of her through the video that I screenshotted and she's just beaming up at me when I'm doing it for myself and that's a testimony. Like we're breaking those bondages and those curses that we've had on our family for years my, my parents, his parents, forever. Today we're breaking that. So when she's raising her kids, she's not going to have these type of memories with her mom. No, I don't have a favorite kid. Y'all both drive me crazy, go away. I love y'all both equally and I want y'all both to go away equally.
Speaker 2:On the good things we root for on the hard days we understand and give grace. On the bad things we try to learn from how it happened, like why did it? Why is today a bad day or bad moment out of the whole year, type of thing. But I respect my parents, I get it, you know. It's been six years and I think of him fondly.
Speaker 2:I don't think of the worst childhood, you know. I don't think of it as bad. I think also we go through these things so that we can create a different world and so when I'm around other people that have been abused or neglected or dealt with CPS because CPS followed me all the way into my adult life, you know. It riddled me all the way into my first children's lives and it affected my second marriage. It never would leave me and I used to be so angry of how and of everyone in my family. You're now targeting me and I'm trying to be everything opposite of what my parents were, but I was still married or in marriages that were toxic and so looking back, I'm like, no, okay, I can see why they were involved.
Speaker 2:Maybe if I had been more understanding and learning, then they wouldn't have done what they did to judge me, but I was still in that cycle of chaos is okay, you can thrive in chaos. Look at me, I'm thriving in chaos. Wrong, it was not. So. That's what catches me off wind these days is I'll think of him. Life is good, my bills are paid, I'm in a beautiful home, my kids are thriving, and my next thought is what's going to go wrong? What am I doing that's going to create the whole collide. The walls are coming in, so that's why I still work on as 40 years old in therapy is why can I not be content when it's good?
Speaker 1:When you're surrounded by the exact opposite of that. As a child, you ever see the movie Pretty Woman, when, at the end of it, when Richard Gere said you have so much more potential. And Julia Roberts said sometimes the bad stuff is easier to believe. And I think that's the case with all of us. I mean, I dealt with it with my dad as a kid. A lot of things were just never good enough. He would always find something to gripe about, even when there was nothing to gripe about, and I didn't have nearly the childhood that you had. My dad never laid a hand on me. What he didn't do with his fists, he more than made up with his mouth.
Speaker 1:Mental abuse is horrible too, and eventually I got to a point where I could basically say go, fuck yourself, I'm not going to put up with this, and there was nothing he could do about it. But when you're a kid it's different. You think it's normal. You've said that you thought that this was normal. You thought this was the way childhood was supposed to be. And you don't have to have all the answers right now. You don't have to be completely through it. You don't have to be completely through it. You don't have to be in a situation where you're not second guessing yourself or you're not giving yourself a hard time because it doesn't happen immediately, but what you are doing is everything right for yourself, for your children, for your relationship with them, to break that stigma, to break that cycle.
Speaker 2:You completely cut off your mother and, yes, you've said you would love to have contact with her if things could be different, but you know that they won't that's the second time I allowed her back in and there won't be another time, and so, like the other question in this, this is, you know, podcast about our dead dads. So you know, my therapist posed a question, so are you going to be there when your mom passes? And I don't have an answer for that right now.
Speaker 1:I don't think you have to have an answer for that right now.
Speaker 2:I don't know what the future looks like. I don't know what she's going through right now. I don't know if there's some revelation that will happen at any point in time before she passes on that there is some redemption and forgiveness Cause I do believe in that. I did forgive my dad you know, and you brought up, you know how mental is just as bad. I think mental abuse is worse than physical bruises. Heal bones, heal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there were definitely times when my dad was saying some of the things to me that he said as a kid where I almost wished not steadily, but there were a couple of times but I almost wish he would just hit me and it would be over and he'd walk away and then it would hurt for a little bit and then we'd move on. But he didn't, and the words just kept coming and coming.
Speaker 2:For some reason that's like a razor blade to the psyche. Like to this day, I do more coaching and therapy and journaling just to get out all the words that still impact me to this day, versus like oh yeah, I've had a broken jaw, I've had black eyes, I've had broken ribs, and those are not just from my dad, that's from my husband's ribs. And those are not just from my dad, that's from my husband's. I used to believe. And for anyone listening today, growing up in a home that was abusive physically made it so normal to be beaten when you didn't do what they needed you to do. That that was love. Crazy. They're loving me. Because they love me so much, they're hitting me. They love me so much that they're so upset that they have to hit something, and it's just better to hit me than the walls.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm doing this because I love you.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I had to work through that victim mentality, that that it's okay to be as someone's punching back for a decade, if not more now, and is physical violence okay?
Speaker 2:No, but if they're also beating you with their words, or maybe they're not touching you at all and it's just constant beratement and verbal warfare. That's not okay either. If they're controlling you with financials, like if you don't have access to the bank accounts, if you're not allowed to go buy what you need to buy or want to buy, but they are, that's abusive pattern two and that can wreak havoc on you. If you don't have anything in your name, there's an issue there, like there's a trust factor there with controlling, and I didn't know any of that until I got out of marriages and started being single and feeling that freedom and peace of I can go out to dinner tonight, I don't have to cook and it need to be there at 6 pm on the dot, you know, like I can put that in the grocery cart and no one's going to yell at me that I bought it.
Speaker 2:It was just so crazy to think of the alternative was better than what I have now, because it's I. Am I thankful to have my children? Yes, am I thankful to have my parents? Yes, because that means I'm here, you know. But could I rewrite some of that stuff to to not go through what I went through? Surely yeah, but now it's made me feel for my passion going forward. Or we have a support group from women who can come in and be not okay and we just sit with them, you know, because maybe they don't have the words right now, but we can see it in their posture and their quietness that they were harmed and not so good way, from physical, from sexually, to financially, to mentally. Those are all wrong ways of showing love, just out of curiosity, the support group that you talk about.
Speaker 1:Is this something local to where you live? Is this an online group?
Speaker 2:So right now it's been going on for about a year and it's locally to where I'm at. I would love for it to go virtual if there was a need for it, but we have, I think, about six women who meet every other Saturday at a coffee shop and we usually do a book study with it about identity. It's called Empower Her and it's literally a support group. For if you've had CPS, if you've had suicides, if you've been abused all of things physically, spiritually, emotionally, financially, if you're in it now and you don't know how to get out of that marriage, but you can go to a coffee shop for an hour and not be, you know, a suspect, like of a trust thing or whatever the hope. And then, as we learn more about them, we learned that they filed for divorce. They got out of that marriage in just a year with the support group's help. It's taking back your power and saying enough is enough and doing it safely.
Speaker 2:All six of us have our phones on everyone's phones. If they need us, then we're picking them up in the middle of the night, we're getting them to the safe place or whatever. It's such a need if you don't think domestic violence is happening as rampant as it did back in the days before cell phones and social media. You're not looking hard enough. You're actually very blind. It's a blind spot for you because it's more prevalent now. They're just better at hiding it and it's sad.
Speaker 2:It's sad that statistics with mental health and all this stuff based on people not knowing how to be married, with all of this technology and all of this temptation out there, you know and what would it? What control it gives to people who don't have your best interests at heart there. So moms can actually talk about how it is being a mom. Or if you're not a mom, just being a spouse. Or you know the divorce in itself. If you're with someone that's a narcissist or gaslighting you, it's hell that you still have to co-parent with them and you need an outlet. Or you will go insane or you'll go back to them. Right, because it's easier to go back into that environment than change to a new environment. That's what some people don't understand. Why do you go? Why do you stay? Why do you go back to them? It's all they've ever known.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And the uncertainty of in the fear and insecurity is it's threatening everything they do know. So that's a comfort zone. I was comfortable in an abusive marriage. Yeah, that's what it is, until someone started to think, mel, this is not normal.
Speaker 1:You should never be comfortable in an abusive marriage exactly any kind of an abusive relationship I, I know and I had to learn that and I didn't know how to tell my own story the reason why I asked about if the group that you're doing is virtual is, I mean, it's wonderful what you're doing with the six of you. I think it's very needed because there unfortunately are so many situations where people do just need to get away for an hour a week. It's your group to do with. You know as you guys want, and maybe you've talked about this, but I really think that at some point, if you were to take this virtual, I think there's definitely something there. My question was if anybody, even if they don't live which area? I don't know if we covered this, but which area? I'm West.
Speaker 2:Texas. So I'm Midland-Odessa area, but Texas is huge. It's quite big, but that's probably why because we're in a very rural area of West Texas and stuff Everything is five hours away from a big city like Dallas or Houston, so being secluded out here in the oil-filled town, I'm so thankful that the six of us have made it where we've made it for in a year. We're about to pick it back up for school. It you know where we've made it for in a year we're about to pick it back up for school. I have.
Speaker 2:It's a non-profit that I've started that I don't know where god's leading it for, but it's called the faithful sparrow.
Speaker 2:There's a website, there's an email to get a hold of me, okay, and it's a way for people to reach out to me and I help you find the resources that are in your area that you know if, until we do go this virtual or whatever and that's one thing I learned when I hit rock bottom is I had to go to the crimes victims, get resources and figure out what therapies I could afford, what I couldn't.
Speaker 2:And the support group is free, you know it should be free. One thing I hope to do when I've had a few reach out through the website, some from like Ohio and Florida, new York and there's such a stigma out there for reaching out for help, but I don't know if it's easily located for each city, but I go and find where they can get started and I reach into them every three to six weeks on. How's it going? And if they do need to talk, they can call me or I can set up a Zoom meeting and they at least have me on the camera not the whole support group If they have a safe place to do that. One thing about going virtual in this is that if they're in the house with an abuser, they're not getting online to talk about it.
Speaker 1:No, absolutely. You have to get out of the house, they have to get out of the house, but even if they have a place to go for an hour to do a Zoom call on their phone or something, I mean anything is better than nothing. I completely understand what you're saying.
Speaker 2:So I'm hopeful, I'm hoping to see the trajectory of what this does, but just having that website up and someone Google it and know that they can reach out and find local sources and I have, I guess, a netbook of people that do counseling and stuff like that that I could refer them to that they can get started, you know there's a way, if you're there now, if you need to talk to someone, and if I need to be the avenue in which that gets started, then I put my information out there, because you just said it.
Speaker 2:Then I put my information out there because you just said it. No one should be alone. That's one thing I think is my legacy. I started my own podcast and I'm joining yours today and I'm talking about things that really can make someone look at me differently. And she, you know, like she dealt with CPS. Oh, she must be a horrible mother. She's been married and divorced twice. Oh, she, you know, all of a sudden you're judging what you've heard, but the right people listening in be going. I'm her right now and I need help.
Speaker 1:And I have to tell you personally, anybody who is listening, who's going to be judging, who's going to say, oh well, she must've done this, she must've done that, she must've been the problem. I have to tell you I'm not ashamed to say it I don't want anybody of that mentality listening to this show, because that's not at all. They're not in that bubble.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're not in that bubble, this podcast is not for you.
Speaker 2:And there's millions of others to go listen to. But if you are plugging in today or you know someone here's, the thing is if you're listening because you've dealt with grief with your family or your dad and everything like that, but you know someone that's been affected by abuse and control and all this other stuff. Now you know someone who's educated in this, who's working in a nonprofit capacity, and my master's degree is going to be in clinical psychology. So my legacy leaving a life of significance, it was taking my mundane life of chaos or whatever and I wouldn't say mundane, it was just chaos. And now everything I've learned, I'm putting it forward. Now I'm going to pay it forward, and I don't care what that looks like for myself internally right now, and so I just know that everything I'm learning, everything I'm learning, I'm taking full advantage of you know, because this is my world has opened up things that I thought I knew I did not know Like it was like on the surface of things.
Speaker 2:Now I'm getting into the depth of it and if I can just sit with someone who's going through it and just be there for them, so it prevents a suicide, it prevents another face getting smacked into, it prevents kids being lost into the system. If everything that I went through can stop happening to someone else's family, then I'm there for and here's a flip of a script if you and your spouse are willing to work together and fix things that were broken from your own childhood two broken people trying to love one another is doable, but there's a lot of work involved. And if you feel like it's just getting started in the abuse sector of things, but he's a really good guy or she's a really good girl and there's some substance there, then I love working with couples that really want to keep one step in front of the other and wants to get it to work out, want to keep one step in front of the other and wants to get it to work out, because it it does happen. There's couples out there that at the very beginning of the marriage. They were volatile to one another, but they didn't realize it's because they're bringing in all of their baggage from their childhood what they witnessed their dad do, what they witnessed their mom to do, and when they got to the work of it, like I don't want to be like my mom and my dad, so stop doing what they did, love them the opposite and watch what happens.
Speaker 2:And I love to know that one of the couples that I have worked with are still married today. They're instrumental in my own life, seeing that a harsh marriage at the beginning doesn't necessarily mean that marriage is off the table. For me, like I witnessed it twice and there's a stigma in my mind that I'm not, I'm not marriage material. You know, like I'm not going to meet someone that's going to be able to take all of me and love me the way I need to be loved. And we love them in return, because for many years I didn't know how to love. So watching them go full circle and really and they've done more work than just me telling them hey, if you want this to work, both of you have to do it separately, and then together they're like huh, so do you both need individual counseling. You both have to go get all of that awful stuff, grow it up and begin to heal and then watch what that does in couples marriage.
Speaker 1:And then right, and then work on it together. Yeah, but yeah, you've got to solve the individual problems first.
Speaker 2:Yep, you have to. And so when they begin to do that, instead of just going neatly into couples therapy, they're like oh, my therapist that sees me separately and his therapist that sees him separately, and then the couples counselor, they're different. There's three people working in that marriage. There's a total of five investing in them. You know, and it's amazing to see, every time they celebrate an anniversary, I'm doing the most incredible leprechaun happy dance you could imagine, because it's not just some sappy Facebook posts that you know you get. This is true proof that just a year or two ago they would have been divorced, they would have been a cystistic. You know, and that's what I hope to change.
Speaker 2:The girls in our group, some are dating again. Some are, you know, married, you know it's. Some of them are single, like us, like me, and it's okay because we, they, the married couple plugs into me, you know, the single part of me plugs into them. We're like hey, make sure that your needs are being met, you know. You know, and those that are dating again, they're taking it one step in front of another instead of going immediately into, like a love bubble, like, oh, it's love. And I'm like wait a minute, take it one moment at a time and I'm so happy for these women and when they're going through it, we're there for them.
Speaker 2:If they're sick, you know we provide meals. If. If their kids need to be watched, we'll watch their kids. If we're having a bad night and it's midnight and you call and text me, I will wake up, grab a cup of coffee and call you. You know what is it. If I need to be at your house, I'm at your house. If you need to come over, you come over and I want that for it. I'm pretty sure each state, each area has something similar, but I knew here, you know it wasn't that it doesn't exist, it was that it was still had restraints and judgment.
Speaker 2:Like how can you minister to people who have been drug addicts and lost their kids? I can, because I don't care what they did.
Speaker 1:I care that they walked into this coffee shop and they need support, right, you know as long as you're okay with it, I would like to put this information that you've given me. I would like to put it in the show notes of the episode, because even if there is somebody who is listening who does happen to be in your area, then I would love them to have access to this. And if there's somebody who's not in your area who still needs somebody to talk to because, let's face it, there's somebody out there who always needs someone to talk to Would you be okay with it? Would you be okay with having a conversation with somebody who's not in your area, who can't get to the coffee shop?
Speaker 2:I think podcasting and networking out like this there's a reason, and if someone's listening today and just needs a friend, then I can be that friend. You hear me talking on this podcast mainly, but I'm a friend that will just sit in silence. I'm a friend that, if you don't want advice, I'm not going to give you any advice. I'm just going to tell you who I am in my day and whatever. Keep it off your mind or whatever. And when you're comfortable telling me about the intensity of your past, I'm there to help you unburden it, because I think it's Brene Brown that says it is that your story is someone else's survival guide.
Speaker 1:And I love that you guys are doing that, because somebody does need that survival guide Somebody who is which I had had it.
Speaker 1:Right, I was just going to say. Somebody who now is at the point that you were at a few years ago or several years ago or as a child like somebody else, is their reality right now is what your reality was, what you were able to break away from. And, as you said before, social media has helped that. There are a lot more resources. Even if somebody can't get to your meeting, if they can't get out of the house, if it's something as simple as a Zoom call or a group call, hopefully maybe they can find a way to get away for 30 minutes or for an hour, because then, if they can just have the call on their phone, they can do it from the car, they can do it from a parking lot.
Speaker 2:They don't have to be in the house.
Speaker 1:Whenever you can, and also knowing that not everybody's abusive relationships works on a schedule. So even though, if they can't be present when the time comes for the meeting, at least having somebody to reach out. I think it's having somebody to reach out to and also knowing just that there is somebody who gives a shit enough.
Speaker 2:There's something else to add to that, because a lot of words and talking it helps getting it all out but it's solutions and stuff.
Speaker 2:So an example I can give that I do is if you reach out to me and you're ready to leave now, but it's overwhelming where to start, what to do, what funds or whatever, I look at your area and how much money you're bringing in yourself, how much you've saved, and we create a budget but also all of the forms to get on whether it's food stamps, housing, all of those red tape, city official bureaucracy, things or whatever it is and we formulate a plan.
Speaker 1:Even if they're outside of Texas.
Speaker 2:Outside of Texas. I will do all of the research behind scenes, so it's not on your browser that you know that you're not going to get caught doing it. You give me the preliminary stuff and I formulate a plan and I send it to you the best way I can. So it's not found and you begin to work those steps by step to leave the situation you're in. Maybe you can't leave instantly, maybe you have to leave in the middle of the night. Maybe you can leave in a month when you've got X amount of dollars and you feel comfortable making this decision.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's you, plus kids, plus pets, that you don't want to have to leave behind. Then I help you find a safe refuge that will take you, your kids and your pets. That's the network that I'm trying to create. So when you get off the phone call with me, you don't feel like you just gave me all of your life story. You have a plan in the works to get out of the situation that is creating chaos, and it's either you or them, and it should always be you. And it's either you or them, and it should always be you.
Speaker 1:You want that first phone call to be a means to an end for them, for the situation that they're in.
Speaker 2:You need to have hope again. If you're calling me, if you feel connected to this podcast episode today, if you know someone that's going through it, then we're going to get to work. I will listen. I don't judge, I don't care who's at fault, whatever.
Speaker 2:But if you've been harmed, if you've been managed, controlled, if you know you and your kids are at risk or you and your animals, or it's just you, whoever then there is a way to live a better life. And I know it's overwhelming. I know you've got a lot of ideas and things going through your head and you don't even know where to start. It's an anxiety thing. You know you need to do it but you can't get started because you don't know where to begin. That's what I'm here for and I can't wait to get to do this more often than not because it's just not known. It's done locally, here and stuff.
Speaker 2:But I've had friends all over before where they've moved from States and lived with me until they got their apartment, you know. And now they're successfully married and have kids and stuff. You know there's there's proof in how it works. When someone knows that they have someone they can call and speed deal. There's another example is if you call me and you act like you're ordering a pizza, I know what that means. I know you're being physically harmed at this time and I'm on the other phone and I'm calling 911 because I've been in it for so long and I know what that means.
Speaker 2:You said it Someone's abuse is not on a time schedule and it's so scary when abuse happens and you feel so isolated that you don't know who to call and your friends are going to judge you. I don't have to be a friend, I'm just a resource. Just call, and if you act like that, then I know exactly what to do with the law. And if they get a whiff of it and they pick up the phone and I'll be just like yes, this is Domino's, how may I help? It's just that critical to know that you can get out the best possible way.
Speaker 1:We will definitely talk offline about this, because whatever contact information you're willing and able to give me and again comfortable putting out there to everybody, then I would love that, because this is an incredible thing that you're doing and this is something that, even though nobody knows about this while you and I are talking about this, so few people know that something like this exists. This has to get out there. This really does and this is you can see, behind me that's my dad. I had a feeling it was about this. So few people know that something like this exists. This has to get out there. This really does and this is.
Speaker 1:you can see behind me, that's my dad I had a feeling it was so, and I've just moved here I just moved to this house and so not everything's put up together.
Speaker 2:But I'm just looking back there. I'm doing it not for myself in any of this, but I remember the girl, still to this day, who wanted to get out and didn't know how, and I don't even know how I got out until it was too late.
Speaker 1:But you did.
Speaker 2:You know like I took one more blow to the face and that's how marriage number one ended. I finally had proof enough to go after him. Marriage number two we ended our marriage with no abuse like that, and then he had his demons with drugs and showed up a month later and put me in the hospital. I've been battered, abused by my own father, mentally abused and stuff by my own mother, and so my whole life I'm hitting 40 this year at all. I'm only creating this because of the need that's out there. I wish it didn't need to be out there, I really did.
Speaker 2:But I remember I could call someone in the middle of the night going I want to leave now. I just don't know where to go. I don't care about my stuff, I just want me and my kids and I want out.
Speaker 1:I wish that was there for you sooner. I wish that was there for everybody who needed it before they ended up in a hospital or in the ground. It before they ended up in a hospital or in the ground, and the fact that more of these are popping up yeah, I'm gonna do everything I can to push this out there you knew that this was come out of my dad's story.
Speaker 2:I didn't um, you know yeah, it's okay, the way it comes out these are.
Speaker 1:This is this is the way that change begins. This is the way to to help people.
Speaker 2:I didn't look back in life and think that 90% of my life has been nothing but abuse. It was therapy that helped me see that 10% of my life has been this new life that I've been living and I'm a whole different person. And if you knew me back then you probably wouldn't want to be in my life because I was different. Now you can't get me to stop advocating to those that are still going in. And does it ever end? No, because I've already lost girlfriends to death by their spouse and we had no clue. We had I. I, in abusive marriages, had no clue that these two women were going through what they were going through and they're not here today, that these two women were going through what they were going through and they're not here today. So, if I can be a voice, a light, a beacon of hope as cliche as that sounds, today is the day that I need to get to work more on what I do behind scenes because this support group I love them. They're.
Speaker 2:You know, at the very beginning, when you look back a year ago, we were all in different seasons of our lives and a year now we can go. Hey, look at us grow, look at us be different, and all of our kids know each other too, which is huge. Your kids need that support too. They see what you wish that they weren't seeing. Don't be naive in that. They see it. They don't maybe not understand it or comprehend it, but they see mom not treating dad well or dad not treating mom well, and that's what made me grow and grow up, I guess, is I did not want them to see it and and have to endure what I did as a child. Now my kids do come and ask me questions, and they're not easy questions, but I don't sugarcoat it. It is what it is. And do I speak ill or bad of the people? No, but did it happen? Yes, and if that can happen with this story going today, then yeah, I can't wait to connect with you on that and figure out how we can get the pipeline growing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're absolutely going to do that, and maybe there's another conversation to be had separately to figure out how you can get this to grow.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, any contact information that you are able to and willing to give me, we will talk about this separately and this will be in the show notes. This will be on your episode page when your episode does drop, because every episode has its own page on the website, on ourdeaddadscom. All this information will be there, and anybody at all if you're listening to this, if you know somebody who is in any kind of a situation like mel just described there is zero judgment send them this episode, tell them to listen to it and then, after that, make sure that they have the information that we're going to put in the show notes, that it will be on the website. All Mel and the ladies that she is working with in this group are trying to do is to give somebody a safe space. That's all that this is about, and I'm so grateful that we had a chance to go over this and discuss this because- Well, I didn't know that it was going to be talked about Like I didn't know that's okay.
Speaker 1:You know what? The 90% that you talked about, that it is going to be part of your story, but it doesn't have to define you.
Speaker 2:It doesn't define me anymore. No, you're clearly defined anymore.
Speaker 1:It is my past. Yeah, you were clearly defined by your 10% and I think your message needs to be out there for more people to help others to be defined by their 10% or their 5% or their 1%.
Speaker 2:Maybe it was 1% for me at a time but now it's going to 10. And the more I do this, that 90 goes down. Yeah, eventually, that's just 5% of who I am.
Speaker 1:Right. Eventually you will get to a point where what was the 1% will be a 10%, and at a certain point it will cross over and it will be 51%, and it'll just keep going from there and it will define more of you. I cannot wait for that, and that's the legacy, that is the legacy, and that is why this needs to be out there so badly.
Speaker 2:I did not put that together until we spoke today. Wow.
Speaker 1:Not a great thing that we had a conversation.
Speaker 2:Well, well, I mean, we didn't know what we were going to get with me recording this. You're right, I have never sat down for this long and and talked about my dad and the childhood that I lived in this way. I mean, my therapist gets chunks of it, you know, but not like this to where I know what's going to be broadcast outwards. You know, it's just, I only created my podcast, so I have excuse not to be a guest and just tell listen to other people's story. I mean, I can listen to people's stories all day and learn. I've become a sponge. I can learn from everything in that regards, but truly flipping the script and people learning from me, that's the new 10% of my life.
Speaker 1:And well, you're screwed now because that 10% is out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got to keep growing on it and I can't wait to see what happens from this. But the end of this podcast should be known that if you haven't begun to talk about it and it's bothering you and it's creating chaos in any area of your life career, family, yourself, whatever find somewhere whether it's a podcast with a family friend, a counselor, you know, nick, I, whoever and begin slowly telling it, because it's there's no easy staples button to get away from that step. You have to begin to talk about it so that you can begin the healing process. I'm glad I finally did, because now I am at 10%, but for so many years I just like it is what it is. You know it's never going to get any better, you know, and that also switched my mentality from a victim mentality to an overcomer and I didn't realize that by telling my story that's what it did.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the entire purpose of this podcast. We are here to well. I am here to help others, you are here to help others, and it's okay if we helped you and others at the same time. I think that this-.
Speaker 2:I know it's going to be a good. Sunday over here in the metal household.
Speaker 1:It's going to be a great Sunday over there, and when this episode finally does drop, I hope that it's going to be the beginning of a lot better days for a lot of people out there. And let's also say that you know, women are probably the ones who are mostly in abusive relationships, but men are also finding themselves in those situations. So, honestly, I think anybody who is finding themselves on the wrong end of abuse go to the show notes of this episode, find the contact information and reach out to Mel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe it's not physically men, but maybe it's mentally and financially. That's abuse.
Speaker 2:Exactly If they're controlling you with your kids. That's abuse. And so, yes, this is not a gender specific, it's not a. My trauma is worse than this person's trauma. It's a completely no judgment. Help, that's it. That's no. I mean, you heard my story of parts of it. It's not easy to listen to. There's not much out there that surprises me with the life that I've lived. And if I can use that type of trauma to help others, then I can let go of those questions of why did it happen to me? Because now I learned that it happened to me so that I can be a voice for those that it happens to as well, and I hope that somebody else can learn by hearing what we've talked about today.
Speaker 2:I did not even know I was going to go there with that. I didn't even think about that. I'm so glad you did.
Speaker 1:I am so glad that you did.
Speaker 2:I mean I've got some-. This is supposed to be about my dad.
Speaker 1:It was. You know, but no out of my childhood.
Speaker 2:I've created this nonprofit and, yeah, the basis of it is if someone had laid out a plan for me that I could have my home and my job and stuff that I would have left a long time ago and a lot of things could have been saved from that. So I love that. Good luck on your next podcast. I can't wait to see this drop, but reach out to me. I got my email up and working, so it's working Okay.
Speaker 2:You got questions for what I should put out publicly or what I do have a separate phone number that goes to my other line that I could probably put out there. The only thing is I just don't know if we get randos calling. So I don't know if we should do like a, like an email, and they can email it real quick.
Speaker 1:I don't know how to do that I think, yeah, let's talk about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know if it is the phone that people do call, once they know me after they're, like you know, a member of the support group or you know they know to call that if they call it at two o'clock in the morning it's on and I know that there's something going on. But I don't know, if I don't know them that to go out, maybe we need to create like a ghost number or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe we either that or link it to well, I mean, yeah, you know there's also there are apps out there where you can basically have burner numbers. I think one is called Talkatone. Yeah, you can create a fake number. You don't ever want to like keep changing the number, because then people who have the number, if that's their only means of contact, then they lose that. I think you're right, though I think maybe like an email situation, because look, here's the thing If anybody is in immediate danger and does not live anywhere close to you, you're not the person to call.
Speaker 2:If there's an email, that will go into text. So when they email it it goes straight to my phone as a text message so I can respond immediately back, cause that's the thing is, if I email and I don't see it for a couple of hours, then they feel like they're not getting the help that they need. It's got to be very timeable at that point, but I'll look into that, because I haven't put it out there outside of the local network, and so the girls have that number, and I mean when it rings for intense purposes and it was just about two weeks ago I took a pizza call, so and everything. So it's getting more known here and I hope to see what God does with it outside of those circles. And I hope to see men use it too, because I've heard some of the worst stories I've heard is women controlling men. So but good luck on your next podcast. Thank you for spending your morning with me and I do apologize on the time delay.
Speaker 1:No, it's totally fine. It wasn't your fault, it was just. It was zoom fucked up originally for me and then they did it for you, so I just have no idea why.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I got to look at mine on zoom. If I put it where it moves the time to my time, not the host Apparently that can happen, so I'll make sure on my parameters. I wonder how many times I was late to other ones. Sorry, I mean I'm an hour behind.
Speaker 1:That's okay.
Speaker 2:We'll have a good rest of the day.
Speaker 1:You too. Thanks so much, Mel. We will talk soon All right Bye. Bye-bye.