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Welcome to Choose Your Struggle Presents: Made It, Season 1: Stay Savage. This episode begins our story. Sarah is born and, when we leave her, she'll be 19. This episode is the foundation of our story.
Choose Your Struggle Presents: Made It, a documentary, serial-style podcast telling the story of a person who has made it back from the depths of trauma and created something extraordinary with their second chance.
Season 1 is titled Stay Savage and focuses on Sarah Laurel and the harm reduction and recovery housing organization Savage Sisters.
* This transcript has not been edited. Sorry, I ran out of time!
Made it made it made it as a member of the shameless podcast network. You want the truth? Fuck. Here we go again. So I knew something was wrong. If he dies first, choose your struggle presents made it season one, stay Savage. Hello, my name is Tarell Hagler, but some people know me as your fave trash man, former sanitation worker.
Now turn community activists and community organizer. I just started a new company called your faith hauling service, where I am hauling construction and demo away from residential and commercial spots. But I'm also doing. So please, if you want to dump the right way higher, you'll save hauling service for all your hauling needs.
Thank you.
How being born? Easy one. Oh my God. What a piece of cake? What a piece of cake Sarah Laura was born on May 17th, 1986 to parents. Muhammad. Mary was only 21 at the time. And the pair already had a daughter in Sarah's older sister, Liz, Mary, and Muhammad's relationship was problematic from the very start. It was a very charming, wonderful guy before Sarah I left and told nobody that I was pregnant.
When I had Liz, I intended to give her up for adoption. The couple that was I had picked, I went to Texas pick this couple carefully. My only thing was they had to be practicing good Christian people. And I ideally wanted them to have already had adopted another child, despite our best efforts, Mary wasn't able to find anyone to adopt her first daughter lives.
So I went to a Christian adoption agency, had many, many interviews in the end of the game. They said, we advise you to keep your baby. And I remember just leaving there and going to church. I felt like I had no right to keep the baby. What am I going to do with this baby? I have no money. I mean, I'm a college student.
Um, I have no clue. I was raised by a single father. I mean, seriously, like I was chief cook and bottle washer at nine years old. How am I going to mother a child? I have no clue. And it was poor kid needs a parents, and I'm not going to marry that guy when she couldn't find someone to adopt Liz, Mary moved back to Philly and gave Mohammad another chance at helping to create a stable and loving life for their daughter.
It didn't last. I think three weeks, four weeks later, I left in the middle of the night. Like I called my brother and said, I got to get out of here. He, he was scary when he got drunk, like frightening. And we left and I told him I'm down with this, but you gotta go to AA. You gotta get sober. In the meantime, I got to go to school.
I got to go to work. I got a life to live. The church that I was in was Pentecostal. They gave me. Peer counselor, couple that for the next 12 months, advise me to pray for him to go to AA with him, to do everything. And I did everything I was supposed to do. And I think I might've slept with them four times and there Sarah pregnant with their second child, Mary, once again gave Mohammad a chance.
And again, he let her down, he wanted to watch Liz one day when I went. And I came home and she was on the deck and she was crawling around on the deck, which had gaps. And I remember thinking, should I run and try and catch her? Or should I try and run up the street? I ran up the steps like a mint, grabbed her.
He had drank almost a full case of beer. He was drunk. She was wandering around in 10 pounds. And I was like, okay, so this is never going to happen again. Another time he said he would just pick her up from the babysitter and pick me up at work and we could go out and have a day together. He put her in the car seat, didn't strap the car seat in and the front seat had a small accident and broke his wrist, holding the car seat.
She wasn't in shoved into the car seat, the car seat wasn't strapped into the car. And he was like, I broke my wrist, saving the baby. Okay. Now. Yeah, there's nothing I can allow you to do all this time. As Mary was giving Muhammad chance after chance, she was keeping the pregnancy secret from her family, nobody, but Mohammed knew that she was pregnant.
Looking back, Mary attribute to that decision to fear that her family would reject her. But once she told them not only about the pregnancy, but about the abuse and the other issues going on in our relationship with Muhammad, they supported her decision to move on. And that's what. She told Mohammed that the relationship was over and she wanted him out of her life.
Not long after he moved to Florida and we didn't see him again after Sarah was born, he drove up. We have pictures of him when she was born. And when not, when she was born, I guess when she was dedicated at the church and he was here during, remember when, when they bombed in west Philly. So that was real close to us.
Like we could hear it. Uh, and so he was here for a visit then. All right, let's hold up real quick because I think this needs an explanation for those of you who may not be familiar with Philadelphia history or generally anti-black history here in the United. The idea of the city of Philadelphia dropping a bomb on west Philly may sound foreign to you.
Well, it happened, here's a very brief overview of what is called the move bombing. In 1995, the Philadelphia police department dropped a bomb on the move organization in west Philadelphia, originally known as the Christian movement for life move was founded in 1972 in west Philadelphia, the group practice, communal living and their belief centered on black liberation and animal rights.
The movement was all, but ended after the bombing in 1985, that started with a standoff with Philadelphia police. Obviously this is making a long story short, but when the standoff could not be ended in traditional ways, the city decided that dropping a bomb on the move complex was the way to go working with the Philadelphia fire department.
They allowed the resulting fire to burn for. More than two city blocks burned to the ground and all, but two members of the move organization were killed. Numerous civilians. We're also hurt again, this is a very quick overview of an awful, awful moment and not only Philadelphia's history, but the history of the United States.
And I encourage you all to look into it, but this podcast isn't about the move bombing. So we should probably get back to our. Anyway, as a single mom, Mary was doing her best to provide for both Sarah and Liz. And she quickly found that she had a talent for selling jewelry. Many jewelers carry live jewelry, many sellers.
I carried a million. I was insured for a million dollars. I was usually carrying a little more and I would go to stores and sell to stores all over the place. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware. I was usually carrying over my million. Listen, Sarah would sit in the bedroom and I had sets a rep for a company that was Lebanese.
I had hundred carrots. Literally. So they would put on these huge Emerald and diamond bracelets and earrings and necklaces, and just sit in my bed, decked out in like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry. I'm like, we're not taking pictures. And you never tell your friends that this stuff is here.
After a few years of this, Mary was doing quite well in the jewelry business so well that she could afford to take Liz and Sarah on vacation. One location that was in rotation was. While, and Muhammad may have been strained. He was still the kid's father and Liz and Sarah were old enough that they wanted to see him.
Here's Sarah. He lived in Florida and my mom would take us there to visit when we were very young. And there were a couple, I believe it was like a couple of visits where we were there for about a month at a time. And I don't remember the visits at all. The only memory I have is. That catastrophic event.
My very first memory is being huddled behind a car next to the wheel of a car with my sister, Liz crying because my dad was beating my mom up and then running to the neighbor's door and asking them to call the police. I asked Liz if she remembered this event and unfortunately for her, she does. I remember that whole situation.
We came home from Disney world, um, to my father's apartment. It was the second story apartment in Florida. Um, we walked into the apartment. I saw a giant water bug on the kitchen wall when we flipped the lights on and my I screamed and my father smacked me across the face. Very, very hard. And I was about three and a half four.
And when I screamed my mother. Got into it with him, should they started arguing? She was telling him you're not allowed to do that. And it got heated very quickly. And I got my sister and we went into the bathroom and they basically tried to kill each other. Uh, I mean, my father really tried to kill my mom.
There was this like a six foot standing metal thing. In the living room. And it, the last thing that I saw before we closed the bathroom door was him. Uh, on top of my mother, she was underneath him and he had this metal fan that was plugged in and moving and he was pushing it closer and closer to her face.
And then there was a scuffle. She came into the bathroom and then she yelled for us to run outside and call for the police to yell for the neighbors. And this is crazy. I was so young and not very strong, but she also said, let the air out of his tire. And, um, so I grabbed a butter knife. I remember running downstairs with a butter knife to try and, uh, like stabbed the tires, but I had no strength to do that.
So I started untwisting, the little plastic caps on the wheels, thinking that that would do something. And then I remember the neighbors coming out and eventually flashing lights and the cops came and, um, that was the last time we hung out with my dad. Let's take a break. Here's this episode's podcast recommendation brought to you by great pods, September, 1978.
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Mary was doing her absolute best to give the kids everything they could want. But of course, as kids often do, Sarah and Liz had other plans when we were taking the subway from Philly tech Honi for the babysitter, there was a time where the two of them. They wanted to stand. They said, if we stand on the subway, it's almost like a ride at the, at the park, you know?
So they were standing and grabbing poles. And I remember for a couple of days, guys kept sitting down next to me, like hitting on me. And I'm like, well, after, after this happened, like the third time, I'm like, are my kids talking to you? And they're like, yeah. Yeah. So I grilled the girls and the girls. They had taken up the newspaper at advertisement, with little kids playing with.
And then pointing it little baby boys. They're like, mom, can we have this one? Like, that's not how that works. Hi. I have to get married. We can't do this again while working full-time and taking care of two young daughters, Mary didn't have a lot of time to date, but only being in her mid twenties herself.
She figured why not? It was at that point that I met fuckery and factory said like, I married somebody for citizenship, but I don't like her at all. I can't stand her. I married her and I flew out the same day and he's like, I don't need to get married to stay here. I can stay here. She's totally down with that.
He's like, but I really want to get married to get married and you, I could be happy with, could you be happy with me? He said, because you need to be married. You've got two kids. That need a father. So we actually sat down and talked ourselves into getting married fuckery, immediately set out, trying to win over Sarah and Liz here's Liz.
He was the Candyman, he was middle Eastern. He had a mustache, you know, and, and it was like the late eighties. And, uh, he would come over and bring candy. He spoke broken English because he's Palestinian. Um, and my mom and him dated. And I do remember there was a bar. Uh, and they drank and, um, you know, everything was fine up until fall got violent.
And I just remember him and my mom getting into a fight and him chasing us and barricaded us again in the bathroom with a broom, the violence between fi and my mom didn't last too much because I think my mom she'll kick your ass. And he probably wasn't expecting that my mom was going to fight back or even be his equal in the ring.
She pretty much like said that's not going to fucking fly here. Despite it's sometimes Rocky moments, Mary and Farquhar has settled down and created a relationship together. And over the next few years, their family grew first came Alex in the early nineties, followed closely by Oz me after Ozzie was Adam who you'll hear from in this series followed by Anna, who we call Mac.
And you'll also hear from in this series, finally, one more son, Aiden was. Here's Adam, probably the first memory I have of Sarah is her dressing me up. Um, as I don't even know what you would call it, but it was lots of feathers. Um, some pajama clothes that were supposed to be a show clothes. And she had me and my two brothers, Alex, and Nozomi all dressed up in the same manner, standing on the Cedar chest in our row home in south Philly on Carlisle street.
And we put on a show and the Cedar chest was. And her and my sister, Liz organized it. And, uh, they brought a couple of the neighbors, their friends, teenage girls to come and cheer us on. It was pretty awesome to Adam. Listen, Sarah, where the type of sisters, it was very, very easy to look up. I was definitely closer in the sense of like times that I spent and like activities that I partook in with Alex anosmic cause we're all two years apart.
Whereas Liz and Sarah are both one year apart from each other and then 10 years older than me. So I definitely, uh, spent more time with Alex and, but Liz and Sarah, I relied on because they kind of took care of us. Um, not only did they like make sure we were okay all the time, but they like, I didn't know.
On play dates unless Sarah or Liz was taking me on them. Both of my parents worked full time and my dad wasn't actually living with us. So my mom didn't have time to do most of those things. So Sarah was very much of a like babysitter for most of my childhood while their dad was always in the picture.
He wasn't always in the. Sometimes you live nearby and other times you live clear across town. All of this meant that the siblings came to closely rely on each other. Here's Mac. My first memory with Sarah is that I would always run up from my bedroom to her bedroom to sleep next to her. And one night I had a dream, like specifically, remember I had a dream, I thought I was going to the bathroom in the bathroom.
I woke up and I was sitting over the edge of her bed, peeing on it and okay. Yeah, I was. Two or three, like I wasn't paying the vet anymore. Like, I don't know how it happened, but she, after that was like, if you want to sleep in my room every night instead of your room, like you can't freaking pee on my bed.
So that's my first, that's my first memory of her. While the sisters may have originally wanted a baby brother, when they got their baby sister, it completely changed their lives to this day. Sarah still looks at Mac as the baby that she helped her. My little baby. I love Anna so much, uh, that little nugget of joy, she's just always been a joy.
Like even her voices cute, like how dare you be that adorable in every aspect she's like, and then she's so fucking cute. But Anna was my baby. You know, that was my, that was my God. I loved her. I still love her. I still look at her like a little bit. Yeah. While the entire family was close. You heard Adam talk about the special bond between the brothers?
The same was true for the sisters. Here's Mary talking about the sister's relationship. I told Liz, you have to join something at school. I don't care what it is. Find something to join. I don't give a crap if it's the chess club or the football team. So she comes home. She's like I joined cheerleading. All right.
That's something. When Sarah joint went to Radnor, she joined the cheerleading squad and Liz became the captain and Sarah became the flight. The one regional championships and went to Florida for nationals. It was a thing. Mack was in the back seat in her car seat while I was driving them to cheerleading practice, they taught Mac all the gay at all, all that she knew as an, as a toddler, she knew all the Radnor, cheerleading shit.
You know, they have pictures of her doing the thing, you know, all the cheerleading. Even in a family as close as there's teenagers will rebel. That's what teenagers do. And with Mary working all the time and fall Curry out of the house, it wasn't helped by the fact that this household was at times a bit chaotic.
Here's Liz, there's always tension. And the older me and Sarah got the more we argued with my mom. I think Sarah got it much worse than I did. And I think partly because I. I loved my mom. I wanted her attention. I wanted her approval and I knew what she wanted to hear and what you wanted to see. And I played that part for my mom longer and more effectively than Sarah did while Liz may have gotten into a little bit easier than Sarah.
She was still the first one to get in trouble with Mary. And as it turns out with the. We were trying to figure out what to do for St. Patrick's day. And I found a concert at the Radnor library, so it was like, all right, everybody let's get the car and go and ride library. And five minutes later, Liz was like, okay.
So I'm going to my girlfriend's house. Her mom's driving us all to the dance at high school. Oh, goodbye. See, you love him left. We get to read in her library, which is 10 minutes from here, the concerts 10 minutes in, and they come up on the stage and they're like, uh, Mary Higgins, Sarah Mary Higgins in the room.
We have an emergency phone call. You. I know it's. We just parted ways, 15 minutes ago, I figured the car had an accident. Maybe she's dead. Maybe she's alive. I don't know. I'm running up the walk and I'm like, whatever it is, Lord, I accepted. Whether she's alive or dead, I accept your will, whatever it is, whatever, answer the phone.
And they're like, this is right in our high school. Liz is here, she's drunk.
Oh, thank God. And they're like, thank God. I'm like, oh my God. I just accepted her own. So we get out of the concert. We go pick her up at the high school. She is, she'd faced in 15 minutes. She cannot walk. She's crying. She's we're carrying. She say
oh my gosh. So she ends up grounded for six months. Factory takes her to the thing, the court thing. And they're like, well, she can either pay a fine do community service or go to classes. I'm like, oh, she can do all three. All of them. So she did. If Mary knew what was to come, she may have treated Liz's first foray into problematic drinking a little bit.
Of course hindsight being what it is. She had no idea. Unfortunately, Sarah was also experiencing her own issues at the time. This period is one that to put it delicately. Sarah, isn't exactly excited to talk about which to be honest, I can understand if I was interviewed about my teenage struggles, I too, wouldn't be too excited to talk about them.
We're going to skip over a lot of it, but here's Sarah briefly explaining what this entry into high school was like. I went to like four different high schools my freshman year. And then sophomore year I went, I started at Radnor high school, which is on the main line. It's a long story. I just wasn't getting along with my mom.
And so I started at a Catholic school and then I moved in with my aunt and uncle here's, Mary summing it up in her words. Sarah needed a lot of attention. Nobody got a lot of attention. This. Yeah, everybody got a little, that was how it was, you know, out of respect for the general understanding that we all remember how hard being a teenager was, we're going to leave it there while Sarah was going through her own struggles.
Liz and Mary were not getting along. Here's Liz. When I was 16, my grandfather took me to. And we had a private audience with Pope, John Paul, and we traveled around. And at the time I loved my grandfather, I adored him and I'll go to church with my grandpa because I love grandpa, but I wasn't into that spiritual stuff for myself.
I went to Italy to buy Italian leather coats and see the world and get the fuck out of the only space in the world that I knew, which didn't have enough for me anyway. And when I came back from it, I was a junior in high school and I w it wasn't like a conscious effort, but things got really more and more tense with me and my mom.
And one specific evening, I wanted to drive to McDonald's to get an ice cream sundae, but I only had a drew junior driver's license. And my mother argued with me and it got physical between me and my mom. And I ended up on the ground with her hands around my neck, uh, kind of strangling me under a car.
And that was the, that was the last night that I stayed at 180 7. I figured, fuck this. I played that card. That was the ACE. I was waiting to play it. I wanted the fuck out of there. I had had just had this amazing experience in Europe and I didn't, I couldn't imagine living life now in this stupid little fucking suburban town, uh, with all this, you know, boring shit.
And I grandpop was like, all right, I'll send you to Ireland and you can live with our family over there. And that's all I wanted. I would have said anything. If I knew that was on the menu and I can have that, I'll say anything I have to say to get that. And, um, and that's what I did, both Liz and Sarah told me separately that they didn't take to the move to the burbs.
And with both of the sisters struggling and their relationship with Mary in a word messy, I asked Adam what the awareness was like for the younger sibling. Remember Adam is a decade younger than Liz. Um, my awareness of what actually was happening was very minimal. The only awareness I had was what I was seeing with my own two eyes.
Sarah, didn't talk to me about it. My mom certainly didn't talk to me about it one day, you know, she was literally gone and, uh, I remember some short time after that we were sitting in front of some big ass. Like red building that to this day. I like don't even know what it was. I mean, whether it was like, where did she put her?
I don't know if she tried to put her in a mental house or whatever, but I remember seeing her looking out a window in a, in a big red building. Uh, one of my very early memories at this point, it must have been right after we moved to the burbs. After Liz left for Ireland, even more of the focus fell on Sarah and as teenagers tend to do, Sarah turned to partying to cope with this.
Here's Mac. I really did sleep in her bed almost every night. Uh, we were very close when I was young. Like she was my hero. Um, I wanted to be just like her when I got older. So, because I was always there. I remember I was in her room one night. She was not home yet. She came home wasted and she, she threw up in all of her shoes and my mom was just like, clean it, the fuck up.
That's your responsibility. And that's kind of when it started getting a little bit tough between them because, you know, Sarah was very rebellious. She had very rebellious friends, they were chaotic, uh, you know, it was Villanova. A lot of, most people had a lot of money. Um, and so you could do whatever you really want and she definitely did take advantage.
We'll be right back. If you guys want to learn more about Savage sisters, check out www dot Savage, sisters.org. If you'd like to hear more from me and Sarah specifically, please reach out to info@savagesisters.org, and we can come speak to you, your organization, your business, or your place of worship on Narcan, trainings, harm reduction, trainings, or anything in general with Savage sisters.
If you want to donate, please go to seven sisters.org sponsorship. There, you can find a plethora of ways to give directly to our cause and help our mission. Additionally, if you want to come volunteer at an outreach, please reach out to info@savagesisters.org. So we can give you dates times and locations for our outreach events.
Thanks everybody. Stay Savage.
Hey, y'all it's Jay, the host of this show. If you're not really enjoying this series and you're just listening to make me happy, then thank you for the rest of you. I invite you to check out everything else. Choose your struggle does in the mental health and drug use advocacy space. We have a couple of other podcasts, including our incredibly popular weekly show called.
Choose your struggle on that show. I interview people with lived and learned experiences on the subjects of mental. Substance misuse and recovery and drug use and policy. But occasionally we talk about other topics as well. We also have another new show called choose your struggle presents Monday motivation, but it's not just podcasts.
We also host two vulnerable storytelling events, rock-bottom storytellers and a day in the life on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube. And now I'm so excited to announce that we'll be doing rock bottom storytellers live here in Philly, starting the summer. I also have a book coming out, hopefully later this year.
And I regularly traveled the country, telling my story. And speaking about these important topics. I know this is all a lot, but you can check us out at our website. Choose your struggle.com and check out all of our podcasts, wherever you're getting this serious, just by searching for chooser struggle. All right.
That's enough about us. Let's get back to the show.
now I want to shift gears just a little bit to focus on an event that was transformative for everybody, but especially those growing up in this generation. That of course was nine 11 as a white guy. I can't imagine what it was like for this Arabic family. So I asked them, and what you're going to hear now is a few recollections from the family.
People were racist as hell when we were growing up because nine 11 had just happened in Sarah's Iranian, I'm Palestinian, we're both Arabic. And we both experienced that for sure. Me being a boy. It was a lot of violence, but, and you would think Sarah wouldn't, uh, you'd think girls don't fist fight. They just do other things that was not true about Sarah.
She certainly fist fought and she certainly fist spot boys. They gave me a hard time. She was a defender for sure. Every single one of my dad's children look exactly like him, Liz and Sarah look a lot like my mom and my last name is Allison. That obviously made people aware that I was middle Eastern. So for sure.
And obviously I look at as well and they definitely have the luxury of being I'm white passing, but it's very clear that there's something going on. However, people knew that we were family and she made sure people knew that. So that was kind of the Mo most of her interactions with, uh, harassment and racism were based on.
Interactions me and Alex and Ozzy would have, which we had very frequently. I mean, for 2001, I think I was in first grade. That's when a nine 11 happened and it was just so my entire childhood, it was just a. Got an obsession with fighting people, because that was my response. Somebody would call me a name and I would go and try to bash them, um, or chase the school bus and catch them when they got off.
Uh, w and weirdly enough, my mom encouraged that, um, because she went through other solutions that just didn't work. Like she went to the school when she told the principal, she went to the people's houses and talk to their parents. None of it did anything whatsoever. So she, uh, she was like defend yourselves and she taught us how to box.
And she certainly taught Sarah and Liz out of box previously to that. Uh, my moms, she was a big supporter of violence. Is the answer as children. Um, I think in, I don't think my mom was wrong at the time. Um, weirdly enough, I remember that my neighborhood had held a committee meeting, um, at a, at a nearby church.
And they had tried to petition the county to remove our family. We were, we were called terrorists. Um, I was called, uh, in elementary school. I didn't even know what it meant, a sand N-word. I didn't even know what that was. I remember going home and asking, and my mom just gasped. She was like, what? Where did you even hear that?
And like, oh, I heard it from a six year old, my classmates and the playroom. So that was, I was young enough that like, I didn't completely care about the hate. And also I was, I was very aggressive towards people that were mean, I, I didn't have any of that happen to me in front of my family, so I never really had to have Sarah stand up for us.
Um, But it happened a lot at school, so it wasn't easy, but at the same time, I pretty much stood up for myself. I was pretty strong because I grew up with a bunch of guys. And so if people made fun of me, I just like kind of decked them after hearing that. I want you to take a second and think back to your own recollections of nine 11, and even more broadly what the world was like after that catastrophic event.
All right. Yeah. Now, keep that in mind when you hear this next part, Sarah wanted out of her mom's house, which I guess I can understand. As a former teenager, myself, we all go through that phase. Sarah. However, actually did something about it. She joined the army. I didn't know how I was going to pay for college.
And so. Yeah, I just kind of enlisted, I got a really good score on the ASFAB like if you score 60 or below, you can only do infantry. And then there's like different jobs that you qualify for depending on what your score is. Meaning like, if you're smart, similar to like the police academy in a way, I think I was in like the 98th percentile.
So I did really well. Okay. Let's pause real quick because I didn't know what this. The armed services, vocational aptitude battery, also known as the ASFAB. Yep. That's what it's called. It's a multiple choice test administered by the United States, military entrance processing enlistment. It's a standardized test to figure out where you're going to go in the army.
Well, let's just go with that. There was a officer there that was telling me all things, but I had done my own personal research on it. And, um, the higher you score, the more likely you are to get. Paid better and more opportunities to have good jobs as a woman. Having a low score can be sort of detrimental because you're limited in the positions that you can hold.
But the military, if you know, the people that I know that have stayed there and done everything and all that good stuff, um, it can be a career opportunity and it really is helpful for people that come from low income families and don't really have. Any means of schooling or stability in their life.
When they're at that age, the training is very intense, the physical training, and we had a lot of. Like you propel down from high Heights and I got injured. I remember the day I got injured, I blacked out completely. My battle buddy, like picked me up and like, I worked through it and I continuously trained on the injury because I just wanted to finish.
And I eventually couldn't and had to go, um, get it looked at. And they were like, oh, you have multiple fractures in like your hip and your pelvic bone. And because you've trained on them, they will never heal properly. Um, unless you take like a year and like this fucking military hospital, which is like so degrading, or if you get a hip replacement, which is also like another six months of recovery and I was supposed to get deployed, I was like, you know, everybody was getting deployed at that point.
You have to understand this was like 2004 and five. So like, it was right after nine 11. And like, you kind of get this sense. With people in that environment, um, like we're going together. And when I found out that, like I wasn't going to go with the people that I had been training with and that, that wasn't going to be an option.
And it was just going to be me sitting somewhere for months. I was like, I'll just go home. There was however, one other factor at play. I remember like my staff Sergeant, and I don't want to say his name because I don't want to just add, I'm not just going to put that out there, but he. Taken a liking to me and like a fatherly way.
And he like pulled me aside a few times, and this was like, unheard of, you know, like they don't, they treat you like shit, honestly, I'm not gonna lie to you. Like, oh, they're the place for women in, in the army specifically. It's rough and tumble. Um, but I liked that. I liked the challenge, um, and he said, you know, You're really just too smart to be here.
And he was like, if I were you, I would get out. And he, and we had gone home on Exodus, which was like a Christmas break. So like we got our dress blues and we flew home for Christmas and he was like, just don't come back. You know? And I was like, why not? Um, and he and another staff Sergeant actually sat me down again.
They, they did this a couple of times and they were just like, listen, getting deployed is now not a joke. And. Really bad things are gonna happen to you and you should get out while you can. Sarah did eventually listen to that advice and leave the army, but she doesn't look back at that decision fondly.
In fact, she still thinks of it as a failure, which may help explain why she didn't accept the benefits offered to her. I had a lot of friends that were coming back home. From Afghanistan and, you know, being deployed and people weren't getting paid war time money. So because there was no declaration of war, um, if you were serving and you were deployed, you, your family, wasn't getting like the amount of money that they would get.
If you died overseas, if it was a war time, they would get a significant amount more. And there just, wasn't a lot of funding for those men and women. Okay. There was such a weight for people that had like intense injuries that I simply bowed out. And I was like, I will be fine. And I did physical therapy. I had been to the VA out in college bill, but it was just like, mine was so insignificant compared to.
The people that like number one, I know died and their families got nothing or they got a much smaller, it was as if they died, stateside driving to the supermarket. And instead they, you know, they died from an IED. So I found that that was, um, strategic and intentional by our governor. But also devastating for the men and women who gave their life.
When Sarah left the army, she immediately went back to one of the few things that brought her comfort, her high school boyfriend, clay. Um, we started dating in high school and he was just, he was like the class clown of really solid good kid came from a good family, super racist dad. Um, but his mom is like an angel on earth.
Clay is and was a good guy. He and I just should not have been in that relationship. I mean, I was with him, it was a Virgin till I was 19. I lost my virginity to him when I was 19 and I got pregnant two months later and, uh, that sucked and I remember, you know, crying and I was like, I want to have an abortion.
And like his mom's Christian and my mom's Catholic. And they were like, you can't, you have, this is a child from God. And I was like, oh, Counseled against having an abortion. Sarah had the baby, it was a boy who she named Dylan. I was obsessed and in love with Dylan. I mean, he is just, um, a beautiful human.
So I was sober for him, like completely. Um, he really got like a good, he got the good part of me in the beginning. Next time. We split up. I left and I took Dylan and I went to my mom's for two months. And then I got my place in south Philly with just me and Dylan. Thanks for listening. Made it. Season one, stay Savage is a choose your struggle production and a member of the shameless podcast network.
I'm Jay Schiffman or narrator producer, and founder of your struggle. Special. Thanks to Lauren Shiffman and Steve Schiffman for their help on. The theme song was composed by me and built on the song, all that by Ben sound and made it theme you hear in episode 10 was composed by lettuce and Rob devious, all interviews for the show were given freely and no payment was received by anyone for providing an interview for the show.
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