Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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 1:It's cold this morning, not like the snow, but like spring that hasn't quite come yet. We drove down through Missouri last night after the children got out of school. They don't have school today, and so we wanted to use the long weekend to get away. My son has surgery on his spine next week. He has cerebral palsy and spina bifida, and he's losing his ability to walk.
Speaker 1:And Monday is his pre op after our appointment with the therapist. So we decided to take the whole weekend together, all of us as a family. It's been stressful. We just got the call at the end of the week, though we knew it was coming. But the surgery is risky, and so we were hoping to avoid it.
Speaker 1:But it just needs to be done, and it can't wait because he's losing more and more of his ability to walk. And what he loses, we don't get back. So I've been worried about that and focused on that. And I know that it's m who handles all those appointments because I've been reading the notebook and trying to pay attention. So we've taken a long weekend to come here to our cabin and rest and play as a family before he has surgery on his spine.
Speaker 1:My mother is buried here nearby. We're just outside of a small town where my grandparents first met is just across the river. But the town where my grandparents met is just outside of there across the river. My grandfather ran the first movie theater in this part of Missouri, and my grandmother drove down from her small town with her girlfriends on a double date to go see the movies for the first time. She didn't date that other boy again after she met my grandfather.
Speaker 1:It's a pretty sweet story, and I guess it's how I came to be. I'm not sure how my parents met, actually. I think they kind of grew up together. My mother's family was from the city, not this one, a different city. And my father's family was from a farm outside the city, but both their fathers written the Masons together, and I guess they saw each other in high school at music camps and things as well.
Speaker 1:So maybe that's the beginning of my story too as I'm learning it. The movie theater where my grandparents met is in a little just across the river, The town where my grandmother was from is a small town just north of here. That's where my mother is buried. She was cremated because of the accident. There wasn't enough of her left to just embalm her, so we didn't really get a choice on that.
Speaker 1:But I guess it's fine. It just is. The ashes of a person are heavier than you would think, more than you would think, and yet not at all as much as a person. I remember that. There's a small cemetery that's just a family cemetery cemetery where all the headstones from seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds, everyone is buried there.
Speaker 1:So that's where we took her, But no one paid to help me bury her, and so I had to get permission just to bury her ashes in the plot with my grandparents, digging just enough to get the ashes down and just enough and just enough to place a marker that I made myself from cement and shattered dishes, her own china that my oldest son broke the week that he came to live with us, the week before we got her ashes back and buried her. So there's bits of glass and bits of china, and I tried to write her name in it because I had already paid for everything else, and there was no money left to buy a headstone. And her family wouldn't help me, so I did the best I could. So we stopped there last night on the way down just to say hello, to say goodnight as the sun went down, to let the children see their family names on the stones marked there to remember and to walk away from. Our cabin is only about an hour from there, so after that, it was an easy trip.
Speaker 1:It was actually easier to get here than it had been from Oklahoma, so that was good for us to learn. The kids unloaded the van quickly. They try so much to help. And they were running and playing, and my youngest daughter fell. And she was crying, But I couldn't see any skin broken and thought maybe she would just have a nasty bruise.
Speaker 1:And so I gave her an ice pack to help her feel better, and we snuggled and tucked her into bed because it was so late already. But in the night, she woke screaming, and she couldn't put weight on her leg. And so my husband took her to the ER, and they X rayed her leg, and it's broken. So now my daughter has a cast on her leg after we told her she could swim, and we're supposed to go to the theme park today. But she was up all night with my husband at the hospital.
Speaker 1:Like, even when she's healthy, things go wrong. Or even when we're trying to do something good for them, we can't keep them safe. I cried, and I felt bad. I felt badly that she was hurt, but I also felt badly that I didn't know she was more hurt than she was. But I thought she was just tired.
Speaker 1:But when we realized it was different than that, we did take care of her right away. We really did. And the pediatrician and the doctor at the hospital both said that we didn't do anything wrong. And I know they meant to reassure me, but when they said that, it made me panic or to think we were doing something wrong just because the children were running around. We were outside with them.
Speaker 1:It wasn't like we had left them alone. I know that we're tired from not sleeping last night, and I know that we're anxious about the spine surgery next week. And I know I'm on edge because my therapy homework this week has been really hard. And so it's all kind of built up to make me anxious and sad, maybe even frustrated. But I thought if maybe I talked about it, it could help me with that stuff about not avoiding.
Speaker 1:Because the more I do the homework about avoidance, the more I realize I just avoid a lot, actually. But it's also true that I'm trying. Before we left yesterday, in the morning, my daughter had a field trip, and it was to a farm. And I I've only gone once before on a field trip with my daughter, and that was in the fall since starting therapy because my therapist said that sometimes being friends with other moms is important. But I have such social anxiety, so much anxiety in general.
Speaker 1:That it's really hard. But I tried, and I tried again yesterday, but mostly because that was the only way my daughter could go. Because they don't wanna regulate her oxygen outside of the school building. And it wasn't a day she had a nurse with her that could go on the trip. And so I went, and it was an interesting experience because it was on this farm.
Speaker 1:So my daughter was delighted with all the animals, baby goats and baby pigs and baby cows and baby chickens, baby ponies and a baby donkey, turtles and fish, even owls and hawks and an eagle. She loved it. She played so hard, and it was really good for her. But, also, if I think about avoidance and things I avoid and also triggers, I I I feel like there were a lot of layers there from the farm setting. There were some things that I saw or experienced or felt that were good, and I could tell that the boy one and some of the little ones were really having a good time.
Speaker 1:And I think some of the time, I lost some time because they were enjoying it. I was anxious about that because I didn't wanna do anything wrong or embarrassing or to get in trouble, but it was okay. And I tried to not avoid it, and I tried to just be present and notice what was happening. But there were a few other things that I think maybe were triggers in a not pleasant way and in not good way. And sometimes it's hard to stay present with those things or to let those things feel up inside me, like, to become something that I'm aware of instead of avoiding because it's not pleasant, and it's not good.
Speaker 1:And I feel like my fear grows faster than I can control it or that the reality of the past comes to the forefront so close, so quickly that what if I can't avoid it, or what if it is real, or what if I lose now time? And it frightens me. But even then, I try to just acknowledge that and feel that. And what it feels like is a lot like this morning where it's too cold to be sitting out on the porch in summer pajamas trying to journal or share things on the podcast. But at the same time, there's something good and bright about the sunshine and about the birds playing and about school buses going by in the distance and the sounds of the highway on the other side of that and the brightness of the water in the river and the way it sparkles.
Speaker 1:And there's something about a morning like this that makes the cold worth enduring. Like, maybe the therapist and the workbook are right. And maybe the more I expose myself and the more I try to stay present, the warmer the day will become. Maybe it won't always be winter. Maybe it won't always be cold.
Speaker 1:Maybe I won't always be afraid.
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.systemspeakcommunity.com. We'll see
Speaker 1:you there.