Latest / The Trauma Therapist / The Joy and Pain of Being Imperfectly Perfect with Tamika Christy

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The Joy and Pain of Being Imperfectly Perfect with Tamika Christy · The Trauma Therapist

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Speaker 1: Trauma Theverist podcast. Plus listeners can listen to episodes early
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Speaker 1: and ad free right now. Become a Plus listener by
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Speaker 1: going to Apple Podcasts, searching for the Trauma Theverist podcast
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Speaker 1: and signing up today. Welcome to the Trauma Nevers Podcast,
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Speaker 1: a show about the incredible people dedicated to helping those
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Speaker 1: who experienced trauma. My name is got macpherson and my
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Speaker 1: mission is to raise awareness of trauma and to inspire
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Speaker 1: each of us to help those around us. All right,
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Speaker 1: so five or three, two and one are folks? Welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the podcast. Very excited to have as my
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Speaker 1: guest today. Timika Christy Tamika.
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Speaker 2: Welcome, Thank you, Thank you guys.
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Speaker 1: So. Tamika is an insightful author whose stories delve into
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Speaker 1: complicated relationships and family dynamics. Her fiction captures the essence
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Speaker 1: of personal growth amidst life challenges, resading deeply with readers.
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Speaker 1: She infuses her stories with authenticity and a sense of place,
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Speaker 1: making her characters come alive and her readers feel seen.
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Speaker 1: More than just a writer, she's a dedicated advocate for
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Speaker 1: women's empowerment. She firmly believes in the transformative power of
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Speaker 1: storytelling and actively supports aspiring women writers through her courses
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Speaker 1: and resources. Her life was profoundly affected when she lost
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Speaker 1: her daughter to suicide. This heartbreaking experience has further fueled
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Speaker 1: her focus on healing through writing, and it adds layers
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Speaker 1: of emotional depth and empathy to her work. Tamiko, welcome. So,
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Speaker 1: before we can go in here, share with the listeners
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Speaker 1: where you're from originally and where you are currently.
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Speaker 2: I am actually a Bay Area native. I was born
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Speaker 2: and raised in Oakland, California, and I still live here
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Speaker 2: in the Bay Area. I live in Hayward Now. I
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Speaker 2: do have Southern roots. My father is from Baton Rouge,
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Speaker 2: and I spent a lot of time down south. So
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Speaker 2: I'm a Bay Area woman with Southern roots.
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Speaker 1: I living there the past many many years, and just
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Speaker 1: moved from Oakland three years ago. Yeah, so very familiar
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Speaker 1: with that area. All right, let's dive in here. So
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Speaker 1: how does this begin for you? How does this story
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Speaker 1: and I'll let you shift and more of my question here,
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Speaker 1: But how does this story of you becoming a writer
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Speaker 1: and then focusing on women's empowerment and generational trauma? How
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Speaker 1: does this unfold and evolve for you? How did it start?
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Speaker 2: Basically, writing had always been a passion for me, even
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Speaker 2: as a little girl. So I journaled in elementary school,
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Speaker 2: and I kept writing through middle school and high school,
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Speaker 2: and I realized over time that a lot of my
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Speaker 2: journal entries weren't just sort of dear diary, the more
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Speaker 2: more therapy and kind of aligned with stories. And so naturally,
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Speaker 2: when I got to college, I majored in English with
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Speaker 2: the creative writing option, and my goal was to teach
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Speaker 2: English and writing. But as life would have it, I
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Speaker 2: was a young mom, and so I ended up going
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Speaker 2: to law school because I needed to make a living
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Speaker 2: where I could take care of my family. But the
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Speaker 2: writing was still there, and so somewhere as a young mother,
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Speaker 2: I lost my mom and all of her serious siblings
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Speaker 2: and so on that particular side of the family. I
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Speaker 2: ended up becoming sort of this defacto matriarch in my
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Speaker 2: early thirties. And so if you could imagine that the
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Speaker 2: chaos and trauma and the dysfunction and things that were
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Speaker 2: going on, there were a lot of life lessons and
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Speaker 2: it taught me a lot about who I was as
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Speaker 2: a relative, a mom, a cousin, a friend. And so
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Speaker 2: my story started to become aligned with some of the
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Speaker 2: situations and issues that I was actually dealing with. And
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Speaker 2: then somewhere and there I began therapy. And so I
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Speaker 2: started writing my stories with these characters who were thrown
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Speaker 2: into these chaotic situations but figuring out how to get
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Speaker 2: their way through it with being account will be honest
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Speaker 2: with themselves, going through therapy, recognizing that some of the
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Speaker 2: things that they're doing and experiencing are actually coming down
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Speaker 2: and being passed down from generations, from their moms and
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Speaker 2: aunts and uncles and different people and their families. And
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Speaker 2: so as my writing and my stories evolved, I decided, like,
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Speaker 2: I'm not a therapist, but I play one in my
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Speaker 2: books because I take my characters through these real life
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Speaker 2: situations that we all experience, alcoholism, drug abuse, mental illness, divorced,
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Speaker 2: a lot of these issues that we all experience, and
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Speaker 2: I pulled them through them. So that's how I'm more
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Speaker 2: from just a fiction writer to being a therapist in
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Speaker 2: my books.
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Speaker 1: What was you know? You talked about losing your mom
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Speaker 1: and her siblings and obviously tragic and devastating. More specifically,
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Speaker 1: what was your impetus for seeking out therapy yourself?
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Speaker 2: I think it just it started to become too overwhelming
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Speaker 2: dealing with the grief and then also trying to be
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Speaker 2: the person who was there for other people and not
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Speaker 2: having the answers for them, or not having the answers
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Speaker 2: for myself. And I think it was when I sank
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Speaker 2: into depression and didn't realize that I was in depression
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Speaker 2: that I thought I figured I needed help. And so
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Speaker 2: when I started to get help, one of the first
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Speaker 2: things my therapist said to me was, I'm really surprised
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Speaker 2: at how high functioning.
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Speaker 1: You are around How old were you at this time.
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Speaker 2: I was in my thirties, okay, And.
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Speaker 1: Did you have had you had your daughter at that time.
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Speaker 2: Yes, I had my daughter at nineteen. So I'm dealing
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Speaker 2: with all of this as a very young mom, working
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Speaker 2: my way through school, ultimately getting through law school, losing
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Speaker 2: my mom, losing multiple relatives, and I just I think
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Speaker 2: it was overwhelming for me. And it was at that
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Speaker 2: point where I decided that I would start to get help.
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Speaker 2: I wasn't eating, I wasn't sleeping, I was responding with rage,
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Speaker 2: and I just had a feeling of like something is wrong,
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Speaker 2: but I can't figure out what it is. And that's
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Speaker 2: when I realized it was depression and anxiety and just
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Speaker 2: trying to be everything for everybody and giving very little
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Speaker 2: to myself.
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Speaker 1: I mean, you're painting this picture of somewhat high achieving
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Speaker 1: I mean law school. I mean that's intense. I mean
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Speaker 1: that's intense, right, I mean that's I mean, kudos to
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Speaker 1: you for going to law school. I mean, you're like
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Speaker 1: going through all this and I'm going to go to
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Speaker 1: law school. How does that come about?
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Speaker 2: The First thing I want to say is when I
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Speaker 2: became a mom, I had no plans on college, and
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Speaker 2: I think my daughter. Having my daughter gave me direction
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Speaker 2: and I knew that I needed to provide and I
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Speaker 2: wanted to provide something better. And so I went to
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Speaker 2: college and I ended up working in law firms, and
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Speaker 2: I knew that I wanted to get an advanced degree,
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Speaker 2: but I had no idea in what, because again I
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Speaker 2: didn't have a focus, and no one else in my
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Speaker 2: family had graduated college. But I worked with this really
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Speaker 2: great woman and one day she said, you know what,
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Speaker 2: I think I'm going to go to law school. And
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Speaker 2: I said me too, And I went to law school
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Speaker 2: and I during that time, my mom was still alive,
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Speaker 2: but I actually went through a divorce during that time,
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Speaker 2: and I thought, gosh, I finished. I made it through this.
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Speaker 2: So I'm not going to take the bar exam, like
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Speaker 2: it's just too much. I can't And somebody say you
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Speaker 2: can't go to law school and I not take the
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Speaker 2: bar exam. I said, okay, well I'm going to do it,
7:32
Speaker 2: but I'm going to do it one time because I
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Speaker 2: don't have the bandwidth for this. Like I'm now I'm
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Speaker 2: going through divorce. I have to figure all this stuff out.
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Speaker 2: And I told God, I was like, okay, I'm going
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Speaker 2: to give you this eight weeks and so I went in,
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Speaker 2: took the bar and buy the grace of God, I
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Speaker 2: passed on the first time and I started was able
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Speaker 2: to start a career so that I could take care
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Speaker 2: of myself and my family.
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Speaker 1: So let's talk about the writing. Let's how things unfold
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Speaker 1: for you and the loss of your daughter, and how
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Speaker 1: does this impact your writing. Take us through that if
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Speaker 1: you can, and obviously to the degree that you feel comfortable.
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Speaker 1: I don't want to, you know, pressure to do something.
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Speaker 2: So the writing my first book I wrote before my
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Speaker 2: mom passed away, and again it was all about relationships
8:24
Speaker 2: and ironically, In that first book, the protagonist lost her
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Speaker 2: mom and it was really emotional for me. So even
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Speaker 2: though I finished the book, it took me years to
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Speaker 2: actually pursue publication because it was so emotional for me.
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Speaker 2: So the subsequent novels kind of hit along the same thing.
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Speaker 2: I lost my daughter three years ago, and it was
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Speaker 2: again a wall for me, but I found myself being
8:48
Speaker 2: able to write through some of my feelings. And I
8:50
Speaker 2: didn't deal with grief in that book because it was
8:53
Speaker 2: too emotional, But the writing was an escape for me.
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Speaker 2: So it allowed me to get into these lives of
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Speaker 2: these other people and these other families, dive into their
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Speaker 2: dysfunction and pull them out because, oh my god, their
9:05
Speaker 2: situation is so much worse. And that was an escape
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Speaker 2: for me. So for my fourth book, which I'm working
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Speaker 2: on now, I'm kind of digging more into grief, but
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Speaker 2: is still very painful.
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Speaker 1: I mean, I can't imagine losing a child and we're
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Speaker 1: talking about suicide here. Do you feel comfortable sharing what happened?
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Speaker 2: She alegra Beautiful, graduating from college in twenty fourteen. She
9:39
Speaker 2: attended the University of Miami and that first year when
9:42
Speaker 2: she graduated and came home she was fine, she was traveling,
9:45
Speaker 2: she was working, and the next year I noticed differences
9:49
Speaker 2: in her and eventually, after a lot of intervention and
9:53
Speaker 2: a lot of personal diagnosis of her being entitled, spoiled
9:58
Speaker 2: different things, she she was diagnosed with depression in psychosis,
10:02
Speaker 2: and she was eventually medicated and she was regulated on
10:07
Speaker 2: medication after multiple years. It took a long time to
10:10
Speaker 2: get her settled, but she started working again, traveling again,
10:13
Speaker 2: living again. She was just fine. And one day she
10:17
Speaker 2: called me and said, Mommy, my medication isn't working anymore.
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Speaker 2: And a lot of doctor's appointments, a lot of follow ups,
10:24
Speaker 2: and the same message was, medication doesn't just stop working.
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Speaker 2: Maybe we'll give her more, we'll change the prescription, and
10:31
Speaker 2: she just declined, and it was a rapid decline. Whereas
10:35
Speaker 2: she had never been suicidal before. She ended up taking
10:41
Speaker 2: her life in September of twenty twenty one. So it
10:43
Speaker 2: was a big surprise because one of my issues with
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Speaker 2: her was having her hospitalized because she was not consenting.
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Speaker 2: But if she had been suicidal, I would have been
10:54
Speaker 2: able to get her put away. So it was really
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Speaker 2: hard and it's still is really.
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Speaker 1: Are just gonna remind everyone I'm speaking with Tamika Christi author.
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Speaker 1: I have your books here anytime soon, never too soon,
11:20
Speaker 1: never too soon, And the last one was rue Rue. Okay,
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Speaker 1: how do you work through this in your writing? Do
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Speaker 1: you work through this in your writing?
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Speaker 2: I don't work through it. I think writing allows me
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Speaker 2: to get through my days. So the first three years,
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Speaker 2: this is year three, and this has been a much
11:49
Speaker 2: better year for me in terms of communicating, reaching out
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Speaker 2: to people, getting out of the house. So the first
11:55
Speaker 2: two years I was very isolated and quiet and just
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Speaker 2: trying to process. And the year before I'd also lost
12:02
Speaker 2: my father, so I was still grieving him when she
12:06
Speaker 2: passed away. So the writing doesn't help me get through
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Speaker 2: the grief, it helps me get through my days, if
12:13
Speaker 2: that makes sense, because when you are grieving, especially a child,
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Speaker 2: it's difficult to even fathom what your day will be.
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Speaker 2: But having my families and my story and working through
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Speaker 2: their problems and being their therapist helps get me through.
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Speaker 2: So that has that writing in that sense is very
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Speaker 2: cathartic for me. My family therapy, medication, I'll be honest,
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Speaker 2: on anidepressants that helps me with the grief.
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Speaker 1: And I didn't mean to imply that writing in and
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Speaker 1: of itself was kind of a curel in any stretch
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Speaker 1: of the imagination. Is this something that you cannot help
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Speaker 1: but address in your writing. I mean, it's such a
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Speaker 1: profound experience to go through and tragic experience to go through.
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Speaker 1: How do you do?
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Speaker 2: Yeah? It is? It is just not I'm not ready.
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Speaker 2: I've had I've done several interviews, and I've participated in
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Speaker 2: different book anthologies, and a lot of people have asked
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Speaker 2: me to share the story and talk about the story
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Speaker 2: and write about it. I've gotten to the point now
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Speaker 2: where I'm comfortable sharing it in an interview, but being
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Speaker 2: a writer actually writing about it is it takes me
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Speaker 2: too far down, and so I can't. I am writing
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Speaker 2: about grief a character who is grieving in the story
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Speaker 2: that I'm writing now, and even that is really hard.
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Speaker 2: I have to do it in small chunks and move
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Speaker 2: on to another another section of the book because the
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Speaker 2: grief is just still too palpable.
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Speaker 1: What do you see as your your mission as a writer,
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Speaker 1: as a person, as a human being.
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Speaker 2: You know, I like to think of myself as being
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Speaker 2: that person that has seen all the things, the addiction,
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Speaker 2: the teenage mom, the abuse, abandonment, the trauma, the generational
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Speaker 2: trauma that has passed, and just being able to work
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Speaker 2: my way through and let people know that we're all
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Speaker 2: perfectly imperfect. We all go through things. There was nothing
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Speaker 2: to be ashamed of in your life. And that's one
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Speaker 2: of the things I really like to impart is when
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Speaker 2: a laber was struggling with her mental health, I was
14:33
Speaker 2: ashamed of it. I didn't want to tell anybody about it,
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Speaker 2: and I suffered in silence where I should have been sharing,
14:39
Speaker 2: because if she had leukemia or hearing problem or something,
14:43
Speaker 2: I would have been happy to share that, but there's
14:45
Speaker 2: a stigma around the mental illness, and so I kept
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Speaker 2: a lot of it to myself. I didn't even want
14:49
Speaker 2: to share some of the other struggles that I had,
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Speaker 2: And through my writing, I think I try to let
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Speaker 2: people know and empower them to say, hey, it is okay.
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Speaker 2: Like your journey is what it is, and it's okay.
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Speaker 2: It builds character, it helps you become the person you are.
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Speaker 2: Everybody doesn't have the perfect the perfect story, or the
15:06
Speaker 2: perfect start, and we all don't go a path this way.
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Speaker 2: Sometimes our path is like this and it's rocky, but
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Speaker 2: you will still get there and you will still be okay.
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Speaker 2: And so sometimes when I tell people my story, they're
15:17
Speaker 2: just like, no way, like you don't And I always say,
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Speaker 2: I just thank God that I don't look like what
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Speaker 2: I've been through, because I've been through hell. But I
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Speaker 2: do like to let people know that it is going
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Speaker 2: to be okay and that you can be okay. And
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Speaker 2: I like to infuse that in my story. So my characters,
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Speaker 2: none of them have a perfect anything. They're missing a dad,
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Speaker 2: they're missing a limb, they're suffering in silence, they drink
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Speaker 2: too much. There's always something because I want people to
15:42
Speaker 2: know that that is real life and you can still
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Speaker 2: be okay and you can still be a good person.
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Speaker 2: It doesn't mean either, or it can always mean both.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. It's hard. It's hard to talk
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Speaker 1: about mental illness. It's hard to talk about like you said,
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Speaker 1: you know, we're all perfectly imperfect. No one is moves
16:06
Speaker 1: through this life unscathed. Definitely, some of us have different
16:11
Speaker 1: challenges than others. I mean it took me, you know,
16:14
Speaker 1: I've been doing this podcast for several years and interviewing
16:19
Speaker 1: people who've been impacted by trauma. Most therapists have been
16:24
Speaker 1: impacted by trauma one way in one way or another.
16:26
Speaker 1: And it took me a long time for me to
16:29
Speaker 1: talk about my own experiences with bullying and how shameful
16:33
Speaker 1: that was having to go through that, and even still
16:38
Speaker 1: even to mention that there's a tendency to feel well,
16:44
Speaker 1: you know, I like, I didn't experience as much trauma
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Speaker 1: as someone else, and therefore I shouldn't talk about it.
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Speaker 1: But when did you get to a point where you
16:56
Speaker 1: were like, I don't know, comfortable, if comfortable a word,
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Speaker 1: when you were willing to share your own experience. It
17:06
Speaker 1: was one thing to write about it, Yeah, right, these
17:09
Speaker 1: people are doing that and they're going through that, there's
17:11
Speaker 1: another thing to say, well, I've had these experiences and
17:18
Speaker 1: before hang on And was that important to you to
17:22
Speaker 1: be able to own that in a sense.
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Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, And it didn't come until after I lost her.
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Speaker 2: It was up until then, I was very veiled about everything,
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Speaker 2: and I cloaked it in. I'm just a private person
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Speaker 2: and this is my life and this is my business,
17:43
Speaker 2: and these are my experiences. But I don't believe that
17:47
Speaker 2: we go through things just to go through them. I
17:49
Speaker 2: think if we go through something hard and we make
17:51
Speaker 2: it through. That's a testimony to help somebody else who
17:54
Speaker 2: is going through something similar. And so it was just
17:57
Speaker 2: recent that I've been able to share a lot of
17:59
Speaker 2: things that I've gone through, including some of the domestic violence,
18:02
Speaker 2: Like a lot of my really close friends had no idea.
18:05
Speaker 2: And it's very similar to you where you feel ashamed, like, Okay,
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Speaker 2: how did I even let myself go through that? And
18:10
Speaker 2: why did I stay in that? Like what did I
18:12
Speaker 2: do that? Cosmis auto to this? Have these mental health issues?
18:16
Speaker 2: Who want to talk about their mom whose drug addicted
18:18
Speaker 2: and abandoned them. You know, you keep those things because
18:21
Speaker 2: it's like a cloak of embarrassment, but it's actually not
18:24
Speaker 2: like it's not my fault. I was just born just
18:26
Speaker 2: like you, just like everybody else. But those were my experiences.
18:29
Speaker 2: But look at how I worked my way through. Look
18:32
Speaker 2: how I decided that I was going to accept them,
18:34
Speaker 2: and even though I didn't come out completely unscathed, even
18:37
Speaker 2: though I made a ton of awful decisions along the way,
18:39
Speaker 2: and I still will. I'm still a good person, I'm
18:42
Speaker 2: still a good mom. I'm still here, and every day
18:44
Speaker 2: gives me another opportunity to keep trying and keep going
18:48
Speaker 2: so I'm no different from anybody else. I just had
18:51
Speaker 2: decided that I don't want to hide my story anymore.
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Speaker 1: Was it the loss of your daughter that kind of
19:00
Speaker 1: broke the Cambel's back In a sense?
19:02
Speaker 2: Absolutely? It changed everything. It changed my careers perspective, It
19:09
Speaker 2: changed the things that I participated in, who I spent
19:11
Speaker 2: my time with, how I spent my time.
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Speaker 1: In what way? Because you were like, what is happening?
19:20
Speaker 1: Talk to me about that?
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Speaker 2: Just looking through messages, I thought, what was I doing here?
19:25
Speaker 2: And this person doesn't mean a lot to me. These
19:28
Speaker 2: relationships are on the surface. And it took me two
19:32
Speaker 2: years working with my therapist and grief groups. And when
19:35
Speaker 2: I came out, my first challenge was, Okay, I need
19:38
Speaker 2: to do something with myself every day. And so I
19:41
Speaker 2: had a very good career. I was director of external
19:44
Speaker 2: affairs for a transportation agency here in the Bay Area,
19:47
Speaker 2: and I thought, Okay, I need to do something. And
19:50
Speaker 2: the job that I took was teaching first grade and
19:53
Speaker 2: it was the best job that I've ever had in
19:55
Speaker 2: my life. I walked into a room a six year
19:58
Speaker 2: old who they didn't want to spell their names, they
20:01
Speaker 2: didn't know primary colors, they just were completely like under educated.
20:05
Speaker 2: And when I left there in May, they were reading,
20:09
Speaker 2: they were excited about learning. And that was the best
20:12
Speaker 2: job I've ever had. I made the same money that
20:14
Speaker 2: I made in high school, but it was the best
20:16
Speaker 2: job that I had and it was the best use.
20:18
Speaker 1: Of my time.
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Speaker 2: And so that reflection of like, Okay, you don't know
20:22
Speaker 2: how long you're going to be here. Are you going
20:24
Speaker 2: to be here to make money or do things for
20:25
Speaker 2: other people? Are you going to leave something behind that
20:28
Speaker 2: matters to you and the people you love? And someday
20:31
Speaker 2: nobody's going to look up and be like, oh, yeah,
20:33
Speaker 2: she was the best director of external affairs. But those
20:36
Speaker 2: kids will look back and say, Miss t taught me
20:38
Speaker 2: how to read, and that's what is important to me
20:42
Speaker 2: because they call me Miss Tea.
20:46
Speaker 1: So you get to this point where you're like, I
20:52
Speaker 1: need to change, not things, my life needs to change.
20:57
Speaker 1: How did that and why you were teaching? Are you
21:00
Speaker 1: still writing?
21:02
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I've never stopped writing.
21:05
Speaker 1: You've never stopped writing. How did this impact your writing?
21:11
Speaker 2: It was still My writing has always been pretty authentic
21:14
Speaker 2: and raw. I think the teaching was a separate component.
21:17
Speaker 2: It was just it's something that made me feel fulfilled.
21:21
Speaker 2: And ironically, when I started college, I majored in English
21:24
Speaker 2: and my goal was to be a teacher. But I
21:27
Speaker 2: mean I couldn't afford to be a teacher because I
21:29
Speaker 2: had a family. But I wrote this in my diary
21:32
Speaker 2: and I said, when I'm an old lady and money
21:35
Speaker 2: doesn't matter, I'm going to go back and I'm going
21:37
Speaker 2: to teach little black and brown kids how to write.
21:41
Speaker 2: And of course money does matter, and I'm not an
21:43
Speaker 2: old lady, but that was something that was it was
21:46
Speaker 2: a passion for me, and so I full circle have
21:48
Speaker 2: come back to that. So the teaching is it fulfills
21:51
Speaker 2: me in one way, and writing fulfills me in a
21:53
Speaker 2: different way. Like I feel like if I didn't go
21:55
Speaker 2: to law school, I definitely would be a therapist.
21:58
Speaker 1: Definitely talk to me about you know, you talked about
22:04
Speaker 1: your characters and what they're like. You know, no one's perfect.
22:10
Speaker 1: People are missing limbs, people are addicted whatever. Talk to
22:15
Speaker 1: me about how you want your characters or some of
22:21
Speaker 1: the ways they move through their lives and how they
22:25
Speaker 1: own their imperfections in a sense.
22:30
Speaker 2: You know, most of my characters in the beginning, none
22:32
Speaker 2: of them on their imperfections, and that's how I want them,
22:36
Speaker 2: So they don't realize. Actually, in my last novel, Who There's,
22:40
Speaker 2: one of the characters has a serious drinking problem, and
22:43
Speaker 2: so whenever one of her sisters or when somebody mentions it,
22:47
Speaker 2: it's don't worry about me, worry about your husband and
22:49
Speaker 2: what he's drinking. Don't worry about me, worry about what's
22:51
Speaker 2: happening over there. So there's this deflection that a lot
22:55
Speaker 2: of us have because it's really hard to hear something
22:57
Speaker 2: about yourself, especially when you're struggling with it. A lot
23:00
Speaker 2: of them they don't recognize until something happens, kind of
23:03
Speaker 2: like in real life, you know, you don't you don't
23:06
Speaker 2: have that moment until something happens. Usually we're not I mean,
23:09
Speaker 2: I don't know about you, But everybody's not just walking
23:11
Speaker 2: around self aware and healed. Of course, you know at
23:15
Speaker 2: some point you're just like, but you did it to
23:18
Speaker 2: me first. So they're figuring it out, and usually what
23:21
Speaker 2: happens is they see themselves through their children. So you
23:25
Speaker 2: see this pattern of Okay, she's isolating and she's being
23:29
Speaker 2: this way, and as you are reading the story, you
23:31
Speaker 2: see that this is the exact same way that the
23:33
Speaker 2: character's mom or dad was, and you see how it
23:36
Speaker 2: filters out. So they're not self aware, and so they
23:39
Speaker 2: see themselves either in someone else or somebody makes them
23:42
Speaker 2: aware of it. Just kind of like how we are
23:44
Speaker 2: in real life.
23:45
Speaker 1: No, when you talk about you know, your own history,
23:51
Speaker 1: your parents, your grandparents, and intergenerational trauma, how do you
23:58
Speaker 1: look at that? Do you was there a time when
24:01
Speaker 1: you blamed your parents, you blamed the situation for who
24:07
Speaker 1: you are and your experiences.
24:11
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say blame. I definitely recognize that a lot
24:16
Speaker 2: of trauma and things that I go through definitely have
24:18
Speaker 2: come from my parents. My father was a single father,
24:21
Speaker 2: so he raised me on his own. He was a
24:24
Speaker 2: Pentecostal minister. So there's your trauma right there. And I
24:30
Speaker 2: didn't blame him, but I definitely recognized some of the
24:33
Speaker 2: ways which I'm kind of conservative, some of the ways
24:37
Speaker 2: where I was very judgmental. There are other things that
24:40
Speaker 2: I attributed more to being raised in a religious household
24:44
Speaker 2: than my dad, because in my mind, I knew that
24:47
Speaker 2: he was doing the best that he could. The same
24:49
Speaker 2: with my mom. I was always very forgiving. I don't
24:51
Speaker 2: think anybody wakes up and it's like, I'm going to
24:54
Speaker 2: abuse drugs and just waste my whole life. I think, whatever,
24:57
Speaker 2: maybe you're predisposed or whatever. Life circumstances that bring you there,
25:02
Speaker 2: force you into that life, or leads you into that.
25:04
Speaker 2: But I never blamed her, and we actually developed a
25:08
Speaker 2: relationship when I became when I turned eighteen, and there
25:11
Speaker 2: was never a sour note from me. There was never
25:13
Speaker 2: a moment that I blamed her, because in my mind
25:16
Speaker 2: and heart, I thought, thank God that you have the
25:19
Speaker 2: wherewithal to let me even be with my father than
25:21
Speaker 2: to have to grow up in this, because imagine that.
25:24
Speaker 2: So I have a really solid spot for people who
25:26
Speaker 2: struggle with addiction, whether it's drinking or anything. I know
25:29
Speaker 2: a lot of people tend to judge that, but I
25:31
Speaker 2: will remind anybody nobody wakes up and says I want
25:35
Speaker 2: to drink too much, I'm going to ruin my life.
25:37
Speaker 2: Whatever the tendency is that brings them there, it's no
25:40
Speaker 2: different from cancer, it's no different from mental illness, it's
25:42
Speaker 2: no different from anything else. And so I never blamed
25:45
Speaker 2: her for that. I mean, I thanked her for some
25:48
Speaker 2: of the good genes that I got and I appreciate
25:50
Speaker 2: it being able to have a relationship with her once
25:53
Speaker 2: she was what she was sober, and then listening to
25:56
Speaker 2: her story how her mom was addicted, and her grandmother
25:59
Speaker 2: and her siblings and just all the trauma. She never
26:02
Speaker 2: stood a chance. She never had a chance.
26:07
Speaker 1: You talked about a new book you're working on. You
26:13
Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit about that.
26:15
Speaker 2: Yes, my fourth book is actually the third book in
26:19
Speaker 2: the Anayas World series. The first is Anytime Soon, the
26:22
Speaker 2: second is Never too Soon. This one is not titled,
26:24
Speaker 2: but it continues the family, which is the Goods, and
26:27
Speaker 2: so we'll follow them a couple of years later to
26:29
Speaker 2: see that's journey. There on a lot of dysfunction, there's
26:33
Speaker 2: a little bit of grief in there, some marital stuff.
26:36
Speaker 2: I love, some good family banter and drama and some sassiness.
26:40
Speaker 2: So all of that is still very present. I'm the
26:42
Speaker 2: dialogue queen, but I'm working on that right now.
26:48
Speaker 1: Was mentioned grief a few times. Was that's something that
26:54
Speaker 1: you needed to learn to do. I mean a lot
26:59
Speaker 1: of people are like, I don't know how to grieve.
27:03
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. Tell me talk to
27:06
Speaker 1: us about that.
27:08
Speaker 2: I had to learn. So I think I told you
27:11
Speaker 2: I lost both of my parents, my daughter, both of
27:14
Speaker 2: my grandparents, two nephews, a first cousin, my step mom,
27:19
Speaker 2: multiple uncles and aunts, and I remember when I lost
27:23
Speaker 2: my dad, that kind of that took a big toll
27:26
Speaker 2: on me. And one of my coworkers said to me,
27:28
Speaker 2: I've been working with you for the past ten years.
27:31
Speaker 2: She said, the number of funerals that you've gone to
27:33
Speaker 2: and just come back to work, I don't know how
27:35
Speaker 2: you did it. And when a labor passed, that was
27:38
Speaker 2: kind of the straw that broke the camels back. And
27:40
Speaker 2: I think that's why it took me two years. I
27:43
Speaker 2: literally did not leave the house for two years because
27:47
Speaker 2: I allowed myself to fully, improperly grieve all of those people,
27:52
Speaker 2: and it affected me in terms of ottoimmune I ended
27:55
Speaker 2: up being diagnosed with ara out of the blue migraine headaches.
27:59
Speaker 2: So I realized I was holding and working and moving
28:02
Speaker 2: and kind of shoving this grief and this pain down
28:05
Speaker 2: instead of just allowing myself. And I'm not saying like
28:09
Speaker 2: every day I'm hooping and hollering, but when I need
28:11
Speaker 2: a moment, I'm gonna take it. When I have a
28:14
Speaker 2: hard day during the holidays, I'm going to post about it.
28:16
Speaker 2: If I say I'm missing my daughter today, I'm gonna
28:19
Speaker 2: say it, and then I'm gonna move on. So I
28:21
Speaker 2: recognize that there's room for grief. There's also room for life,
28:25
Speaker 2: and there's room to keep living and to keep growing
28:27
Speaker 2: and learning. And a lot of people don't know that.
28:29
Speaker 2: So it's either Okay, I'm over here and I'm wallowing,
28:32
Speaker 2: or I'm pretending like it never happened. You cannot pretend
28:35
Speaker 2: that these people were not in your life. You cannot
28:38
Speaker 2: pretend that they did not exist. You can't go through
28:40
Speaker 2: a week without calling their name. You can't even go
28:43
Speaker 2: through a week without seeing their picture pop up on
28:45
Speaker 2: your phone. So what are we doing and pretending acknowledge it?
28:49
Speaker 2: Let yourself feel that, but still live, live and keep
28:53
Speaker 2: going and figure out ways to honor them, and figure
28:56
Speaker 2: out ways to get your way through that group and
28:58
Speaker 2: help that grief and help somebody else who is going
29:00
Speaker 2: through it also. So it's definitely a learning process.
29:04
Speaker 1: You know what you seem to me like a kind
29:08
Speaker 1: of a beacon, like uh, you know, like a crystal
29:13
Speaker 1: when the sun hits the crystal and then this spectrum
29:19
Speaker 1: of beautiful light comes from that. Right. You seem to
29:24
Speaker 1: me like someone that has experienced a lot of stuff
29:30
Speaker 1: and write a lot of a lot of us experienced stuff,
29:34
Speaker 1: but not everyone transforms those experiences into writing or messages.
29:42
Speaker 1: And that that's what you seem like to me, like
29:46
Speaker 1: you're you're on a not I don't want to say
29:48
Speaker 1: a mission, but you want to share everything that's come
29:53
Speaker 1: through you and speak it in a sense.
29:58
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and thank you for saying that. That's very nice compliment.
30:02
Speaker 2: Thank you.
30:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm getting from you, you know, and
30:06
Speaker 1: I think it's it's very powerful.
30:10
Speaker 2: Wow.
30:11
Speaker 1: All right, Timika intense, very intense. Once again, My guess is,
30:18
Speaker 1: Tamika Christy, what's the best way for people to uh
30:23
Speaker 1: reach you and learn more about what you're doing.
30:26
Speaker 2: You can find me on my website Tamika Christy dot com.
30:29
Speaker 2: I'm also on Instagram at our Rights Matters. Oh you
30:33
Speaker 2: are Rights Matter. I am on TikTok but I think
30:36
Speaker 2: that may be a mood point, so you can find
30:38
Speaker 2: me on Instagram or my website.
30:41
Speaker 1: Okay, awesome, thank you again for being here. Love to
30:45
Speaker 1: have you back definitely. When that when's the book coming? Out.
30:49
Speaker 2: Oh my god, God, you don't ask a writer.
30:51
Speaker 1: That you're aphraise the question. Love to have you back
30:57
Speaker 1: whenever you want to come back. Appreciate it, and we'll
31:01
Speaker 1: be in touch. Thank you so much for having all right,
31:04
Speaker 1: take care of the