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My Fiancé Was A Pedophile: Her Reaction Is Heartbreaking · Babes, how did you get here

• 0:00
  I had gotten engaged. I was in a relationship for seven years. Okay. And this is... It's really crazy because it took me a long time to be able to talk about this openly because there was shame and guilt around it. But I found out my ex-fiance was a pedophile. Yeah. How did you find this out? It was...
• 0:20
  It was three weeks before our wedding. It was right after the wedding shower. And there was someone in my family. Okay. And so I was told by the parent. And I had a really hard time wrapping my head around it because...
• 0:36
  People make the assumption that pedophiles are, you know, these repulsive people that you can identify. Sure. Completely not the case. We're talking like Pierce Brosnan wrapped in Ben F. Like with charming humor and just salt of the earth. Would shovel our neighbor's yard because she had cancer. Came from a big warm Irish Catholic family. Would never have known.
• 1:01
  We're dropping new episodes every single week. So make sure you subscribe. You don't want to miss this, babes. And leave a comment and tell me, what do you want to hear out of my next conversation? Your support really helps this community grow. And if you know someone who's quietly been thinking, should they take that next big leap? Babes, send them the podcast.
• 1:20
  Lilly is a singer, songwriter, and addiction advocate who spent her early years in foster care before being adopted and taken from Thailand to America. Although she grew up in LA, she has recently made the incredible decision to return to Thailand, reclaim her Thai citizenship, and begin the deeply personal search for her birth mother. I'm so excited for today's conversation, but before we get into all of the details, I have to ask, babes, how did you get here?
• 1:48
  Wow, that's a loaded question. It's a long time coming because I left when I was four, but...
• 1:58
  It just kind of happened very quickly, the move to Thailand. And it was really the fact that I'm seeing myself getting older and realizing as an adoptee, if I want to find my birth parents, I may not be able to have the luxury of waiting longer. Sure. Yeah. And that was something that I had on my mind more because of it's something I know is really important for the healing process.
• 2:25
  Even though I'd never had a burning desire to need to know, it just, something kind of changed when I started getting older. And that led me to think, wow, I wonder if I could get my citizenship as a Thai adoptee. It was nothing I'd ever thought about. And the more I uncovered, which interestingly enough was through Facebook group, they had one for Thai citizenship and I learned
• 2:51
  that I am considered a Thai citizen I just need to reclaim it and prove with the paperwork and now with the help of the adoption agency and so I said I want to move here you know let's just move here I've been living so I was living in LA for 13 years but actually did grow up on the east coast originally and um
• 3:13
  I just knew it was time for a change. Okay. And something, I think, kind of switched in my journey and my spiritual journey, too. And especially as I, you know, began the undertaking of, like, really embracing being an artist. Okay. There is a whole side, I think, to being an artist, which to...
• 3:33
  My art was used to heal me as an outlet before I was healed. And then as I healed, it was a part of the journey too. Before we even get to there, do you remember a time when you were younger? And did you always know that you were adopted? Yes.
• 3:49
  Yeah. Okay. So I always laugh when people ask me because I'm what's called transracially adopted. Okay. I didn't know that was a term, but it makes sense. Yeah. So that means that I was adopted into a family that was not Thai. They weren't Asian. They're actually Caucasian. Okay. So I very much stood out. And especially growing up in rural Pennsylvania where there weren't other Asians or people of color. Right. And so that was probably...
• 4:17
  Yeah, there was no denying I was adopted. But I don't think being that young, you really understand what that means. Do you remember when you started? Because I love the beauty in children is that they don't care, right? They don't see the things that adults see, and they're not tainted in that way to notice differences. For example, you go to the playground, and as long as you're nice to me, I'll play with you, and we keep it moving. Do you know at what age you started to appreciate what being transracially adopted meant in terms of your experiences
• 4:47
  family? I think it took me a long time to appreciate it because I my experience as a transracial adoptee unfortunately made me kind of self-loathe that I was Asian. Okay. Yeah there was growing up in a neighborhood where you I think as human beings as children you want to feel a part of you want to feel like you belong and so when you're the only one that looks like you the experience is very isolating and so
• 5:15
  I want, all I wanted to do was like be accepted and be like everyone else. So I had, I would always ask my friends, like, do I look Asian? I don't really think I look that Asian. And I didn't realize until I got much older and I really dove into my identity things that I was really struggling with understanding what it means to be Asian. And I think because of the time I grew up in the eighties in rural Pennsylvania and I,
• 5:43
  there just wasn't a lot of education in the area with people being versed to people of different cultures. Like they automatically just would call me Chinese and things like that, you know? And I think
• 5:58
  Part of the rite of passage too, my friends were like having their first kiss, having their boyfriend and this. And I was like, oh my God, no one likes me because I just, I look so different. And do you know why your parents decided to come to Thailand to adopt? So my father was actually an officer in Vietnam. Oh.
• 6:17
  Okay. Yeah. And so he was young. They went young and they didn't really know what was going on during that war. And it was after the fact. And I think there was a guilt he had from his participation in that war. And he...
• 6:32
  saw a lot of really terrible things. He never doesn't really talk about them. And so they had initially tried to adopt from Vietnam, but they couldn't. And so then they adopted me. And I think this is very common in adoption, especially because a lot of times families do it because of infertility. But what I've noticed in my own, I can speak about my own, is that
• 6:54
  you know, there's this hole that my father had from the war. And I think adopting a child from Southeast Asia was going to somehow, he felt kind of heal that wound, you know? Before we continue, make sure that you join our community by clicking the link below. You will get to choose thumbnails before the episodes go live, pick our next destinations, even recommend guests. I really cannot wait for you to help me shape where this podcast goes.
• 7:21
  Did you have other siblings in your family? So growing up, I had an older brother who was my adoptive family's biological son who was three years older. Okay. Yeah. And then many years later, my father ended up divorcing and remarrying. And I have a younger sister who's 15 years younger than me, adopted from Cambodia. Okay. Yeah. And, uh...
• 7:45
  Are you guys close? We are. But I think it's a different dynamic because I'm so much older, you know? And one thing I've learned, too, is with the adoption stuff, I allow people to have the space to kind of go through their own process. So although I may be doing my thing and moving back here and locating my birth family, I do not by any means try to... Presume that everyone's going to have that journey. Yeah, yeah.
• 8:14
  And your older brother, how is your relationship? So it's interesting because our family is, my adoptive family is all very, they're from German background. And so what I've noticed, and I'm talking to other people with the same heritage and their families is that, it's not necessarily the most warm.
• 8:33
  Warm culture, and so there wasn't a lot of affection in terms of showing love and stuff like that. And so our family is actually not very good at keeping communication. So I recently, I was back in the United States. Unfortunately, my father passed away this spring.
• 8:55
  but I was able to come back in time to see him before he passed but it was the first time I had a lot of things in regards to my adoptive mother that were kind of really hard to understand I was younger but now
• 9:11
  I was talking to my brother and he told me that our mother has never actually tried and called him either. She's never reached out and initiated communication. You know, so this whole time I'm thinking, oh, it's me because I'm adopted. So these are the kinds of things that I've been learning to unravel in this journey.
• 9:32
  That must be really difficult to know what are the things that you can attribute to being adopted and what are just as they are. Yeah. And I think that is something that happens, I think, with anyone who's gone through some sort of trauma. Mm hmm.
• 9:47
  And it's something that I think we have to be very careful navigating because when you're uncovering, you're uncovering, you're talking about your trauma and you're getting all these things out, you have to be very careful that you're really looking through a lens of someone who's not still in pain. Yes. Yes.
• 10:05
  Yeah, and that's a hard, I mean, this has been a long journey. Part of it was sobriety too. Right. So that began this whole journey of getting me to where I am now, to wanting to move here and look for my biological parents was the sobriety. Before your decision, when you were growing up, did you have this niggling idea of wanting to know, wanting to have more answers?
• 10:30
  or is it literally more in your adulthood that you've decided that this is what I want to do? Yeah, it was literally more in my adulthood. Really? Yeah. And it really wasn't like, I think, so part of, for me, my emotional makeup ended up being very guarded, and I detached and dissociated and would tell myself, oftentimes, things that really mattered to me didn't matter. Because it was a way for me to protect. So in that vein,
• 11:00
  it never thinking about wanting to find my parents and all that. I just was so far removed emotionally from being able to even think like that. Can I ask, do you think that if you weren't in a transracial adoption, so let's say you were adopted, but you were white and you looked like you came from Pennsylvania or you looked more like your family. Do you think that your journey as in dealing with some of the traumas would have been easier?
• 11:27
  Well, I can say because I actually, I'm very involved in the adoptee community. Sure. And I know that adoptees, even adopted into same race families, have a lot of adjustment issues because of the early childhood abandonment and the inability to know how to form attachments. And so it creates,
• 11:53
  On one level, the same feeling of not belonging, not being wanted that I have. But the thing that a lot of them, and they'll say this to me, I don't say, like they say, I couldn't imagine what it was like for you. To have an extra layer. Extra layer. Right. Yeah. For me, most people don't realize it because they...
• 12:16
  they don't really, the concept of someone being transracially adopted isn't in their sphere. Why would it be? It's not in their experience. Sure. So that's why a lot of times people are like, why don't you speak Thai or something? And I have to explain like I was adopted. My family is a white, but they don't put those. Why would they put those things together? So it's an assumed, you know, perceived identity, you know? Yeah. And there was almost like
• 12:43
  At one point, I've had so many shifts in how I internalized my identity that I almost had a badge of honor because I was a little bit indoctrinated with some very racist stereotypes from my environment. And so that, I think, is what caused this...
• 13:02
  this self-loathing to a degree because can you explain what some of those yeah like i think and it's portrayed in the media and things as well you know that asians are very submissive very weak and and and those are all qualities that i just didn't identify with
• 13:18
  It's funny because I think when I look at Asian women or like the Asian households from an outsider's perspective, I see so many similarities with black culture, right? Like the way mothers mother and their disciplined and certain things, the way that it's centered around food. Like there's a certain things that I see. I'm like, that could be a black woman, right? She just happens to be Asian, which is completely contradictory to this idea of submission.
• 13:43
  Well, the interesting thing that you say that is that that is the community I had gravitated to quite a bit. And that had a lot of influence in why I sing the music. I sing in R&B. Black communities. Black communities, black culture. But for me, that connection came through the common thread of music. And because even though my family was Caucasian, they listened to Motown. They listened to Aretha. They listened to Sade. And so I grew up listening to that and singing that. And so for me...
• 14:12
  That's the beauty of what music was able to do for me, was it blurred those lines. There was no, you can't sing this because you're not African American. I believe soul is a feeling, not a color. 100%. And I've experienced different discrimination within the music industry from other people of color. Because they're just like, what's she doing here? And then you just open your mouth and you're like,
• 14:43
  That's why I'm here, babes. When you say that these stereotypes you didn't identify with, did that add a complexity to you being able to just shape your own identity? Yeah, I would say that it probably caused me to overexert more of a dominant, confident persona because I wanted people to be like, I'm not like that. And that's where the self-loathing came from because I was making these associations that this is what people think of Asian people.
• 15:13
  You know, like I said, it's just such a submissive portrayal that's not accurate at all. Yeah. You know? Do you... So...
• 15:22
  In my mind, obviously, the number one goal when it comes to any adoption is that a child gets to go to a loving home, right? In Jamaica, I worked with children's homes for years and years when I was with Jamaica. And I saw so much of, like, just pain from abandonment. And it can come in different forms, right? My mother left me when I was a teenager. And so it was a lot later, as in I came home one day and the maid told me that she was gone, right? Oh, my gosh. Still, that's...
• 15:48
  But I lied about it for about two to three years. I would make excuses to my best friend and say that she was working. When I graduated high school, she was on a work trip. Like I just lied because I was embarrassed. I was shamed. I felt that we hear so much of this mother-daughter bond or mother-child bond. And although in my brain I knew it wasn't my fault,
• 16:11
  sometimes your brain and your feelings don't marry, right? And I think that that's kind of how I got into working in children's homes, because in the beginning it was, oh, I can help them.
• 16:22
  But I tell people all the time, philanthropy is never one way. Like it might start off with you thinking that way, but ultimately they helped heal me like immeasurably because I, with them, I began speaking about those feelings of abandonment because that was the way they were able to see that we had a connection.
• 16:41
  Prior to those conversations, I was Miss Jamaica with a crown, and I could never understand their experiences. And so I've often thought about things like adoption, just through my work with these young girls.
• 16:54
  I completely see the benefits of being adopted irrespective of race, religion, class, all of those things. However, more and more now we see white mothers asking for help on how to comb black girls' hair because they've adopted a black child. And I think it's great that people are willing to do the work. But I do think that sometimes, particularly with celebrity glorification of, oh, I'm just going to go to a destination and I'm going to adopt a child.
• 17:18
  I do get the impression that it's minimized the added layer. And with that added layer, I do think that the adopted family have more work to do. And I just wondered that in your position, do you think that's a fair portrayal or do you think it's irrelevant?
• 17:34
  I think it's very relevant. Okay. Within my own family, there's not only myself and my sister adopted from Asia. I have a cousin who's adopted from China. Okay. And so I've gotten to see how each parental unit has raised each child differently. And unfortunately for my situation...
• 17:52
  My adoptive parents were hiding a divorce they were going through. And so there was a brokenness and emotional unavailability. My adoptive mother and I never bonded. And it was interesting because I was listening to a podcast the other day and I just it never clicked with me. I started to click with me that.
• 18:12
  Um, the resentments I was holding on to with her, I didn't realize, I started to realize it must've been really hard for her to have a child that wasn't bonding because I do remember a time and she was really trying to have that bond cause I was almost four when I came. And then I was like, that is exact same thing that happens to women who have postpartum. Okay.
• 18:33
  So I never used that term, but I was like, no, that is exactly what happened. And I think incredibly common, there's a book called The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier, and it discusses, she's a psychologist who has an adopted child.
• 18:51
  and she has really come to understand and use language that adoptees, we've kind of taken her book as our Bible in a way because it's putting language to feelings we had, and because they don't have a context in our life, we thought we were kind of crazy, and nobody...
• 19:10
  could understand what we're talking about because it took a lot of time for me before I connected with other people who were adopted. I just wasn't, I just thought I was alone in the world. Right. Um, and so now when you look at the whole dynamic and that's why I'm really careful being able to share my experience and my feelings, but not to discount that there's other people involved and there's other dynamics coming on, you know, with what was attached to their experience with it too. Um,
• 19:39
  It does it takes a really heightened amount of like conscientiousness as Just an adoptive parent let alone one of a child of a different culture And when you say that you're like your cousin from from China or your younger sister. Oh, so the differences. Yeah, okay so
• 19:57
  My aunt chose to make the move geographical from living in Cape Cod to Boston, where there was more of an urban city. There was actually other adoptees. And they took Chinese lessons, you know, and she could take Chinese ribbon dance. There's just more opportunities for her to connect with her culture. My sister, they still stayed in kind of rural New Jersey, but they would take trips to Lowell, Massachusetts, which has the largest Cambodian population in the U.S.,
• 20:27
  and go to events and stuff for my sister there. And then my dad got really involved with a nonprofit that helps young kids get educated and then teach them a craft so they can be self-sufficient. And so that isn't real, and that's really great because now going through the experience that I have,
• 20:47
  I'm a big advocate of family preservation and that adoption should be the absolutely last resort because there is just so much trauma that a child undergoes. And especially in the international, you know, you add that component too.
• 21:03
  Do you think that sometimes a family may not consider, not the immersive experience, but getting closer to the child's home culture because that is in essence magnifying a difference? Like I might think that the more I take you to Thai cultural events or the more I take you to a Thai auntie, and when I say auntie, I mean like how we call everybody auntie.
• 21:29
  but that might be heightening this idea that you're not the same as us? I think for sure, and I think in the particular case where you're talking about a mother who has tried desperately to bond with her child,
• 21:45
  if that bond isn't secure, there's an insecurity that develops. Right. That if there's something that this child is going to identify easier with, and it's not me, that I think can be hard for some people to manage. Yeah, to manage, you know.
• 22:03
  So it takes a certain type of person to really be able to take this on. And, you know, like I said, the dynamic in my family was just not conducive for that. You know, there were just too many people that were hurt and needed to self-soothe themselves, much less try to soothe the child that was, you know, coming with trauma.
• 22:25
  Tell me music. You mentioned that you found music and it heals, but also that there's an evolution of your story with music. Yeah, it's interesting because...
• 22:36
  It was something that I always had in my life young. I grew up, my mom was from a traditional family. And so both my brother and I, we had to play the piano. And I was kind of like forced to do it. Me too. My dad threatened to kick me out the horse. I was about eight. And he said, if you don't keep practicing, you have to. And I believed him. I was eight. I hated practicing. Why did you hate practicing? Why?
• 22:57
  I, because I'm so stubborn and if someone forces me to do something, you resist, I resist and we didn't own a piano. So my mom at the time was actually very involved with the church. And so we would go to the church and I would practice and I don't know, I ended up playing the piano in church. I sang in the choir and, um, I did. And it was in our town is a lot of retired people at that time. So it was like me and like 50 and 60 year old women. And I was like,
• 23:26
  and then like i'm asian you know what i mean like i just i just i remember because i look so ridiculous in the robe you know because it didn't fit but i did so i i grew up with music in that way and then i always used to watch the musical annie and i would sing it at the top of my lungs and i i didn't understand the depth of maybe why i connected with that particular music if anyone's
• 23:56
  and so I would always sing the sun will come out someday I think at the top of my lungs all day what age are we talking about? I was probably so I was given Annie to watch often and then musicals like The King and I I think that was the way that I was getting connected to my story I guess you know the universe was sending signs yeah um yeah
• 24:23
  I was I gosh I was probably like started watching those six seven okay yeah because there is a period where I don't remember a lot when I came to the country the shock I think it caused me to disassociate okay so I was actually told I I cried for like six months straight when I mean when you just arrived in America and then I was learning the language on my own too so I repeated kindergarten those kind of like some
• 24:47
  Some of the American rite of passage cultural things I don't remember because there's like a chunk of my life I just can't remember. Probably just a compartmentalized. Do you remember any of your life before you came to America? I don't. But when I first came back to Thailand in 2000, the thing that triggered just a sense of like I've been here before was the smells. Yeah, I've always been very heightened to smells like I love cooking and
• 25:14
  smell and they say memory and smell is really tightly connected so for me it sounds so weird but the smell of durian it is the to me embodies thailand and i was born in bangkok okay and so when i well that's a kind of a weird smell because if anyone knows it's called the stinky fruit right it's definitely distinctive it's like banned you can't bring it
• 25:38
  into certain there's signs everywhere no hotel rooms even when you airbnb there's a sign the elevator that's what like triggered you know this sense of like i've been here before for me and even to this day like i buy it at the supermarket i just keep it in a little airtight container my fridge um
• 25:59
  Oh my God, so it's the smell of durian and being back that gave you this presence. Yeah, and since now, spending a little bit of time since I moved here, it's been very easy for me to connect with the aspect of a culture where people are just very thoughtful and compassionate and kind. It's something that I was feeling was lacking when I was getting ready to leave the United States, and it was very refreshing to feel that when I came here.
• 26:28
  Are there other things growing up that you felt were different? So I can imagine that although you don't have distinctive memories, you know, describing that you're used to like a warmth that perhaps wasn't where you were living now. And also something now that I'm learning more about Thai culture, this there's a Thai phrase for it, but I'm still learning Thai. But it's this, um,
• 26:49
  way of conducting yourself where you're not doing anything to inconvenience other people which is a very much a part of Thai culture which is very different from American culture where it's very like be very vocal and outspoken about what you need
• 27:04
  And I remember there was an incident where I had got, I was, I did not speak English. That much I do know. So there's little sound bites I have. And I had got my finger stuck in the bike chain and we have bikes on the back porch and my mom was having people come over. And so they're walking by me and I was just acting like everything was normal. Because you didn't want to inconvenience others.
• 27:26
  And so that pattern continued throughout my life. And it wasn't really until I was working in my sobriety and working with a therapist that I didn't realize how much I would make these rationalizations and excuses for not speaking up for myself because I would think in the space of recovery and healing that other people needed it more than me. And so...
• 27:54
  You could see the roots of that kind of... Yeah, and that I think also was threaded into the abandonment and not feeling worthy and good enough, you know. Can I ask, when did you start therapy? So there was one time we started it in high school. And the therapist, there aren't a lot, there aren't really many adoptive competent therapists.
• 28:16
  And they actually said to me, I think you're fine, and I think you're really well-adjusted for everything you've gone through. And so it was something that was really prompted by my adoptive parents because they just couldn't control me to be the way they wanted. I was very active in school. I went to private boarding school, and I was very active in extracurricular activities. I started a dance program. Like, dance was my first love. Okay.
• 28:41
  Very much I danced professionally in a dance company. I was younger, spent the summer in Saratoga, and we had the New York City Ballet, teaching classes, like this whole thing. Art was just in my, in me. And,
• 28:56
  And so it was I'm starting. I think you are explaining what your parents why they encouraged therapy. Okay, so they encouraged therapy because they were concerned that I wasn't being more focused academically. Okay. And my grades were still good, but they wanted them to be like the best. Sure. And.
• 29:15
  like they have a son who's their biological son and he fit the prototype of what they wanted. Just very into school and just nerding out on everything. Not so much on his creativity. Yeah, yeah. And the irony is my parents met at Pratt, which is an art college in New York City. Yeah, I used to live around the corner.
• 29:36
  So my mom was an art history professor and then my father was an architectural designer and actually helped design the... So both creatives. Yes, they're both creatives. But I think in the creative world, they were in a space that had stability, you know, with work and stuff. Yep. Which is nothing with my life doesn't speak to that at all.
• 30:00
  So they thought that through therapy, you could perhaps get on this path. Yeah. Yeah. And I think every parent does do these things motivated out of concern and out of love, you know? How did you feel? Because I know that I felt devastated, especially with the dance.
• 30:17
  I was auditioning in New York City. I had done the summer program in Saratoga where I really excelled. And they even gave me a really principal role. And I'm there with girls who went to School of American Ballet, which is the school that prepares the dancers to go to the New York City Ballet. Right.
• 30:35
  And it was the first time I started to really feel like, wow, like you're and my my new teacher that I had started taking from at that point was really encouraging me because she was like, you're you have very well built for like the modern dance. But my mother, who was not a dancer, but from a different time, really indoctrinated a certain type of.
• 30:57
  body stuff. And I think that's common with like women from a certain age. What do you mean? Well, in terms of like body image and expectations for women, but also for me pursuing ballet. And I was always athletic, like
• 31:12
  Oh gosh, think of nowadays you have more examples. There's that African-American ballerina who's really well known and she's very muscular and she's kind of told the same thing and she broke that mold. Misty Copeland. I was never even that muscular, but at the time muscular enough
• 31:30
  You were more muscular than this fine, petite image of what a ballerina is. Yeah, so my mother told me, like, you know, you don't have the body type for it. Yet my dance teacher was telling me different things, right? Yeah, and so it's crushing when somebody, you know, tells you you can't do your dream. And so I started to associate doing the arts with, it's okay to do them as a recreation, as a hobby, and be cultured, but not professionally. Yeah.
• 31:59
  Right. And now years later, one of my good friends is Tina Turner's niece, who's a phenomenal singer. And when she shared me, you know, some of her recordings, I was like, oh, my gosh. She's like, yeah, Tina had invited me to go on tour with her and my parents wouldn't let me.
• 32:16
  Really? Yeah. And I think now... You said Tina Turner is her aunt? Yeah. And her parents would not let her go on tour with her aunt who is Tina Turner? They are. But now, let's look at the things that are coming out in the music industry. Okay. So they were coming in from a protective...
• 32:32
  Okay, because you know my head went straight to, of course you're going. And now, you know, what she does in the world is so impactful. You know, she has positions in diplomatic spaces over in South Africa. And a lot of, we got, we connected when we were doing philanthropic work during the pandemic. So I think...
• 32:50
  It was coming from a good place. It was coming from a good place. And I think our journeys, I truly believe, especially as I've gotten older, you know, I've come to believe in my higher power and have a really strong faith practice in my personal life that all these things were meant to happen, to shape who we are, to make the decisions and become who we are today. Sure. You know, and I had a conversation yesterday with someone because we were really getting deep. And, you know,
• 33:20
  It was about the idea of agency. Do we truly have agency in our life? And I believe we do. As a Christian woman, I still believe that, God has always given us choice in our life. But also, it's important to know that
• 33:40
  although we have agency, we don't know everything. And that little space right there is when you can acknowledge you don't know everything and you're not in full control. Because as a recovering alcoholic, one of the things that we have to really untwist is this
• 33:59
  this need to control things and feeling like we can. And it usually causes more instability in our lives than we realize than letting go and trusting that something else is going to be able to carry what we are trying so desperately to do that it's not really our decision of whether we're able to do this or not the way we want, because that isn't necessarily
• 34:25
  the best thing for us it's like dating i think i'm at the worst ticker and we sometimes are not the best judges of what's best for us sure you know and i think that's kind of how i look at these experiences there's so many things that you have said so many so when you first start therapy
• 34:48
  Are you open to it? And the reason I ask is because so I was in hospital for attempting suicide when I was 17. And so I really resisted therapy for a long time because I'm not sure what to attribute it to, whether it's black culture, Jamaican culture or just a personal. I felt that by admitting I needed therapy, then there's something deeper wrong with me that I wasn't able to accept that I had things to work on.
• 35:13
  And however, I also had to appreciate that in order for me to continue living, I needed some help. I needed some support. I needed some way of navigating that. And therapy didn't work out for me in the sense that it felt a bit like a pity party.
• 35:43
  In the grand scheme of things, I was also very cognizant of my privileges. So it felt really uncomfortable to be constantly like, you know, this wasn't very cool. This wasn't nice. When at the same time, you were never hungry. You know, you were never in need of anything. And it could have been a lot worse. I then appreciated that...
• 36:04
  you kind of have to find the therapist that you click with, you know? And I tell people all the time, like I treat it like a Rolodex, right? I don't feel the need to spend too much time with a therapist if I just feel like it's not working. I think, so for me, part of the challenge with getting myself to therapy, the first experience I had wasn't bad because it validated, it validated me. And I was actually hopeful that we were gonna have group sessions, but that happened once and that was it. And then it was just me and I was like, what the fuck?
• 36:35
  And so, over the years I kept telling myself I want to go to therapy, but because of my alcoholism, I never followed through with it. Can you talk me through when you realize that alcohol is an issue?
• 36:50
  So it wasn't until I had moved to Los Angeles and that geographic was done under duress. Okay. Yeah. So how old are you at this point? So at the move to the move. Okay. So I was just turning 30. Okay. And I had been living in Boston for 10 years. Right. And during that time I had gotten engaged. I was in a relationship for seven years. Okay. And.
• 37:17
  This is, it's really crazy because it took me a long time to be able to talk about this openly because there was shame and guilt around it. But I found out my ex-fiance was a pedophile. Yeah. How did you find this out? It was...
• 37:32
  It was three weeks before our wedding. It was right after the wedding shower. And there was someone in my family. Okay. And so I was told by the parent. And I had a really hard time wrapping my head around it because...
• 37:48
  people make the assumption that pedophiles are, you know, these repulsive people that you can identify. Sure. Completely not the case. Yeah. We're talking like Pierce Brosnan wrapped in Ben F, like with charming humor and just salt of the earth would shovel our neighbor's yard because she had cancer. Came from a big, warm Irish Catholic family would never have known. And I already was almost 11 years younger than him. And I,
• 38:15
  I try to dive into this understanding that dynamic. Now looking back, I'm like, why didn't anyone say anything? Isn't that weird? And I realized, well, your father remarried a woman who is 15 years younger than him. So the I mean, when I was in college, my boyfriend was 22 years older than me. Yeah. And now that we're having this conversation out loud, I'm like, yeah. I mean, if my daughter came and said that she was dating someone 20. But again.
• 38:39
  it's so circumstantial in the moment. Yeah, so this experience, at the time I was actually in school as an English major and a pre-law student. I had a letter of recommendation to go to Harvard Law School. My professor was my advisor and also taught there. So...
• 38:56
  I was I had there is a whole bunch of my life there at 19 I like withdrew from college I'd gone to Smith which is an all-women's college outside of Boston and told my adoptive family I don't want anything to do with you and I went my separate way so I had Definitely this collision with the adoption issues and just unresolved resentments and was the first that was the first time experienced any issues with
• 39:21
  feeling a grief from being abandoned. She came out of nowhere, triggered by a picture of an Asian woman on a Vogue magazine, and I looked in the mirror and I thought, why would someone wanna give me up? And I just started crying. And I never, my mind had never gone there before. And that's when you pushed your family? I pushed my family away, because what triggered all that was my father, whom I was closest to,
• 39:45
  suffered a really debilitating accident that caused him to be in a coma for four months and suffer a head injury. And what I didn't realize at the time was that these were losses and they triggered my initial loss of my abandonment from my mother.
• 40:04
  But I just, I didn't have the words to understand. I was just trying to survive because I started to, this is a trigger warning if anyone has a food issue, but that's when I started binging and then I started withholding food.
• 40:22
  and around the time of the accident. Yeah. And you're at college. And I was drinking, you know, so I was engaging in all these different behaviors to try to escape what I was feeling. Did you know at the time that that's what you were doing? Or is that in hindsight?
• 40:37
  In hindsight, I think. But I think with the food thing, I realized that I was falsely believing that I was trying to control. I was having control over something when it was completely the opposite. And there was a lot of secrecy, and I was hiding it. And there were rumors in the dorm from other girls. And that age, anyway. Yeah.
• 41:02
  Forget dealing with so much that you have on your plate. But when you're going to college and you're starting off in this new, there's already so much. So my best friend's mother growing up is a therapist. And I actually, when I withdrew from school, told my parents I didn't want anything to do with them. I stayed, lived with her. And to compensate living there, I painted her whole house inside. And I started working at a restaurant, you know, at a little soup and sandwich place and saved money to move to Boston.
• 41:32
  How long was this period of I don't want to deal with you? It was a year. You didn't speak to them? I didn't speak to them for a year. I wouldn't tell them where I was. I think they knew I was in Boston, because I stayed with my aunt for the first month. You know what I mean? But there was no communication. There was no communication. But what I was meaning to say, I was trying to fit so much, but my best friend's mom, who's a psychologist, was like, Lily, what you experienced in college was clinical depression.
• 42:01
  Everything you went through, you shut down, you removed yourself from society. Like I literally stopped going to classes. And this also was when I started to realize I have some strong opinions and I think our academic system is a sham. And so Smith College is one of the seven sister schools which was originally created for women as a women, female version of the Ivy League colleges. So these are like the best institutions in our country.
• 42:27
  And the fact that I was able to skate by not going to classes and not fail or get on academic probation showed me, like, it doesn't really take that much, you know. And it was also the first time I experienced that.
• 42:45
  It was interesting because I grew up in a family that provided the means and the resources of a great education. But there was something internally inside me that felt this. There was this discord and disconnect with watching these privileged women hold candle vigils and believe they were making a difference. And I just somehow I knew despite the context of how I was raised. And I really that's where I really believe like nature versus nature.
• 43:12
  nurture comes into play because there was four years I spent where I learned later that I ran around the slums of Bangkok and when I came to the United States I know how to defend myself like I wouldn't take anything and you know even says it in my adoption records but there were also things that I understood that most children don't.
• 43:33
  Okay. You know, like, for instance, in America, I was at the playground going down the slide, and one of the parents, the father, was helping me down, and he touched me inappropriately. I never said anything to anybody, but I sternly told him when he asked to help again, no, I don't need your help. Right. Because I knew that that was wrong. But I don't know how many kids would have known that at that age if no one talked to them about it. Yep. So, yeah.
• 43:58
  somewhere in my development before I got here you knew how to protect and defend yeah and you know because people don't realize that life is so much different in other countries you know when there's poverty and stuff life is very expendable you know wow but
• 44:16
  Yeah, so there's a lot, I think, that I formed in my identity that I wasn't conscious. When did you meet your ex-fiancee? Because you jumped into you being 19. Okay, so my life was kind of chronicled through different boyfriend eras. Okay, yeah. I can't be the only female. But I had a Jamaican boyfriend who was so sweet, Jamaican-American. And I was with him from 19 to 21. Okay. And then I...
• 44:46
  And then there was, shortly after that, I think there was maybe a few month period or so before I met my ex-fiance. Okay. No, no, no. Hold on. No, no, no. I'm skipping. I'm skipping. Who have we ignored? So, yeah. So then there was...
• 45:03
  Asian boyfriend I had from college. He was living in Boston. I forgot to mention part of my Asian identity crisis in college like really exploded when all these things imploded. You had the abandonment. You had the father in the accident. And then you had what does it mean to be Asian? Right.
• 45:21
  I thought by dating Asian men, I was going to be more Asian. So I only dated Asian guys in college. But it was my only way of being able to have someone who could teach me more about the culture, I guess, in my eyes. Was it specifically Thai? No, he was Vietnamese. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. There was a way for you to get a little bit more connected. And it made me feel like I belong. Okay. You know?
• 45:47
  It's so, you know, it's silly now when I look back at it. I think it makes complete sense. Yeah. And then I had joined an orientation group for women of color when I went to Smith. And that's when I first really met other people of color. You know, there was a few in high school that I sang with, you know, and that's how I associated, you know, I got connected with more of the African-American community. But this is when I first met.
• 46:11
  kids who had grown up biracial and mixed race. And that clicked so much for me because they were in this liminal space and being caught between two cultures. Yes, they at least, yeah, we know, they had a parent from each one, but it doesn't matter because the way they walked through life, their lived experience was so much like mine.
• 46:31
  Yeah, and also having the parent, it's funny because my kids are obviously black, but they're white and Chinese. Yeah. And I think I raised them as young black girls, right? And I was only thinking about this the other day, again, because I was seeing more mixed families and people were identifying different things that they're having to do to accommodate.
• 46:50
  different cultures within the home, right? Within like a two parent household. And I initially took my girls to a few Chinese speaking classes because I want them to be connected with all of them. I'd be lying to you if I didn't acknowledge also they are Jamaican through and through, right? Like that's just how we roll, babes. That's like number one. But I realized that as a black mother, I can't prepare them for a mixed race experience, right? In my mind,
• 47:18
  Also, I do think it's a little bit different from the one-drop rule days, right? They, to me, are young black girls. However, someone else said, how is it for you traveling with one twin that looks white because she's blonde with, like, hazel eyes and the other twin that looks Chinese? And I swear to you,
• 47:36
  I didn't see that. I didn't look at my daughter. And yes, her hair is blonde. And yes, it's a bit bizarre. But I didn't see her as a white girl with a tan. He said, oh, yeah, that's just a white girl with a tan. I was like, no, she's not. And so, like you say, even though you could be from a mixed race family and you have
• 47:54
  whether it's black and white or Asian and white, whatever the mix is, as the parent, you still only have your masterboard, if you like, for how you've experienced life. And I still think that it takes learning to understand how to leave space for the fact that your child's experience will still not mimic your own. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's crazy. So you meet your ex-fiancee.
• 48:22
  Yeah, so I just turned 23. I just turned 23 because there was the Vietnamese boyfriend before that. And it was, I mean, I had this pattern of just going with the flow.
• 48:37
  know and I I was very just I don't know like just wanted to I was having a good time I thought it was everything was gonna be a rebound I was never expecting these things to turn serious so the Asian boyfriend moved me in right away I mean his mom like it's all on and I'm like he's like you know she's ready to get married he's a little bit older he was 29 and I was 22
• 48:59
  But this was the dynamic. So I had decided to go off on my own. And it really was this like crash course in life, you know. And I was so stubborn that I believed that I was more capable than I was to withstand just life things. And so this man was not like a good man, you know. And he turned out to be an abusive person. And so when that began, I'd never experienced anything like it in my life.
• 49:28
  And I got out. So he tried to first he would threaten me, tell me he knew the police and he had a gun under his head. And then he one time choked me, which I didn't understand. I always thought, oh, that's not a big deal. Like he didn't hit me. And then I learned later from people who are in domestic abuse situations.
• 49:48
  They're like, no, that's very serious because he's trying to kill you. It's actually considered more than yeah, more violent than if someone just hit you. So I mean, I just had no context because I didn't grow up in a home with any of these things, you know, and that was the part of me that foolishly gravitated rebelliously to things that were just completely different than what I experienced. So take me back to when you meet your ex fiancee.
• 50:14
  Alright, so I met my ex-fiancee when I was still in a relationship with the Asian guy. Right. The one who was abusive. And so...
• 50:24
  When we say abusive, what are we speaking about? Yeah, so he was controlling, and then he physically tried to choke me out, and then he would threaten that if I told anybody that he knew the police. And like a very, as I learned, very stereotypical abuser behavior. Right. How long into this relationship is this happening?
• 50:48
  So initially I was introduced to him through someone I knew too. Yeah. But now I look back and I realize she was not exactly a great character either. Someone that I worked with. Okay. And he didn't exhibit these things right away. It was slow. First, I was blonde at the time. I was 22 working in the club like a bartender, like a really hot and all the club magazines.
• 51:13
  And the attention that I got, I didn't realize, he actually suggested I change my hair color and had his colorist come to the house to color my hair dark. Literally. Yeah. And I was young, so I didn't understand.
• 51:29
  What do you think that that was kind? Cause I could imagine someone offering to send someone to my house. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't think that he was trying to control me and that he was having an issue with the tension. I got it all. Okay. No, I just thought, Oh, you know, he just likes me having dark hair, which now older me, it was like, first of all, no man's going to tell me what color my hair is going.
• 51:49
  to be but I think too at that time I was um you know I wasn't financially secure you know and so there is that aspect where it seems like okay this isn't a bad situation I'm not I'm just going to be completely honest you know I'm a young girl who loved her family taking care of herself on her own um and so this seems really appealing he would pick me up in different BMWs and I had never had that
• 52:15
  You know, I mean, I was young, you know what I mean? My dating experience is very limited. But also I can see where these acts of kindness can easily be interpreted as positive. Yeah. So it's good to know the context of where I was coming from when I met my ex-fiance. Because after a relationship like that, anyone's going to seem better. Yes.
• 52:38
  Right? Yeah. And I think we forget to, like, talk about that in our, you know, going through the, you know, our dating history. But so my ex-fiance happened to be friends with the manager of the bar that I was working at. So I was working at this bar in Boston near the wharf and everything. And it was known as a bar that a lot of, like, pro athletes would go to and stuff like that.
• 53:04
  And I remember he came in and he was so cocky, very handsome, funny. But I was, you know, I was like, you're just crazy. Like, what is wrong with you? I'd never met any man who was so forthright with showing his interests. I thought, oh, my God, this guy's crazy. But he was funny. So it wasn't like threatening, you know, and playful. And so.
• 53:27
  I was like, you know, I have a boyfriend, you know, and actually I kind of skipped the first time we met. That was he came to visit me at the bar after we met when me and my girlfriend went out and we had met up with him. OK. And things are not going well with the current relationship. Constant fighting, abusive relationship. This Asian boyfriend introduced me to a life with cocaine. Yeah.
• 53:52
  Okay. Yeah. That was a chapter in my life and really the only one where I was just surrounded in that. Really? Yeah. He ended up getting caught with two kilos of cocaine. Was he dealing cocaine? Yes. Okay. And I didn't know that at first. Right. You know, I was very much a lot more naive than I wanted to believe.
• 54:14
  Yeah. So you are in this world. Are you using coke at the time? I was using he's using he was trying to really push it on me. And I knew enough to know that he this man is really trying to control you. OK. He wants you to become addicted and need this. So you need him. And I found out that he had very he had his connections with the Italian mafia in Boston.
• 54:36
  Yeah, it was deep. It was deep. He used to be a bill collector, you know. Yeah, so there was a lot of intimidation. Did that make it harder to leave that relationship? It did, but what was interesting, and I've always had this my entire life, so I was working in the nightlight industry, and I've always secured really strong relationships and friendships. And so,
• 55:00
  Interestingly enough, Boston is gangster. So the bar that I worked at and that my friends worked at was owned by one of the biggest mafia families. There's two of them in Boston. And they also owned the major strip club in town. And so they were able to get me the bouncer from there and a private driver to come packing a gun to take me. Amazing.
• 55:26
  Here's how messed up the psychology of being in an abusive relation was, I went back. I ended up going back. After they helped move you. Yeah, and that's when they were like, you know, we want to help you, but we can't help you if you're not willing to help yourself. Why did you want to go back?
• 55:45
  I think there was a guilt thing. I think I'm one of those people who's an empath. Okay. I'm an empath, and I think with the background of trauma and stuff, there's an aspect of chaos that almost became normalized. Right, was it comforting in a sense? Yeah, and it was like,
• 56:04
  I didn't realize how deep this trauma stuff runs from abandonment and things. And that lack of worthiness and stuff. But it's like you had people helping you. You have people that will find, you know, they have the means to be able to help you get out of this situation and you go back.
• 56:20
  But honestly it wasn't too long after that that I finally left him and then I think because the ex-fiance came along it made that out easier yeah and that's where another thing I didn't realize was that these string of relationships they had were also part of my trauma so these men became my family they filled that void because here I am abandoned then I leave my adoptive family and so I really relied on
• 56:49
  And that for so much more than what any relationship should ever be. And these men were clearly, you know, there were there something off with them, too, to really want to have someone that they control or take care of. The thing with my ex-fiance was that his demeanor was very laid back, easygoing, wasn't overtly trying to control anything. Right.
• 57:13
  I say overtly because I think he very strategically understood how to psychologically get in there, under and into my life in a way that he would have control without me realizing it. Right. And that's what I always find concerning when I see young women with older men is not realizing that...
• 57:35
  we just no matter how smart you are or how much you've gone through you just don't have that life experience yet to really understand some of these other things yeah you know that someone who has more age than you just does yeah and until you get older do you realize that
• 57:52
  Take me to the point where your aunt tells you about your ex-fiancee and you said her child. So it wasn't my aunt. I'm just going to kind of, I'm going to leave it no name. No problem. You know, family member. No problem. Yeah. And in that moment, do you instantly believe that person? Because I can, let's say you and me are best friends, right? You and I are best friends. And somebody tells me that you went to a store and stole a dress.
• 58:18
  My immediate thing is, no, my friend wouldn't steal the dress. Oh, yeah, no, no, no. It was very hard for me to believe at first. Well, it wasn't like, no, that's not true. I wasn't defensive. I was just, I was asking probing questions to really, like, confirm, you know, was this a misunderstanding? Sure. Was one of the first things I said. Yeah.
• 58:36
  Yeah, are you sure this isn't a misunderstanding? I mean, he's very good with kids. He comes from a big family. They're all good with kids. There was nothing I noticed that his behavior steered out of the norm of what I was seeing in the rest of his family and what I've just seen in life.
• 58:52
  Um, and, uh, she was like, yes. And so I found out how they found out was that the victim's boyfriend at the time, um, this started happening when they were 13, went from 13 to 15.
• 59:07
  And she was confiding in her boyfriend, who is the same age. Right. And their kids are young then. They don't really understand the extremity of it. And he was seeing a therapist because of the HIPAA laws. If someone discloses something that is endangering another person's life, they have to share it with you. Okay. They have to share it with the authorities. And yeah. And so that's how it came about. Right. And. Were they going to prosecute?
• 59:35
  So here's the dynamic. And this is where it gets. And that's why I leave the names out. Of course. Because it's such a personal thing. But it shows how generationally a lot of these traumas occur. So it turns out the mother of the victim who came forward to tell me what was going on.
• 59:56
  I didn't know it at the time, but I chose, especially with the pre-law background, to go directly to the authorities and really make sure that, you know, this victim understands that there is consequences and we're going to do something.
• 1:00:13
  I found myself very alone in that battle. Even from the mom? Yeah. So what I found out, and it didn't align with any of the previous behavior and how I knew this mother to be, and it turned out that she had been molested when she was a child, and she never told anyone. And so I think...
• 1:00:34
  having it happen to her daughter triggered her to freeze. Sure. And I was wondering why I was getting this bizarre resistance, but now I knew. And the victim's father, unfortunately, wasn't in a place to be able to really handle what was going on himself. Okay. And so...
• 1:00:56
  I went and I will tell you, the police, I'm just going to be very candid, I'm very against the defund the police business because in my experience, they're already underfunded. And so they weren't properly, not every person is properly trained to handle the sensitivity of these kinds of issues.
• 1:01:17
  So I really wanted to punch them in the face when I initially, the way they responded when I went to make the report, because it was so insensitive and just so kind of brushing it off, you know. And then that's when I learned that in order to file anything, you need to go access.
• 1:01:33
  exactly to the county and you know where it happened right um so luckily what ended up happening is when i did that and i was met with someone who was just night and day okay so turns out this was a detective and he was the premier detective in these kinds of cases in the state of massachusetts
• 1:01:55
  And later on found out he was one of my closest friends' cousins as well. Okay. Yeah. So I was very fortunate to have that. The right person. Yeah. And then this, you know, this was one of those cases. So at the time I was almost 30 where my family did come. My mom came. My aunt came with me.