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Navigating the Troubled Teen Industry: A Mother and Daughter's Journey to Healing · Surviving-ISH Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: So in last week's episode you met Miss Nikki a little bit of on the record and it definitely off the record.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: She and I had talked a lot about her family life And today we have Miss Kimberly with us, who is Nikki's mother, and Nikki is here with us too.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: She will be coming in.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: But I think it's very important that we cover all sides of this, of these topics, and Miss Kimberly has decided that or agreed to join us and talk about the parent point of view, or at least her point of view of how the TTI industry and how her daughter got into the TTI has evolved with them in their life, miss Kimberly.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, hello.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad you're with us, nikki.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Thank you, even if you're not talking a lot during this episode, which something tells me that you and I will both have some things to chime in on, but just seeing you sitting there with your mother and supporting is really cool.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of stigmas and thoughts that go with and preconceived notions, and I'm so glad that we're able to have this conversation because it's very important and people have been writing in asking what did the parents think?
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: where the parents know, let's take a second And of course I do want to throw out if people haven't listened to last week's episode.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: It is with Nikki talking about her journey and trials and tribulations And of course, we always end on positive, great notes And so if you haven't heard that, i would recommend going back and listening to that.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: But with that said, nikki, introduce yourself.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Give us a couple of cliff notes just to refresh us, because a week has passed.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: So give us a couple of cliff notes of your TI journey and then we will get in with Miss Kimberly.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: My name is Nikki.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: I was in two programs Academy at Ivy Ridge and Bethel Girls Academy between 2004 and 2005.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: And I was there for the final riot and shut down Bethel Girls Academy and expelled for singing.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: A thousand boats appear on the wall From Ivy Ridge Which, if you know me, checks out Interesting.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: I don't think I ever knew that.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: That's why you were kicked out.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: They never told me that.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you were just defiant.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, I thought they called you in but I wouldn't stop singing.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: I think you might have said that you wouldn't stop singing.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: I don't think I knew the song was.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, It was a thousand bottles of beer on the wall for two days, I think.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: That's hilarious, miss Kimberly.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, give us a little introduction about you.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: My name is Kimberly and I'm 57 and Nikki's my only child.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Hey, when you get one, that's perfect.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: You just stop right, You just stop.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: You just stop.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Why mess with perfection.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Funny that you mentioned earlier that there was an earlier show on a woman who was adopted, because I was actually adopted as an infant And one of my brothers was also adopted as an infant.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Our oldest brother was my parents' only natural child, so I had my own fair share of issues growing up, as any kid did.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: But I grew up in the 60s and the 70s.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Things were not discussed as openly as they are today.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: My mother was an alcoholic.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: I learned about alcoholism and AA and all that stuff at a very young age.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: She was also a type one diabetic, so that combination was not very good.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Both my brothers had issues, so I was certainly aware of a lot of things at a very young age.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: My husband, nikki's father had problems with alcohol and drugs.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: I knew that going in and I made the decision to go into that relationship anyway.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: It didn't stay for very long, just shy of three years But it was verbally, mentally, physically abusive.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: But even then in the early 90s you didn't really talk about things, you just sucked it up and you moved on and you did the best that you could.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: So that's what I did And I lost my mother at a young age, when I was 16.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: My father passed away when I was 32.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: So I had my fair share of whatever But things with Nikki.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: Obviously she's the joy of my life, has always been Oh, i need another tissue already.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: But Nikki's father, in his own way he loved her the best that he could.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: It was not always positive And it wasn't until much later in life that I learned out just how traumatic it was for her.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: A lot of these things I never knew about, but he just had a very warped sense of what love was and how to show it.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: He saw her once a week for about three hours For a few years.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Quite a few years.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Early on.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, on Wednesdays he would pick her up from daycare at five and drop her off at eight And their plan was either it was always involved a Disney movie and involved either pizza or McDonald's, i believe, or turkey sandwiches Or turkey sandwiches.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Okay, but that was the extent of it.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: He didn't see her on the weekends, he didn't do sleepovers, he didn't really ask for much time at holidays or anything And looking back on that I don't think I understood the potential for trauma for that.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: I figured at least he saw her once a week, which was better than some people I knew.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: But when I look at it now it was so much less than most people do.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: The old saying hindsight's 20-20.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: You can look back on a lot of things and change them, but then you aren't the person who you are today.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: And I don't really want to change who I am today And I don't want to change who Nikki is today either, but I would have to say that we're in my mind.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: I think some of the start of some of the issues were probably around the time that she was 10 or 11.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: I would say the start of middle school.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: We moved to a new place.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: I'd actually bought my first townhouse, i worked full-time.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: I still work full-time at the same company.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: There were many times I can recall when I got my first Blackberry that she used to tell me that I liked my Blackberry more than I liked her She used to.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Kids are amazing.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: They may know nothing about computers This is again late 90s.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: They may not know a lot about computers or cell phones or gadgets, but boy did she manage to crack into my Blackberry and program it so that it turned off at 7 o'clock at night and it didn't turn back on until 7 o'clock in the morning.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: I blame all that technology knowledge on my father, because when he got his first Mac, i want to say Nikki was B2 or 3?
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: And he had her on there and she was messing with it And he's like what?
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: are you doing?
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Still the extent of my knowledge, though.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah but he is what are you doing?
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: And she's pop up I'm doing lulling And it was just like, really Really, i remember being very frustrated about that.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Sure, because I didn't have a choice.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: I had to work because I was by myself And my dad didn't contribute shit.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: He paid his child support but, but for a long time, until he went out on disability, he always paid it.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: Oh, he paid it on time, but it left me $15 a week.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: After covering daycare.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: That was at $15.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: No, excuse me, $15 every two weeks.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: It left me $30 a month to help take care of any other expenses.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: I had to do what I had to do And I'm not going to lie.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: I've always been very prone to depression And I'm able to look back at these things now only from years of my own therapy and a lot of conversations with Nikki.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there were a lot of times that I thought I was being the best parent that I could be And in reality I wasn't, because I would come home from work and not necessarily cook dinner, but either reheat a leftover or stop at McDonald's on the way, and I would hole up in my room and watch taped episodes of shows that I missed during the day And leave Nikki defend for herself a lot of time, assuming she was doing her homework and doing what she needed to do and everything, and that wasn't fair.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: That was not being a good parent, and this is probably where Nikki and I sometimes still have our one fairly large bone of contention is that throughout my life, you can only do And you can only make decisions at the time with the knowledge that you have at the time.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: And I've often said, if I still only have the same information today that I had almost 20 years ago, i would have made the same decision to do the same thing, i still would have sent her to that first school, i still would have chosen to move her to that second school because it was the knowledge that I had at the time And I did the best that I could with my resources.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: I'm not the person.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: I didn't make that decision lightly.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: I truly, and I sent it to her many times and I know she doesn't.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: I know she loves me, i know that.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: But I've also said many times if you hated me until the day I died, at least you were here to still hate me And I would find a way to live with that And I believe it, and I know that is hard for her to hear, But I think she has finally gotten to a point where she gets it.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: She still doesn't like it very much and I don't blame her for that, but she gets where I'm coming from.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: And Nikki, let me ask you You hear all the time that parents say these things and you will find it all day long.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: but then you have your own babies and you're like, oh shit, i know I get what they're saying.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Has that helped you relate in any way with having your own babies?
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: Yes and no, because I, like she said, we do differ.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: I and I've told her this before with what she said.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: saying that she would still make the same decision even with the lack of information that she had, feels still very problematic to me.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: if I'm being very honest and she knows that and we've had that conversation It's actually gone more in the opposite direction.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: now that I have children, i cannot fathom a situation where I would not go there myself before sending my child somewhere.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: I would not, but those aren't options that we had back then.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: And you have knowledge today that you didn't have.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: So I get your point.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Shoot, if I were in your position, there's no way in hell.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: I ever would have made those decisions.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: If there's a way that, like she, let me go to the pool two blocks down the road by myself at age nine because I passed the swimming test.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: That was a horrible thing to go to the apartment complex, right Well, i could not even imagine letting my 12 year old do that.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: So and I do understate of that, and it's not that I don't I think it will just forever feel problematic for her to say that she would make the same decisions.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: I don't know that there's.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: I can't conceptually understand why she's saying that.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: It doesn't mean that it like resonates with me because I don't have her experience.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: I was going to say absolutely.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Your experiences are different, even though it's about the same subject.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: But what's also very important to realize is when Miss Kimberly says that she is basing in on the knowledge that she would have had, then It's not the knowledge that she had then, plus your story.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Well, for sure, And she has always made that very clear.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: So that is in recent years she has made that very clear.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: If people let's put it this way when it first happened, when I first sent her away, i didn't even talk to people in my own church about it.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Nobody talked about.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: My best friend knew, my best friend's parents knew, and maybe one or two other people my stepmother knew.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: It was very hot, it was very hushing.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Nobody talked about it.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Now, once he get to know me a little bit better, i'm pretty much an open book and I'll say anything to anybody because I just don't care And I love to talk And I will tell you my whole life story in the first 15 minutes if you're willing to listen.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: We got it.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: You got your whole life story down to 15 minutes.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: My friends would love for you to teach me how to do that.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, you basically got like a five minutes analysis at the beginning, but nobody was willing to talk about it.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: It wasn't for years that I found out that there were two other families in my church that had been through the same experience.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Had we had it been not so taboo to talk about, we could have helped each other.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: We could have learned from each other's experiences.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Heck, i could have found out what happened to them and then been like shit, i can't send her there, right, i can't do that.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: But I didn't know.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: I didn't know And I did as much research as the Internet allowed me to do almost 20 years ago to figure out what places were good, what places weren't.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: You didn't find as many of the negative information that you can find out today.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: You do a Google search today and all the negative stuff is going to come out first.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Back then it just wasn't there And they I went in like this serious boom of the troubled teen industry in the early 2000s.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Before that big boom, a lot of it was like conversion schools, religious conversion schools and that.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: So a lot of the older survivors like 60s, 70s and even in the 80s it's mostly LGBTQ conversion schools In the historical sense the Mormon church in particular saw a market for all troubled teens.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Not just that quote, kind of trouble.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: But they were families refinancing their house, getting second jobs, going into all this debt to say my child was gay.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: No one can know, take all this money, fix them.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: So of course they're like, oh, but what if a child sinks out of a window?
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: What if a child smokes pot?
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: What if a child smokes a cigarette?
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: What if they skip school?
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Everything that a teenager does You're troubled and come here and will save you.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I can look back on it now very differently because I'm one, i'm not the same person And two, i'm not in the situation anymore.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: But at the time when you have a 15 year old child that you truly believe that the next knock on the door is going to be from a cop And it's either going to be telling me that she's in jail or I have to go identify her body in the morgue, you are as about as desperate as it comes.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: And I didn't see at the time that these places were places that would prey on the horror that a parent is going through with, at the time, a very defiant child who I did not understand.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: Yes, i knew that she had problems.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: I did know she was a cutter, she skipped school.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: I was, i will lead, she was.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: I didn't know she was bullied I do now but I didn't know about it then.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: I knew she skipped school.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: I knew she was smoking pot.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: I knew she was doing things.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: I didn't know to the extent of anything.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: There was lots of yelling and screaming in the house.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: There was lots of fighting.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: There was lots of which, by the way, triggered up, bucked on, of her own trauma.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Sure, oh yeah, and it was.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: I thought I was.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: I knew that I was trying to do the best thing that I could at that time, and it was.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: I did try other options before the school, but she didn't want to have anything to do with them.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: We did.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: I had a really bad luck with therapists.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: She did have bad luck with therapists.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: I'm trying jumping out of the car on her way to therapy, going 65 miles an hour down 66.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: That was a little dramatic for me, the therapist had a dog that bit me and I did.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: And there was another one that was like way too into Jesus And I was like you're making Jesus sound like a curry, because she was basically like Jesus is watching all the time, not understanding at the time that these people were really not looking out.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Not only were they not looking out for my best interest, which in my opinion is secondary, they were not looking out for my child's best interest, and I chose that right Merrily, because I believed they were looking out for my child's best interest.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: You're talking about Ivy Ridge?
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Yes?
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Both places.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: really, It wasn't about me.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: It was rescuing my situation, but I believed at the time it was saving you.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: I want that on a t-shirt.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Not rescuing my situation, but saving you.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: That's beautifully said.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: It's hard to hear.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: I'm sure it's even harder to say, but that is beautifully said.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: That's what I believed, and it never, and Nikki will attest to this.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: I always choose to see the best in everybody to a fault.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: I choose to believe that people are innately good.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: It's just the way that I have survived in life.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: So it never dawned on me that there would be people out there especially knowing the circumstances Well and especially on top of it, in the name of God, that would intentionally, purposely, deceive me and hurt my child.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: They didn't just they didn't help her.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: They didn't do anything to try to help her.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: All they ended up doing was hurting her and traumatizing her more than she had already been and stripping away all the goodness that was already in her.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: It just She just needed a little polishing, a little help.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: She did not need to be completely stripped of everything, torn down to the core and rebuilt from the ground up, which is literally a part of their verbiage is to break you down and rebuild you in God's image, but it wasn't part of their verbiage almost 20 years ago.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, none that you got Right, none that I got, none that I saw Did I think it was strange that she had to go through a probationary period where I was not allowed to talk to her.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: We were not allowed to have communication that she had to earn that privilege.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: Did I think it was strange?
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to lie, i didn't, and I think I'll be very honest, probably painfully honest.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: But there was a little bit of relief in it.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: Sure, because it had been so hard It.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: There was a very small bit of relief because and the only reason I can say that is because at the time in my heart I believed I was doing the right thing and that they were helping her during that time.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: It's like when people go to a clinic for like a better word for inpatient treatment for drugs or alcohol.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: They're like you can't talk to anybody.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: You can't have your cell phone.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: You can talk to my for 45 days, because what if that is the person that triggers you And I was to that Yep.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: And around all of my alcoholic family and friends and husband.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: So I, from a program perspective, it made sense to me.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: I was like, okay, I can't mess with this because this is her detox.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, No, this is what the program requires.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Just like when they started sending me all the information to going to this conference and going to this conference with all these other parents and getting together and talking about your feelings and doing some crazy stuff.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: You're like this is part of the program, Yep, And if I want this program to work, I have to be able to show Nikki that I did all of my steps.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: I did everything that was required of me, just like I'm expecting her to do what I believe is required of her.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Yep, And the reason I did all those things, they were a little weird.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: They were a little weird and they cost a lot of money and they were never close by.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: But I was like I can't let her down by not doing my part.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: If I'm asking it of her to do her part, if I'm forcing her because I did, I knew I was forcing her to because she, she went against her will.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: It was like a horrible being.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: I've never talked to anybody that I said I wanted to go here.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: It's always against their will.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: Right, i think she mean she had me transported versus kids who knew they were going there.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, oh yeah, no I.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: I hired professional quote unquote escorts that came and picked her up at my house.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: I didn't rock, but is escorts what it was presented to you as?
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: because we've heard the words goon?
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: No.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Or gooning, and okay.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Transporters Nope, they were called professional escorts that their job was to pick troubled teens up and make sure that they got transported successfully and safely to this place where you were sending them, so that there was less, especially because both places were very far away.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: We were in Virginia and the first one was in upstate New York, the other one was in Mississippi, so it was to ensure that she couldn't back out at any time if I was trying to drive her there or even take her on a plane, and it was presented as a way to save me the trauma and her the trauma, although I never thought about honestly never thought about the trauma that it could cause by having two complete strangers show up at the house at 10 o'clock in night and put her in the back of the car.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: But in your defense though, when they say transporters, I hear that word.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: When we're talking about the president today, Yeah, Like when you hear that word, they do present it.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, get away.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: You think, okay, there are educated people on this format.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: More than one of them There's, I have.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: I was a man and a woman.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: I have already run away from her several times.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: I've already given her the slip several times.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: Like these are professionals, They professionally handpicked.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: But I can even see, even though, where I am, where we are, i guess now, with trauma and recognizing and mental health, we now can see how, even just waking up and seeing a man and a woman above you and cuffing you or grabbing you or whatever and escorting you away, regardless of their title, We now would be like, okay, that could be traumatic, that's going to cause issues, but then but then you know it's played on weaknesses.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, even though it's going to scare the hell out of her, they're going to get her on this three hour plane ride or this eight hour bus ride or whatever, itself pretty wide And she's going to be safe.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: And they are trained to say Hey, we know this was scary, but it's done, it'll be worth it.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let me tell you I know how traumatic it was for me after she left, because I spent the next hour in my bathroom violently throwing up.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: So no one has traumatic as it was for you, obviously not realizing until that moment, right, but then have that realization of Oh fuck, if it was this traumatic for me, what about my baby?
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: And the only thing I can say in my defense it's not really in my defense is because it carried its own trauma.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: Was the fact that I didn't have them wake her up out of a dead sleep and come into our house to do it.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: It was after my best friend and I had taken her out to dinner and it was when we got home, so it was before we even got in the house and my best friend was there too.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: So that was that has definitely carried its own trauma for her, which left not only a bad taste in her mouth about me and hating me, but it hated.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: It put a bad taste in her mouth for my best friend, who she has known her whole life, who she loves and adores and who my friend loves and adores.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: So that was another layer of an added on.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: I didn't see it at the time, but it was definitely another layer of trauma that I put on her and the situation put on her And I don't say that to be a martyr.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: That is something that I fully accept my role in what happened to get her there, like she accepts her role in what happened, not that it got her to where she went, but she does know that her behavior at the time contributed to some of my decisions.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: Am I speaking correctly?
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, i think a lot of it is And we talked about this before like I was a child, it wasn't my job to know better.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: I didn't have the tools or the resources to act better because I didn't know how to deal with the trauma that I had And I didn't know how to communicate.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: So at that point.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: I didn't understand all of your strong, understand the way that I was communicating for help.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: To be fair, you didn't even know how to communicate your old shit, or deal with half of your old shit.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: True, like how are you going to help someone else through theirs if you are dealing with yours?
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: So we had the blind leading the blind, yeah, at that time.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: But we and, believe me, it's been almost 19 years And it probably took the better part of 13.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: 15.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: It all.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: No to come to terms with some of it.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: We have only truly been able to have some of these down conversations probably in the last two and a half years.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Since I watched Paris Health and Stock for Better Eat, but I was never sure that we were ever going to get to the point where we were five and six years ago.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: I was never sure we were going to get to where we were then, let alone to where we are now.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: I think there's probably a part of Nikki that is giddy with joy that I agreed to do this, because I'm probably saying some things right now that she might have been waiting a long time to hear, and a part of the conversation that she's been wanting to have for oh, probably last year, that I'm very I'm a very good procrastinator and I'm very good at avoidance.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: I'm not a huge fan of confrontation And I'm not saying that our conversations are confrontational.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: They are not confrontational at all.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: They're just as you can, as you are experiencing right now.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: They're just extremely emotional and it's difficult to hear.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: They're different on both ends.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, again, i'm not an expert And when you use the word confrontational, i feel that and if you ought to disagree, please let me know if that's what's all this is about.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: But when we say the word confrontational, or the way that I'm taking it with you guys in this moment, is almost feel that confrontation is avoided because we've been taught and trained that if you raise your voice, you show certain types of emotion, then you're mad at each other.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: There's a forgiveness, There's only hate.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's okay to just raise your voice and be like Mama I feel like down or for you, mom, to raise your voice and say society fought me.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I feel like those are okay And those confrontational moments, without it damaging the actual relationship.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: And I would agree with that.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: I would agree with that.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: The reason why I say that I like to avoid it and I use the word confrontational is because I take things very personally.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: Even though I know what Nikki is saying is, she is saying it from her perspective and how she feels, and she's not blaming me as a parent.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: I cannot sit back and not feel the blame, if that makes any sense.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Oh it does, Because I bet you would say the same thing I make.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, i bet, I'm willing to bet you You have the same reaction if you had chosen to build a ramp and Nikki had her toe cut off in the process of that ramp being built.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Something tells me because I know it would be with my mom that you would say, had I made the decision, by the ramp, i, my kid, going to ramp without shoes.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: I am going to find a way to blame myself.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: I also think that on this specific topic, my mom has come from such a defensive place for so long and trying to shift that perspective is hard when you had like a certain stance on a topic for so long and allowing yourself to hear it and not get defensive or like truly internalize some of the stuff.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: It's hard to because there's not one of separation You don't want to.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: I can't imagine any parent who wants to be like fuck, yeah, i did all this shit to my kid.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: Second, no one wants to realize that the decisions they made put their kid through some of the worst trauma in their life And my dad did a number.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: So to know that that's up there is not an easy thing.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: To conceptualize it.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: On top of it, when we first, when I first got home, everything was very much we did not talk about it And when I tried to show her the giant in my head she was like no, she wasn't hearing it.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: And I will say also, because I was still under 18, when it got hard, like I ended up running away and it was difficult.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: I had trouble that I didn't even understand in the way that, like I didn't understand why I was so afraid to get in the car with her Now as an adult who's been through therapy, obviously, because the last time I got in the car with her, two strangers showed up and took me to hell Like little things I couldn't figure out and that you don't have the tools to understand.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: And therapy for sure was not what it was then, that it is, and education on trauma is for sure not what it was then, as it is now.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: Trying to really shift your perspective from a defend So an acceptance is a difficult thing to do after 20 years.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: And the other thing on that topic is I felt like I didn't have the only way.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: For so long, literally for almost 17 years, the only way I could deal with it was to defend myself.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: I had to defend my decisions to make.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: again, i was still being selfish about it.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: I had to defend myself and my actions to make myself feel better, to make me feel like I was not the most horrible parent on the face of the earth, and I can remember having some blow up conversations and come right out and saying I'm like, fine, so I was the most horrible parent there was.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: What did you want me to do?
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: And then it just it became a battle of wills and then we wouldn't talk for a little while And then we didn't like that Because, to be fair, we're two very different person.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: Like my mom, her trauma response is like fawn.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: So she just gets super quiet and my cuddles down And I I mean she comes out punching, fucking fight or flight Like I am taking off on a jet fighting at the same time And from, i think, from my perspective, i at that point it had been so long and I was an adult and I was like, no, you're going to fucking hear what I went through and you're, you deserve how mean I am to you and all that stuff.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: And so it.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: I think I got to the point where we finally had that one conversation.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: I was like I don't know that we can like genuinely not be passive, aggressive to each other if we don't talk about this.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: And also, when my dad died, there was a whole bunch of shit that I didn't get to talk to him about.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: So, being able, you're here, i have you here, yeah, and the whole dad thing has been an issue between us for years and she has a very fair and valid point And cause it was always very frustrating for me.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: I'm like he always got the best attitude from her.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: He always got the best behavior from her.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: He always got all the smiles.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: I didn't know until much later it was because she was terrified that if she wasn't good, she didn't it wouldn't stick around.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: He wouldn't see her the next week And I didn't know that And I got the shit attitude When I would tell him about it.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: He'd look at me like I was fucking nuts.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: What are you talking about?
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: I'm like she doesn't do this for you.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: No, he's.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: What are you talking about?
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: I'll talk to her, and I'm like I don't need you to talk to her.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: So it was.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: It was frustrating for me And then, after he done laid, it was even more frustrating to me because I'm like man is dead and he still gets more praise than I do.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: The man is dead and he still gets all the I love you, i miss you.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: But then she pointed out she's, but because he's gone, that means I can let that go and I can think about the good stuff.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: He goes, but you're still here and I still get to create memories with you and I still get to have a relationship with you.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: So I had to realize that They were completely separate and I had no reason to be jealous or envious about the love that she expressed for him, because that was her relationship and the way she dealt with that And I had to respect that, because my brothers don't have this kind of memories and respect that I have for my mother, for our mother.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: They still carry a lot of hatred and anger towards her.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: Yet they didn't go through half the things with her that I did.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: But I've gotten past them and I see the good, because that's what I choose to remember, because who wants to really remember all the crap?
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: But also, like when someone passes away, like especially the person who's perpetuating that trauma, the trauma stops And when trauma stops you could finally start to heal.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: But in our case it's not that the trauma was perpetuating, but it was this undertone of.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: Are we ever going to look at this giant elephant in the room?
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: We both know why we're best aggressive to each other And I would say it's not that big.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: The elephant's only about this big It should be like that, and it's the whole fucking circus tent Right.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: So, slowly but surely, we are finding our way through it.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: I think that biggest thing is like being able to listen and validate so much because still as a child, still that 15 year old little girl who just wanted her mom to realize what she went through, if that it was real, because for years and years I was told it wasn't real.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: They even went right before you go home.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: They tell you, like I was supposed to get a home visit.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: I have paperwork.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: We were preparing for a home visit before Bethel got shut down.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: They literally said you, darling, tell you.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: If you tell your parents, if you try to tell your parents what happens or what you this is how they say it what you think happens here, what you think happens here, you'll be here till you're 18.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: I was 15 at the time.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: I didn't want three more years And on the other end, on the parent side of it, the hardest thing in the world to do.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: Yet the most important thing that a parent can do is to acknowledge everything that their child went through and to validate it and to say I hear you because and I believe you, i believe you Literally every time.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: She said I believe you I'd be like, i was like I don't need this from her.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: I know it was real blah, blah, blah And then out of the bluewood they just looked at me and she was like I don't know that.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: I've told that.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: I've told you, i do believe you, i believe every word you say.
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: And I came unglued in the most unattractive way But that to me as much quote unquote healing I thought we had been doing over the years.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: Those three simple words, easy words, that I believe you, were absolutely, undoubtedly the most important words I ever could have said to her, and that was when I believe our true healing process started.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: Because he needed those words, the.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: I believe she needed those words, the.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: Actually she needed that believe word more than she needed All the I love you's.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: I've ever told her All the I love you.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: I would never stop.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: You could never do anything to cause me not to love you.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: I will always love you.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: That one, those three little words, i believe you More important than anything else.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: It's the name of our book.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: It's gonna be the name of our book, but it's just.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: It's very, but at the same time, i'm not gonna lie, it was a hard thing for me to say, because it was a hard pill for me to swallow, because then and I go back to, i know that I did what I did with the knowledge that I had.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: But I think another very important step for a parent is to, when you are saying those words, when you have to believe them or it doesn't mean anything, and your child will know whether or not you are saying it with belief in your, in your words.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: They will know the difference.
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: But it's also a hard pill to swallow, because that is when you start accepting the fact that you played a role in it.
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: It was an unconscious role.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: It was an unconscious role.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: It was the role shifted.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: You thought your role was very different.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: Yes, as the role shifted drastically Without my consent.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they put a different role on me than I was expecting And they did it without my consent.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: They did it without my knowledge.
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: They did it Against everything that I believe they stood for, based on how they represented themselves.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: They screwed me But, more importantly, they screwed my kid, and you know you can do anything you want to me.
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: I used to say this about my marriage I could put up with anything that my husband was going to do with me.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: You mess with my kid and you're done, and that's how our marriage ended.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: He went to hit me when I was standing at the top of the stairs while I was holding her And I fell back onto the first platform And I looked back up at him And I punched him in the face and I broke his nose And I told him you will never touch me or my child again And our marriage was over.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, i didn't have the hindsight or I have the hindsight now.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: I didn't have the forethought to think that he might ever do some of those same things to his child without me around.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: But then again, hindsight's 2020 and you can only go based on the knowledge that you have at the time.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: Step up and arrive.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: So, as we're starting to come to an end, I know this conversation was hard, but I was going to say a thing.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: But I know that these are things that so many people feel and need to hear And even if a parent hasn't been in this situation yet, this is bringing awareness to now.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: We do have the resources, The things of Goog.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: We are in.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: There are still thousands of children in these programs.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And the hour we've been recording today.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: there are children lined up in a while that's been there for 18 hours in their own year.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: Right now.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: This didn't stop.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: I always thought, when I always say that I go to the 60s and 70s, because I think of the Rebecca Girls and the generation they were in 60s and 70s and 80s.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: but, nikki, you're young, your babies are babies.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: This is happening right now.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they do a lot of it.
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: now Most of them I would say a lot of them are not the same structure programs as the one I was in.
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: There are so many that are like three to six month wilderness camps where they basically try to say, oh, they're just learning survival skills, they're learning how it really hard it is without a cell.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: You don't get to eat unless you have a lot of fire.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: We just had I know her as Ashley, but I think on social she's Nora who is my social media manager, for lack of better words.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: She was part of the wilderness program.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: She was out in the wilderness and then the next day it was an unexpected blizzard and they were stranded and they were like you don't eat unless you have a lot of fire.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: The other scary thing, too, is that, with today's abilities, there are still parents out there who feel like they don't have any other choices and who don't have any other resources.
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: Probably it's because they don't have anybody to talk to who's had some of the same experiences, because nobody wants to be the one that is saying my kid is troubled, my life isn't perfect, my family isn't perfect.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: They don't want to be the one friend that I'm already the divorced one, i'm already the single mom.
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be the one that's also got the troubled kid.
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: Those are things I didn't think about either.
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: The kind of trauma that that action put on a lot of my friends' kids, because they were like, all of a sudden, nikki was just gone.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: It was like we were thinking and nobody wanted to talk about it.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: It was like I literally just disappeared, she just disappeared.
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: My best friend's family is a very large family and a lot of kids and they're like cousins and aunts and uncles and everything and she just disappeared, no one said why.
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: The kids from her youth group, a church.
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: She just disappeared.
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: I was in school, i was just gone, and especially in school, because I didn't go back to that school.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: So I literally was just gone until I got a nice face two years later.
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: Then I literally You and I could have so many episodes here on-.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: Look, i'm always up for a mini-series And you don't make me so really happy.
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: Is Miss Kimberly in the beginning?
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: not in my podcast before?
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: and she was like I'm a little nervous.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: And then here we are at the end.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: Just you know what we could do.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: So many episodes.
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: I love it Well and also And you realize how much- there is to still say Yeah, but I'm going to say that one.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: you made me comfortable in that respect And I have a great appreciation for that, because it's not the easiest topic to talk about And she is not the easiest one to make comfortable.
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: But at the same time, i know what being able to talk about it does for Nikki And that's important to me And when I told her that I immediately, without hesitation, would agree to do this with her, if what we have to say can even help one kid, one parent, i'll do as many as these, as people want to hear If it's going to help anybody, because I don't want other kids to have to go through it.
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: I don't want other parents to have to go through it.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: I want them to know it's okay to talk about it.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: I want parents and their kids who are already out of these programs to find a way back to each other and to heal.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: As always, thank you to the listeners.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: I try not to ask too much, but please like share download on all the podcasts and social media platforms.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: Even leaving reviews helps people find us, So if you would do that for me, that would be great.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: People have been asking for merch, and now our merch store is open.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: Of course, the link is provided on all the socials, but it's at Tspringcom.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: Please check it out.
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: Help support the show.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: You are the best.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: I love you guys and we'll see you next week.