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Emma shares about complex trauma, deprivation, and dissociation (CPTSD, OSDD, DID). Educational, supportive, and inspiring, System Speak documents the best and worst of life through insights, conversations, and collaborations. An archive curated for dignity for all.
Welcome to System Speak, a podcast about Complex Trauma and Dissociation. It's our story, our learning, and the ideas we've been working with as they've unfolded over time. Earlier episodes give context for where we are now, and current episodes may engage more advanced material, harder content, or reference earlier conversations. A few things to remember as you listen. The podcast is education, reflection, and storytelling.
Speaker 1:It's not therapy, and listening doesn't create a relationship. Although I am a therapist, I am not in that role here, and nothing that I share is individualized clinical advice. Every system, every internal world, all of your own stories are all different and you take
Speaker 2:up your own shape. What we share about ours won't translate directly to yours.
Speaker 1:It isn't meant to. We're all different, and all of our stories matter. As always, take care of yourself during and after listening. We are so glad you're here.
Speaker 3:I know that when I realized I was feeling joy once was I was visiting a friend of mine. My friend Kelly. I was her, and she took a picture of me from across the table. We were out at dinner one night, and she took a picture of me. And as I was leaving her house and driving home, I looked at that picture and I had to study it and study it.
Speaker 3:And I just gasped when I realized that's the first time I have looked in a mirror or seen a picture of myself since she died that I see joy on my face again. And that was in spring spring of of twenty twenty four. So it took four two full years for me to see myself looking joyful again. Wow. And I hadn't been unhappy the whole two years.
Speaker 3:I had had I had lived back in the happy moments and and times and adventures, and I was doing things. And I was proud of myself in a different way I had ever had to be proud of myself. But it was kind of interesting because every time I was proud of myself, I would well, like, when when I had decided that in the summer of twenty two, we were gonna buy a new car. And after he died in the spring of twenty two, I thought, I'll probably put that off. My brain just can't do that right now, and my body is too tired all the time.
Speaker 3:So I just thought I'd put it off. But then I started realizing, well, car's 13 years old. I probably need, you know, I probably need to be driving a reliable car. So I went ahead and did what Joe and I had planned. And and I went and I negotiated for the car, did it all in about three hours one day.
Speaker 3:And as I was driving off, as I was driving away from the dealership, I was so tickled because I had bought a car by myself with my own credit score, with my own money, with my own planning, with my own negotiating. I had done that by myself and I was so proud. And then instantly, that feeling came, but I did it without them. And every car I've ever bought in my life, I did with Oh. And and we draw drove out of the dealership going, oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:I can't believe we paid that much for a car because we were always in sticker shock because we kept our cars so long. They'd always gone up so much in price by the time we bought the next one, our next one. We were just shocked that we spent that much money on a car. And I was still shocked that I did it this time, but I was alone. So for a long time every piece of joy or happiness, most of them or being proud, most of them came with the flip side of that.
Speaker 3:So I was living, existing in those two worlds that you have to exist in.
Speaker 2:It's so much.
Speaker 3:It is so much. You know? It just is so much. Because I had not lost a parent at that time. I had two grown children and had no way to have to have an understanding of what they were going through with the loss of a parent.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow. That piece I had not thought of.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I did not know what they needed or what they wanted from me. They both have had significant other people in their lives, and one was in relationship a marriage that he had been in for quite a while, but my daughter was in a new relationship, and she has since married that man. But, you know, I didn't know what they needed. I didn't know what they needed from me as opposed to what they needed from that other person in their life.
Speaker 3:I just didn't know. You know? And I so I had to ask all the time. And I realized, again, what a privilege that is that I was 62 and encountering my first big loss. But it was a doozy of a one.
Speaker 3:You know? Yeah. So, I mean, I started off with a bang, I guess.
Speaker 2:Of course you did.
Speaker 3:Of course, I just went full bore.
Speaker 2:You also had, in your situation, some of that anticipatory grief that started early. I did. Because, because of the circumstances. It, you know, that's such a different experience. I had that with my father, knowing that it was coming, and did not have that with my mother since it happened so suddenly and unexpectedly.
Speaker 2:It's a completely different kind of grief, I think.
Speaker 3:What did you did you think from that having anticipatory grief and then going into the grief of loss, what did you think you knew in the anticipation that you found out you did not really under know?
Speaker 2:I think for me, it was how much I had already grieved, and that that relationship was complicated and so different than yours. But I think I thought it would really hit me after. But for me, I did so much grieving in the process, and then the experience of funeral week and all of that was so intense. Like, I stayed by myself to watch him be buried all the way while everyone else went back to the house for the meal or whatever. Right.
Speaker 2:And I think that was really significant for me in a way that felt like it bookended that anticipatory grief, not into a closure place, because grief doesn't happen that fast, but there was a settling that happened.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I had also just grieved for so many years. Like, I really hadn't seen him since everything in sixth grade. And so I think for me, it was maybe more like an end of a waiting, whereas for you is in some ways, like, the beginning of a waiting, even the waiting is not necessarily the right word either. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I married, knowing because of his type one diabetes. I and because I'm a very practical person, and Joe was a very practical person too. I mean, we always knew most likely how it would a solution for us. Not just, I mean, just knowing what diabetes can bring and knowing that he was a child with diabetes when they didn't really understand a lot about it, you know, and everything. And so just kind of knowing, I mean, they call it the silent killer for a reason.
Speaker 3:And, yeah, it can sneak up on you with heart disease and triple bypasses and kidney transplants and all of those things. And then he did great with his heart, not heart, with his heart triple bypass. He did great with the kidney failure. Came out of those. But there's a time limit with those things too.
Speaker 3:And so we were thinking that those time limits, you know, like how well how long do those arteries last? How long does the kidney typically last? Those kind of things. When we were on that trajectory not realizing we were going to get cancer thrown in. And they do tell you when you decide to get it, you want to get a kidney transplant.
Speaker 3:They do tell you that the medicines will leave you, your immune system in a way that will be compromised compromised. And And often often the the result result of of that that is is cancer. Cancer. And, you know, but when you need when you need a kidney to keep living, you say, okay. You know?
Speaker 3:And you just go, we'll deal with that when it happens. If it happens, it won't happen to us. You know? But it did. And and so I always kinda knew and I were very practical.
Speaker 3:At one point, we moved the money. We were we were not a wrench. We were always scrounging, but we moved the money that we were spending on me once the kids were grown. We were spending money on me for life insurance that did if something happened to me. We moved all of that money and put it on life insurance that was very expensive for him, which was so practical and was so good because we both kind of lived in the place of we're gonna lose him first.
Speaker 3:Unless something weird happened. Just statistics. Joe is older than me. You know, he's male. Plus he has these, you know, real things going on in his life physically.
Speaker 3:I don't have real things going on in my life physically. I'm younger and I'm female. Everything told us he was gonna go first. This was how it was gonna end for us, and it did indeed. And so we kind of were very open and could talk about that.
Speaker 3:Like, things like, we know we need to be spending more money on our money on life insurance for you, you know, that I would collect on. You know, those kinds of things. So we did that. So I think I kinda always anticipated that from when I married. Wow.
Speaker 3:So I think I lived in that for about forty years. But I also realized when he got cancer, I was still going to work most days unless he had a treatment or something. And driving home from work, I would literally make myself think you need to try to see what it feels like to be making this drive home and not being there. Wow. And I would cry in the car thinking about that and everything, But I did realize the second he died, I realized there was no way.
Speaker 3:It's you can totally put yourself into the position as much as you want to. To. If you've not experienced a huge loss, you can't really try to conjure that panic and that feeling. And I had been rather futile of me to try to try to do that. I don't think it was wrong of me.
Speaker 3:It was something I felt like I needed to do. The interesting thing is kept saying once he got cancer, he kept saying, I'm just so sorry. You're gonna have the hardest job, and I'm gonna get to leave and just be fine. And but I'm leaving you, you know, to learn to live life so differently. And I'm I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:It's gonna be this way. And I would tell him every single time he said that. He said it on his deathbed that he was sorry that I had to do the harder job. And I I told him even then, you know, no. You have to do the harder job cause you're gonna miss so many things I know you wanna be here for.
Speaker 3:It's you that has the harder job. And I knew the incident. He didn't take that next breath. I knew he was right that this was the harder job.
Speaker 1:Oh, my heart.
Speaker 3:I know. My heart too. My heart too. But I will have to tell you, has truly been an an amazing journey. I did very quickly realized I did fairly quickly go into a new relationship, which I describe as very good.
Speaker 3:And what it did was it did not take any of the grief away. It did not lessen it at all. It just gave me a soft place to land.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's beautiful.
Speaker 3:That's what it gave me. I was fortunate that I went into a relationship with someone who also loved my husband. He's one of his very best friends since high school. And so a man I had known for the forty years, I knew and had liked so much. He was probably one of maybe the only of friends that I felt like was also my friend.
Speaker 3:He and I just clicked really well when I first met him. And so I felt like I had a relationship with even outside of I had my own friendship with him too. And so that was very easy to fall into. And I can tell you I had all kinds of people asking me, are you sure? Isn't it too soon?
Speaker 3:Isn't it and you know what? This is what happened in my life. This is what presented itself, and I was not and there's no rules on how you grieve. And so I decided I could open myself up and fall in love again. You know, that it's my grief and it's my rules.
Speaker 3:And I'm with someone I trust and with someone that loved my husband and is perfectly fine with experiencing and being a companion with me as I grieved was not, you know, intimidated or bothered or anything by that. And so that's been a lovely piece also. I did realize very quickly that when I met up with some friends of mine, like, back in Oklahoma, when I go there for visits, and I I realized very click quickly when I hooked up with some friends of mine who were also widows, which I was so grateful. Those people come out of the woodwork no matter how many years it's been since you all have been in contact. I'm so grateful.
Speaker 3:I had, like, five women all in different phases of loss of their spouse call me within the first two days just to tell me I'm in the worst time. It's not it's not gonna be like this like it is right now forever. And to call them anytime, which I did through about the first four months. I made calls to them just to have them tell me, you live through it. You through it.
Speaker 3:You will get to another place. And that was so reassuring. And so I told myself that I was gonna be one of those that made the call, and I've I've had to do that a couple of times. And I just called, just made the calls whether the person expected me to hear from me or not, you know, to just tell them you're gonna be okay, but you're in a horrible place right now because that was very comforting to hear. Wow.
Speaker 3:I did realize that when I visited them with them more and everything, going into a new relationship that I literally fell in love with that person put me in a different category than a lot of widows because I think they think and I thought too. I I didn't I wasn't I was no longer having the same experience because such a big piece of a loss like this is that you don't have your person anymore. There's no one that's saying good morning to you every morning and good night to you every night. There's no one who's sending flowers just because they love you, and there's, you know, those kind of things. But I did get that.
Speaker 3:Not you know, within the first year, I started that. And so that did kind of put me in a different place. And even though then I were long distance until about three months ago, I was still in a different place. I still had a person that said good morning to me even if it was on text and good night to me and sent me flowers for no reason. You know?
Speaker 2:Wow. Think it's an example of how unique grief can be. Yes. Like, I'm thinking my, my brother had such a different experience of grief than I did. He was living with him.
Speaker 2:Like, we didn't always live together. When in the season I knew you, he was living with my father, and and so wasn't in my foster nanny placement, shiny, happy,
Speaker 3:whatever all that
Speaker 2:was in those worlds or in shiny, happy college where I was. And so we really had these very different experiences. And so that showed up in grief as well. I think he and I navigated things really beautifully where there was no trauma drama between us in the deaths of our parents. Right.
Speaker 2:There were some hard conversations, like I went ahead and signed over the cabin because my family was just so big. It just, we just outgrew it. We weren't going to fit there anymore. And so those kinds of things, but I think all things considered, of all the things for us to get right, we did that well. And I'm so grateful because our experiences were so different, and he in some ways had that side of the family support, even though his experience was unique, and I was so alone in mine, but that was only for a very like, what feels like a split second before we lost our mom.
Speaker 2:And so then we were very much in that together because she had almost no one. And so we really, I think, needed each other to get through that in a way that was different than many of our other experiences. And also the griefs, I think having that anticipatory grief with my father, but with my mother, it was more about the shock, like just trying to even process what just happened. Yeah. I think, like, it was like we were so focused on losing him.
Speaker 2:What is that gonna be like? What does it mean? What does it mean now that it's we're on the other side of that? Except then out of the blue, this happened over here. And so that anticipatory grief with my father became a sort of disrupted grief because we didn't get to finish that before this happened over here.
Speaker 2:And then the grief with my mother was so much about the shock of what just even happened and trying to process. And because she had been I mean, she had been to see them, but it was sort of in the context of this holiday where not just the end of the year holidays or Christmas or whatever, but which was really our first time to all be together as a family. Right. But we were all together because we were also doing his funeral, like the the temple work for that church at that time. And and so it was like we went from one funeral to another is what it felt like.
Speaker 2:And so I think that's part of what I remember is that I couldn't even I felt like I felt like I couldn't even get to the grief fog because I couldn't get through the shock to get to the grief fog. And so it was very Yeah. It very that overwhelm. Like, I still don't think I can even put it into words. You've done such a beautiful job finding words today in in your writings, and it's so hard to find words for still.
Speaker 3:It is. In fact, I think looking at the writings and the
Speaker 2:I loved it.
Speaker 3:But there is one that is about and and I'm gonna read it if that's okay. Please. Yes. It is, I do not recognize myself in these messy days, unable to focus, stumbling along, the falling and the getting back up, the the metaphorical and the literal. But I remember the moments that brought me here, making the bed together in tears, sleeping in the parking garage, three starts and three violent stops, the songs, the knowing, the leaning in, and the letting go.
Speaker 3:And yet, I also see myself feeling in the midst of it all, slipping into what was lost, stepping into a second chance, unsure where that love lived, still in me, I suppose, waiting its turn, letting a playlist tell the story, cracking open a hidden portal, whispering some words, holding on to others, all the songs and all the knowing, the leaning in, and the full embrace. That appeared on my phone one morning after that because it came to me to fill the night. And I love it because it is about the love and the losing and and then turning around and being brave enough to step into the love. Knowing that, once again, I am connected strongly to a man who is older than me. He does not have the health issues I had.
Speaker 3:But statistically, I'm gonna do this again. Oof. Yeah. And that was I did a lot of therapy about that thought right there. Like, can I do this?
Speaker 3:Can I put myself into position? Because I was still in the first year. I was still in the the hard throes of grief. And am I going to turn around and do this to myself again? And I decided that the the other option was to not love like that again.
Speaker 3:And I knew because he had actually told me in the hospital before he came home on hospice. I knew that he'd want me to be with someone. He had told me, we both know who you are. We know you like people. We I know we both know you like having people around, and we both know you have loved being married, which I love that he said that.
Speaker 3:And Aw. You know? And so I want you to be happy again. And I think for you that would mean finding someone new. And, so I I went into it with the confidence that I was probably doing just what would want and that with the person probably would have picked out if he had had to pick someone out for me.
Speaker 3:So, yeah. So that was good. But it's interesting for you what you said about, you know, putting one death into perspective. My daughter had always, always been afraid of losing my parents and of how badly that was gonna hurt because my kids were very close with my parents who were very active in their growing up. And so when she moved away from home, anytime I called in the morning, like at an unusual time, anytime I called her, she picked up the phone scared.
Speaker 3:You know, I got to the point because she thought it meant one of the grandparents had died. That's how worried she was about how And scared she so I got to where I text her before and said, nothing's wrong, but I'm about to call you. And, but it was interesting because in those first two or three weeks after we lost her dad, she said to me, you know what? I'm realizing that when I lose the grandparents, it's not gonna be as scared as scary or as horrible as I had thought it would be because, you know, I've lived through this, and this is so much harder than losing a grandparent. Like, now that I've learned to live through this, I can do anything.
Speaker 3:You
Speaker 2:know? And
Speaker 3:so I know I'll be okay. And we did, a year later, the spring, the April '23, we lost my dad in kind of the same way. Just nothing bad happened. He just got old, you know, and was very old. And he was a week in the hospital and about two days home on hospice and just died with all of his family right around him.
Speaker 3:You know? But then just the following no. It was two years. He died in '24. And the following September, my sister's husband, who had been in my life since I was 14, passed away.
Speaker 3:Wow. So, like, within two and a half years, we had lost three men in our family. You know? My mom, my sister, and I all became widows. And I got to go first, and I was the youngest.
Speaker 3:Yay. But that's been interesting to just watch them grieve. My sister's grief was pretty much a lot like mine, except that she has a lot of kids in her life that and lots of grandkids that are in and out of her house all the time. And my mom and dad actually were living with her in Texas, and so she still had a lot going on in her life where I did not. I came home from work where had a very active, wonderful life, but I came home alone.
Speaker 3:You know? So we had different challenges, but our grief was a lot the same. My mother's grief, completely different. I went to see them about three months after we had buried my dad. And I said to my mom, thinking, you know, I'm the expert in grief.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna give my mom some insight. So I just want How are you doing with your grief? And she said, my what? Your grief of losing dad. And she said, oh, oh, I'm okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah. No. I don't I don't really get sad about that. She had always she and my dad, very devout evangelical Christians, and she had always prayed that dad would go before her because he would not do well without her without her. And that's true.
Speaker 3:And she wanted him to be able to be at home when he passed away and for it not to be a huge, long, drawn out thing. And she said, I feel like I got all three things. Wow. I want it for him and for myself, and I just can't be real sad about that. And they were married for seventy four years.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And they she is very confident that she will join him soon in heaven. And, you know, I'm I'm glad she has that kind of comfort. I wished when Joe passed away, I realized, oh, I wish I still have that comfort that I was gonna see him again, soon, but I don't have that in my life anymore. And so I couldn't snatch it back, you know, just to to help me get by.
Speaker 3:But yeah. So her grief was so different. And my grief for my dad and for my brother-in-law were just like my daughter had predicted. I had lived through the worst and, you know, so I could handle all of these. And while I was sad for the loss of them and I was sad for the lust that that put into my sister and my mom, it was not overwhelming like the loss of Joe.
Speaker 3:Oh, and my sister, I asked her because my sister lost a child. And I asked her some months after she lost her husband. I said, I think I know the answer to this question, but I wanna hear from you. Was it as hard? Because of my experience of losing the person closest to me and then losing other people, you know, those weren't as hard.
Speaker 3:And I wondered for her. And she said, no. Losing her son was harder. And I kind of suspected that, that losing a child would be harder than a spouse. You know?
Speaker 3:It would just be a different kind of grief to get over. Well, not that you ever get over, but to live with for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2:So Wow. I I feel like there's three things in my head that have come up. One one is that when I think of your parents, I don't even know how to take their names apart. It was like they had Yeah. One It's just one one squashed together name like a sandwich.
Speaker 2:True.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's true. That's funny. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I don't it's hard for me to remember that your dad has passed because it feels like they share a name, and it's just a thing.
Speaker 3:They're they're both gone or they're both still alive. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then I appreciate that you brought up, I'm I'm gonna, for this context of the podcast, just say religious trauma, that layer of things. What what happened for me was in processing grief about my parents. My therapist brought me to the place of how I was, you know, aside from anyone's faith, that my strenuous efforts of trying harder and trying harder and trying harder in church, in religion, in religious trauma, as if I could earn something was because if I could earn God, I could maybe get my father. Like, I could get God's approval, maybe I could get my father's approval. And that was maybe the hardest part of my grief, because then I felt like I lost God as I understood God and my father at the same time, like in one big therapy swoop.
Speaker 2:It just eradicated both concepts. And then in processing that, talked about, like, the I mean, I have the aspects of, oh, there's some conversion therapy. And like I told Nathan before we got married that I was gay, like he knew that, we talked about it. And, also like, why did I put myself through that? And my therapist said in a similar way, like, that was about your brother.
Speaker 2:Like, if you could get not, like, in an incestuous way, but in a, like, if you could work it would heal things with your brother. And I think grief surfaces all of these things and sort of these invisible contracts that we don't even realize are there when it is complicated grief or traumatic grief, grief always being traumatic. But, for me, it was I really struggled with separating grief from trauma. Yes. Because like when you're talking about those roots, like, that's what was in there.
Speaker 2:So when the tornado of grief wiped out my trees, it was the trauma roots that were left displayed in front of me.
Speaker 3:From the past with those relationships. Right. Wow. I will tell you, I always have worded it, but it's interesting now that you bring that up. I always worded it with the loss of and I've told people often was that one thing I felt very fortunate about was that I didn't have regret.
Speaker 3:Like so many people say, I wish I had told them this or I wish I had known that or, you know, like you go to funerals and you go, wow, I wish I'd known this person was so awesome before I was attending their funeral, you know. And so lots of times people talk about regret when they lose someone close to them. And I realized I did not have regret. When I over so many years had said so many things to each other about how much we loved each other, how much we respected this about them, how much we appreciated. We always verbalized that and it always came out.
Speaker 3:We didn't day he was in the hospital after he made the decision that he was going to go home on hospice, once that was made and his sister left the hospital to meet the hospice people at the house to get everything set up and everything. And Joe and I had one. We had, like, four hours. We had a morning at the hospital by ourselves. And we, like, verbalized that once I get in the car to go home and you get in the ambulance that's taking me home, once that happens and we get home, we are never gonna be alone, just the two of us again.
Speaker 3:Wow. And and so we have this window of time to have any conversations we want to have. And we both expressed that's when he told me to find somebody else and everything. We have both expressed each other that the conversation that we had wasn't trying to cram in everything we should have said in the last forty years but just didn't because, oh, you know, because people say things like, well, I'm just not the person that expresses my feelings like that or I'm just and I tell people now I call them on that bull and I just said, no, you need to express them now, you know, because you don't know when you're gonna lose that person and you don't want to have those regrets. And but, yeah, I felt so fortunate that we laughed during that conversation.
Speaker 3:We brought up memories and everything, but neither one of us were in that conversation wishing we had had that conversation sooner.
Speaker 2:There's there's something so beautiful about it that is even more than just not having said the things. Like, one thing we talk about on the podcast a lot is how trauma is the bad or hard things, but deprivation is the good that was missing. And you guys said all the things sort of so you didn't have the trauma of regret, but you also had so much good that you gave each other.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That is really, really beautiful. I feel like by the time I lost my parents, I had done enough therapy that I feel like I did get to say all of my things, but I don't feel that I was understood in saying those things. So I feel like I still got deprived.
Speaker 3:Right. The deprivation still overwhelmed
Speaker 2:the Yeah. And and it could have been, there could have been more healing if everyone was doing that work. And also, I don't feel any resentment at all. Like, I think everyone was doing their best and you and I talked so much about it at the time, but, like, I just they didn't know what to do with me even even if we weren't disagreeing about our different experiences of the same things.
Speaker 3:It just Right.
Speaker 2:I was somehow so foreign to them. So I think that's another place where grief shows up for me is in that deprivation. There's a book that I love that I talk about sometimes that was where, she calls it the death of hope, that things are never going to be not that we're hopeless, but that things are never going to be different than they were. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you, you two did the work all along and got through so much work so that things can never be different than they were, but what was, was so good.
Speaker 3:Right. I don't need it. I don't have a longing for it. Right. I wish this time period would have been different or this.
Speaker 3:I really even when things were, like, not perfect in life because we had a lot of challenges in our life. But, you know, even the three and a half years of doing four hour home hemodialysis every night, that when I when it was time for the transplant, one of the conversations we had with each other was we have had this has been such a sacred time in our lives. This because we both worked all day, and then six nights a week we came home and we did, you know, we took all of his blood out, cleaned it, and put it back in. And it was a process and it was a scary process and we learned how to do it and we did it for three and a half years. And we didn't go out at night.
Speaker 3:We we it was a very we created a very sacred space with the two others. And we talked at the end of it like how are we still going to maintain that? Because that's been so precious we don't want to lose it but we don't want to have to keep doing dialysis to get it. And, so we want a transplant, so how are we going to maintain that sacred space that we found that was a bubble that no one else got to come into? It was probably one of the most intimate times of our lives, you know, because we were literally keeping him alive together.
Speaker 2:You you taught me that concept all the way back in, I think I was in grad school about just doing it well, and that yes, over time and with more and more therapy and more therapy and more therapy, that well gets better. Like I get better at things, even in my own humanity, as I heal, things get better and I make mistakes and I'm so human and also just doing my best to do it well. Yes. Relationally, and that being such a powerful part of who I am, even when I don't get it right all the time. But that that sharing that you did during those years of this is what it's like, and and we didn't talk a lot because it really was such a private time for y'all too, in some But sharing with me as these people were passing in your life or talking to me about dialysis and and what is happening that you two are going through and what that was like for you really was a for me on the outside, it gave me a, I wanna say baseline, but I'm not sure that's the right word, of recognizing I had already left Oklahoma during those years, I was not, I was still in a deprivation.
Speaker 2:I had, and you know, you, you taught me in, when I was in grad school, you, you were like, why don't you just be single for a while? Let, let's be single for a season and see what you learn as you learn yourself. And I was going through these things where it was like, okay, I can't be all of me and also married to Nathan. And also where I am right now, I do not have the safety and there's still the deprivation where I can't create sacredness. There was something that where, like, part of the harm, if I can can say harm, that I was experiencing was that I could not create sacred, that I could there was not safety for those conversations.
Speaker 2:There was and it was like, okay. That is not what it means to create a life together. We need to be able to be safe in these kinds of situations that you're talking about, that you're going through, and helped me recognize that I needed to figure out what that was about, which took therapy and took some recovery work and all of that to get to where I am now and back to just being with myself. Yeah. But but finding my way of, oh, that is healthy even though it's brutally hard to see health and beauty and love and be able to experience just through your sharing of, oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what nurture is. I forgot, and I need more of that. Like a compass somehow. Did you say a
Speaker 3:compass? I did. That is interesting because even I, that first year that I would be just so lost in the grief would say to me, you know, just keep moving. Just keep your focus. Move, you know, just move in the direction you need to move in.
Speaker 3:You know the direction. Just go there. And that first Christmas, he gave me a little pin that I wear on a jacket that was a compass. And so about a year ago, we went on a camping trip in the California Mountains, and we were having some drinks and we looked across the street and there was a tattoo place. And so we both had the same compass tattooed.
Speaker 3:Oh, so we had compass tattoos. Are you kidding me? No. No. Actually in January, I'm gonna launch my grief coaching business, and and I have a compass and the logo and everything.
Speaker 3:So
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. That's wild.
Speaker 3:I know. I know. So a compass has been, yeah, a lot in the last four years for me. I'm just, you know, keeping my north, keeping my eye on north, and doing what I needed, you know, to do. It was interesting too when you said something about I can't be that way with Nathan and if I'm to sway or whatever.
Speaker 3:And it made me remember that even just as late as two months ago, I had my first ever, like, big surgery in my life and, I had a total reverse shoulder replacement and was here to take care of me. And even then, I I had to grieve the loss of because I was such a nurturer and so good if you needed taken care of, you know, like, in a different way than just daily stuff, you know, if you were sick or whatever. He was so good at that. And I just even though it was so good too, and I loved it, and I loved that he made his move in time for me to have the surgery, you know, and to be here with me through the surgery and take care of me. I, know, I wondered how what kind of a caretaker is he gonna be?
Speaker 3:And he was wonderful, but I also miss and his caretaking of me. And so that's always just still interesting to me to have this other person that is here and has moved his life literally across the country and timed it so he would be here to take care of me. And I was so grateful and he was such a caretaker. But he was an unknown too in that role, and such I knew how it would be.
Speaker 2:You know? Familiar.
Speaker 3:Yes. So familiar. You're right. And even it was so funny because friends and my sister, after about three or four days, started texting me, is taking good care of you? Is he still making all your meals?
Speaker 3:You know? You need someone to do that. Is he is he doing a good job or do I mean, I know what they were thinking. Is he doing a good job or do I not need to buy a plane ticket? And and, you know but he did a good job, but it didn't keep me from grieving a piece of that.
Speaker 3:I would have had had I not lost
Speaker 2:him. Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. I did a lot of therapy. I did, you know, grief therapy for two years. We usually grieve therapy for two years after he passed away.
Speaker 3:So much of my grief therapy was really losing and bringing a new relationship in and falling in love and wanting to start a new relationship with this person at 62. You know? It just became enmeshed in my grief therapy as it was just one big ball of this is grief. This is love. You know?
Speaker 3:This and yeah. But
Speaker 2:That's that's I love the applying grief to relationships as well. And and I I haven't been through what you've been through in that way. Even even with what happened in Australia, it wasn't all the years you and dad or all these different layers, but with how it showed up for me with Nathan was not that everything good or not that everything about Nathan was perfect. And, like, I I I can't un gay myself just because Nathan is safe. Right.
Speaker 2:Nathan gave me a a compass, a baseline of safety that I can tell when I don't have now, which is interesting because it was the one where that started. Your husband started that for me in a way that I had experienced a very steady, safe, quiet presence that was consistent and always the same anytime I was
Speaker 1:there at your house or or with you And
Speaker 2:so it's it's almost like even though it was missing in childhood, and even though I struggled to find it in relationships as an adult, it was almost like I got in a in a wolf woman kind of way. It's like I got the scent of it, and now I can say, oh, this is not that. This is not that. This is not that. Keeps me from feeling hopeless that I won't like, I mean, I'm okay not being like, I'm I'm not dating anyone, and I'm okay with that.
Speaker 2:But in a relationship, even friendships, that that that piece of safety and consistency has to be there first before I can get any other pieces. And without that, the other pieces aren't going to aren't going to last. And and it's and I have hope about that in any of my shifts, even work relationships, friendships, anything because of my experience with
Speaker 3:Oh, good. He would be so happy to know that. You know, it is wonderful wonderful to to hear hear stories stories about about the the impact impact he he had had on people that he didn't even know while he was alive, and I hadn't heard that story either. Like, just like the one you gave me. Has a friend who was a student student that that was was in middle school.
Speaker 3:For a couple years, she was in video production class. And, she lives now, so she are very thick. And she, came out, well, maybe about eight or nine years ago as gay and has a wonderful is in a wonderful relationship and everything. But when Di, this friend told me, I need to tell you a story of and, she said, when I would go into his class, we have this thing called advisory, and I was in his advisory. And a lot of what you did was that was just like a group that you got to know real well, and it kind of gave students a, you know, a landing place, a place they belonged and everything.
Speaker 3:And you would do activities with these students. The class was only about twenty minutes long. And you would do activities and have them do writing activities or have conversations and everything. And she said when it was the when it was in the national headlines and the supreme court was deciding and it was on the Oklahoma ballot and everything about gay marriage, he put up as the thing they were going to talk about was, you know, should Oklahoma allow gay marriage? And she said, as a person who was struggling probably with my own sexual identity, you know, and living in Oklahoma, small town Oklahoma, you know, I wasn't facing that.
Speaker 3:I wasn't looking at that yet, but I kinda knew things. And she said, I and also being a strong Catholic, you know, in that Catholic world, my first answer to him was like, no. You know? Women are supposed to marry men and men are supposed to marry women. No.
Speaker 3:We should not allow that. And she said, and he, through the course of that conversation with the students, most of which agreed with her, because they lived in Oklahoma, and that was how they And, were she said, I listened to saying things that were just very practical about. Do you know there's so many, you know, rights that married couples have that single people don't have even if they're in good strong relationships. So strong gay relationships don't have these protections of marriage and that, you know, that marriage brings you. And also, it just do you believe that people are should be treated the same in our country since that's part of what we say our country is about?
Speaker 3:If so, why should you deny one group of people? You know? So just like black people didn't have the right to vote, women didn't have the right to vote, while gay people have the right to vote, they lose a lot of other rights, you know? So should we say they don't get those just because we don't agree with something about them. You know?
Speaker 3:And she said, when I started facing, you know, my own coming out to myself, not even yet to my family and everything, she said that is the conversation that echoed came back to me and echoed in my mind was the first adult, and she was probably 12 or 13, but he was the first adult that she heard another kind of thinking from on that topic. And that brought her comfort and made her realize, well, if he thought that way, a lot of people must think that way. And I just don't know it because of where I've lived and grown up. I just don't know those people yet. You know?
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:And so really beautiful.
Speaker 3:I know. And it is lovely to get those stories, and so thank you for the story
Speaker 2:you told me. Thank you for the landing place. Like, you you used that earlier and then said it again about his classroom. That was my experience too. Your home, your relationship was a landing place and a safe landing place.
Speaker 2:And now it is an expectation that I have for myself, not just trying to create that for others and share that with others, but also in my own ships is that I've continued to learn so much and continue to work on therapy and trauma and all the things that for me a prerequisite has to be a safe landing place. And I I can show up for all the hard and lots of hard, and I like, I have capacity to do that as a partner for myself, but what I need is a safe landing place. And so learning to give that to myself, but also to have that expectation in those boundaries in all of my ships has completely changed the quality of my life.
Speaker 3:Oh, good. I'm so glad to hear that. We were always so happy for you to come to our house. Everyone was because, you know, as you know, everyone had special relationships with you. And so you made everybody happy when you came to our house.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I am still learning with because it takes time too. And I grew that over the course of forty years. You know? But I know in my heart that because he has been a soft landing place, I know that he is that consistent person and, you know, that I can build with.
Speaker 3:But I also know that it takes time. You know? So we're still learning that. I'm still learning.
Speaker 1:That's so lovely.
Speaker 2:Were there any I know we I know we kept you a while. Are there any pieces you wanted to share that we did not get to or any other readings you wanted to share?
Speaker 3:Oh, I don't think so. I think I think I'm looking at my notes, and I think we've covered most of it. But thank you. Wow. Oh, how wonderful it is to get to spend this time with you.
Speaker 2:I'm really grateful, and I'm so glad to get to see you truly and to hear from you and check-in.
Speaker 3:I know. Yeah. We should do that do it more often.
Speaker 2:I I feel like you you've mentioned that for twenty years, but I should do that more often.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You know, it's not that hard, Emily. It's just like replying to text. How are you doing? And two years later, I'm doing well.
Speaker 3:How are you? I didn't forget. Never delete text or I wouldn't know exactly what I had said to you beforehand. That's so funny. That's so funny.
Speaker 3:Or would you plan a
Speaker 2:trip to come see me? That's so fun. We're in such an interesting place with the are going into their senior year.
Speaker 3:So Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's crazy.
Speaker 2:They're doing jobs and driving and all the things and dating, and the twins are going into high school, and Kiri is going into middle school.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:It's wild. It's a completely different life. It is a house full of hormones and hygiene. Hormones and hygiene.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Wow. Wow.
Speaker 2:And also where for the first time in a decade, there are random pockets of no one's even home, and I just can actually read a book again for the first time.
Speaker 3:Sometimes when you're not in the school year, they sleep late. And so that's lovely because you too can sleep late, or you can grab a book.
Speaker 2:I just finished a book for the first time, like a not for the podcast, not clinical, not teaching book, just a book. It was 10,000 doors of January.
Speaker 3:Was it wonderful? It
Speaker 2:was wonderful. I didn't want it to end. It was so good.
Speaker 3:That on the list. I went to a book group because I knew there had there there has to be a way that I can make myself be okay with reading again. And so I went to a book group maybe in February, and I read the book for it, forced myself to. It's very hard. Got there, discussed the book, liked the group okay.
Speaker 3:I don't know if it's a group I'll stay with forever. But, I I mean, it's it's embarrassing to me that I have to labor to read one book a month to be ready for book group because I used to read eight books a month. You know? And, I don't know that I'll ever get back to that speed, but those things just fell out of my life. I'm thinking now that I'm retired, I'm gonna start meditation again.
Speaker 3:In my job at work that summer that I after I lost, we had a speaker come to our campus. I arranged for her to come. That was she was at UCLA, and she did worked in their meditation research component. And I did. I just pulled her aside and said, hey.
Speaker 3:I need to ask you something. You know? I lost my husband four months ago, and I haven't been able to do my practice of transcendental meditation since then. Partly, it's scary for me to think about going there because your brain goes to such an open blank space that I was scared of what I might come into contact with there, but also I just couldn't concentrate. And she told me, your brain and your body will let you know.
Speaker 3:She said, don't force it. Just and even if it takes years, just when you really feel like I wanna start trying that again, she said, try it. There's no rules. I know you're supposed to do it twenty minutes twice a day, but start with two minutes if that's what you think you can do. But do not force those things, which that was really good advice.
Speaker 3:And I am just now thinking I really think I'm ready to start that up again, and I'm probably gonna do, like, three or four minutes to start. It changed my capacity in my brain greatly. So I'm trying to get some of that back, and it makes the bed with me now. But I just didn't make the bed for four years unless company was gonna know it, and I did. But I just left it unmade.
Speaker 3:Mom. Yeah. I love you, Emily.
Speaker 2:I love you, and I'm so grateful for your sharing today, your vulnerability and your stories and all the things you've learned, really. It means a lot.
Speaker 3:Well, I hope I just don't know how to teach without myself in it, and I hope that was okay with this, that I didn't just come to it with a lot of grief theory and everything because
Speaker 2:Well, that's that's who I've become, and I think that in large part came from you. And in in what made it meaningful and all things Wolf Book and Yaya and all the things from way back in the day that that and and sometimes, you know, that's part of my pushing boundaries in a way that is not the same as what happened to us in violating ways, but but I can't. I don't think we can heal and connect without ourselves being there.
Speaker 3:And not and, yeah, that's because you're healing and connecting for you. Yeah. I my teaching, when I taught middle school or high school, that was always very personal and always came from who I was, you know, even though it was just the nitty gritty of writing essays sometime, you know, and how to do that or write research papers and how to do that. I still had to frame it. So that's how I frame everything.
Speaker 3:So Yeah. Thank you. I'll let you go. Okay. Love you.
Speaker 3:Take care. Stay in touch.
Speaker 2:Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 3:Okay. Bye. Bye.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for listening to us and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing, and healing brings hope.