Latest / The Living Loss | Navigating Invisible Grief & Identity / 12 | Living with the Hidden Grief of Family Estrangement with Lee Horton-Carter

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12 | Living with the Hidden Grief of Family Estrangement with Lee Horton-Carter · The Living Loss | Navigating Invisible Grief & Identity

• Cassandra: Hello friends, I'm Cassandra Harris Towner. Daiana, LMHC: and I'm Daiana Bernard. Cassandra: And as licensed mental health counselors, we're unpacking the quiet complex griefs that don't come with a funeral because you can't heal what you don't acknowledge. Daiana, LMHC: Welcome to the Living Loss Podcast. We are so glad you're joining our conversation as we name these losses and create a meaningful path forward together. Please subscribe and share this episode. It helps us grow this community and reach others who need to know that their grief is valid. Let's dive in. ⁓ Cassandra: Now, before we bring in our guest today who is absolutely spectacular, we do want to lay a little bit of groundwork. First and foremost, we'd like to mention that today's conversation does touch on the subject of sexual abuse and could be triggering to some listeners. It's not the overall focus, but we wanted to be mindful of everyone's experiences. Daiana, LMHC: We talk about quiet losses on this show. And today we're looking at ambiguous loss pertaining to family estrangement. Cassandra: Now, just so that you all know, family estrangement is the intentional physical and emotional distancing that happens between family members sometimes. isn't just a heated argument. ⁓ a persistent state of detachment that occurs when one or more members decide that maintaining a relationship is more harmful than silence of living in its absence. ⁓ It represents a living loss, the ongoing process of grieving someone who is still alive but no longer present in your life. Daiana, LMHC: This ambiguous loss is grieving someone who is psychologically or emotionally absent, but they're still alive. Estrangement, grief often lives here. Cassandra: And we sometimes will talk about the feeling of estrangement, but today we're bringing in some psycho-ed to help us understand the mechanics of it. Why does it feel so heavy? Why does the family react the way they do? We're gonna look at three main concepts for why this happens. Daiana, LMHC: The first one is family mythology. And this is the shared story a family tells about who we are. You've heard them, you've heard that the saying like the miller stick together or we don't air out our dirty laundry. Heard that quite a lot of times. And when you choose estrangement, you aren't just leaving a person. Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Daiana, LMHC: You're disrupting an entire story. The living loss here is that you're often cast as a villain simply because you stop playing your assigned role in this mess. Cassandra: And that often leads into scapegoating. Scapegoating is a dysfunctional in which one person often becomes the bucket for everyone else's stress and blame. It stabilizes the family because as long as you are the problem, ⁓ don't have to look at their issues. ⁓ So if you've walked away and the family is in an uproar, remember you didn't create the chaos, you just stopped absorbing it. Choosing yourself means the system has to find a new way to balance and that's not your burden to carry. Daiana, LMHC: Right. And we have spoken before and I think we will always come back to this window of tolerance and the window of tolerance. Just a reminder is if you've been with us since the beginning, you remember in episode four, if you want to go back there, there is a we go into it a lot deeper. And a quick refresher is that it is your optimal zone. It's the space where you can handle emotions without spiraling into a panic or shutting down completely. Cassandra: And for many of our listeners, family contact pushes them right out that window. Estrangement isn't an extreme or a mean choice. It's a psychological zone. It's choosing to live in a zone where you can actually breathe, parent, and function instead of just surviving that next phone call. So with all of that being said, we are so excited and so humbled to have our guest with us today who's had a deep dive experience into all of these things. Her grief has been with her in one form or the other for at least the last 30 years. Lee: Thank Daiana, LMHC: We would like to give a warm welcome to Lee, who is a retired psychotherapist and has done extensive work after debriefing first responders following 9-11. Thank you so much for joining us here today, Lee. Lee: Thank you for inviting me. I just feel so honored to be able to talk to you guys and feel so validated and seen to have this part of my story told. Cassandra: Lee, we're really grateful to have you here with us today. And when you're thinking about your story and what you'd like to share with us, a lot of times we wonder like where it all began and then kind of what happened after that and then what's it like for you now. And I know that there's a lot of history here and I really appreciate you being willing to be this vulnerable with us. So thank you. Lee: You're welcome. Thank you. Cassandra: So where did it all start for you? Lee: So it probably started in my ⁓ training. When I was learning about how do you work with sexual abuse survivors, I mean, you have to remember I'm kind of old, I'm retired now. So the training happened a long time ago and a lot of it was about how do you ask the questions? How do you honor sexual abuse survivors when you tell them your truth, that they tell you your truth? And ⁓ then how do you support them Cassandra: Okay. Lee: around their truth. But there was nothing that I learned that was like, if you confront your family about this, look out. I didn't get any of that in my training. And so ⁓ I was quite young when I was sexually abused. And so I went into my disclosure with a level of naivety that I don't have now. Daiana, LMHC: ⁓ goodness. Cassandra: Yeah. Lee: And when I work with sexual abuse survivors, I will encourage them to look at all of the nuances of the relationship dynamics and that. I think of a family system like a mobile. And if you move one part, the rest of it all has to kind of shift and adjust to rebalance itself. And I wasn't taught that, I learned that as a psychotherapist. And so when I disclosed My father didn't have enough ego strength to be able to go, yeah, I did that, I'm sorry. Instead, what he did was he moved into being quite controlling and he made everybody in the family choose. Like you're either with me or you're against me. and you know, this was my mother, he said like, you know, if you believe her, then we're getting a divorce. Well, imagine somebody who has lived, you know, 40 years of their life. Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Lee: with somebody and then being forced with this ⁓ no-win decision, right? ⁓ And the same thing with my siblings. ⁓ And my dad was so controlling that he even said to my mom, if she maintained a relationship with her sister, who is my aunt who did believe me, my aunt was a psychotherapist as well, ⁓ then he would divorce her. You know, he not only made her lose her relationship with her daughter, but also her best friend who was her sister. So I, I had no idea. I was very naive that that would be the fallout from what I said. And then, and then you're left sort of with this estrangement that you didn't pick because what you wanted was the truth to be honored and to be resolved. Cassandra: Hmm. Lee: within the family so that you fix it like in a good marriage, you get into arguments and then in a good marriage, people sort of go, yes, my bad, sorry, and you heal and repair the rupture. And so the naivety that I had that that could be repaired left me in a place where I was estranged, but I didn't choose estranged, lots of times people choose it. I ended up on the receiving end of estrangement because of my naivety. ⁓ And then because of that, I lost a lot of my identity and things that were really valuable to me. Like I remember in my early 20s saying in an interview, ⁓ yeah, it was the days when you could ask, Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Daiana, LMHC: Hmm Lee: How do you get along with your family? And are you married or not married? And all these things that you'd never be allowed to be asked in an interview now. And they asked me how I get along with my family. And I can remember saying, oh yeah, I really, I love my family. This was before I had my memories. My memories were completely blocked. And then they came up in my early thirties. I said, my family, my parents are two of my best friends. I go camping with them on the weekend if I don't have plans with my friends. So I lost that. Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Lee: Pride that comes along with, look, you know, that sort of social media, what they do now is they take the picture of the family looking really great and having a lot of fun. ⁓ I now sort of found myself to a bit adrift and going, well, who's my family? And this is before the conversations about chosen family were really ⁓ mainstream thinking. I had to come up with that concept. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Lee: and find people who would be chosen family. ⁓ So, did I answer your question? That's where it began. Daiana, LMHC: Yeah, you sure did. That is such an interesting concept that you didn't choose estrangement. And there's a lot of talk now on the internet that it's a trend that people just choose it. And that's a misunderstanding in itself. Because when someone does make that decision, it's usually after decades of trying to fix it, trying to make it work. Cassandra: So that's where it began. Lee: Mm-hmm. Be good. Right. Daiana, LMHC: what you did was to try to repair that relationship. And you believe that in telling the truth, and it's so, it like hurts my heart because when you're trying to tell the truth because you believe that that is what's going to heal your family, because it's the truth, you're not lying. Lying is bad. Telling the truth is good. But when you have a dysfunctional family, when you have this trauma within your family, the truth is evil. The truth is the worst thing that you can do. Now it's a betrayal. It's a betrayal to your family to tell the truth. Lee: Right, right. Because the myth in my family was we were so close. I mean, I did not have... Parents who were alcoholic, unkempt hygiene, didn't go to our plays or our baseball games. Like I had parents that were professionals that showed up for our baseball games. They were a lot of fun. was the best thing. I know this sounds very weird. The best thing for me is since Cosby has been caught, I now have a way of describing my family. because I go, I grew up in a white Cosby family where it's really fun, really intelligent, really close knit, lots of laughter. And then there's this dark side. So now I can sort of describe what my family system was like without having to go into the kind of the drama of the story, which isn't me. That's not who I am. That's what happened to me. Daiana, LMHC: Wow. Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Lee: of like saying I don't go around saying I'm the girl who got in a car accident in my 20s. I don't go around going I'm the person who was sexually abused as a child. It's not my identity. It's what happened to me. So now I can sort of short form it because Cosby was caught and if people are older like I am and they grew up watching the Cosby family they can go that's what your experience was and then this is what was happening. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. Lee: that was beyond your control that got blocked out. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. Yeah, they could experience maybe even a fraction of the of the real-life shock that you experienced in your own life Lee: Yeah, because what I have found is that people want to compartmentalize you into this or that. You know, if you've grown up in a family where there was sexually abused, then you have terrible trauma that you probably can't survive. And they were horrible people. And I'm not saying that what happened to me wasn't horrible. What happened to me was horrible. And I went through years of like working through all of the different bits of the trauma and stuff. ⁓ but that's not all of who they were, you know, they're whole people and there were lots of parts of them that I really enjoy and miss. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Daiana, LMHC: Of course, of course. And this is... Lee: And I think that that doesn't get understood by the general population because we're trained with the movies we watch and all that kind of stuff to just focus in on the dramatic parts. Daiana, LMHC: Yeah, correct. And as you were experiencing all of these parts, I'm sure that this estrangement, were like you said, you were learning what it was and all the doors that were closed as you went along. And I can imagine that you continue to learn how this estrangement kept impacting your connection to your extended family. or the confusion of continuously thinking, where do I belong? Can I go? ⁓ I gonna be kicked out? just a not knowing, continuously not knowing. Lee: Well, and I kept being naive and shocked by it. There's a little bit of a theme of being naive and shocked by things. Daiana, LMHC: Of course. Yes, but I think that makes complete sense. That makes complete sense to be shocked because what most people don't understand about estrangement is that there's this hope that things are gonna go back. And this is why estrangement takes so long because you keep seeing this good version of people. You keep seeing what you want and desire to go back to. Can we just be this? Lee: Yeah. Daiana, LMHC: all the time, can we be this good family? And there is this hope that keeps you, whether it's naive or hopeful, but that's what you continue to desire. Lee: Yeah. right, because I kept thinking I could still I don't know. So when I get get back some of who I am, it's partly about my identity and loss of identity. You know, because my identity was being part of this great fun, intelligent family. And ⁓ so my mom got Alzheimer's. And then when she got Alzheimer's, she moved into a long-term care facility and I would go visit her and take her out and spend time with her. And sometimes I would show up to look after her and the nurses would say, sorry, are you the daughter that is named Lee and you're not allowed to then see her? And I would be shocked. So it would sort of go in and out depending on my dad's mood and... So, and then when she finally did die. I know I shouldn't have been, but I was shocked that I was not allowed to be part of the family system while we were planning her funeral. I was, my father was like, I'm too vulnerable and she's not gonna, I'm not having her anywhere near me. She's not, she chose to not be, I think in their minds, they think that I chose to not be part of the family because after I disclosed, I didn't see my parents for about five years. mutual estrangement. You know, he was cutting my mom off from my aunt and all of those things. And I was trying to even just figure out who I am and purging these memories and processing them and stuff. ⁓ And so I got married and I didn't invite them to my wedding because I didn't want my dad, he's got a very big presence. Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Lee: and I didn't want them at my wedding. And then I think the myth in the family was you chose to not be part of this family because I didn't have them at the wedding. And I was too naive and young to kind of do the math and go, if you don't invite somebody to your wedding, ⁓ they're going to assume that you don't have a relationship. And so when my mom died, I was not invited to be part of the family system during the planning of her funeral. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. Lee: making of the boards, you know, with all the pictures of your family. There was no pictures of me over the age of 30 at my mom's funeral and I was 60 when she died. And no pictures of my husband, no pictures of my stepkids. So it was, it was very hard. It was very hard. You know, and I would hear about the fact that they'd get together as a family without me, but I hadn't really absorbed it until my niece got married. And I mean, I'm close with this niece. made like a hundred dozen or how many, anyways, dozens and dozens and dozens of batches of cookies for her cookie bar at her wedding. And then I bumped into the family going in for a family dinner. when I was coming out of the same restaurant and going, ⁓ they're going in and I was not invited to this family dinner at the time of her wedding. it's a very hard thing that you walk with your whole life and you only just sort of, I think I've learned how to walk with it and be within my window of tolerance. Like I'm talking about it now and I'm not crying, but I can feel in a deep, Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. Lee: place the sadness. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. ⁓ yeah. Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Daiana, LMHC: Yeah. Lee: So I think that that's the part of being a sexual abuse survivor that doesn't get talked about is all of those losses. It's little things like the traditions. At Christmas time, I loved that on Christmas Eve, our family would go to church and we would come home and we would play this game. And it was a singing game and you had to sort of... sing the first two lines of a Christmas song and then, you know, the next person goes and the next person, until you sing one that's already been sung before or you can't think of one and then you're out. And I never got to have that as a tradition anymore, because I married into a family and I mean, I love my husband and I love my stepkids and, ⁓ but they're introverts and it was, my traditions weren't necessarily adopted. Daiana, LMHC: Come on. Yeah, could imagine an extrovert going into an introvert family. So you had to be that's another way that you also pioneered not only the chosen family, but new traditions. More more concepts that were not taught that you just kept creating this path of healing for yourself. Lee: Yeah, I found places that I could belong because what you do is you, the double bind is you can choose your truth and authenticity or you can belong. And I'm not saying that this is new to sexual abuse survivors. I mean, we can see politically people making choices around authenticity and then they get fired, right? So. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. Lee: that speaking truth to power has risk in it. And it's okay to acknowledge the risk and there isn't a right or wrong. But I chose authenticity at the risk of belonging. And so what I had to do was find places I could belong to. So I joined a church that had the values that I have and I joined the Y because ⁓ you could Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Daiana, LMHC: does. Mm-hmm. Lee: I didn't have a lot of money and I knew intuitively I wasn't going to be getting money from ⁓ my family. So you could have a free membership at the Y if you volunteered and taught. And so I've always belonged at the Y for 32 years. I've volunteered teaching at the Y and then no matter where I go in the world, I can go work out and stuff. But it also, if I'm having a depressed day, I could go there and people would always be, hey, Lee, but. Daiana, LMHC: Hmm. Lee: And I could get that sense of belonging. It's looser threads than a family system that is more knit together, but it's still a sense of belonging. And I think that that's the thing that people don't realize is that whether you've chosen estrangement or somebody else has chosen to estrange you out of the system, you have to work at finding places to belong. And the onus is on you to do that. and you don't really regulate until you do that. Daiana, LMHC: Wow. Lee: You can't be in that window of tolerance of emotional regulation until you actually have a place you belong. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Correct. know, when you're... Go ahead, Cassandra. Cassandra: And I love that, ⁓ no, I was just thinking, I love that you have managed to carve that window out for yourself because I can only imagine that having this visceral disruption into your family life has caused it to be also difficult for you to build connections and trust with other people outside of that as well because there's an underlying fear of estrangement regardless. Lee: Mmm. Cassandra: So I'm a little bit curious as to like how that has played out for you. Lee: it's been hard and it's been hard for me to know. What is normal? Because when you think about, okay, everybody's the center of their own world. And then your first tier of support or closeness or whatever, probably the people you live with, your closest friends, your kids, and then you've got your second tier of support and your third, whatever. If you end up having that first tier drop out of your life, Then you form relationships and you go, well, how often am I supposed to call you if I know you have a first tier in terms of your family, but I don't and that you're going to still think of this as a normal level of interaction rather than being seen as needy or too much, you know, and, and honestly, I I don't think I'm alone in that. I think everybody's guessing about that stuff all the time anyways. But in my mind, I was ⁓ much more unsure about that kind of emotional math. Whereas before I had my memories, I was very clear. Family's first. And I get to like you guys. Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Lee: but I don't need you. And then all of a sudden, if you didn't have that center tier, it's like, ⁓ well, what if I do need you? And how much can I need you for you to still wanna have this relationship? Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Lee: It's more complicated math. And then of course you have just life, right? And there are, I have said to people, 100 % when people have major life changes, it will change the dynamics of your relationship. So if people move, if people get a job, if people have a baby, if people have somebody die, like, you know, I had a really good girlfriend that, ⁓ like we were best friends. I was part of their family. And Daiana, LMHC: No. Lee: Her husband died and I don't think she consciously decided that's it, I'm cutting you off. She just went, I think in her head she could not hear me talk about my husband and the struggles that we had with our child with special needs because at least he was alive. And so she gravitated towards all of the single friends in our group. And so our friendship ended up dissipating. So some of that stuff is just normal stuff. But when you have this history where there's estrangement in your family system, ⁓ you're looking through a lens that is more insecure because you don't have that foundation behind you. Does that make sense? Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Daiana, LMHC: Oh, so much sense. It sure does. Yeah. This conversation is just so important. And when you were speaking about authenticity, a way that I kind of conceptualize it for myself was that the unwillingness to betray yourself, like to not have that self betrayal. And that is what you do gain. You're not betraying yourself when you are authentic. You're Lee: Okay, good. Crazy! Daiana, LMHC: standing up for yourself. Lee: Yeah. And I would say that where I've come in terms of my healing is, even though I didn't choose the estrangement at first, I had a naive thought that I just had to say what was wrong and then it would get better because the other person would apologize and then we'd heal. ⁓ That obviously came from my inner child. And now I would say I would choose the estrangement. Daiana, LMHC: And I think there's so much power in that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Lee: you know, I'm in a different place where I go, that is an unhealthy relationship for me to be in, to be relating to somebody who hurt me and then still wants to control the dynamic. You know, I, and now I, I know that I'm not going to be in the will. And ⁓ I, in my head, what I do is I just go, well, my siblings had to deal with my dad for all those years. So. Daiana, LMHC: Yeah, wow. Mm-hmm. Lee: That's just payment for them having to deal with my dad. Daiana, LMHC: Yeah. Cassandra: You Daiana, LMHC: Yeah, I could imagine. Absolutely. Lee: And I've done okay. I'm not going to have problems with money in my retirement. I did well getting myself a career that paid well and I was successful at it. So I don't need the inheritance, but it also teaches me about the privilege of inheritance. You know, I think people don't get that it's a huge privilege when you come from. Daiana, LMHC: Right. Lee: wealth and money and it gives you a status in society that other people have to work to get. Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Lee: and the choices that come with all of that, right? you know, there's always, it all made me a better therapist. Daiana, LMHC: Sure did. Lee: And I would say that the living ⁓ wisdom, ⁓ is that what you said that ⁓ ⁓ is that I have to just lost is that all I have, I have to focus on what I have control of and I have to let myself be myself regardless. So now because that's Daiana, LMHC: Yeah, living like living loss lesson. Mm-hmm. Lee: value around family is so deep. Now what I do is I babysit my niece's kids, even though there was like all these issues around the funeral and her wedding and everything, because I'm all about family. And I recognize that I'm looking after her kids. And something might happen during my dad, if my dad dies and there's a funeral and there might be an escalation of some type that I can't control. And maybe they'll cut off and not have me look after the kids. But in the meantime, I just have to be myself and live my truth about who I am. And if that happens, that's who they are. But It's easier said than done. Because I'm walking with that tentativeness that comes with, this family system, they can cut off from me when I least expect it, and they can justify it, and they pretend like this is normal and that it's not impacting on me or that I chose it or whatever the story is that they tell themselves. So I just have to show up and be who I am because that's my truth about my values and my sense of identity. And if they change the relationship dynamic, then that will be sad, but I would have been sadder not choosing who I am. Does that make sense? Daiana, LMHC: Right. It makes so much sense. What I hear is that your family, your value is family and there is estrangement from your nuclear family and that does not take away your value of family. And you've found other ways to honor that. Cassandra: Absolutely. Lee: So I think that my, I'm closer with my niece and her kids and niece and nephew, her kids, than I am with my sister. Cause I think my sister is more threatened by me. And in my humble opinion, she's still in denial about what may have happened in our family system. I don't have a relationship with my brother. He's very unwell in terms of his mental health. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. Right. Lee: I wish him well, but I think there's stuff that he hasn't processed. And I think he's because he's a male, he's more likely to ⁓ behave the way my dad behaves ⁓ when my dad is behaving in an unwell way. So I don't have a relationship with him and I'm okay with that, but I wish him well, you know. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm, correct. Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Daiana, LMHC: I think another point there is that that is your value, your family, and you've allowed for you to accept, radically accept that you don't have control over which relationships do work out. But the ones that do, like with your niece, you welcome it and you're not pushing things away that you can actually have. And I think that's an extremely important thing for us to all hear. Lee: You're not taking a stance that you have to believe what I believe for me to have a relationship with you. But the reality is I disclosed because I was trying to protect my nieces. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. Lee: I ended up not having much of a relationship with them as they were growing up because my sister does not believe me. you know, and now my nieces both have, like between the two of them, they have five girls. And so it's one of the hardest, but one of the proudest things that I've done in my Daiana, LMHC: All right. Wow, that is very powerful. Yeah, it is. ⁓ Lee: Right? Mm-hmm. And so because I did that for them, if they're going to open the door for me to come in, I'm going to walk through that door and I'm not going to go, I'm only walking through that door if you believe me about what I said about your papa. You know what mean? I'm not going there. I'm just going to go and be myself and they will see me being consistently who I am. And then Cassandra: and those they love. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Lee: My guess is at some point in time, I think that I know them well enough that if my sister escalates when my dad dies or whatever, they will choose loyalty. So I'm not naive as much as I used to be. And if she pushes for them to believe her versus me, they will believe her because they're very close with their mom. And I won't try and make them think differently. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. I need more. Yeah. Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Now, I think that throughout this entire episode, everyone listening is getting ⁓ so much insight into this process looks like ⁓ and ⁓ answers to own ⁓ not feeling alone, knowing this experience, ⁓ as hard as it it is a shared experience with people who have gone through things like estrangement or sexual abuse survivors. So I greatly, greatly thank you for being here with us today. Lee: Well, I thank you guys because honestly, I've never told this part of my story. Daiana, LMHC: Wow, ⁓ such an honor, thank you. Cassandra: Thank you. Lee: So it's so validating for me to be able to articulate it and have people go, ⁓ I get you. No, you're not crazy. That makes sense. Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Lee: So it's very validating. Thank you. Daiana, LMHC: Absolutely. Cassandra: Thank you for being here. Daiana, LMHC: course. Cassandra, anything else that you would want to mention about whether is this living loss connection or just any thought? Cassandra: I was just thinking about the hope that comes through in Leaps and Bounds in this story. Like, there was never a... I know that there's times where, I don't know, I'm assuming that there were times that it did feel hopeless, but at this core of it, because you stuck to your values, because you realized that this was more important than how you felt about things, that you were able to find hope in even the darkest moments, you were able to hold on to the fact that... It's time to build a new family. It's time to build a new way to do this. And you did the hard thing. You did it regardless of how you felt about it. You did so much regardless of how you felt about it. And you protected those that couldn't protect themselves. And you just continuously showed up to be the person that you felt in your heart that you wanted to be. And there's just so much hope in that. Lee: To be fair to people who are going through this, it wasn't as easy as what you're making it sound. Cassandra: No, and I apologize if it sounds like I'm diminishing it. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. Lee: It was a little bit more like being on a ship and having it sink. And then you think you're going to drown and you feel like you're drowning. And then you sort of make your way up to the surface again. And then you find a piece of wood and you're floating around and you're kind of existing, but not really knowing. And then you, and then you go, Oh, Oh, I'm on land now. So I sort of think that I can articulate it because it's been 30 years. Daiana, LMHC: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm hmm. Right. Yeah. Cassandra: Right. Lee: Right? Like this level of ⁓ emotional regulation and articulation doesn't come in one year of therapy or five years of therapy, or it comes from years of living it and going, ⁓ and I'm surviving it. I'm okay. I didn't die. Daiana, LMHC: Mmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Cassandra: Mm-hmm. Lee: I, you know. Daiana, LMHC: Yeah, I think that's such an important point. I think Cassandra and I are seeing you through these lengths of resiliency and that ⁓ it takes an extremely resilient person and listening to your entire story. ⁓ We could only imagine how difficult it is. And it's really important to say that, that it is difficult and to also acknowledge how resilient you are. Cassandra: You're right. Lee: Yeah, thanks. Thank you. I do think of myself as one of the most resilient people I know. Cassandra: Thank you. Daiana, LMHC: Good, good. I'm glad. I'm glad. Thank you so much, There's no words to express how grateful we are that you have shared your story. And I know it's going to, it's immense impact on us of our listeners. Thank you so much. ⁓ And thank you to listeners for being a part. Thank you. ⁓ Thank you to our for being a part of our circle today. Remember that this ⁓ Lee: you Thank you guys. Daiana, LMHC: Remember that sharing this episode, you are helping us reach someone else who is carrying their loss in silence. Let's keep growing this community together. Subscribe, follow, share, and know that your story matters. Cassandra: And just as a reminder, this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes. While we are therapists, we're not your therapists, so this does not replace professional mental health care. But if you feel like you'd like to speak to someone, please reach out to a professional near you. Thank you again, Lee. Daiana, LMHC: and I'll see you next time. Lee: Thank you guys.