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Diagnosed with Complex Trauma and a Dissociative Disorder, Emma and her system share what they learn along the way about complex trauma, dissociation (CPTSD, OSDD, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality), etc.), and mental health. Educational, supportive, inclusive, and inspiring, System Speak documents her healing journey through the best and worst of life in recovery through insights, conversations, and collaborations.
Over:
Speaker 2:Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to longtime listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 2:I actually need help because it's been a long time since we did a podcast and a lot has happened. And I had lots of podcasts scheduled way out in advance and they have caught up again. And so it's hard to get started and I'm overwhelmed with everything else anyway. And you said you would help me get started again. That's so nice of you.
Speaker 1:And admitting that you need help is the first step towards recovery.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. You are terrible and cruel. Also clever. So I don't even know where to start on the podcast to try and catch people up of everything that's happened. I think okay, so let me just tell you and they can listen for
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And then because we've not scripted this at all. So let me catch you up and then to where they are and they can listen. I don't care. That's fine. Hi, guys.
Speaker 2:But then you can help me see where we go from there. Literally what we did was like all the way back in March, we interviewed a whole boatload of people. And so those interviews are scheduled out for the rest of the year and into next year. So that has taken the pressure off. But then we also had some conferences that we went to well online and so we talked about those which stuck up like a month and a half.
Speaker 2:And then we also stopped doing them twice a week because of the pandemic and the children, so many children. And so much was happening, and you were struggling.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And Kiwi was having surgery, and everything was happening. So I moved them back to just only once a week, so they go up on Mondays now. Someday I would like to add the Thursdays back, but for now, just for self care purposes, we've been through like 18,000 therapists.
Speaker 1:It sure feels like it.
Speaker 2:Right? And so that's pretty much what like, don't think everything that has been recently, like, for the last three months, really was old. Almost all of it was recorded in March.
Speaker 1:Still good, but not happening right
Speaker 2:now. Well, yeah, like me. I'm old, and I'm still good.
Speaker 1:You're amazing.
Speaker 2:So I don't even know where to get started. So I've had a bit of a hiatus from the podcast myself. We may or may not have accidentally forgot about it for a small season and had to do the conference ones really quick to help catch up. Right? And so we're trying.
Speaker 2:And in some ways, it's something we had to debate about whether we were gonna keep doing or not because it is so energy intensive. And
Speaker 1:Just a second. Pull that back.
Speaker 2:You just killed a spider.
Speaker 1:You're welcome.
Speaker 2:That was so subtle. You were like, let me just do this while you're not looking. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:Sorry about that.
Speaker 2:Thank you?
Speaker 1:Carry on. You were saying something. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:Okay. So let's start there with the spiders because Reader's Digest version, we have moved to the country and it is like spider heaven.
Speaker 1:So many spiders.
Speaker 2:Okay. That ah, I can't shake it off. That was awful.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 2:Okay. Anyway, let's talk about moving to the country. Let's start there. Thank you, Spider, for giving us a starting place.
Speaker 1:Context.
Speaker 2:Context is king. That's what they teach you in the school of theology.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 2:Isn't it? Because then people take theology all out of context.
Speaker 1:I would have thought they would have taught God as king.
Speaker 2:Don't you think?
Speaker 1:Each to his own.
Speaker 2:Her own.
Speaker 1:Her own. My mistake. God spelled with a y, I assume.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Did the spider bite you? Is everything okay? Have you been talking to your sisters?
Speaker 1:I now have radioactive dad joke powers.
Speaker 2:Nice. Okay. So we moved to the country
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Yes.
Speaker 2:In two weeks
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Yes.
Speaker 2:With zero notice
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And zero plans to move.
Speaker 1:Correct.
Speaker 2:We loved our other house.
Speaker 1:We did?
Speaker 2:Well, most things.
Speaker 1:One of us really, really struggled with the move here because the other house was pretty great in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2:We loved the house. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And a lot of the friends that we had there. Was so amazing.
Speaker 2:It was a good safe place for us. We were happy there. The house itself we're emphasizing the house because we're introverts and we didn't actually leave the house.
Speaker 1:Also quarantine. We've spent a lot of time in the house.
Speaker 2:Okay. For the record, as of today, we have been in quarantine with six children for twenty two weeks.
Speaker 1:Send help. But don't send help inside. They have to just stand outside the
Speaker 2:door. Right? Okay. So going backwards, two weeks before spring break, our kids were pulled out of school for quarantine because our daughter was gonna have surgery.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Right? But then the pandemic happened. We oh, we flew to California on accident really fast. Just go get an award. Oh, wait.
Speaker 2:The award is canceled. Oh, wait. But you met cool people. Hey, octopus. What?
Speaker 2:And then fly back, and now you have COVID. Bam. Stay in a hotel for two weeks. The children are singing outside the window. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:So much excitement. Record a bunch of podcasts because you're gonna be really tired because of a trauma response and the ongoing trauma of a pandemic. That was brutal. So, our kids were already pulled out of school because of surgery, but then because of pandemic, surgery got delayed. And so we had like what three four months of the trauma once again of is she gonna die is she gonna make it are we gonna have surgery are we not that's traumatic It was awful.
Speaker 2:You have to talk if you're gonna help me on the podcast. They can't hear you nodding your head.
Speaker 1:I'll try to rattle my brains around a little more. There you go. I was enjoying the story so much. I didn't have anything to say.
Speaker 2:It was terrible. It was not enjoyable.
Speaker 1:Amen. I agree.
Speaker 2:It was really hard. So it was scary. They know that. We did talk about that on the podcast. Because while that was going on, we went through another, like, three dozen therapists.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It was You're just tearing your way through them like tissues.
Speaker 2:There were lots of tissues involved.
Speaker 1:Once you've wept on one of them, you can throw her away and go to the next one.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. It was bad. It was hard to find a therapist that would take our insurance. It was hard to find a therapist that could help with TID. It was hard to find a therapist that would be then online for telehealth, except now, at this point, everybody's online for telehealth.
Speaker 2:But in the beginning it was hard because they were like, well, we're therapists. We're gonna keep going because you can't do that online. Which is so funny because that is my job, and everyone has always made fun of me and now everybody's doing it. And I was like, trendsetter.
Speaker 1:Also, you actually had an amazing run of good therapists. Like, each one of them had things that you really liked about them, and you were so excited that you had finally found the one Yeah. For at least a period of two to four weeks, and then you moved on to to move the next one. But you weren't changing because you had issues with the therapist other than logistical issues or
Speaker 2:It was so traumatic. Yeah. So leaving the therapist in Oklahoma was basically like somebody died. Facts aside, nobody died, nobody did anything wrong, we worked through those layers, but the grief has been unbearable. And so we basically have spent the last nine months crying, and it has been terrible.
Speaker 2:And I still can't even talk about it. It hurts too much. I can't do it.
Speaker 1:That makes sense.
Speaker 2:And then we found the really good one who taught us about EMDR. That was on the podcast. Is good reorienting. Thank you. We found the really good one that we loved with EMDR, but her office was weird and wouldn't work with our sliding scale or insurance or whatever the drama was.
Speaker 2:They were barely across the state line. And we were, I don't even know, something logistics. Like you said, logistics. And so basically, we had to pay a million dollars or get out. We're like peace.
Speaker 1:That was the the specialist specialist.
Speaker 2:Yes. And she was so kind and she was so good. And so then we went to another one who was very kind, very DID accepting but she was a skittish little thing.
Speaker 1:Oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was adorable. Also she wanted to meet in person and that was the real issue Because we were in quarantine, and I could not meet with her in person. So we lost her, and then we found the one that painted while we talked to her. And she was amazing and had all these killer lines. She would just truth bomb these killer lines about how she could handle things, that everything's okay.
Speaker 2:We were doing really well with her, at least getting started. Therapy is never going to be the same again. We're never going to talk to someone the way we talk to the one in Oklahoma. We never are going to share some of those same things in the same way. I know we need to do therapy, and I know we need to take it seriously and I get that, but it's never gonna be the same ever.
Speaker 1:And that's okay.
Speaker 2:All of those walls are up and different and it's not, I can't tell you how much things have changed.
Speaker 1:Well a relationship that intimate is practically like a marriage relationship, right? Like that is such an intimate vulnerable bond that it makes total sense that having to end that is a trauma and even if you find someone else that you love, it's not gonna be the same relationship.
Speaker 2:I will never love someone else. It was awful and I cried for nine months. Like, nobody knows how bad that has been. You do because you've been through it with me. I couldn't talk to my friends about it because of
Speaker 1:Other complications.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Other complications. And so, like, it nearly killed me. It was awful. It was awful.
Speaker 1:And I know one one pattern that I observed as you were grieving that is that in the past when you had close relationships so often they ended in betrayal and so to have to end a close relationship in a way that was not betrayal still triggered a lot of hard feelings, not not like resentment kind of feelings, but such intense feelings of loss because you've lost so much. I feel like for once having to say goodbye to someone didn't mean that they had stabbed you in the back. She was loving you to your face and it was just time and circumstance that pulled you apart.
Speaker 2:It hurts.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I basically am having to get therapy for therapy now.
Speaker 1:It's just therapists all the way down.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. So she would the new that what is that? The third or fourth one, right?
Speaker 1:I've lost track.
Speaker 2:That one was lovely and kind and I worked through a lot of that grief with her. I'm not gonna talk about DID because we're not even there because right now therapy is a trigger and I can tell you nothing because all the loyalty, not just loyalty, although that's a piece of it, but that was so intense and we did so much work there and we don't have our notebooks and I can't do it again. I cannot repeat that process. I will never again repeat that process. So we basically spent maybe six weeks, eight weeks, and twice a week therapy for grieving the therapist in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1:That makes sense.
Speaker 2:And that was brutal. But then, out of the blue, when we think our daughter is about to die, because this is our life.
Speaker 1:For the record, she's she has legit problems, but I had more confidence. Emily has had more firsthand experience with her hospital trauma, so we come from a slightly different perspective. It's true, she has many medical crises, but I was grateful. It wasn't it wasn't compounding my stress in the way that it was compounding your stress, but I had other issues that I was struggling with.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think you just were not there.
Speaker 1:That's in a way that's, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2:Which is so ironic because I'm the one that has trouble staying present. But you were struggling, which we'll get to in a minute. And I don't at all mean that judgmental, I just mean as far as our experiences of what was going on.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:But literally watching her deteriorate and months into the pandemic and then out of the blue with zero warning the hospital called.
Speaker 1:They called and said, So are you still planning to come to surgery on Thursday? Like, Wait, what? And so she had to like go to the cardiologist and get COVID tested and all these other appointments just in time for surprise, it's surgery.
Speaker 2:It was just out of the blue. And basically, the doctors were like this is this is the Reader's Digest version. But, basically, the doctors were like, we've done as much for her as we can, and the best thing is to get her out of the city. You need to move to the country. And we're like, no.
Speaker 2:No. And my husband here, he's city folk.
Speaker 1:I'm a hybrid.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. So many things were going on. The other issue is that your parents were struggling because your mother was having surgery. And so your dad was trying to take care of her, but he needed help and she had multiple surgeries by the time the whole thing was said and done. And so once our daughter had surgery our quarantine definition I guess could sort of shift a little.
Speaker 2:We still need to be super careful because we have two high risk kids and we're taking the pandemic very We are taking the pandemic very seriously and we have two high risk kids. So it's not like we could just say, okay surgery's done, we can go do whatever we want. But your mom needing help and our daughter's surgery being finished meant we were available to shift very carefully our help. And so if we were going to move anyway, which was completely unexpected and unplanned, We needed to move as close to them as possible to be helpful. And so we literally with no plans on moving, no idea where we were going or when we were going or what was happening, literally did a search for all of the places that we could in the area and got as close as we could.
Speaker 2:And then in two weeks, we were completely moved.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:It was insane.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. It was exhausting. I really really don't like moving and we've done it a lot.
Speaker 2:It is a hard
Speaker 1:thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Hard. And even that is interesting because it's a piece of trauma from my childhood, having to move so much and people find out secrets from the family and so you up and move and sort of running away from things. And so that's an external parallel sort of to what happens internally. Except we've had to move literally for our daughter from hospital to hospital or situation to situation that is all related to that. Yep.
Speaker 2:And selling our house to take care of her and all of those traumas mean that for now we're renting and so we had to find a rental house that can fit all eight of us which is very hard to do. And there were only two choices of where we could move and one of them at the last minute, they sold it.
Speaker 1:Oh, did they?
Speaker 2:And so this was it, and here we are.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it's a lovely, lovely place. It's small, but it's we've lived in smaller.
Speaker 2:That's see, that's what when you say small, I think it is not small because we packed our whole family into that 800 square foot house right next to the hospital Two bedrooms of baby. Yeah. That was small.
Speaker 1:Two triple bunk beds, all the kids sleeping in one room.
Speaker 2:When they were little bitty bitty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they were so tiny.
Speaker 2:Just for like eight months or something we were there. The house here is smaller than our house in Kansas City.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:But everyone fits. But the best thing for the children is that we're out in the country and there's horses and cows and foxes and chickens in the yard and goats.
Speaker 1:They just wander across the yard from the neighbors. It's adorable.
Speaker 2:It also means our children have pets that we're not actually responsible for.
Speaker 1:Hallelujah.
Speaker 2:There's also coyotes that we met when we were camping.
Speaker 1:So if we have too many children or too many naughty children
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, that's terrible. But I know we're just going on and on, but the whole point is that in the last month, our entire lives have changed.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And also, we're physically exhausted. Because not only did we have to move in two weeks, but also now we push mow 10 acres.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. Yeah. 10 acres on a hill. It's it's not horizontal acres, it's vertical acres.
Speaker 2:Vertical acres. And we do not have a riding mower for two reasons. Number one, we are not millionaires and they cost
Speaker 1:The price of a small used car.
Speaker 2:3,000 to $15,000. And number two, our oldest daughter Mary, her grandfather actually died from a
Speaker 1:roller Riding motor on a slope.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's a big trigger for her. So we're having to play that out. But we think we have had her help us enough with the mowing that she is understanding why it can be necessary to have a riding mower when you have lots and lots of acres. And so there are parts of the bottom of the yard that we're gonna be able to use your dad's riding mower.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm hoping, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's very kind of him.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Just leave the hard parts for the kids.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. No. Some of it is so intense we have to weed eat instead of mow Yeah. We can't even push mow it. It's hard work where we are, but it's so wonderful.
Speaker 2:It's been good for them, it's been good for us, and I love it so much. I was just out looking at the stars. There are stars here in the
Speaker 1:It's beautiful.
Speaker 2:So, continuing the saga, in the middle of all of this, you were struggling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was.
Speaker 2:Let me fix this really quick. Okay. I just wanna make sure we're still going. Do you wanna tell us about that?
Speaker 1:Well, I I struggle with depression and my depression has been on kind of a decline for a while. And around the same time that we were trying to move, it was at a low. I was really struggling. Like, just overwhelm and despair and anxiety and
Speaker 2:Even before we found out we had to move. Right. Right before that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it was hard for me to get excited about a move but I was committed to participating and just doing what I needed to do and helping however I could. And Emily was so kind and tried so hard to tried so hard to care for me and and make sure I got lots of rest and time to recuperate. But moving is just hard. But I pushed through it.
Speaker 2:A family of eight moving is hard.
Speaker 1:But this was, yeah, it was a lot. But I also just recently went to my primary care provider and had talked about it. I really was fortunate in the area where we were living to have doctors who helped diagnose more problems that I had that helped care for my depression and also to help adjust my medicine in ways that had not been done before. And that helped a lot, but here I was really, really struggling and so I went to my doctor and talked to her about it and she said that sometimes these medicines work really well but over time they just lose their efficacy. And I had been taking this particular medication for two years and she said, well, let's try switching you over to this other one.
Speaker 1:We'll have to taper down your dose, so that was a rough couple weeks.
Speaker 2:While we were moving.
Speaker 1:That's thing we were While we moving, yeah. Then switch you over to this one. And she said, Just know, it'll probably work for a year or two and then we'll have to switch back. So that's something to look forward to. But since taking the new medication, I feel awake again, literally and figuratively.
Speaker 2:Just in the last few days. Yeah. And it's been fun to have you back, mister creator. You're building walls and painting paintings and
Speaker 1:Welcome back. I built a a temporary wall, framed it out with metal studs and
Speaker 2:You're a stud.
Speaker 1:Putting me. And I from there to painting a giant coy abstract painting for the bathroom, like I'm running the gamut of of my creative skills here. But it has felt good to to do those things and to enjoy doing those things. Because when I'm I'm depressed, I I don't even enjoy the things that I like.
Speaker 2:I heard you laugh last week.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't think I've heard you laugh in a year. Six months for sure. And I was gone the three months before that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I wasn't laughing the three months you were gone.
Speaker 2:That was brutal.
Speaker 1:I always I always have to talk with my therapist or doctors about how I am a naturally cheerful person who just happens to be depressed. I'm not actually depressed about anything, that it is independent of my situation. I love my family and I love my life. I don't really have anything to be depressed about.
Speaker 2:Other than it's been very hard.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's been so hard and so much in the last few years has been kind of traumatic of kids' health issues and all this moving and all of that but that is an entirely different issue and that's something that talking with a therapist has been very helpful about. But this kind of depression where it's just like I'll be walking through a Walmart and through my head is looping phrases like, I'm ruining everything. I've I've ruined it. This is all terrible. I just I'm gonna die.
Speaker 1:This is awful. I can't stand it. For I'm just in a Walmart. I'm not doing anything wrong. And it just runs through my head on a loop.
Speaker 2:Maybe you shouldn't go to Walmart.
Speaker 1:It's too Walmart. Could you imagine if I went to IKEA? But yeah, I don't have those thoughts running through my head right now, so that's nice. I can spend that mental time thinking up terrible puns.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. You guys, he's feeling better, so all he does is tell dad jokes all day.
Speaker 1:My my new favorite dad joke, when does a joke become a dad joke?
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:When the punch line is apparent.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. See, he's feeling better.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it was hard. We were struggling. Our kids were struggling. The pandemic didn't help.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The drama on the news doesn't help.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. Every night at bedtime, Emily finds the worst news articles to read to me. I read her fairy tales to help her go to sleep and she reads me the news to help me stay awake.
Speaker 2:You're welcome.
Speaker 1:Symbiotic, I guess.
Speaker 2:I want you to be awake enough to read me a fairy tale. Do you guys know that? He reads us a bedtime story every night. I love it. You're adorable.
Speaker 1:A lot of them are also very weird fairy tales but that's just because she's lucky.
Speaker 2:It gets me even for that.
Speaker 1:Gets you weird, weird dreams.
Speaker 2:News articles. I'm grateful to have dreams about something else. Dreams are hard. Nightmares are hard. Sometimes we wake you up.
Speaker 2:You're very sweet. You've never gotten mad at us for that.
Speaker 1:Why would I get mad at you for a nightmare?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I'm just grateful that you're you and not somebody else because not everyone is so kind about it or so gracious about it because nighttime is brutal. You have six children plus me
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And nighttime is rough. No wonder you're tired.
Speaker 1:It used to be a lot more rough. I'm so grateful that most of the children I wouldn't say they sleep through the night but at least their activities are covert and don't wake me up.
Speaker 2:He's the mom at night because our ears come off.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's one of the things I'm really jealous about.
Speaker 2:He is very careful and supportive and sensitive to sort of protect our nighttime. If the children come to us at night, we try to attend to them in nurturing kinds of ways, except that usually he can hear them before they get to us, and he takes care of it, which is very sweet because bedtime is so hard for us. It's very difficult to get back to sleep. And so when we are sleeping, you're such a noble gentleman making sure we can get our sleep when we do. Seriously, I'm very grateful for that.
Speaker 1:I love it. When we when we moved to the new house, one hiccup was that the latch on our bedroom, the door didn't latch so the kids just could walk on in. It didn't matter if we locked it or not. They just push it and it opened. And so that meant that kids were coming in and waking up mama early in the morning.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's funny because we get up super early
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that we can work Yeah. Before they're awake, and then we come back and take a quick little nap before it's time to get them up and going for the day. And so sometimes it would literally be like we just laid down to go back to sleep after working four or five hours and it's painful.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It hurts so much.
Speaker 1:But after I fixed the door, there was early one morning, there was a rattle at the doorknob by someone who was surprised that the door wouldn't open. And because it was a sound cue instead of a slap across the face to wake up mommy, I got to go intercept that one and Aw. Our youngest had a nightmare and so we talked about what you do when there's a nightmare, you can say a prayer and you can sing a little song and then you choose what new happy dream you wanna have and that's what you think about.
Speaker 2:You're such a good papa.
Speaker 1:I try.
Speaker 2:You're good to us too.
Speaker 1:I do what I can.
Speaker 2:Has that been hard or weird for you to deal with nighttime dramas or night terrors or nightmares or
Speaker 1:With you specifically?
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Not at all? No, it has not been a problem at all.
Speaker 2:What's that like for you, like on the outside as a different person?
Speaker 1:Sometimes I worry about the dreams you're having. Sometimes you'll drift off to sleep and I'll be lying next to you doing something on my computer or reading or whatever I'm doing. And you'll start to moan and and sort of toss and turn a bit, and I can tell that you're so scared. And all I can really do is is reach over and hold you. And, I mean, the same thing I would do if you were awake, but I there's in those situations, there's nothing I can do to change what's happening in your head, but I can work to make sure that your body knows it safe and hope that that trickles in somehow and helps to calm things on the inside.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of love.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's so funny because I thought two years ago, this is the most vulnerable we've ever been and this is the most we've ever tried to face and this is as hard as it gets and we're gonna have to do this. And then everything just kept getting harder.
Speaker 1:Never say this is as hard as it gets.
Speaker 2:Africa happened. Yeah. And
Speaker 1:And you traveling to The Middle East during a civil war and to California during a That
Speaker 2:was bad. That was bad. And then Kyrie, all of her medical drama, which really has been traumatic for us. I think this round of surgeries, I think it surprised us some of the triggers. Even you've talked about some of the triggers and having to like, medical trauma is a thing.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And going through that. And she's doing great now, by the way. And we are so grateful, little miracle.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That she's doing so well and thriving. But it's just been hard.
Speaker 1:And parenting is so intense that
Speaker 2:Parenting well is intense. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Parenting well is exhausting. Being around children is intense. But there's been such intensity over the past few years that I feel like we haven't had time to actually cope with all of the trauma that has happened in the last few years, not to mention all of the stuff we've been carrying with us from before then. So it's it's been rough and I'm hoping here in this new country home that we have a chance to rest for a little bit and recover.
Speaker 2:Well, then that's part of what feels good I think because the surgeries are behind us. She's doing well at least for a season. Mhmm. They said she should do well for a year to eighteen months. And so we have a break from that, a bit of a respite from that.
Speaker 2:Yep. We are closer to our friends and family here, but because of the pandemic, we can't actually see them. So that's funny. We've waved to people through the glass. We have opened up our quarantine to include your parents.
Speaker 2:So your parents can come here and we can go see your parents, but we're still not seeing anyone else other than I threw a painting in someone's yard.
Speaker 1:A drive by arting. But we're such introverts that in some ways quarantine is such a relief.
Speaker 2:Well, but people are being respectful of that. Normally, when we would move, people like sort of flock over, but because of the quarantine, people know that we're taking it seriously, and so it's given us extra space. Yeah. And we've not been invaded. And I think that that's protective and I think it's something that our family has needed.
Speaker 2:Because it's not just us, the children too. All eight of us are just sort of breathing this sigh of relief of we made it here and let's catch our breath and they're getting to play all day which is releasing all this trauma and stuff that's all somatic like
Speaker 1:Sweat. It's releasing a lot of sweat.
Speaker 2:Oh, they're so gross.
Speaker 1:Grill in the Oh my goodness. Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're so filthy. But it's delightful. It's where they should be. They're learning. They think they're country kids and they're really just tourists.
Speaker 1:I made a playlist of country music and they've all decided it's their favorite.
Speaker 2:It's been a it's been a change and so much going on of our life and reorienting through all the things we were sort of on pause for. Now it's all done. Like all of those hard things that are new hard things are now also all in memory time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's true. We're making new memory time for the future.
Speaker 2:Woah. What do you want in your new memory time in the future?
Speaker 1:I would be happy if my memory time extended to breakfast this morning like My my trauma response is my bubble of awareness just gets smaller and smaller and if it's more than like a half hour outside of where I am right now, I'm probably not thinking about it.
Speaker 2:So between your early onset dementia there and our dissociation, I think it's part of why our relationship is so lovely
Speaker 1:because I remember nothing to hold a grudge about.
Speaker 2:Everything before California feels like lifetimes ago.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Everything
Speaker 1:And that was less than a year. Right?
Speaker 2:That was Oh,
Speaker 1:yeah. That was March. Much less than a year.
Speaker 2:Everything before moving here feels fuzzy and like memory time. Yeah. Like a lifetime ago. Like, not my lifetime. Like, a whole different
Speaker 1:We've changed genres.
Speaker 2:There you go. I read about it. I know that we're tracking it. I know that on my calendar every day it says to text my friend and that it's non negotiable. Like, I've got that level of continuity Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But I do not have possession of any of it. None of it feels like mine. None of it feels like my history. None of it feels like it's part of the present.
Speaker 1:Is that good or bad?
Speaker 2:I don't know. And now, once again, that therapist that I had that liked that was helping us with the grief, she could not see us because we crossed the state line. And so I met with another therapist and she was very, very lovely except then something happened with her. I don't remember. I've had three more since then because
Speaker 1:Oh goodness, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Well, one of them said they were gonna be able to take my insurance and then couldn't.
Speaker 1:One
Speaker 2:of them said, yes, they could see me. And it looked like on paper everything was okay. But then when what happened? It was something about, oh, she was only gonna be very cognitive behavioral, meaning like only
Speaker 1:thoughts. If this, then that.
Speaker 2:No, that's not happening. And didn't wanna talk about anything in the past at all, which is fine except I can already do that. Well, This is actually helpful.
Speaker 1:For some of us, the past is still part of the present, so
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Some some some of us are still stuck there and needing relief.
Speaker 2:So I really was at a crossroads. And so now I have, like, the fourteenth therapist since October, which was not even a year ago. Nine months, like birthing a baby, here I am.
Speaker 1:You're like the therapy version of a heartbreaker leaving a trail of discarded therapists behind you.
Speaker 2:That's terrible because that's a whole different diagnosis. But those are not my fault. This is not
Speaker 1:my No. Is not then You are not discarding them. Is.
Speaker 2:But it is a reminder of how hard it is to find a good therapist when you have DID.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And in the meantime, I can't talk about it at all to anybody and it's very hard and very lonely and very awful and I've cried and cried and cried and cried and cried. But you're feeling better and it was very nice to hear you laugh last week, this week.
Speaker 1:I laughed today.
Speaker 2:And see your smile again.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Aw. And we had a little snuggle.
Speaker 1:We did.
Speaker 2:Aw. Welcome back. Thanks. So now I have a new therapist. I've seen her twice.
Speaker 2:That's progress.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:And she will take my insurance.
Speaker 1:Also good.
Speaker 2:And I can see her online during the pandemic. And I don't plan on moving again for a while so hopefully we're settled. We'll see.
Speaker 1:We'll see.
Speaker 2:Also, I just would really rather here's my plan, to not do therapy.
Speaker 1:Bad plan so far.
Speaker 2:Thank you for your encouragement. And then I'm going with the beautiful mind plan.
Speaker 1:Just gonna see your alters all over as they disrupt your life completely.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:That's okay. I'm going with the eat my feelings plan. I may not have multiple personalities, but I'm eating for them anyway.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness. So I don't even know what to say. Just a lot has happened. Do we cover everything?
Speaker 1:I don't think it's possible for us to cover everything. It's just a lot.
Speaker 2:It's a lot. But we're okay. I made it.
Speaker 1:We
Speaker 2:did? Our daughter's okay.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:The children are doing well here. They're happy.
Speaker 1:All things considered, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's still exhausting to be a good and present and attentive parent.
Speaker 1:Yes it is.
Speaker 2:But there are also moments that because we do a good job of that or they can just go play outside. Or we can play outside together but don't have to interact as directly. And that gives us some breaks in a way that we did not have living in the city where they could not safely be outside.
Speaker 1:There are moments when I hear the children on their own just singing and I think, okay, we haven't destroyed them yet.
Speaker 2:Because they're happy. Yeah. We've tried so hard.
Speaker 1:To destroy them?
Speaker 2:No. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:We're just trying to keep future therapists employed.
Speaker 2:No doubt. If you're gonna have a therapist with a horse, the kids are.
Speaker 1:Doctor Ed.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. They're so excited.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. That'll be fun.
Speaker 2:You know what we should talk about that on the podcast after they get to They might like to talk about that. Yeah. I don't know what else. What else? Anything else?
Speaker 2:Or how do you close it? How do you finish it?
Speaker 1:Tada. Jazz hands? Jazz hands don't work on a podcast.
Speaker 2:You're impossible.
Speaker 1:Not impossible. Just highly improbable.
Speaker 2:Encourageable.
Speaker 1:I thank you for your encouragement. I love you.
Speaker 2:I love you. I just wanna finish with the jazz hands.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening. Your support of the podcast, the workbooks, and the community means so much to us as we try to create something together that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community at www.systemsspeak.com. We'll see you there.