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Cowboy Dad and the Decade of Grief · Side Note...

• Melissa: you to Side Note with Melissa, where personal stories spark deeper connections, conversations, and questions. Out of all the things that life can show us or teach us, I think grief and trauma are some of the best teachers, if we are willing and open to receiving this gift that essentially we did not ask for. So trigger warning, in this episode, I'd like to talk about loss. grief, trauma, coping, addiction. In particular, my almost decade of those things. Welcome to Side Note, this is episode eight. Side note, let me just start by saying talking about this topic is actually not difficult for me. And let me tell you why. Not only have I done a lot of work to move through it and therapy, but probably the biggest thing that was healing for me, which probably doesn't surprise a lot of you, is the writing part, and that is writing of the book. which I will also talk about in this episode. But in particular, the therapeutic writing that happens, there's a type of therapy called trauma-focused ⁓ cognitive behavioral therapy. And so there was a lot of that going on when I was writing the book. And so really what that does is not only am I going through and telling the story of my trauma, writing about that, but every time I sent that to my editor and she read it, she would send it back to me and I would have to write it again. Depending on the therapeutic model, some therapists and some patients and depends on the situation, retelling the trauma over and over would not be encouraged. But there are some ways of thinking and some therapeutic models for trauma that will say, okay, actually, let's tell the story again. And by repeating the story, you're moving through it. And in theory, each time you tell it, it's getting a little bit easier. That was really the case for me in writing the book. So again, I'm, let's say I'm working on a scene, a traumatic scene, a sad scene. and I write that and then I send it to my editor. She sends it back and says, okay, this is good, this is good, but I want you to work on this part or rewrite this part. Then I have to go through the whole thing again and in my mind visualize it, write about it. I had to do that a lot. That's why I'm able to talk about these things almost matter of factly. Now people come into my store often and Of course, my book is in there. And so we get to have these conversations. And so I'm able to talk about it without breaking down. And of course, this was not the case years ago. And as we talk about what happened in this episode, you'll know why. But when somebody comes into my store and they start talking about their circumstances, they'll share with me about their dad or their husband or somebody they know now. that does make me cry. As an empath, I can instantly feel their sadness. I can see it. If I see tears, I'm done. Actually, at this point, I'm okay with that, depending on the situation and how appropriate it is. I try to hold it in because I want them to have the space to feel like they can grieve, but sometimes it's actually helpful because it allows them to feel comfortable too weak also. So just keep that in mind as I'm going through telling you my story. I just invite you to listen and reflect on your own stories of loss and grief and trauma. This era of grief, so to speak, was pretty much in my 30s. If you can imagine, your 30s, generally speaking, is a great decade. Now, I will tell you there were amazing things about my 30s. And some of those things I've already shared with you in other episodes, like being a spa health writer, being an aesthetician teacher. And those were kind of woven throughout my loss and my grief that I'm going to share with you. The era of grief or the decade of grief really plays like a book or a movie because I'll do flashbacks and flash forwards. And if you've listened to the other episodes, it's kind of all coming together. But speaking of books, I just want to throw it out there that I am going to be talking about Cowboy Dad in this episode, my book Cowboy Dad. And so kind of a spoiler alert, a lot of the book people know what it's about. I mean, it says it in the title. So that's not a spoiler, but there is. one thing that happens in the book that I'm going to share with you during this episode because it's a big part of my grief. So just a heads up, there is a spoiler alert. We are going to be talking about Cowboy Dad. So I want to set up the scene for you here. Remember in the other episodes in my early 30s, I just graduated from grad school. I moved back to Santa Barbara from Pasadena area and I'd gotten a job at Brooks Institute. That job ended because of some drama. I shared the details with you. Then I got a job at the Santa Barbara College of Oriental Medicine. That job also ended because the school was closed and everybody who worked there lost their job. So that was more drama. And then I decided I would go to Italy, move to Italy for a few months, had never been out of the country. So that was right around 32. And if you're interested in the fun details of all those, you got to go back and listen to the other episodes. But just taking you back on this timeline and setting up this scene, I had just gotten back from Italy. I was about 32 and I had started teaching in aesthetics. My best friend, Kylie from childhood, had communicated to me that she had found a lump. in one of her breasts. And so she was waiting for testing and waiting to hear like what it was. So we were all kind of waiting for that. And as you can guess, we got the bad news that she had been diagnosed with a pretty aggressive form of breast cancer. Don't need to go into the details of it, but just know that she was, I believe, 32, 32 years old, married. with two small children. She lived in Colorado. I would go out to visit her in Colorado. And she went through treatments, was... feeling better, getting better, and it looked hopeful. And so when I would go out to Colorado to visit her, we would also visit the ranch where I grew up, where she came to visit me all the time. I mean, this is where we spent so much of our childhood on the ranch and on the four-wheelers and ice skating on the frozen pond during the winter time. I mean, was just, the ranch alone is like a character in my book. It is this heartfelt, beautiful place. And so when I went to visit her, she and I would go out to the ranch, which was at that point and still is basically a ghost ranch. When my parents left and ultimately separated, a couple of people had been hired as ranch managers, but one thing led to another and ultimately it just was not taken care of and then really kind of became a ghost ranch. And eventually barns and houses and everything were tore down through the years. Now, At the same time as Kylie being diagnosed, I was trying to reconnect with my dad. Now, when I say reconnect, if you've read the book, you know that my dad and I had disconnected because he was an alcoholic, a really bad alcoholic. So when I had moved to California, I was really trying to escape a lot of things. And that was one of them. I talk about this in my book while living in Santa Barbara. For a short time, my dad had come out to live with me. Essentially, it's classic adult daughter of an alcoholic. I was trying to help him. I was trying to save him. And the book goes through this process and ultimately it didn't work. Surprise, surprise, it didn't work. And when that crumbled, basically him living with me in a studio in Santa Barbara and he... drank again and wouldn't go to rehab and everything is outlined in the story. Then I basically paid for a bus ticket and I told him that he could go anywhere he wanted, but I never wanted to see him again. And he ended up going to Wyoming. Now, a few years had passed. That was in my 20s. And as I was getting into my 30s, I felt this urge to reconnect with him. I was feeling anxious. I was starting to have panic attacks. I was starting to just feel really sad about it. And so I would talk to Kylie about this and she would urge me to find out where he is and go visit him and see if I can reconnect. I wasn't sure actually where he was, but I'd done some research. I talked to some relatives and I of course knew that he had originally gone out to Wyoming for ranching work. And so I found him, believe it or not, at a bar. in Wyoming. Now this is just me calling. I didn't go out to Wyoming. But I had remembered him saying he was going to go to Laramie, Wyoming. And I remember from being in college in Fort Collins, Laramie, Wyoming was one of our big football games. It was the Wyoming Cowboys against the Colorado State Rams. And we had gone to Laramie a couple of times to watch football games and it was a small town. And there was a kind of a famous little bar there called the Buckhorn Bar. And I'm not kidding you, I just felt like that might be the place that I could find out where my dad was. And so here I was in Santa Barbara, California. I was 32 years old. My best friend had just been diagnosed with breast cancer and I was wanting to reconnect with my dad and Kylie was encouraging me to do that. I Googled Buckhorn Bar in Laramie, Wyoming. I called bartender answered and I said, this is going to sound really weird, but do you know a guy named Randy Broughton? And without a beat, the bartender knew who I was talking about. They called him Rowdy, which didn't surprise me at all because he'd like to be called that. So he said, ⁓ you mean Rowdy? Now at the time I'm on the other end of the line, I hadn't talked to my dad for several years. I had no idea what was going on. And I was like, Yeah, okay, rowdy. The bartender proceeded to say, ⁓ yeah, he comes in here almost every day, but you've missed him today, call back tomorrow. And I said, okay. And he said, but I'm gonna give you a tip. You need to call before, I think it was three o'clock, because if you don't, he's gonna be wasted. So that's what I did. And again, I tell this story more eloquently with more details in my book, Cowboy Dad, about... reconnecting with my dad. And so I would call him several times a week before three o'clock and we would have five to 10 minute conversations on the phone while he was at the bar. One of those conversations that we had was of course me telling him about Kylie and Kylie was like family. So, you know, of course this made him really, really sad. I had gone back to visit highly twice to be with her for her treatments. For a while she was in remission, then she got more treatments. And all the while she was encouraging me, you know, like, think you need to go visit your dad. In those conversations that I was having with my dad, something had come up about him having seizures. Now, mind you, another detail was that he was homeless a lot of the time living in Wyoming. in the winter time, which is obviously not good. So he would find himself in the emergency room after having a seizure. And at this time in my life, I didn't know anything about withdrawal, seizure, tolerance, nothing. All I knew was alcoholic dad, drunk, that I didn't understand the science behind it, the disease behind it, the compassion that's needed. in understanding the disease. And so he said, yeah, the doctor said it was something about withdrawals and that I shouldn't try to quit cold turkey because he was trying to quit cold turkey because we were reconnecting and feeling closer. And I think he had this true desire, as many alcoholics do, to quit. But if you understand the disease, you know that a true desire doesn't always lead to sobriety and also quitting cold turkey when your body is that addicted to alcohol can be very dangerous. And that's what had caused these seizures. This had been happening for several months. Conversations with dad over the phone in the bar, me going to visit Kylie. And then one day I had tried to call Kylie and she wasn't answering and my gut told me something is wrong. and I called her husband and all he said was you need to get back here as soon as you can. So of course you can guess what happens. The story is told in my book but Hailey had passed away from breast cancer and of course I was devastated and it seemed a little strange because it seemed like she was getting better and then it just happened very quickly. And so of course, I wanted to call him at the bar, let him know what happened. It was a crazy thing because I had never heard my dad cry before. And so it was really this lovely moment that we could have, you know, together over the phone and crying together. I just always thought that Cowboys didn't cry, but it was such a tender moment. And one of the things that he did that was so, so special, and I shared this story in the book as well, is that in my moment of despair, he reminds me of this beautiful story of when I was little that I had forgotten about. And he says, do you remember the fawn when you were little? And it just... caught my attention. mean, I was just weeping and all of a sudden it just caught my attention. And I said, I don't think so. And he tells me the story of the fawn about how he was in the field early one morning on the tractor and he had come across this baby deer, couldn't find the mama anywhere, picked it up, took it into the house. I was still asleep in my bed. It was early in the morning. And as he's telling me the story, I'm starting to remember it. It was like when I was like 10 years old, I was starting to visualize this memory that had happened. And it was so beautiful. This cowboy kneeling at my bedside, holding this baby deer with this shiny black nose and spots. And it was really quick because he said, I gotta take her back. the field her mom is going to be looking for, but I wanted you to see it. And the reason I'd forgotten about it is because I fell right back asleep. So I thought it was such a beautiful gift that my dad had given me this memory, this story of the spawn. And for five minutes, I forgot about my pain and my sadness with Kylie. So what ended up happening was I continued talking to my dad and he would call and check in and see how I was doing. At that point, he could use the phone at the bar, but also he had met some woman and moved into a trailer. And so she had a phone and so we were able to talk a little bit longer. Now, side note, I had written a short story for a chicken soup for the soul book. I know it sounds random. but it is so connected to the story in a way that I'll probably write a separate story about how it's connected. But for now, just know, side note, I had written a short story for Chicken Soup for the Soul about, I'd say, a year before Kylie died. And I just remember when I wrote it, I remember thinking to myself, I know they're going to pick this for the book. Because it was a, they were looking for entries and I had sent them my short story and I knew, I knew they were going to pick it. It was such a good story. It was a miracle story that had happened. I knew it was going to be picked and so sure enough it was picked and I had shared this with my dad. Now the book signing for Chicken Soup for the Soul for me at the local bookstore in Santa Barbara, Chaucer's Bookstore, was only a couple of weeks. after Kylie had died. I mean, I wasn't even sure if I could go through with it because I was just out of it. And I went ahead and did it. But my dad one day when I was talking to him on the phone and I had told him about the chicken soup for the soul story, and he was just so excited. And so he had asked me, hey, have you mailed me your book yet? He said I could mail it to General Delivery and he could just pick it up at the little post office there in Laramie. I said, You know, dad, I actually haven't sent you the book yet. And I was really honest with him at that point. I said, I haven't sent it because it's kind of a little bit about mom and her new husband. It's not about them, but they're in the story. And I don't want it to hurt you when you read it. And he said, ⁓ honey, don't worry about that. I just want to read the story that you wrote for Chicken Soup for the Soul. I've been telling everybody about it in the bar and I want to read it to everybody in the bar. I said, okay, dad. I will make sure to get that in the mail right away. So I package up the book. I actually sign a little beautiful message to him. And I'm on my way to the post office and I get a phone call. It's my aunt in Arizona, who is my dad's sister, who I didn't talk to on a regular basis. but she was my dad's emergency contact. And she said, your dad has had a seizure and the hospital called me and he is in a coma. And I had that book in my hand. I turned right back around to my apartment and I started packing. Now, mind you, I had not gone to visit him. Even though Kylie had told me to go visit him, I hadn't. We had just reconnected on the phone in the bar for a year. I packed all of my stuff. I threw that book in the suitcase thinking I would be able to give it to him in person. Called my brother who was in Texas, I believe at the time already. And I just said, look, here's what's going on. I lay out all the details in my book, Cowboy Dad. We rushed to Laramie to see my dad in the hospital. whom I hadn't seen for years. He had white hair, white mustache, and he was in a coma. It was devastating. The book details the two weeks that my brother and I and my mom and my stepdad were also there in the hospital, hoping that he would wake up. And there are details in the story, but you know the end of the story. He does not wake up and he passes away. And it was two months after Kylie had passed away. So, and it was all backward. Not only was I devastated in grief, it was all backward. If anybody had said, you know, who's gonna pass first, I would have said, well, Kylie's gonna heal and live to be an old age like me. And my dad is gonna pass away. but he's older and he's gonna go first. But it was backward. Kylie died, two months later, my dad died. And that started my decade of grief. But honestly, was it really the start of my grief? Was that decade in my 30s the start of my grief? It actually wasn't. It was the part that definitely sent me over the edge. And I'll tell you how. If you've listened to my other episodes or you know me personally, you know that my grief started a long time ago. Many times, psychology says that children of or adult children of alcoholics often have what we call complex PTSD. It's not a short-term post-traumatic stress disorder. It's complex. It's long-term. This is stress over years. over a long period of time. And also loss is loss of home, loss of job, loss of marriage. So again, if you've listened to my episodes, you know that I had experienced a lot of loss and grief at that point. I didn't realize it, but I had definitely been repeating patterns. Psychologists would say, let's look at the patterns that you've been repeating here. as far as trauma. Even though it's uncomfortable, this loss and grief, it is what you know. It is what you're familiar with. While all these leaps of faith that I had done and would continue to do served me well, got me accolades and wisdom, it was a little bit of me repeating patterns and feeling comfortable in the chaos. And it was a loop. So what did that grief look like? Now, again, keep in mind, I was in Santa Barbara still trying to function as a normal person having a normal life with the teaching job. But again, I was, you know, alone. I wasn't married. I didn't have family. And I was still trying to figure out all of this. And so my grief looked like a lot of ugly things. But here's what it looked like. It looked like really, really bad depression, of course. And I remember how that played out. I was well aware, I was well educated, I knew what was happening, I knew that it was normal that I was sad and I'd gone through and was going through these stages of grief, right? Denial, bargaining, anger, acceptance, all of that. I would go through all of those stages. But with the depression, I remember thinking, okay, I need to go see a therapist. So I did that. I need to get on some antidepressants. So I did that. I need some anti-anxiety medications. So I did that. I found myself a grief hospice support group. So I did that. I did all of the things that you're supposed to do and they helped. They did, they helped a little bit, but I am here to tell you. My grief and trauma were so intense that I remember the day that I thought, my God, this isn't helping. This isn't enough. And I even remember having sort of these, what I like to call passive suicidal thoughts, meaning I wasn't actively going to try to do something, but I would have these passive thoughts about hoping something would happen. So for example, driving to my dad's memorial with my brother. We were in his truck and we were both devastated, just like we were done. And I remember thinking in my head, I wish that a deer would run out in front of us and just do us a favor. That's how bad the depression was. And I just remember thinking, it's so bad. None of these things that I'm doing is helping enough. I know what I can do. I know what I can do. And that is when I started drinking. I thought I had outrun the disease of alcoholism all of those years, my 20s, career, graduate school, moving to California. Look at me, I'm accomplishing all these things, published the little college handbook, and all of a sudden I'm so grief stricken in just having my best friend die, my dad two months later, watched him die from alcoholism, and the only thing I could think to do was pick up a drink. Here's the thing, when I did that, I felt better. Now in AA, as we say, it works until it doesn't, and believe me, it started not working. That's what happens. But in that moment, I felt so much relief. When I drank, I could not feel the pain anymore. I couldn't think about it. It wasn't consuming me. And not only was I not feeling the pain, I realized something else. It kind of made me feel the most normal I've ever felt. Now people say, what are you talking about? You were popular in high school and you've been successful in this and you've been successful in that. Okay, fine. Wasn't until I started going to AA when people would say, I just never felt quite normal. To outsiders, I might've looked just fine. But inside, I always felt off. And when I drank that alcohol, I felt so normal. It was such relief. Now, the other thing that this looked like, my grief and trauma, was not only the depression, but I was so unhappy and so sad that I was making really bad decisions. Like, I don't care if I live or die, so whatever. And so I was... drinking and driving a lot, and I was getting in relationships with men that were extremely harmful. There was one right after the death of my dad, and right out of the psychology textbook, I start dating a raging, abusive alcoholic, which just tells you the state of mind, because my dad was never physically abusive. Now all of sudden I'm dating a raging alcoholic with 10 DUIs and verbally and physically abusive to me. I had gone out on another date with a man and ended up in a group of his male friends drinking too much and that's pretty much all I remember except for waking up the next day with no clothes on and having to find my car impounded. and wondering what happened? What did I do? That's how it continued. And that's how I dealt with my grief. And you can see the stages of grief here. In the denial for me was the numbing. The anger was not only what I was doing to myself, but I had also stopped believing in God. I mean, I was completely atheist. Because I remember praying, begging God. Okay, if my dad is going to die, then at least have him wake up once to see that I made it and that I was there. And when that did not happen, I thought, how awful, how can this be? And then I remember having this sort of epiphany for myself. ⁓ it can be because there is not a God. And as a therapist pointed out to me, that was another loss for me because I had been a believer up until that point. and I was convinced that there was not a God. Now, I have to say during this time in my 30s that I was actively drinking for about six years. So 32 to my late 30s. I was keeping jobs, sort of. I had things that happened in between there. I never lost a job because of my behavior. I was very good at keeping it a secret. and very good at keeping it within my circle. I have to say, side note, and this might sound weird, but I'm grateful for that time because during that time of active drinking, I had a group of friends. We would day drink. We would go to the wineries up in the Santa Ynez Valley. We would drink. We would party. I had a boyfriend. at the time and he was in this group and we were just an amazing group of friends having a hell of a time. And I didn't think about grief or sadness in those years. And that's what I needed at that time. Were there healthier ways to cope with my sadness and trauma? Of course. I tried them. They didn't work. It was that group and that time that I just was able to breathe, so to speak. And I feel like that that saved me. I was happy and I was free of sadness during that time. Now, side note also, my book, Cowboy Dad, talks about my childhood growing up with my dad and his alcoholism. It talks about Me getting married young, getting divorced, moving to California, Kylie's diagnosis and her death, my dad's death, and it talks about all my grief and my trauma. Cowboy Dad does not talk about my addiction. I was still actively drinking when I wrote Cowboy Dad. As I was in my mid to late 30s and all this is happening, remember from the other episodes, I was teaching at San Barbara City College as an esthetician teacher and I lost that job, which was devastating. And then I was diagnosed with skin cancer and had to have reconstructive surgery because it was pretty bad. And I moved to Wyoming. So I talked about all of that in one of my other episodes, but this was the end of tail end of my thirties that this happened. I was just grief-stricken. So I left that group of friends, I moved to Wyoming in the wintertime with my mom, and that is when I wrote Cowboy Dad. It was during that time I lost my job, I was diagnosed with cancer, I had no health insurance, I was in debt, I was drinking too much, and I moved to Wyoming and with my mom and my stepdad. I really couldn't go outside, it was in the winter time, I was freezing and I wrote Cowboy Dad and I just would get up every morning like it was my job and I would write and I would send it to my editor and she would send it back and then I would give it back to her and that was my life for I think it was eight months. But let me just leave you with this. While I was living in Wyoming, I was starting to go stir crazy a little bit and I remember one morning I woke up and I told my mom that I was gonna take a road trip. to Montana. Now, keep in mind, we were living in Pal, Wyoming. Bozeman, Montana was maybe two hours away. It wasn't that far. I had this idea I was gonna get my first tattoo and this whole thing. Again, I was stir crazy. I'm driving on my way to Montana. It's cold. It's in the middle of winter. It's in the middle of the day. And up ahead, I see on the highway, this huge black wolf. Now, at first, was like thinking, am I seeing things? Because are there black wolves? Yes, but they're pretty rare. Also, it was so big that I almost thought it was a black bear. This is in the middle of the day. Now, I'm seeing this thing ahead on the highway and it is dragging a huge carcass across the highway. It looks like, I don't know if it's a cow or what, but it is huge. I'm pulled over at this point watching this happen and I notice something very strange. The other cars that are driving by, and there's not a lot, it is in Wyoming, it's in the middle of nowhere, but the other cars don't seem to notice this. How could you not notice this giant black wolf carrying a giant carcass of something across the highway? They're not slowing down, they're not pulling over. Normally in Wyoming, if you see buffalo and elk and all that, people are pulling over there and they're pointing and look at the bear, look at the, you know, they're not doing any of that. Later on, when I got back home, I was still thinking about this and I like, I looked it up and it talked about the symbolism. The black symbolize the shadow work. The confronting the hidden shadows, the personal inner transformation that one is supposed to be going through. Apparently that's what a black wolf means. The dead weight of the carcass, the dead weight that you have to get rid of. The highway symbolizing like this is where you're going, this is your life, but you've got some shadows and personal transformation that you're going through and you need to get rid of some of this dead weight that's happening. was bizarre. Now, my question to you is, what has grief gifted or taught you? I know for me in my 30s, it was one of my greatest teachers. In my next episode, episode nine, I will talk with you about the light at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel being the decade of my 30s. And it is a bright light, I'll just tell you. But, I want to remember that amazing gift of grief that we do not ask for. But if we are willing to accept it, because we can't change it, if we're willing to accept that gift, what kinds of things will it teach us? What sort of wisdom will we gain from it? So my question for you is what has grief gifted or taught you? Thank you so much for listening to Side Note with Melissa. If these stories resonated with you, please share this episode with a friend. Don't forget to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, and feel free to leave a comment. You can also follow and connect on my Instagrams, SideNote with Melissa or June Bloom Lavender. And I hope my crazy convoluted stories made you laugh, smile, and even reflect on your own chapters. This podcast is brought to you by June Bloom Lavender. a Lavender Speakeasy in the Texas Hill Country. June Bloom specializes in handcrafted lavender gifts and a premium skincare line made with lavender harvested each summer by owner Melissa Broughton, that's me, in Santa Barbara County, California.