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Healing Childhood Trauma: Harry Potter & Breaking Generational Patterns with Barbara Latinka · Finding Treasures in the Trash

• 0:00
  Troy Lacher: A quick content note before we begin. This episode includes discussion of childhood trauma, abuse and neglect, sexual abuse, suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and mental health hospitalization. Please listen with care and give yourself permission to pause or step away if anything feels too close.
• 0:23
  Unknown: As a child, who had someone so stable and so exuding of light and positivity and love and nourishment, I held on to every bit of him that I could, and that I believe wholeheartedly was my internal voice telling me, you're better than this. You're more than this. You deserve more than this, and it really does just take that one caring adult to step in and say, you know what, you're better than what's happened to you. You're capable of rewriting your story. You are not a product of your past. You get to create your future.
• 1:01
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: What if real, lasting transformation happens when we're willing to face our shadows-the messy, uncomfortable parts of ourselves we'd rather not look at-and what if the things we avoid out of fear or shame are actually the treasures that wake us up? I'm Carrie Jacobs Crevetto, executive coach and meditation teacher, and this is finding treasures in the trash through raw, unfiltered conversations. I invite you to turn toward what you've disowned and begin integrating it back into the whole beautiful human you are meant to be. Your treasure doesn't always live in the
• 1:37
  light. Sometimes it's buried in the trash. So, grab your gloves. Let's go dumpster diving. Where do Harry Potter and trauma meet? For any Harry Potter fans out there, you are going to love my next guest. Meet Barbara Latinka. She is a self-published independent author, a homeschool mother, and a full-time photographer. Her work has been recognized by the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy as a mental health resource for trauma survivors and therapists. What work, you might be asking? Well, she's written three amazing books called "Spells for Surviving a Haunted
• 2:24
  Childhood, and she really dives into the world with hope of helping others who've experienced similar trauma, upbringings of feeling unseen or understood or less alone. I am so excited to talk with Barbara today. Welcome to the show. Welcome to Finding Treasures in the Trash. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. So you reached out to me on Instagram and said, "Hey, I'd love to introduce myself. Can you check out my books? Can you check out what I'm doing? I have to say, normally I check. I'm like politely send some heart emojis. I opened your work and was instantly
• 3:08
  enthralled in what you're doing. Can you just introduce your books?
• 3:15
  Unknown: Absolutely. So while diving into trauma therapy for my own, as I call it, haunted childhood or traumatic childhood. I began journaling, and when that journaling happened, I got really angry about it. I got really sad about it, and my therapist continued to push me and keep going, and said it's okay to feel these things. It's okay to be upset. Just keep pushing through. And when I did, this spark of inspiration happened, and the series came to fruition. It's my life story, but told with a little twist of magical realism that I think readers will find relatable and whimsical, but
• 3:58
  healing above
• 4:00
  all.
• 4:01
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Well, and some of the things that you said to me when we met that stuck with me were about complex trauma and this idea that these books were built from your own complex trauma, and that this sort of permission to have the dark feelings is that a big part of what the book is about and why you reached out to me around this particular podcast.
• 4:22
  Unknown: Yeah, absolutely. I think that a lot of us, especially those of us that had grown up in the 70s, 80s, 90s, we were dismissed in regards to our feelings, especially the yucky ones. And I think that has a lot to do with our mental psyche nowadays in in adulthood. And I wanted to offer something to readers that help them not only feel like seen and heard, but also let them know that these awful yucky feelings are okay. That you can experience those and you can sit with those, but they don't get to run the show. Who did you write these for? These children.
• 5:00
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Books are these books for millennials? Are you a millennial? I'm so curious.
• 5:05
  Unknown: I am technically, I guess, a millennial. I'm 36. I had written these books originally. In all honesty, I wrote this for my family, for my well-being, for my daughters. I have three daughters. I wrote this for a way to solidify my family history, and to pass that on to my children and my grandchildren one day. But as I shared this with my therapist, she's like, "Barb, honey, you got to get this out into the world. You have to share this with other people. This can't be just for you. She didn't like force me, but you know, she read these and she was authentically like, "This is the best
• 5:41
  way that I've ever heard trauma written about, especially complex trauma, in a way that's so helpful and hopeful for people to read about healing and resilience in ways that hasn't been done before. So, with her encouragement, I definitely sought out to speak to those '80s and '90s latchkey kids that again, whose feelings were dismissed growing up, who may have experienced again their own haunted childhoods, and I feel like the more that I share the story, the more that it gets out there and readers come back to me. I'm realizing I went decades feeling so alone in my story, but if we just talk
• 6:20
  about the awful, uncomfortable things, we realize we're really not alone. There's a lot of us that are feeling these exact ways, maybe not the exact stories, but there's so much relation in the feelings that we're left with that I feel like this story really resonates with a lot of readers.
• 6:37
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Okay, so as like a six year old, I could read these books. I've scanned them, but I could dive into these books, and I love the languaging. By the way, oh, like I just love. So first of all, self confession. I'm in my 60s. I kind of miss just missed the Harry Potter thing. I could go back and watch it, or I kind of picked up a book here and there. But I this was not necessarily like it was right after me, but I definitely love magic, and I believe in magic. Oh yeah! But you said some things to me about my world of meditation and doing healing work, where you kind
• 7:13
  of recast and categorize this as magic. Can you say something about how this inspiration to rekind of think about all this came
• 7:23
  Unknown: absolutely. So as I said, I'm 36, so I basically grew up with the characters of Harry Potter. I was a teenager going to watch all of the the movies as they were coming out, and that was a big part of my childhood. I think that a lot of us who have dealt with a traumatic childhood, we see movies and books like Harry Potter that are full of magic, and it's this orphaned child who has gone through so much adversity. I mean, if Harry Potter was to take an Aces test, I think he'd knock it out of the park. But wait,
• 7:55
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: wait, what's an Aces test? Tell me. I don't know. Oh, you.
• 7:57
  Unknown: Oh, okay. No, tell me a childhood adversity test. So basically, it's to see how many adversities that you face. So children in the foster care system have to take ACE tests and to see basically how traumatized they are. is It's a 10 question survey that you take to determine basically just how traumatized you are. So if you've not taken one yourself, I definitely recommend. Yeah, I'm not sure. Google it. I'm not
• 8:23
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: sure. I want to know the official answer, but definitely. So you're saying Harry Potter, if he were to take the test?
• 8:29
  Unknown: Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, he's orphaned and he was abused and neglected by his aunt and uncle, and just this total third wheel of this family. But this magical wizard Hagrid comes in, and he's like, "No, you're a wizard, and you've always been a wizard. And not only are you a wizard, but you're a descendant of the best wizards that took on like the most powerful, awful person that's trying to destroy the wizarding world. And it builds up this whole storyline of this boy who overcomes the Dark Lord, and it essentially is just this message of hope and resilience, and even the most
• 9:05
  traumatized kids can have so much power. I think that a lot of us who have grown up with that is just like, oh my gosh, I resonate with that so much. I want that power. I want that healing. I want that arc for myself. So when I started to write this series, you know. I'm a spooky girl myself. I love Tim Burton and Harry Potter and all the witchy and dark esthetic of things. I love you.
• 9:30
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: I love identifying yourself as a spooky girl. By the way, I don't know if that's like a thing out there, but I love it. Okay, and if it's not, you heard it here from Barb. Spooky girls. Hashtag spooky girls. I
• 9:42
  Unknown: absolutely am, and I always just felt like if I was going to tell my story to do it in this format, just felt so fitting to me. And I think that it would help resonate with a lot of other kids my age, again that grew up with Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and all these magical quests. Of overcoming adversity, so in my story there are like little magical elements that are added in. So like my darkness is a shape shifting monster that follows me throughout my entire series. And while yeah, actually, truly, there was no shadow monster that followed me throughout my life. At times,
• 10:22
  it felt like it. At times, it felt like there was a monster looming in the corner waiting for me, and it knew that something worse was right around the corner. So, I wanted to write about that poetically and in a way that I felt like other people could relate to and find a sense of seeing the normalcy in life and adding your own little magical twists to make it a little bit more survivable.
• 10:46
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: It's so beautiful. So I'm hearing that any age, but could it also be like for teens? Absolutely, absolutely. So there are
• 10:54
  Unknown: some dark topics. Of course, this is childhood trauma, and I don't dive into it in in a way, for shock value, I steered clear from that. All of the traumatic scenes that are written about in the series are from the mindset of the age in which it was happening. So I detail in part one, chapter 15, is specifically about sexual abuse to a child. But if you don't have the language for what's going on as a six, seven-year-old kid, I wrote about it in the way that a six or seven-year-old would be imagining or be describing these these instances. So while I'm not putting language to it, and
• 11:38
  again, there's no shock value to it. It's a man walked into my room and took something from me I didn't have the words for yet. So it's done in a way that is, again, not for shock value. It's not meant to be like, oh my gosh. It's meant to be like the same thing happened to me, and I didn't know how to feel about it. I didn't know if I would be believed. I didn't know if I would be heard, and I feel seen in these pages. I feel heard in these pages, and I don't feel alone now in these pages. And that specific scene, I think, I've heard the most feedback on in relation to females growing up
• 12:18
  that were put in places that they shouldn't have been in, or put around family members that they shouldn't have been around, or friends of the family that they shouldn't have been around, and they didn't have the courage, or the knowledge, or the words to say what happened to them in the moment. But now, reading my story and seeing the the relation to it all, I think that it's helping a lot of people open up and reflect on their own healing journeys.
• 12:43
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: That's so beautiful. First of all, thank you for beginning to tell a little bit of your story because these books are based on something very real, which is your own past, your own life lived. That luckily has the happy ending that we're sitting in today.
• 13:00
  Unknown: Yes,
• 13:00
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: but it wasn't always, and this was the fodder that. So you going through therapy and journaling was the fodder that began the writing of the books.
• 13:14
  Unknown: Oh yeah, and she was not my first therapist. I honestly had probably seen close to 20 providers throughout my lifetime, and finally found the therapist that I was always meant to hear, that had the words that I needed, the language I needed, and the mind work that we did, the framework that we did. We worked exclusively in internal family systems where, basically, you look at yourself as a young child. You look at your parents as a young child that they're only human, and the damage that's been done through generations. And you start to like, instead of being so engulfed and so
• 13:56
  enthralled in this whole story, you're able to take a step back with your therapist, and take a look at the bigger picture here of what's really going on in your whole family system, and that was exactly what I needed all along. I had therapists growing up that would tell me things like, "Oh, every girl needs a mother. That's great, but what do you do when you don't have one? I can't go out on the street and be like, "Hey, be my mom. Like that's not how that works. So telling a 14-year-old child, "Oh, you need a mom. What do you want me to do about that? How am I supposed to do that? And
• 14:34
  that was the kind of care I was receiving growing up. Was just, "Oh, well, this is your problem because you don't have a mom, or this is your problem because of X, Y, Z things outside of my control, and finally, I found the right therapist for me that really helped me see everything so clearly and see big picture stuff that I hadn't seen before.
• 14:54
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Well, and you're hinting and talking directly to something really important for the listeners who are out there, which is. Sometimes it takes a minute to find the right person, or in my case, I had many therapists as well, and they were right at the moment. And then I I needed something different, and so that you grow and evolve, and you need
• 15:12
  Unknown: a little bit extra. Yep,
• 15:14
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: and then you need to go through the like, oh my god, I can't break up with my therapist, and there's that, you know. But I'm here to tell you as a coach, we are okay. Therapeutic practitioners are okay if you need something different. But so let's get in a little bit into you and your story. Tell us a little bit about where you grew up, how you grew up, and just what key points were pivotal to the writing of the book.
• 15:38
  Unknown: Yeah, so I grew up on a family compound in the mountains of East Tennessee in the Appalachian Mountains. My grandfather worked really hard to make sure that our family was a very tight knit one, and that we were all on the same piece of land that he worked so hard to provide for us. This is like rural
• 15:55
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: rural Tennessee. It
• 15:57
  Unknown: is, yeah, extra rural Tennessee. Yeah, the story basically starts with the death of my grandfather, and as I just stated, he was essentially the glue of our family, and then it slowly evolves into the dissolving of my family unit. I've stated several times it's like my nuclear family blew up, and I watched it all happen. His death sparked a mental illness in my mother, an addiction in my mother, and my father opted to to leave to back off, and then this spiraled into more mental illness for my mother, harder addiction for my mother, and basically just the entire breakdown of this
• 16:45
  woman who had no support. She lost her father. Her mother was never there for her, and now her husband left her. And here I am, this six-year-old little girl who needs somebody, but I instantly become just this third wheel of the family that nobody really checks on or cares about. They say that kids are resilient; they can be, but resilient kids turn into traumatized adults, and it can rear its ugly head. You know what you think a kid has forgotten, they don't. It sticks with them. It is in their DNA. It is in their bone. Is in their body, they don't forget; they hold on to it. So, what was
• 17:25
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: this like for you? I'm hearing, you know, this piece around you had this sort of connected family through your grandfather. He passes away. Your mom has a huge response to this, and and in a way, abandons you to addiction, and so what was day to day life like at that point between sort of like you know six and you know 15, let's say, or six and 12? What was going on? What was it like?
• 17:54
  Unknown: Well, I would say ages six and 12, I had a huge shift of my family life. So around age six is whenever my mother started to unravel. My father left. In her unraveling again, I said her addiction ramped up, and we. The only way that I can describe it is my family home became a trap house, where people came to get their drugs, where people came to party, and here is this collateral damage over in the corner, or locked away in her bedroom that nobody cares for, or you're
• 18:29
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: talking about yourself. You're you're the collateral damage. Okay,
• 18:32
  Unknown: yeah, I'm the one that's locked away.
• 18:34
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: I just need to pause for a second and let that come into my heart. Like just the fact that you would identify yourself as in this circumstances the collateral damage.
• 18:44
  Unknown: Oh yeah, yeah. I was the burden. I was the problem. That's how I viewed myself for a really long time, and I think that's how she viewed me, and probably still does view me, honestly. But and as a result of her negligence and her abuse, and the people that would come and go into the house were abusers to me as well.
• 19:03
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Sexual abuse for one, yeah.
• 19:04
  Unknown: Sexual, physical, mental. Yeah, the people that were coming and going were not nice people. There were three men in particular that lived with us during a period of time. So I'm a single mom, her daughter, and three men living in the same house together under deplorable, awful, dirty conditions, and I describe all of this in my book. And feeling like I'm walking on landmines, like I can't touch anything because that seems like an insult. I can't clean up after anyone because it seems like I'm judging someone, and I'll get in trouble or I'll get smacked or hurt. So,
• 19:39
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: you know, it sounds like a movie, like something I couldn't even write, or if I did, I would have to. It would feel so extreme. It's just so. I just want to reflect back to you that it, you know, even in this moment, I'm sure you've told your story and you've written your story, but it's heartbreaking to hear.
• 19:56
  Unknown: It is. It absolutely is, and I hear a lot from. And reviewers that are like, I wanted to pull you through the pages and give you the biggest hug and let you know that you're not alone. And like, I appreciate that, I really do. But it also took an immense amount of strength and healing for me to write this. So like, I'm okay. I really am. I believe that everything, and I know that trauma survivors hate to hear this, but I, as a trauma survivor, feel this-that everything happens for a reason-and my family was so plagued by this generational curse. That's what I call it. It's a
• 20:30
  generational curse. My grandmother, her mother, and so on. It was abuse just trickling down. That this extremity had to happen for me to say, you know what? No, I'm done. I'm done carrying this legacy. I'm making my own legacy, and I'm doing that, and that's okay. I'm strong enough to do that, and I'm resilient enough, and I had my own like before we were talking. We were talking about integrity, and that's why I feel like this is so important to me, and why that was so fitting that we we talked about integrity because I feel like I've had such a strong moral compass of who I am and
• 21:12
  who I'm supposed to be, even at a young age. So when all this was going on, I knew I was destined for better, and a lot of kids don't, and so that's another reason why I wanted to write this series is to let remind other kids, other adults who have gone through this as kids, that you're resilient, and the power that you have is within you. If we can pass on trauma, we can pass on love, and it's up to us to decide what we're going to do with that.
• 21:38
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: So beautifully said, and you know, there's so much in just the this little segment of the podcast that you just shared, and two things that stick out are: I really remember my own trauma, and I remember the conscious shift from victim. Like I'm not going to allow myself to be victimized by this anymore.
• 21:59
  Unknown: Yeah,
• 22:00
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: and I'm going to I'm going to move out of like vigilance and resilience into owning this for my life story. Mine was not as traumatic, frankly. But you
• 22:11
  Unknown: can't compare trauma because the feelings were the same.
• 22:15
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: The feelings you still
• 22:16
  Unknown: felt unheard, unseen, and unloved. And at the end of the day, that's the same, regardless of the event that occurred, the feelings are the same. I've had a lot of people say that, like, "Oh, my story's not as bad as yours. It's like that's okay. It doesn't have to be. If you feel this way, that's okay. I understand it's a shocking story. Again, I didn't write it for shock value. I wrote it for healing. But you were asking a minute ago, like how my life shifted or changed between like ages six into 12, when all that occurred with my mother, and she was becoming more and more apparent
• 22:49
  that she's not the right figure for me. My dad finally did step in after a short stint. I lived with my grandmother for a period of time. My mother actually abandoned me for a job for the circus, and that's why in part one there's like a little circus tent on the cover,
• 23:07
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: like a real. Hold on a minute, hold on. I just have to ask this question. Like, are we talking like Cirque du Soleil, high end Vegas circus? Are we talking like circus, like elephants, peanuts, circus,
• 23:20
  Unknown: like a roadside show. Think of like Carney's and just Carnage and like just the most deplorable people in the world that you don't want operating your amusement rides. That kind of yeah, just full of addicts and other has beens and whatnots. And that's what she gravitated towards, and she found this job working on the road with one of the three men that were living with us. The two of them left, and I stayed with my grandmother for about a year. Whenever this happened, and that in itself was a whole other level of abuse. She kept her house clean, which was nice in contrast to mine. I
• 23:58
  was growing up in filth, living with solely my mother after my dad had left, but it kind of came with stipulations and ultimatums, and there was no love. It was very cold there. She was, of course, grieving the death of my grandfather, and she wasn't the most pleasant person to begin with. That only hardened her more, and the grief made it almost unbearable to live with her. Finally, my dad stepped in, and that's kind of where the end of part one ends, and the beginning of part two starts. Is my dad coming and being what I refer to him as my good knight, my knight in shining armor? I
• 24:33
  think that he's valiantly coming to save me.
• 24:36
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Okay, and then we
• 24:37
  Unknown: find out in part two that's not the case.
• 24:40
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: No, at some point, what you shared with me is that you were hospitalized.
• 24:45
  Unknown: Yes, and this was during the section of part two where I was living with my father. I experienced some extreme mental illnesses, extreme depression, extreme anxiety. My father almost passed away from a heart attack. And that I want to say just like escalated my mental illness and my worry and anxiety because I I realized as a 15 year old I look around and I'm like without my dad who am I where do I go what happens to me I have no family I just have him and he almost died what do I do with that and in turn the heart attack really changed him too, and made him more cold and more brash
• 25:25
  and more isolated. And his medication wasn't helping him. In it was helping his heart, I'm sure, but not mentally. He was not mentally well with
• 25:35
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: a capital H E A R. Exactly. Yeah.
• 25:38
  Unknown: Exactly. There was issues there on top of the fact that this woman figure that's been in my life since I moved in with my dad was not who she said she was. Was this his
• 25:49
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: wife or his
• 25:50
  Unknown: his girlfriend, his long term girlfriend for 10 years? In the book, I call her Rhetta, and I've changed names in the books for privacy reasons for people. But she was not who she said she was, but I always knew, even as a child, that she just wasn't always what she said she was or appeared to be. I always questioned her, and I think that there, because of that questioning and because of that uncertainty, she created a wall around me, and not only around me, but between me and my father. So there was definitely some rifts between me and him because of her, and we find out at the
• 26:27
  end of part two that she was basically living a double life and had me fooled my entire childhood, which really shatters a child's former reality and understanding of what they just went through, what they just grew up in, so there was some big earth shattering news there that happened that felt like a whole other level of abuse.
• 26:49
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: I really get this because you know my dad also remarried, and so like you think about it, well, 10 years in the in the history of an entire life, yes, it's a long time, but couldn't you get over it, but 10 years in the life of a teen,
• 27:03
  Unknown: when your mind is a sponge,
• 27:04
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: when your mind is a sponge, and you're looking for people to love you and help you and help you get through this, and so you trusted her, and it turns out she was leading a double life. So what happens? What landed you in the hospital?
• 27:16
  Unknown: So I started having suicidal ideations, and he admitted me into a psychiatric hospital for a period of, I believe, a week at first. This is where I was diagnosed.
• 27:30
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: People who aren't watching and you're just listening, Barb's putting giant quote marks with her fingers in that she was diagnosed.
• 27:37
  Unknown: Yes, diagnosed as bipolar disorder, and as we know, people with CPTSD, which is complex post-traumatic stress disorder, often get misdiagnosed with other mental illnesses. And this was my case. I was diagnosed as a teenager with bipolar disorder for three years. This is my own medical history, so I'm able to share this with the world. But I was placed on 1800 milligrams of lithium, on 50 milligrams of Zoloft, on trazodone, on Seroquel, and a buffet of psychotic antipsychotic medications between 15 and 18 years old. In that time frame, I attempted suicide three times after being
• 28:18
  placed on this medication. I never felt as detached from my body as I did while I was on these medications. I felt like I was in a brain fog permanently. That I just floated above it all. I lost all my friends. I only found friends. I again using the quotations here under friends, I only found a new group of friends through addiction. All the wrong crowds. All of my friends that I had in childhood had basically left. They saw the road I was going down, and this was early 2000s. We didn't talk about mental illnesses then. We don't discuss those things. We keep those things to
• 29:01
  ourselves. Well, and this
• 29:02
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: really touches into my own story. And when you and I first met, and we talked about this, this was a huge connection point. And just to bring my story into this a little bit, my mom was-I'm not really sure what happened because it was the '70s, so even 30 years prior to when you were going through this, and she was probably had postpartum or some kind of depressive state. There was definitely something going on, and they prescribed her Valium, which is what they did to women back then. It was what they did probably to anyone, but there were lots and lots of women, you
• 29:36
  know, sort of 60s housewives that were probably waking up. The sexual liberation movement was happening. They were figuring out that they had been suppressed. They wanted to go to work, and in that space, some were not. Some were struggling, and I think my mom was one of those. Oh yeah, and she was as
• 29:54
  Unknown: a woman, you can't speak up about mental illnesses because you're just hysterical.
• 29:58
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Oh, you're hysterical. You're anxious, you know. It's your period. It's your hormones. Then didn't know what to do. Here's some drugs, and so like different than you, and that you were put on actual mental health drugs. She was put on Valium, which eventually turned to Vicodin, which eventually turned to Norco. You know, whatever the drug of the day was, and there she stayed. But for the rest of her life, so from the time she was 22 until 70. So when I hear this from you, two things emerge in me. One is extreme empathy and compassion for because I don't know if
• 30:34
  someone told me when I was a teen that I was bipolar and that I had to take a bunch of drugs. I don't know that I would be able to get myself out of that, and clearly you did because you're sitting here today. So I want to hear that part of the story. So that's the first thing, and the second thing is just the resilience and somewhere inside you, this voice that said they are wrong. They're wrong about this. So what? Tell me, is that what happened?
• 31:02
  Unknown: Yeah. So, like we were just saying, children are sponges. And whenever I said in the beginning of this interview that my grandfather worked really hard to glue all of his family together, that he was such a lie in my life. He died when I was five years old, five or six, as a child who had someone so stable and so exuding of light and positivity and love and nourishment, I held on to every bit of him that I could, and that I believe wholeheartedly was my internal voice telling me, "You're better than this. You're more than this. You deserve more than this, and it really does just
• 31:44
  take that one caring adult to step in and say, "You know what? You're better than what's happened to you. You're capable of rewriting your story. You are not a product of your past. You get to create your future. And I truly feel like years of therapy and the questions that come from therapists is how are you able to be such an empathetic mother without a mother example at all, or how are you able to come off of this medication like you were just asking? And my answer wholeheartedly has always been my papaw, and that's what we in the South call grandfather. So he was my light, and he always has
• 32:22
  been. And he's he lives in me, and I feel like because I knew him, I was able to love myself more than I think I would have if he had died sooner in my life. I feel like he was just such an important role in my mental health and overall ability. Identity, your identity.
• 32:43
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: really right. That those first five years and telling you, and it's just remarkable that stayed and that that resilience pushed through. I mean, you are just, I marvel at you. I mean, just what you you're too kind. I'm not too kind, Barb. I'm not because I've met. I meet a lot of people, and people who have fallen victim to their own trauma and have had way less trauma, and who can't find that voice of resilience. If someone doesn't have that voice, that inner voice, how do they get it? What happens?
• 33:16
  Unknown: I would truly encourage you to look around and make sure that the people that you've surrounded yourself with truly have your best interest at heart, that truly love you for you. And if they don't, then you need a new group of friends. You need new family. You need newfound family. I looked around and I realized that my dad, I love him, and I have a very complicated relationship with him and his ghosts. But I knew that he did not have my best interest at heart, and I reconnected with an old childhood best friend of mine that I knew from our schoolyard days. That she loved me, that she
• 33:55
  knew me. She also saw the darkness. She had issues within her family, and she rose above that, and we just connected on such a sister level. I feel like if you look for those things in people, you will find them. If you look for people in your life that truly want what's best for you, they'll be there. So I urge anyone who's going through it that might not have that internal ability to have that resilience, maybe that was instilled in them at a young age. Is look around and make sure that your support group that you have currently is there for you, and not something that you can offer
• 34:30
  them, or just something out of convenience, or you're not just a title to them. That they truly love you for who you are, and if not, I promise you, there's people out there that that will love you, and then secondly, at the end of the day, it's all about finding the right therapist. Right before meeting my current therapist, Donna, I was in therapy for postpartum. I knew I had postpartum depression with my second child, so while I was pregnant, I saw. Out a mental health therapist specifically to help me through giving birth, the after feelings, and everything. And I realized maybe I
• 35:11
  think my youngest child she was like three or four months old, and it was my last appointment that I had with her. I didn't know it at the time, but it became my last appointment with her at the time, and I just realized that I think I know more about my mental health and my mental state than she does, and that I almost felt like I was there listening to her problems. And I get that some therapists want to relate to you and say, "Oh, well, I went through this, but that's like all that our therapy became was just her talking about her problems, and I'm still leaving in tears. So I realized this
• 35:47
  isn't working for me, and I took a break from therapy. And one of my support group people, my people in my life that I know love Barb for Barb, said, "Here's the name of this therapist who works with foster children on childhood trauma. Please give her a call, and I did, and that was the most life changing thing I've ever
• 36:12
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: done. So again, I think what you're saying is, if you are somebody who is suffering and feels alone and feels abandoned and unseen. Whether you're younger or in your 20s or your 30s or your 40s or your 50s, find at least one person. And if you can't find one person in your peer group who can really see you and who you can feel like you can be seen, like that to me is a big deal, right? Like, how many people actually allow me to be fully seen and still love me?
• 36:47
  Unknown: Yes, and you know,
• 36:49
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: I have good parts of myself. I have dark parts of myself, and like, there are certain people that will love the light and hate the dark.
• 36:56
  Unknown: Yeah,
• 36:56
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: but I want those people that love it all.
• 36:59
  Unknown: Yeah, that'll stand there in the dark. So find that,
• 37:01
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: and if you can't find someone, and you can't find a therapist, and if you can't afford therapy, then you reach out to Barbara. I we're saying that right now in this podcast. You DM
• 37:10
  Unknown: me.
• 37:11
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Yes, you DM Barbara.
• 37:12
  Unknown: I believe Patinka.
• 37:13
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: She believes in you, or me, Carrie Jacobs Corbetto. I want to talk about a little bit of the languaging that you shared with me. One of the things that stuck with me when we met is you talked about meditation as magic.
• 37:26
  Unknown: Yes, I
• 37:27
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: loved that. Tell me, why is meditation magic?
• 37:32
  Unknown: Yeah, so it's a way for you to disconnect from the world and enter your own little world of magic and healing and just visualization, and you're allowing all these feelings to exist, and you're just sitting with them. You're visualizing what you want to happen, almost in the level of manifestation, but just in the sense of healing. So, my series spells for surviving a haunted childhood. Each chapter ends in a corresponding spell, and I'm using quotes again under spell. So it's not witchcraft in your typical sense; it's actually meditative building blocks, and this is why
• 38:14
  it was recognized by the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. So these spells that are written out throughout the series are meditative building blocks to help readers ground themselves and gain more mindfulness, resilience, and awareness through these traumatic experiences. So the ingredients list for the spells are all grounding exercises. It's something that touches your senses, so a smell, a scent, a feeling, and then it's also like one of the ingredients on one of the spells is the way that somebody says your name kindly. You know, you're just imagining all of
• 38:48
  these things that help ground you. So it could be like the feeling of a blanket or the sound of your voice being said nicely, the smell of a candle that makes you feel at home, and then the directions. It basically is building up to where you're repeating a positive mantra about yourself to where you believe it. Your brain believes what you tell it. That's one powerful thing that I learned in therapy. If you tell yourself that you're worthless, well, guess what? You're going to feel pretty worthless. That's right.
• 39:15
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: And if you tell yourself you're a victim over and over and over again, once and I'm not saying I'm saying long after the trauma is done. So if you're in a traumatic state right now, that's a different story. But once the trauma is done, if you're continuing to tell yourself a victim and believe those stories, and believe that, as Barb said, I am better than this. I am more than this. This old story is not going to be the story I continue to live by, and you turn it around. I just love you, Barb, and one of the reasons why is because I can't imagine. And maybe people
• 39:50
  said this to me too that I had a certain amount of resilience, but I hear your story. I can't imagine finding just the power of you that you were born in these. Rural conditions, and here you are, 36 years old, which is not that long. You've got three beautiful children. You've got a healthy marriage. You've written three books. To have to find that kind of inner resilience is remarkable, especially in a world where I feel like there's a little bit too much around how we can't do it, how we can't survive, and we have to take these medicines. And I'm yes, absolutely not anti-medication.
• 40:29
  However, your story and my mom's story of two people I now directly know who have been medicated, and there are several more who probably could have gone through therapy, have worked their stuff, have worked through their trauma, and not be medicated.
• 40:47
  Unknown: Yeah, it was really important to me to not be medicated. I remember the feeling of feeling like brain fog, and feeling like a zombie, and feeling like I had no empathy for other people or myself, and that's dangerous. That's very dangerous.
• 41:02
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Neither of us are anti-medication.
• 41:05
  Unknown: Oh no! If you need it, absolutely. I 100% support anyone who needs anything medically. But for me, medications that are psychoactive or antipsychotic do not work. I've tried them all, and they don't work for me. Talk therapy was my saving grace with the right therapist,
• 41:28
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: and for me, also, I didn't want to go on medication because my mom had been an addict, so I was just fundamentally didn't want to put something in my body where I might end up like her. Now, chances are, I absolutely would have been put on some kind of anti-anxiety. What happened to me in the 80s and 90s happened today. You know, extreme panic disorder, showing up at the hospital every week, like I'm sick, I'm hurting, something's wrong. Absolutely, would have been medicated. It wasn't available, and I had to go into talk therapy and meditation, and had I had these
• 42:03
  amazing books, that really you're just disrupting something so beautifully-a category and a way of talking about things. I had books that were like self-help books, yeah. But you know, there's nothing better than storytelling that you get to learn because you feel emotionally attached to the characters, and you're learning about healing inside of that.
• 42:29
  Unknown: Yes, yes, exactly. I feel like through related and shared experiences, other people can see their own reflection in my story. And one really crucial part of my story is my character throughout the story is nameless, and I did that so that people who are reading can really immerse themselves in the story and feel like, what if this was me? Or I have gone through something so similar. This feels like it's written for me. So that was really important for me to for readers to be able to connect with this story and see themselves, and not only the bad parts but the good
• 43:03
  parts.
• 43:04
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: I love this so much. In a minute, we're going to do Trash Cantero, but before we do, can you tell us where to find your books and where to find you?
• 43:16
  Unknown: Yeah, absolutely. So my books are available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. They're also available through my website, hauntedlight.com. I sell them directly, or they're also available anywhere that books are sold online.
• 43:32
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: I absolutely recommend just knowing Barb, knowing who she is. There are just so few people I feel like in the world that I connect with immediately like this, and I feel so much trust in you because I can tell you've walked the walk. Like it just comes through, and I absolutely encourage and recommend you read her books. Okay, so let's do Trash Can Troy. Yes. So for those of you who don't know what this is? I am going to spin the proverbial trash can tarot reel and pick a surprise question for Barb, and it is: If healing had a mascot, what would be yours?
• 44:18
  Unknown: I'd say a source of light, whether that be a light bulb or a candle. In my series, I talk a lot about the darkness, and the light is definitely in relation to healing. That's the way that I can visualize my healing and visualize how I see light or darkness in others. So yeah, I would definitely say a source of light, maybe like a lantern, a really cool vintage lantern. I love
• 44:46
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: it. I see it's funny because mascot to me looks like somebody in one of those cheerleader, you know, the cheerleader. Oh yeah, I feel like this giant vintage lantern with the top. I know the
• 44:55
  Unknown: Pixar guy that like yeah that one yeah perfect.
• 45:00
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: Pixar guy,
• 45:01
  Unknown: yeah.
• 45:03
  Cari Jacobs-Crovetto: All right, my friend. It has been so lovely being with you here on this podcast, and I am so happy we have met. And Amy Lynn Durham from Magic Thread Media, the production company that produces this podcast and several others. I think Barb should have her own Podcast. Thanks. I would love
• 45:24
  Unknown: to have you as a guest on my future podcast. I would consider it done. It's done. It's done. Thank you again. Thank you so much, Carrie. I really appreciate the opportunity.