Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / Guest: Laura Brown

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Guest: Laura Brown · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Welcome to System Speak, a podcast about Complex Trauma and Dissociation. It's our story, our learning, and the ideas we've been working with as they've unfolded over time. Earlier episodes give context for where we are now, and current episodes may engage more advanced material, harder content, or reference earlier conversations. A few things to remember as you listen. The podcast is education, reflection, and storytelling.
• 0:41
  It's not therapy, and listening doesn't create a relationship. Although I am a therapist, I am not in that role here, and nothing that I share is individualized clinical advice. Every system, every internal world, all of your own stories are all different and you take up your own shape. What we share about ours won't translate directly to yours. It isn't meant to.
• 1:06
  We're all different, and all of our stories matter. As always, take care of yourself during and after listening, and we are so glad you're here.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Hello, Brown, my friend.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: Hello, my dear friend Emma.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: I am so happy to see you.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: And you as well. I mean, it's been about a year since you were in Seattle.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Yes. Yes. It seems like ages ago, so much has happened.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: At least turn the sound off on my phone because I'm selling things on Facebook Marketplace, and people are pinging me literally every minute about the items that I put up for free. So
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So you've been out often disasters helping people.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Or a disaster trying to help people. It depends on the day.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: You are a very funny person. So what are we talking about today? I forgot kind of forgotten, but anything you wanna talk about with me is I'm fine.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, you're so kind. I so appreciate you. Here's let me tell you this story, And will give some framework a little bit to why you were the one that I was like, we need to talk about this with you. Okay. So, well, several things.
• 2:43
  One, just progress in therapy, right? And so tackling new things that I wasn't ready for in the past. So just some more advanced things is part of it. Also, in the last year since I saw you in Seattle and we got to talk there, so much has happened in my personal life, with lots of changing, not like switching, but like changing priority of caring for myself differently. And with that and therapy issues have come working through a lot of religious trauma, a lot of sexuality, queerness issues.
• 3:26
  So that's kind of the background. And then in two instances, in just the last month, there have been public times where I was watching other clinicians responding to their own stuff, which is fine, but they were responding with anger. So this is what got my attention because for me that's still a little bit of a trigger. And so I'm working in my therapy. This is not therapy, but in my therapy, working a little bit about, there are obvious reasons anger can be a trigger when you have developmental trauma, but also there are some things that are really important to be angry about.
• 4:20
  And so I have gotten in therapy as far as, like, how anger points to injustice, and that brings up social justice issues for me that are important for other reasons. And so as I started exploring some of these things, I thought of you because feminist theory, and I thought about, like, how does that apply not just for therapy, but professionally? Because for the podcast, for other things, I end up having a platform without intending to, but then needing to use that well and having responsibility to use that well aside for my own expression, I guess. And so ultimately, through study, which has included other than books and some podcasts I have found for me, I also have started a group no. I didn't start the group.
• 5:25
  Started going to a group once a week specifically for people who are queer and have religious trauma background, and then another group that is specifically about faith transitions and things like that. In that context, I came across, and I cannot remember where now, but specifically the phrase feminist rage. What can you tell me about this? There's so many things and I know this is all big questions, but that's my starting place.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: Okay. So I'm not sure I've heard the term feminist rage myself. What I can say is that so actual anger as versus the use of loud voice to engage in violent behavior because I think we have to differentiate those. And for survivors of developmental trauma, there wasn't a differentiation. So a raised voice or red face gestures often were words of violence, acts of violence, they got mixed up together.
• 6:38
  They weren't about anger at all. They would call you were told that I'm angry, but in fact, it wasn't anger at all. It was control. It was violence. That's over here.
• 6:46
  Wow. Anger is information. Like every other affect, like every other emotion is information. Sadness is information. Joy is information.
• 7:01
  Anger is the body letting us know that there's something not okay in the world, either in our direct face or in the larger picture. And anger also happens on a continuum. So you can have irritation, which is little anger. You can have annoyance, which is little anger. You can have kinda angry.
• 7:29
  You can have anger. And then rage is very large anger often about something that seems both unjust and not something where you have any power to do very much about it. And so I think when we talk about rage from a feminist perspective, what we're saying is this is identifying something that's very wrong. And right now, we don't know what to do about it. We feel powerless in its face, but that is information.
• 8:04
  And so if we treat anger as information and we separate it from violence, when I am driving along and someone cuts in front of me and I experience irritation, which is a mild activation of my HPA axis and my sympathetic nervous system, I just like, oh, well, they're in a hurry. I let it go. If I were to escalate that to road rage, which is not anger, it's taking the sympathetic nervous system, adding cognitions about people aren't allowed to do this to me. I'm gonna punish them. That's a different thing entirely.
• 8:45
  And so I think doing that differentiation so it makes sense to feel rage at an institution that is systemically oppression oppressive. It makes sense to feel rage at structural forms of oppression and maltreatment. And then to use that rage as information and say, okay. I don't know how to be powerful with this yet. What do I need to become powerful so that this, first of all, doesn't occupy my entire sympathetic nervous system so that I don't have time to know this other stuff?
• 9:23
  How do I use that as an information about how wrong this is? That this is wrong at a thousand on the 10 scale. And then, alright, what are the powerful things that I can do? Because in feminist therapy, we ask, what is one small powerful thing you can do that will move the needle of you, your life, your community? Maybe not more than a millimeter, but it will move it.
• 9:50
  And then you do that again, and then you do that again. That's a long answer to the question though.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: That makes sense though because the people that sort of startle me so one example is that there was a conference and there were a panel of people presenting, of clinicians presenting, and I actually asked a question, but it was through an app, so they didn't know it was me asking the question. And my question was authentic about navigating institutions, but they saw just the word institution and just kind of flipped out, just went and I was shocked and I had sort of my own internal response of now I thought these people were my friends, but now they're angry at me and, like, feeling scared, things like that. Right? So I had to work through that, and I worked through that directly with them. So there's no drama there.
• 10:44
  I've I've done all of that work, but I didn't understand what was happening with them. And partly that's not my business, but partly I didn't understand, like, how that happened. And I think you answered it because their experience with institutionalism in that way has been very oppressive, and they have been very rejected as part of the process. But for me, I have not been for some reason and
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: I You've have done really well in institutions. Think because of being raised in your particular faith, which taught you how to follow rules and deal with hierarchies well, you've got a skill set around that.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: That's true. That's true. That makes sense. So so there was power that I had that I didn't know I had and didn't know they did not have was part of the difference. So they were And then there's this other piece,
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: which is, you know, you know, I practice a martial art. I do Aikido. I'm starting to work on my third degree black belt. Woo hoo. So sometimes when we're training with people, we step on each other's toes because we train barefoot, and it's a very intimate art.
• 11:56
  We're very close-up. So we're all wearing our masks. And so someone steps on my toe. It hurts. And I know they have only good intention because they're training with me, so I don't get activated.
• 12:11
  If someone is rushing to get to somewhere in the airport and the process, they push me aside and step on my toe, that isn't neutral. I can't assume their good intention. I have to soothe myself. So but that person may have no bad intention. They may simply be, like, late for their plane.
• 12:30
  So we can activate each other's danger warning systems, our SNS, our amygdala, our HPA axis. We can do it, which means we have a kind of power with someone we may not wanna have. We can do it with perfectly innocent intention. And then we have to be willing to say, oh, this thing I said or did means something for this person that activates them to a place of not feeling safe. And particularly when you're a survivor, it's hard to see yourself as powerful in that way.
• 13:05
  And it's also important to differentiate yourself from the people who knowingly, sadistically, intentionally did terrible things to you. So there's all these different pieces of it and sort of teasing out the we can unintentionally, neutrally do something that's hurtful. We can unintentionally, neutrally do something that the other person already knows has no intention, or we can be sadistic and cruel. And then there's that there there's anger, which is a whole different creature. It's simply information.
• 13:41
  It's the information that something here is not okay.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: That's interesting because what they were experiencing with institutions has been my trauma in, like, the queer community because it has been hard for me to find safe people and by experiences, whether it was reenactment before therapy or whatever was going on, my experiences initially growing up, like since college kept being traumatic. Like I never had this welcoming, embracing by the community kind of experience. And so I continued to feel like the one place I could belong, I didn't belong. And I think that's what they were experiencing professionally, But then it left me feeling like if I can't do this community right and I can't do this community right, like I lost both my chances at community.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: But it's like, what does it mean to do community right? First of all, we talk about queer community. We're talking about a thousand different subsets. The queer community is like a person with many ego states. And there's places in the queer community that I don't precisely fit as a 70 year old lesbian who's been out since she was 19.
• 15:08
  I, you know, when I there's places where I was like, okay, I we opened this door fifty years ago. Here's what came through it and and I don't fit in with them. For people who come out late in life and come out into the queer community with a relationship with a husband or wife and kids, that's a harder place to come out from. Although I know a lot of women, there's actually a book called, and then I met this woman, which is all about women who came out late in life. I know lots and lots of those women and they, you know, it's like kids and grandkids and, you know, ex husbands from their previous lives.
• 15:53
  Emily's taking notes ferociously. But that's that's a there used to be groups for women who were coming out later in life because when I first came out in the seventies, there was this explosion of women in their forties and fifties and sixties were like, oh my god. I think that's become less common, but if you grew up with religious trauma and particularly conservative religions, it takes a lot longer to look in the mirror and say, Oh, this is me too. And so I don't think the support around that is as good as it was thirty years ago when it when I knew lots of people in that situation, lots and lots of, you know, the lesbian village where my now ex lives with was our vacation home. Half the women there came out after being married to men and having kids.
• 16:45
  So when you talk about community, there's different therapist communities. I don't fit with the psychoanalysts. I don't fit with certain parts of the dissociation world. I don't wanna fit. I want to know who I am and see who shows up with me.
• 17:05
  Wow. It's like, remember last year at the conference in Seattle where a certain famous psychiatrist wouldn't put his mask on, and I kept going up to that person and say, put on your blankety blanking mask. I've never I have never fit with that person. I've never liked what he said. I've never liked how he talks about people with dissociative ego states.
• 17:26
  He's brilliant. He knows a lot of things. We've never it's like, I don't wanna belong to whatever he belongs to, and that's okay. I was okay being a crazy masquerading with him. So I think this whole thing about belonging because I think there's such loneliness when you're a kid experiencing horrific trauma.
• 17:48
  There's such loneliness being that kid who becomes the dissociative adult that you wanna fit somewhere. And it's hard to say, you know, I have to fit with me and then see who shows up and is part of the jigsaw puzzle that I am rather than can I squish me into somebody else's jigsaw puzzle?
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: Well, and it's so funny because I think if some random community entirely abrase me and got super intrusive and I was belonging in that kind of way would completely freak me out. Because then what do you do with the voided attachment? Like you and I, for me, on my end, we have a beautiful friendship, but it's because like I can email you every other month and we're okay.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: Right. And I can say that what we want is something that is a good fit for who we are and then we may not fit there. The lesbian community I fit into in 1972, I wouldn't fit into that kind of community anymore in 2023 because of not being that young woman anymore. So or the Jewish community. I mean, the Jewish community in which I was raised, which is this, you know, the central piece of who I am in my values is not a place where I feel completely at home, but I feel a little bit at home.
• 19:21
  But would I join a synagogue that was that part of Judaism? No. I'm in a whole other part of it now because of who I've become. So I have all those pieces of my intersectional identity as I am today. It's a little bit like having an ego stage whose function was to do something to protect you from a particular perpetrator and that perpetrator is dead and gone.
• 19:49
  So it's like, how do you repurpose the protective function of that ego state for the here and now?
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Well, and, I mean, that's part of what I do too. Right? Because my And parents are I've spent the last three years processing what you said about death of hope, which is one of the most common emails I still get about the podcast from when you spoke about the death of hope. And so many people were touched by that and resonated with that. And so I have done some serious grief work the last three years on that and some other issues, but then sort of reestablishing myself and feeling with myself, I mean, and feeling more confident isn't a right word.
• 20:46
  I don't necessarily like confident in that way,
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: there's, That's right.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Yes. And more aware of when I experience feelings, maybe it's dissociation, but of, okay, this is less me or this is more me, or this is me missing right now, I need to fill that in. Where is it? Like actively seeking it out to try to fill in those gaps. And that's part of what's led to some of these conversations, but it has been an intense process.
• 21:16
  And so when something knocks off balance, there's I think I'm just more aware of it now, more present with that, and so wanting to learn what is that difference. I think what you were saying about anger and rage, I've seen in parenting where I have to parent my children differently than I was parented where anger is involved, where what I have stays at anger or works through is is lower on that anger continuum because that rage, I never put together until you said that about it being about power and control, and that makes a lot of sense.
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Because there's absolutely no reason to rage at a child, period. The end. No reason ever. So when someone does that, that's abuse.
• 22:16
  That's power and control. There is perfectly good reasons to get really angry at a child and especially as children get older and you know, it's like, hi, I'm gonna violate your boundary mom and see what you do and the answer is I'm really angry about that and there's a consequence. Okay, let's deal with that. And you know when we see small humans having the thing that we dismissively call temper tantrums, What we're seeing is that they're experiencing distress. They don't have the words and they also don't have the ability to self soothe.
• 22:53
  And that's a hard thing for grown ups to be around and stay centered and okay. And yet that's what the best parenting is about is to be able to say, you are really, really, really upset right now and you're probably exhausted and maybe you're hungry and you can't find the words to say what you want. I'm just gonna hold you until you're able to feel soothed, which means not being afraid of a two year old who's kicking and punching and biting because they're simply unable to express their distress any other way. But that's not rage. That isn't rage.
• 23:30
  And we get that all mixed up. We treat it all like one thing when it's not.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: It makes me curious how much of that trying to find where I belong has to do with just seeking that, the comfort or the reassurance. And when when that's small things or specific things, I'm better at reaching out, like I could message you or Peter or something and say, hey, this is an update. But I'm so new at knowing what I actually need that it's hard to put into words of what I need back from that or what I expect or something like that. And and so the last year has been big with that. So basically, with the queerness, one thing that happened is I was working through things in therapy and my therapist finally said one day, when are we gonna talk about you and your husband are both gay?
• 24:31
  Like, well, thanks for destroying my life in one sentence, but okay. We can talk about that. And so, you know, having conversations with him and that process unfolding of I'm not trying to abandon the children, I'm not trying to cause harm anywhere, but if I am learning to heal and be, quote, whole, then what does that look for me? What does that look like for me in context of relationships and how do I add that in and where do I need to change my context? And so that's a lot of pieces to figure out.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: Mhmm. And do you know how normal that is, by the way? Back in the seventies when we were figuring out about people's lives. So this famous author, Vita Sackville West, who was at some point lovers with Virginia Woolf and her husband Harold Nicholson who was also gay they were both gay and they loved each other and they had some children together and one of their sons wrote about their lives But they were a gay man and a lesbian who married in the you know Edwardian late Victorian era because that's what you did and that doesn't mean that you end the marriage it means you reconfigure what that means. In this case, what they did and there's a book called A Portrait of a Marriage, which is about that marriage.
• 26:03
  And these were, you know, extremely wealthy aristocratic British people, but people have done this for a long time. And I've known people, like gay man and a lesbian, who love each other so much, but not sexually, but they want to be a family together. They want to raise children together. So they get married because that way they can keep their relationship to their children safe with each other and they have agreements about how they are, if they are romantic and sexual with other people. And it's kind of a version of polyamory is what it is.
• 26:40
  But the primary relationship is that marriage between two people. I have a dear friend. She and her husband have been married for forever. They are both bisexual. They are polyamorous.
• 26:52
  They have a kid. They've raised together. They're in their seventies now. That was the agreement with which they began their relationship is that they acknowledge their bisexuality. They acknowledge their polyamory.
• 27:06
  This is part of who they've always been. They look like your, you know, heterosexual married academic couple, but they're not. And so to know that people live like this, that these are lives that people have, that this is not about blowing up your family. This is about telling a truth about you, telling a truth about him that frees you to be more completely human and bring that warmth and love and centeredness back into the family, which I think is pretty cool.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: That's amazing. There's there I wrote the book down, the name of the book, of course. I'll go look it up. But I I think that it has been some intense conversations. We have learned from the modern poly community words like being ethical.
• 28:05
  So like there's nothing being sneaky, we're being transparent of everything, agreeing on boundaries, all of that sort of thing. But also having to look, and he is safe enough, and people who listen to the podcast have heard him lots, so they know that he is good and kind and safe. He is safe enough to have really hard conversations. Like for example, one issue that we've had to talk about that's really intense is that I married him because my boss told me to. That connects back to my religious trauma and where I was working at the time and things like that.
• 28:44
  But and and he's never harmed me, but now that I'm learning about things like consent and other issues, I'm like, wait, wait a minute. Like, can we just have an honest conversation about, I didn't have consent to marry you, that that's a problem. And even though you've not caused harm and thank God you were like a safe person, but that's a big deal. I need to process that and I need time and space to process that, even though it's not necessarily your fault directly and how do I reintegrate that experience? And so going through that, and then our children, of course, are all adopted from foster care, so he's never pressured me in those ways, and I'm grateful for that.
• 29:35
  But now I find myself struggling with how much binary thinking is in my head, and I don't mean binary like gender. I mean how the impact of fundamentalism shows up in ways I don't expect. When I am adding a girlfriend or adding care for myself in those ways, then I'm still like, but that's not enough. Like, I wanna commit to her. I want to do this.
• 30:06
  And like having to work through the layers of binariness in my own thinking that it's still all or nothing and that light switch on or off, that's a lot. Like trauma just keeps impacting everything.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: Of course it does. Because when you're in a situation of trauma, you don't have any space to live life as a rheostat. You have to be either it's either safe or not. It's either this or that. Trauma wires that kind of either or thinking.
• 30:37
  And so getting out of trauma, living out of trauma and saying, oh, I could live in a real estate. I could be a little bit this or a little more that or a little less this. That's a part of the healing process. That's a part of moving toward seeing people as all of who they are rather either good or bad. It's like, alright.
• 31:01
  I'm moving into this. And some of it is fundamental religion, which has a lot of, you know, this is either a sin or it's not. But if you think about the fact that the more so this is Lakota. So Judaism is a very old religion. We've been around for about three thousand years give or take.
• 31:29
  The earlier versions of us were really primitive and nasty. There are current versions of us that are really lovely and expansive, and it takes time for a faith to mature out of either or, bad or good, into there's a lot of different possibilities for goodness. And I think that that's true of any process. And you were raised in a very young faith. It's what, 200 years old, barely?
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: Well, his church I didn't join until later. I was raised in what I now understand is called IBLF. It's the same as the Duggar church.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: Okay. So it's actually a fairly new version of Christianity. So it was very young. It's extremely young. Yes.
• 32:27
  Because, you know, the the older the Catholic church isn't running crusades, murdering people or burning people at the stake anymore. They were, you know, not too long ago, putting people to whom I was probably related. They don't do that anymore. They're an older religion. We're even older.
• 32:49
  The Duggard version of Christianity is very young. Some of these you know, the LDS church is very young. So if you look at it in terms of developmental pieces, I look at religion developmentally the way I look at humans. Okay. If you're raised in a really young either or place, that makes it harder to heal from trauma, not just because of religious trauma, but because you weren't raised in a world of choice and ambiguity.
• 33:19
  I'll give you a for instance. So, you know, observant Jews are not allowed to carry things outside their home on Shabbat on the Sabbath, But people have to carry their kid in the diaper bag and and so we've created this thing called the Eruv where the community strings lines around the telephone poles of the neighborhood and the Eruv makes inside the air room is a household so you can carry your kid and you can carry the diaper bag. We've come up with a compassionate way to both not work and expand the definition of what was home. Okay. It's not being sneaky.
• 34:02
  Everyone knows it's happening. Sometimes the Eirud goes down and the word goes out before Shabbat. Eirud, yeah, went down because there was a windstorm.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: My goodness. So
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: we have to find ways to create more expansiveness.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: I feel like that applies to what you were saying too about relationships with others and what you need and where you need, but it applies internally too, right? Not just Oh, yeah. Because of parts or ego states, but, even in healing that I'm not an I am not an, it's so hard to say, it makes me emotional just trying to say it. I'm not an object that belongs to someone. So how much Say it again powerfully.
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: Say it again, Emily.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: Am not an object that belongs to someone. So how much of myself do I want to give in this area of my life, in this area of my life, in this area of my life? And not just relationships, but work. What is work that is safe for me and that I enjoy? How much do I want to volunteer with ISSTD and how much do I need to hold back?
• 35:16
  How much do I want to invest in colleagues and which colleagues do I want to invest in? And creating all of that as part of who I am, how much do I want to mentor, support, or help other survivors, but also in ways that care for myself and provide for my family. Doing all of these things and balancing all of that as part of me is different than just giving away pieces of myself or thinking I have to be binary about it that, oh, I said yes to this so that means I'm all in, or I said yes to that and so it means I'm all in. And that is, that what you shared helps me dial that too so that it's on the dimmer switch and not just an on off switch.
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: And to think not that I'm giving myself, but that I'm interacting in ways that nourish this person that nourish me. And that there's some kind of, it's not necessarily equal, but there's reciprocal nourishment. The reciprocity. When there isn't reciprocal nourishment, when all I'm doing is getting sucked on. It's like, No.
• 36:28
  This is not a place I need to be. This is not a person with whom I need to be. And it's never gonna be fifty fifty, but there's some reciprocity. So I'm not giving of myself. I'm sharing, and the other person shares and the other sit situation shares back.
• 36:48
  I think that's another hard piece for survivors of the worst childhood trauma is you were an object for someone to use. And to say, I am not an object. I'm not here for use, but that doesn't mean I don't willingly share in situations of reciprocity, that I can't be generous with spirit because there will be generosity that returns to me.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: That's a beautiful thing. I think it's hard to hold onto when it's still so hard to notice that we have needs at all, much less ask for those to be met. So when we talk about reciprocity and relationships, it becomes tricksy because I think, oh, I don't have anything of value that I'm contributing. So asking for anything is already take, take, take, take, take. And so it's hard to see that and it's not true.
• 37:44
  I know those are old thoughts and I can tell myself that's trauma talking.
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: That's lies. That's the lives of a world in which you were an object of use. And to say, in a good enough relationship, more of the time than not, the people nourish each other. And, you know, I'm in the process of leading a marriage, And it's not because the other person is a bad person. We're doing it in a loving and compassionate way.
• 38:19
  It's that we were finally able she finally was able to get to a point where she could tell the truth about her own brain and the ways in which she couldn't be the person she wanted to be. And I was able to tell the truth and grieve about. I kept hoping that the person she wanted to be and could show up as for a few minutes, I kept hoping that person would just show up and being able to tell the truth that this is simply impossible and that holding out for it to happen someday is simply causing pain. That means we actually now have a relationship that's more loving and reciprocal because she knows she isn't able to be the person she tried to be, and I'm no longer counting on her to be that person and therefore there isn't this struggle and frustration. There's honesty and kindness and care.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: Such liberation in the concept of compassion.
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah. But, you know, it it took a long time and a lot of individual therapy on my part and couples therapy and reading and thinking and I mean, we worked it this hard. And so I think being willing to be honest and say we can be more loving to each other, not entangled up in this institution of marriage. We can be more loving to each other if we are honest about who we are, and then we can share in ways that are much more reciprocal.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: That's so beautiful. I moved out of our home in June 2022. Mhmm. And my initial response to that decision was absolute panic and guilt that I was abandoning the children. But I was so intentional with how we did it and actually was able to end up being in contact with them more than I would have anyway.
• 40:28
  And they're old enough now that they do have phones and we could Zoom and all the things, and my kids are old enough now, what they want is conversations, and those tools made those conversations more possible than the chaos of all 10 of us at home. And it was a tricksy transition, but then I had them come out to visit me over the holidays. And once they saw where I was and made that full connection and I saw that they were actually okay, like all of that went away. And part of what's happened as I come back to visit is that the things that I needed, they can't do partly because it's not their job to take care of me because I'm the parent. And what they do need from me, I don't have to be there to give in that way.
• 41:28
  And it was huge for all of us to learn. And I had been doing classic trauma response, right? And the over functioning and codependency. Had been doing much for everybody that when I left, everything kind of fell apart because I had been doing everything. But now, eight months, nine months later, everyone is so much more healthy and everyone is so much calmer and more happy because the things I was trying so hard at weren't actually important to them.
• 42:02
  Was just thinking that this is what they needed or trying. So that telling the truth of this is hard for me and what I actually have capacity to give and what I don't and what you have capacity to give and what you don't and how do we do that in the most healthy way changed everything.
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: Yes, It's the willingness to tell the truth. You know, I go through life now because I've always been relatively honest with myself, as honest as we can be. We all have ways we don't wanna like, I don't wanna look at that. I think being really honest about what gives me joy. And so finding it in the relationship me and my spouse are developing as we disentangle our lives so that the struggle isn't there anymore.
• 42:57
  And I can find joy there. Finding joy because I wake up every morning and look at the mountains and bless the spirit of the universe, the source of all good things. Finding joy in my connections with other human beings and with the plants and the trees and and with the beauty of the art around me that I'm now finally being able to put around my home. And so I think that joy is information. Just like anger is information that something is wrong and grief is information that there's been loss.
• 43:34
  Joy is information that something is right.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: Wow. Wow. Information that something is right. Yeah. It feels like clues to follow, like something that I am capable of interpreting and applying as opposed to big feelings that drown me.
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: Mhmm. To say, okay. The big feeling has something at its core. What's the information there? What's what's this telling me?
• 44:09
  How can I become powerful by knowing what information I'm getting about this person, this place, this thing? I can tell you that there's certain works of art that when I look at them I just feel infused with joy. In other works of art I look at them and there's some music. I can tell you the first time I heard Bach's air on the g string that my whole body resonated with joy. And every time I hear it, the same thing happens.
• 44:43
  And I remember sitting at Severance Hall in Cleveland, listening to the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, George Zell conducting. I must have been 11 years old hearing that and sitting in that chair and my young body just being infused with joy and knowing when I hear something. It's like, yes. And so information, our emotions, when they aren't messed with, when we are able to heal, our emotions are such good information because they're our body telling us something. And sometimes there it's our body telling us, run.
• 45:26
  Sometimes it's our body telling us, Move toward. And sometimes it's our body telling us, This is not okay. My boundaries have been violated. Someone else's boundaries have been violated. Injustice is happening somewhere.
• 45:40
  That's all useful information. And when you're in a situation growing up where you're abused, it's important to your perpetrator that you not have that information. And it's dangerous to the child to have that information because you might do something that the perpetrator will respond to with worse torment. So being able to get back to that really basic source of information that infants and good enough families are able to develop. And it sounds like you're on that path right now.
• 46:11
  You're in that piece of work right now. That is so cool.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: Well, I I think of I think of Clarissa Pangola Estes in Women Who Run With the Wolves, and she talks about how intuition is that voice that says this way, this way. And I love what you just said about moving towards because right now, I could not tell you what my life is going to look like another year from now. But I am doing the moving towards. And that feels good because for lots of reasons, but partly because I'm not just running away from anything. I'm not running away from what's hard, and I'm not running away from what's good.
• 46:50
  And I could have done either of those. I could have done a fine flight with valid reason and every justification to just flight it out of there. And I could have avoided what would have been good, but I've not done either of those things and that feels good, but moving towards what is good feels good. And there's something powerful in that. And when I hear you talk about how that can manifest in the body, like I can't not think of you.
• 47:21
  Like a year ago, I didn't know if you would still be with us now.
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: Well, ago, I didn't know if I would still be alive and now I'm in complete remission, which doesn't mean enduring remission, but it means right now I have no active cancer. It's amazing that I'm alive. And getting to that place is a lesson about no one knows what happens next. A very dear person very dear to me, who was part of my support system, she was a survivor, she's someone who had been pulled from the brink of death with her cancer, with an experimental treatment. Part of the things they did to treat her created the second cancer that killed her two weeks ago.
• 48:08
  But she got nine more years in which she did amazing things. She saw her kids grow up, she worked for justice, she lived her life, and she helped me at the beginning of my process with cancer. And what I thought is that you don't know what you get. I mean, you go and work disasters. People don't know what they get.
• 48:34
  One minute you got a house, the next minute it's rubble. We live in the illusion that we know what's going to happen. And here's what I know. The only thing I know for sure that's gonna happen is we're gonna finish this podcast in a moment. I'm gonna deal with all the people trying to get stuff for me off Facebook Marketplace.
• 48:54
  I'm going to eat a meal. I'm gonna go for a walk in the sunlight and hopefully come back and not be hit by a guard. That's what I know. That's all I know, and that's all I have to know. And I have to know, take care of myself right now.
• 49:17
  I mean, you know you don't know. I know I don't know. Lots of people have the illusion that they know. So we're more powerful because we don't have that illusion.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: I love this. And I think there is something that can settle when we, whether that's because of therapy or internal work, whatever, all of it, when we can settle enough into that, that knowing not just this blanket now time is safe or what makes now time safe enough, but that I'm okay because I'm listening to my body and I know right now this is what I'm going to do and this is how I'm feeling and I'm aware of those things, that's how I keep myself safe. That's how I find those moments of joy regardless of what my circumstances are and regardless of all those kinds of crises of things that we don't know and that can be environmental or political or this or that or that we don't have any control over. I know that you were a safe person that I could call for this conversation. I know that there were other people had similar questions as mine and that I was okay sharing this piece of the journey.
• 50:38
  I know that I am thrilled not only that I got another conversations with you and that you are well enough for that, but that it is delightful that as your body heals, you are also finding joy in your relationship. It's such a beautiful thing. And talk about wholeness, right? That your body and spirit found joy at the same time together. Integration right there.
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: I'll tell you on the way to here, it's hurt like hell from time to time, and it's gonna hurt like hell again. And that's alright. There's this wonderful Sarah McLaughlin song that starts, hold on, hold on to yourself. This is gonna hurt like hell. And yeah.
• 51:30
  Because if I'm fully alive, I'll stub my toe. If I'm fully alive, my heart will be broken. If I'm fully alive, the unknown will occur. But if I'm not fully alive, all those things will happen anyways. I may as well be fully alive because I didn't know I would get to 70.
• 51:55
  Two years ago, when the metastasis showed up, my oncology team was like, don't know what to do to help you. Then they came up with an idea and it worked and we published the article about it and gonna save an awful lot of other women who've had you know the same terrible cancer and the same it's been horrible treatment beforehand and mine wasn't great it hurt it was hard but it saved my life and my body So hold on to yourself. This is gonna hurt like hell, but this is also gonna be like, wee. So, Emma, I gotta go. You gotta go.
• 52:37
  You know, you can ask me to come back anytime.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Truly, truly. I love you and I'm so happy to
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: see you today. I love you too. And I'm not coming to ISSTD in person because Kentucky too far, but I will be online. So you might see me online because I can't because Jennifer will be there. I can't miss seeing Jennifer Fry.
• 52:59
  She's one of the keynotes, and she's, of course, amazing. It's amazing, amazing person. You should try to get her on your podcast in time to talk about institutional courage.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: I have messaged her. I have she has not that has not worked out yet, but I want to have her there.
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: If if you really want her, tell me, and I'll ping her because we're we had that relationship.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: I do. I do. I would love to speak to her. Also, ISSTD asked me to be a plenary next year. Alright.
• 53:29
  Oh my god.
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: I might even force myself to go to Texas for that.
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. I I was shocked.
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: Like boycotting certain states, but it's I oh, okay. If you're gonna be one of the platteries, I could make myself show up there and then I have to organize a few demonstrations maybe.
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. I hope you have
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: a beautiful day. Alright. You too. Take care, sweetie. Bye.
• 53:59
  Bye bye. Hold on hold on to yourself for this is not a bad account.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to us and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing, and healing brings hope.