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Learning How To Connect With Human Beings with JoAnn Lagace · The Trauma Therapist

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Guy McPherson.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: So five, four, three, two, and one. Our folks, welcome
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: back to the podcast. Very excited to have as my
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: guest today, Joanne Lagasse. Joanne, welcome.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Guy. Very glad to be here and I
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: appreciate the opportunity.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Joanne is an author, advocate, nonprofit founder, and
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: woman in long-term recovery whose life has been shaped by trauma, resilience,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and the decision to turn pain into purpose. In her memoir,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Seeds and Shattered Soil, she shares an unfiltered journey through
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: childhood trauma, addiction, mental health challenges, survival, recovery, and ultimately
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: healing and self-acceptance. After more than 20 years in real estate,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Joanne changed the direction of her life and entered nonprofit work,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: eventually founding the National Animal Foster Network organization, working to
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: build infrastructure that helps keep people and their companion animals
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: together during temporary human crises. All right, Joanne, just a
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: little bit about you. Before we get going, share with
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: our listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: I was born in Rhode Island, raised in Savannah, Georgia,
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: and now I currently reside in the Denver, Colorado area.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, so how does this all start for you, Joanne?
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: You know, the book has been 17 years in the making,
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: and I don't want to give away any spoiler alerts.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: My book is about, as you mentioned, trauma being first
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: and foremost because I was born into generational trauma. And
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: what I didn't understand then is that the generational trauma,
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: as well as mental health challenges that I didn't understand,
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: led me to what I refer to become a trauma magnet.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: And when chaos is all you've ever known, Chaos is
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: the life that you live because you don't know anything else.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Let me pause you for a second here. I want
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: to get specific. So when did this happen? Where were you?
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: What was your family structure like?
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: So I was born in Rhode Island, which is primarily
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: made up of French, Canadian, Catholic individuals. So I grew
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: up thinking everyone in the world was French, Canadian, and Catholic.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: That's how naive I was as a child. And then
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: when I moved to Savannah, Georgia, I had a worldwide
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: opening with different religions and different racial animosity. I didn't
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: grow up with all that. So it was a very
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: dynamic and impactful traumatic experience for me at the age
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: of 11 going on 12 to.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Make that type of move.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: So at the age of seven, where it all started,
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: I was born with a degenerative hip disease. And so
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: at seven years old, if you can imagine Forrest Gump,
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: I had a brace on my left leg with a
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: boot and a pedal that looked like it would go
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: on a bicycle.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: I had to walk with my leg extended.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: If I wanted to sit down, I would have to
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: lift a little hook to make my leg be able
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: to bend, as well as walking on crutches. That made
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: me a target. We all know how horrible children can be.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: And I was targeted. And I was called every name
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: under the book. The boys would jump on my back
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: at recess, make me go around in circles. I mean,
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: I felt like a lion attacking its prey. And the
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: teachers stood there and laughed. And so at a very
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: early age, I lost faith in humanity. I lost faith
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  Speaker 3: that There was anyone out there who was going to
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: save me.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Pause for a second. So your family structure was what? Mom, dad, siblings?
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: My mom was divorced with two children, married my father,
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: and my father passed away when I was 18 months
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: old of leukemia. He went to the hospital thinking he
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: had the flu, and two days later he was dead.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: My mom never remarried.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: She did have another relationship where she had my younger siblings,
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  Speaker 3: the twins. So I'm the middle child of five. The
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: two older are seven and eight years older than me.
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  Speaker 3: They're Irish twins. Then my younger sister and brother are
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: actual paternal twins.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: So you grew up with this hip situation, targeted, bullied.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: How do things unfold for you during school, high school, etc.
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  Speaker 3: So it progressively worsened because I couldn't run and play
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  Speaker 3: like other kids.
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  Speaker 2: So now I'm not just handicapped. I'm overweight.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: And then my teeth, one of my teeth, my eye
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: tooth grew up out of my gum rather than down underneath.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: And so I was overweight, handicapped, snaggled tooth. My hair
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: was funky. It just didn't grow right. I had a
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: protein deficiency. So anything and everything that you could think of,
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: the world judged me, beat me, criticized me for, and
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: conditioned me to believe that I was an unworthy person.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: And that continued to be validated because the more traumatized,
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  Speaker 3: untreated trauma I experienced.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: the more trauma I attracted into my life.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: And you say that, hang on, before you get there,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: how were you during this time, how were you quote
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: unquote managing? How were you dealing with it? Did you
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: have any friends?
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  Speaker 3: I had a big family. So my friends were my cousins.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: They had to play with me. But what did develop
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: was my rage. I became very enraged as a child.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: And I start my memoir off by saying, I think
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: when I was born, the doctor might have smacked me
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: just a little too hard, and I put up my
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: dukes and said, I'm getting ready to kick your you-know-what,
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: because as far back as I can remember, I've always
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: been very angry. And it only progressively worsened as I
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: progressed in life and kept attracting more and more trauma,
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  Speaker 3: whether that trauma came from an intimate relationship or sibling rivalry,
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  Speaker 3: it was everything about me was anger.
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  Speaker 2: I never felt happy.
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  Speaker 3: I'm just now at this age learning to find peace
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  Speaker 3: and joy in certain moments, but I don't yet know
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: if I'll ever find happiness.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: During what was high school like for you?
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  Speaker 3: I was expelled in ninth grade for fighting. I was
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: very violent. In 1980 is when alternative schools came out
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: in Savannah, Georgia. I was one of the first seven
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  Speaker 3: students in Chatham County School District.
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  Speaker 2: Selected to go to.
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  Speaker 3: Alternative school, which is your last chance school.
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  Speaker 2: If you did not do well at.
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  Speaker 3: The alternative school, you were expelled from Chatham County school
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  Speaker 3: system permanently. And so I was in an altercation. It
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: got really bad. I almost really hurt the principal of
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: our school. I was sent to alternative school. A week
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: after getting there, I almost threw a kid out of
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: a second story window and I was expelled from the
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: Chatham County school system.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: So up to this point, Joanne, how was your mom
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: coping with this? Were you getting any kind of quote
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: unquote help, treatment?
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: I saw one shrink when I was seven. I had
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: two visits with her and then I ruled the roost.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: I told my mother what to do. My mother was
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: very fearful of me. My rage was such that, that
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: my own mother feared her own child. I'm not proud
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: to say that, but it is what it is. And
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: I had to make an amends and ask for forgiveness
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: from my mother later on in life. But that rage
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: consumed me, controlled everything about me, and I didn't know
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: how to heal. And I wasn't willing. I was so
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: stubborn at the time. I wasn't willing to look at
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: mental health diagnosis. I probably had narcissistic tendencies at that
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: point in my life. No one could tell me what
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: to do. I was the boss of me and just
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: very hard to get along with.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: During high school, did you have any types of relationships, friends,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: intimate otherwise? Did you work?
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: I did develop....
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: Promiscuous side during those years because I was lacking self-esteem.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: I was lacking connection.
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  Speaker 3: I didn't know how to connect to human beings in
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  Speaker 3: that emotional place.
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  Speaker 2: And then when I would let my guard down a
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  Speaker 2: little bit.
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  Speaker 3: My father would say, love at six, I was 14,
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: he was 16.
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  Speaker 2: And I fell head over heels in love with him.
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  Speaker 2: He was my first everything.
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  Speaker 3: And I know that was a very young age, but
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  Speaker 3: it is what it is.
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  Speaker 2: It's all in my memoir.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: So John was my first love and also my first
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: heartbreak in the intimate realm. And that just became a
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: trend throughout my life. And as that trend progressed as
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: I aged, I never developed the ability to completely love
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  Speaker 3: or trust anyone. My love and trust can be flipped
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  Speaker 3: on like a switch because I've been let.
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  Speaker 2: Down so much in my life.
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  Speaker 3: It's really hard for me to allow at this point
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  Speaker 3: in my life anyone to put me in that vulnerable
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  Speaker 3: of a situation ever again.
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  Speaker 1: What happens after high school?
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  Speaker 3: So after I get expelled from high school, the fair
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  Speaker 3: was in town, the carnival, the local carnival that comes
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: to your town every year.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I thought, why not?
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  Speaker 3: I'll join the carnival and travel with the fair since
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: I can't go to school and I'm, you know, don't
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: want to work at a fast food restaurant. And so
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  Speaker 3: I made my mother sign custody of me over to
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: some man. She didn't even know what he looked like.
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  Speaker 3: And I told her if she didn't, I would run
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  Speaker 3: away anyway and never come back. But if she agreed
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  Speaker 3: to sign that relinquishment of custody paper, I would come
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  Speaker 3: back and go back to school the next school season.
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  Speaker 3: So then I took off with the fair and I
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  Speaker 3: ended up becoming spider.
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  Speaker 2: Lady with the fair.
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  Speaker 1: What is, what was spider lady?
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  Speaker 3: Spider Lady is where I sat in a box with
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  Speaker 3: my head sticking out only. And I wore a big
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  Speaker 3: black wig, big eyelashes. I had a stuffed spider body
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  Speaker 3: behind me. And I had gadgets underneath the box where
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: I could move the legs and convince people that I
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: was real.
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  Speaker 2: Wow.
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  Speaker 1: At 15. At 15. Okay. At 15. Interesting. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: it's hard not to draw the conclusion from how you
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  Speaker 1: were treated as a kid, what you felt about you, yourself,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: and then here you are putting yourself as some kind
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: of attraction, right?
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  Speaker 3: I wanted attention. I wanted attention however I could get it, right?
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  Speaker 3: No one ever saw any good in me. Everybody was
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: all so good at pointing out All the bad things
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  Speaker 3: about me. The question, you know, was always, what's wrong
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: with you? It was never the question of, what happened
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: to you?
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  Speaker 2: Right?
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  Speaker 3: There's a big difference there. People weren't trying to understand me.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: People were wanting to judge me and criticize me. And
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  Speaker 3: I gave them every right to.
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  Speaker 2: I will own my responsibility there. I had a very
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  Speaker 2: bad attitude.
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  Speaker 3: I walked around just very angry at the world because
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: the world hurt me so bad.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: And I wanted them.
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  Speaker 2: To feel it.
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  Speaker 1: No one could blame you. I mean, it sounds awful
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  Speaker 1: what you went through, Joanne.
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  Speaker 2: It is awful. And that's just the beginning of my life.
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  Speaker 1: So let's move forward here. What happens at some point?
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  Speaker 1: Did you, I want to kind of want to jump ahead.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: into your 20s and 30s? How do things unfold for you?
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  Speaker 3: The more pivotal experience was when I got back from
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: the fair. So I was traveling with the carnival for
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: two months and I met a young man who was
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: in the National Guard Reserve and he came and traveled
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: with me and he wanted to control me and that's
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: not going to happen. I just made my mom sign
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  Speaker 3: custody of me over to somebody she doesn't even know
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  Speaker 3: and I'm not going to be controlled by anybody at
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: this age.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: And he was 21. He wanted to control me.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: And the owners told me I either had to stay
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: with him or go back to Savannah.
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  Speaker 2: And I said, send me back.
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  Speaker 3: And when I got back to Savannah, I found out
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: I was pregnant with his baby.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: And I carried that baby for nine months.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: And I thought, wow, if I could just have one boy,
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: if I could have a boy, I could have one
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: man in my life who will never leave me, who
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: will love me no matter what.
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  Speaker 2: He'll have to love me because I'm his mother.
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  Speaker 3: Well, on January 13th, 1983, he was stillborn on his
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: due date. And I have to bring that up because
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: it was at that point where I felt like God
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: had it out for me and I was a mistake.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: I never thought God could be so cruel.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: And so I really went out of control after that
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: because I didn't care whether I lived or died. You
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: could probably say that I was a living suicide attempt.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: That's how I lived my life. I really never did
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: care whether I lived or died. I did things and
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: put myself in positions where I should have been dead
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: time and time again.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: So you come back to Savannah. Are you living with
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: your mom at this time?
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: I moved back in with my mother, yes.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: She told me I was going to have to give
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: the baby up for adoption, and I told her there
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: was no way that was going to happen. So I
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: got the father to agree to come to Savannah and
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: agree to help me raise the baby, and he joined
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: the military full-time, so he was going to be a
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: military father. And so my mom said I could keep him,
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: but then you already know what happened there.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: In the interest of time here, at some point, I'm
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: guessing something happened such that you started to gain a
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: little bit of awareness into the possibility of healing or
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: what that even might look like. What started to happen?
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: The pivotal moment was.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: I ran into an old boyfriend on River Street in Savannah, Georgia,
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: and he was with a girl that I went to
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: high school with, and they had gotten married and had
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: a baby.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: And this was after I lost my son.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: And I was trying to be nice, and I said, hey,
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: how's your baby doing? And she looked at me and said,
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: better than yours. And when she said that, when she
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: said that, I lost control. I blacked, I didn't black out.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: I read out first. Everything went red. And then everything
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: went to black. And I didn't see anybody but her.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: And I beat her so bad, I could have taken
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: her life.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: And I realized in that moment.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: That I was afraid of myself. And I started to
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: pray for God to take that anger away from me
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: because I was fearful of what it was going to
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: do to me.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: And so after that, I really started to progress, but
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: it was little by little. You don't just come out
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: of all that trauma and jump into this major healing cycle. Right. So...
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: You know, I still made.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: Bad relationship choices and went through domestic violence and alcoholism.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: And I'll be 18 years sober on October 13th.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: And it's been a progressive healing journey. The memoir, Seasons
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: Shatter Soil, I've been writing that for 17 years. And
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: to have it come out and be released, it's like...
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: Taking your child off to college. The empty nester is here.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: I want to get there, but I kind of want
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: to find out how you got to that point where
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: you're even like, I want to write this book. How
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: did you get to that point?
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: Once again, I was back in Savannah, Georgia. I was
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: still in my drinking days. It was in 2007. And
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: I was just so depressed. I just knew I needed
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: some help. I just didn't know where to turn to
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: get it. I knew there was something horribly wrong with me.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: I just didn't know. And so I started, I thought,
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: if I journal about it, maybe that will help me.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: And journaling started becoming a book, but of course I
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: was still too sick.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: There was just tears all over the page.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: As you can see, even with the healing now, I
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: still get emotional talking about it because it is so personal.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: But it was then I had my bottom fall out and.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: I called my brother in Tennessee in 2008 and said,
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: if you don't come and get me tonight, I'm going
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: to take my own life. And he said, Joe, don't
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: do anything. I will be there in eight hours. He
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: was there in seven. He took me back to Tennessee
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: and I went into treatment October 13th of 2008.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Was that the first time?
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: That was my first time in treatment.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: For alcoholism per se. I had attempted to get help
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: on multiple occasions. I was diagnosed narcissistic, not an alcoholic, narcissistic, right?
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: But the pivotal diagnosis, if you want me.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: To go there next, Not necessarily. When did you start
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: to consciously say, I want to write this book?
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: I consciously wanted to start writing it in 2007, but
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: I knew I was still too sick.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: I wasn't anywhere in a position.
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: So when COVID happened is when I really got down
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: to the nitty gritty because.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: I had time. I was a real estate broker. That
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: was my career. And I had just moved from Tennessee.
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: To Colorado and was going to start my team and
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: COVID shut me down.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: I also went through a divorce.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: And so during that time, I had a lot more
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: experience and things continued to progressively get better. I started
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: finding my spirituality and my rhythm in the spiritual realm.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: And I just started opening up for healing. And I
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: removed myself from society.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: At first it was isolation. And now it's become solitude.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: And there's a difference.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: I isolated because I couldn't continue to get all this
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: poured on me. I couldn't heal with it continuing to come.
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: And we all know how judgmental and critical.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: People can be.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: If I may, when you started to write the book,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: what did you want to say.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: Initially, I wanted people to understand me, right? I wrote
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: it thinking, if I just tell my story, then they'll understand.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Like you said in the beginning, when I.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: Was telling you how horrible those kids were to me,
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: you said, why wouldn't you, Joanne?
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: And initially, that's what I wanted people to say. Why
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: wouldn't you be that way?
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: How could you not?
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: How could you not?
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Of course, you're a human being.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: You're conditioned. You're conditioned to hate yourself.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: And when you're conditioned to hate yourself, you can't love
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: anyone else.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: So you've been conditioned to hate yourself, therefore you hate
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: everyone else. And misery loves company. And everyone was invited
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: to my party.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: So the book, again, the book is called Seeds and
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Shattered Soil. Yes. Yes. Okay. And who would you say
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: the book is for?
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: My mother, primarily for my mother. My mother is.
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: The, and I didn't recognize what unconditional love was until
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: later on in life from a human being.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: My mother never turned her back on me.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: As much as I hurt my mother, making her sign custody,
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: I was physically violent with my mother at times. I
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: put my mom through a lot going to jail for
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: DUIs and staying out all night partying when I should
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: have been taking care of my children. My mother never
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: judged me, never criticized me, and never once turned her
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: back on me.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: So my mother, I was the seed. My mother was
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: also born. I'm so sorry.
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: Into shattered soil. But that woman knows how to love.
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: And she loved me so much.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: And my book is about my gratitude for her never
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: giving up on me.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: You, Joanne, obviously have been through Your journey has been,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: how do we say this? Horrific, tragic, but you sit here,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: you sit here having moved through this with a certain
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: amount of resilience and strength and courage. How the hell
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: did you do that?
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: Because of my mother's love.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: And so what my book also shares is not about
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: the trauma that I experienced, but about the hardships it
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: causes for the people who love you the most. And
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: so I have done my best to try and help
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: those who love someone who struggles with addiction or mental
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: health or a combination thereof, or are in their own way,
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: their own trauma magnet. how to be able to love
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: and support someone when it hurts you so bad.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: How do you do that? Obviously, we're not giving away
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: the book, but give us an example. How would they
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: do that?
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: For one, it's recognizing that you will never understand what
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: they're going through.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: Stop trying. I'll describe it to you this way.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: When someone is in an episode, say bipolar, It's like
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: living inside an F5 tornado. You've got rain, sleet, hail, thunder, lightning.
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: You can't see, taste, touch. You just can't make heads
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: or tails of anything. And then once the tornado subsides,
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: you're treading water in floodwaters.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: You can't feel the bottom yet.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: And once that subsides, you are stuck cleaning up the
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: wreckage of everything that's left behind. And that can be
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: something as far as we didn't agree on something and
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: I cussed you out and I brought up something you did.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: 20 years ago and threw it in your face and
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: now we're back to square one, right?
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: How to avoid doing things like that.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: How to have boundaries and stay happy within a relationship
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: with someone you love who may struggle with bipolar or
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: addiction or something else. It's a really fine line and
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: so I talk a lot about that in my book
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: to try and help those of loved ones because I've
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: put my loved ones through a lot And there are
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: sections of my book dedicated to them as well because
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: my mom transitioned in 2018 and in.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: Her place is my best friend, Christy.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: And I just went through a very dark period and
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: they can come and go. And that dark period led
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: me to a bipolar diagnosis where I was finally able
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: to find the right medication to to stop all of
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: the tornado activity going on in my head.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: And because I.
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: Got that part under control, I was able to finish
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: the book. Because when you have that much chaos going on,
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: you cannot separate and categorize. And AI was a big
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: help to me having.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: ADHD as well. AI, I want to make this clear,
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: did not write my book. It could not write my
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: life story, right?
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: It helped me categorize it and put it out in
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: a way where people can understand it, where my trauma
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: brain wouldn't be able to do that without assistance.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Before we close out here, I want to talk about
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: the National Animal Foster Network. And you founded that. How
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: did that come about?
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, thank you for bringing that up because
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: this is my heart and soul.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: So it came up during COVID. I couldn't sell real estate.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: And I thought, Joanne, if you were to take all
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: your titles away, real estate broker, sister, mother, cousin, whatever,
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: who are you?
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: Who are you? And I did not have an answer
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: to that question. I thought, I don't know who I am.
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: And so COVID helped me really start peeling back the
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: layers of the onion to get to that pearl. And
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: that pearl is a nonprofit founder. And because I've been
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: through so much trauma, as I mentioned, I've lived in
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: the world of recovery. I've seen how much impact an
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: animal can have on someone in recovery's life as their
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: emotional support animal and only source of unconditional love and companionship.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: And the crises... The type of crises might change, but
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: the need doesn't, right?
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: Right now, when someone is in a temporary crisis situation,
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: they typically surrender that animal to a shelter when all
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: they needed was two weeks, four weeks, a month, 90
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: days for a treatment program, and someone to love their
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: animal until they could get back to it. And we
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: have great organizations out in the.
• 29:31
  Speaker 5: World, but we are so fragmented, no one knows who
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: out there exists, and there's no unified platform. putting everyone
• 29:42
  Speaker 5: in one place and so that's our first step is
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: we are building we dug the foundation over the last
• 29:48
  Speaker 5: three years now we're building our advisory board of experts
• 29:53
  Speaker 5: in their own.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: Field legal human animal bond animal welfare researchers. We have
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: 12 members of.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Our advisory board now of experts who are going to
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: build our policies, procedures, and protocols.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: And this is a ground level nonprofit.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: We are now filling in the foundation.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: So just to clarify, the organization, the National Animal Foster Network,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: helps people who are in crisis, who might otherwise, who
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: need to go into treatment, for example, who might otherwise
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: lose their animal because of that, you help them place
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: that animal during the time that these people are getting treatment?
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: With reunification as the outcome.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: The other great thing is we're going to reduce the
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: overpopulation of animal shelters, right? So Our overpopulation of animal
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: shelters is due to temporary crisis and no resources being
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: available to help those people be reunified with their animal.
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: We are now creating the nation's first coordinated, vetted, and
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: compensated foster care system for animals serving those in crisis. Wow.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Yes. Joanne, damn.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, you are amazing. Really.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: I want to thank you for coming here and sharing
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: what sounds like a fraction of your story. I can
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: tell that there's so much more, but it goes without
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: saying what you've gone through is tragic, but you're sitting
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: here as a testament to what? Resilience? I mean, you
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: use that word. How would you describe it? How the
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: hell did you pull through this?
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: Somewhere along the way, there was always some little flicker
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: of hope, whether it was my animal, my children, my mother.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: There was always some little glimmer of hope. There was
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: always something in my heart that says, this is not
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: the end for you. And I want to inspire other
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: people that no matter how horrific your trials and tribulations
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: may be, Your story doesn't end there. And you get
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: to decide. I'm deciding at 60 years old who I am,
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: who I will portray myself to the world as. And
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: I get to teach you at this point how.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: To treat me.
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: And if you don't treat me the way I want
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: you to treat me, then you will have nothing.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: To do with me.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: I love it. All right, Joanne, how do people learn
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: more about you and the book, again, Seeds and Shattered Soil?
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: What's the best way?
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: So it will be released on Amazon tomorrow. So they
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: can go to Amazon and look it up. It's releasing
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: on my 60th birthday. So that's tomorrow. Nice. Greatest birthday.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: And they can go to J-O-A-N-N-L-A-G-A-C-E.com. That's my author, speaker,
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: personal website. And then NAFN.us is the website for National
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: Animal Foster Network.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: You can check out what we're doing. We're going into
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: phase two this year.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: The students at CU Boulder are building our technology infrastructure.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: So we'll have an app and a completed website by
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: May of 27th. And it's just a very exciting time
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: and growth. So if they could support us, I've got
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: a birthday campaign going on.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: They could donate a dollar to NAFN. Every little bit helps.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: All right. And we'll have each of those linked up
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: at the show notes page here at the traumatherapistpodcast.com. Joanne,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: thank you. You are so freaking inspiring. Yeah.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Guy. I appreciate it.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you. All right. Take care.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: All right. You too.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Bye-bye.