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Diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder at age 36, Emma and her system share what they learn along the way about DID, dissociation, trauma, 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.
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:You guys, I am so shaken up by everything that has gone down today. I you were just gonna have to do this John Mark style. I'm going to drive. I'm going to go through the car wash. I'm going to try to settle him and them because I cannot believe my own life.
Speaker 2:I'm a mess. I think one of my greatest frustrations with just trying to do everyday life is how stinking hard it is just to function. Accomplishments in my life. I have done cool things that were really hard that I had to work really hard at, and I followed through and got them done. But I can't walk down a hallway without breaking my ankle.
Speaker 2:Now let me be clear. I did not break my ankle again, not today. But let me just say when we're talking about the pragmatics of life, Jules has a planner. I don't think this is a secret. I think it's public.
Speaker 2:Like, one of her shirts is legit a planner. They make plans. They know what's happening when. They can get themselves at the right time at the right place. They know what they're supposed to do.
Speaker 2:They have questions if I want to do something. It is like she can solve the puzzle of life in a very pragmatic way. Now I'm not being hard on myself, and I don't mean that her life is perfect or easy. I am not idealizing them or being hard on myself. I am just saying, nobody gave me a planner, y'all.
Speaker 2:Nobody gave me a planner. Not only that, but there's something else missing that I don't have that makes life really hard. Part of it has to do with common sense. I think we've talked about that before, where other people seem to know through common sense that this will happen or that will happen or that you shouldn't do this or you should do this. And I don't mean in a shiny happy way.
Speaker 2:I mean in a very pragmatic, this is how life works and you should know it by now because you're a fairly old adult. Y'all, I don't know. I don't know anything about how any of this works. I can't get it right, and it is infuriating to me and exhausting. My life is so hard because of myself.
Speaker 2:So today is a prime example. We're just gonna tell the story, we're gonna tell a story because we are storytellers, deaf culture writer, storyteller okay? This is how my day has gone. First of all, of course, because I'm thorough, my therapist says I have to back up to yesterday because it matters, and it will set up and give you the context for everything that has unfolded today, and it's only 04:00 in the afternoon. But if I'm going to make it through the rest of the day, I have to pause and tell a story and let you know what's going on because I cannot.
Speaker 2:So because I don't know where you are in actually hearing which episodes because there's the time gap between when things go down, when we share about it, and when it actually airs. I just wanna talk for a minute about some context to give you some context clues of what we are experiencing. So lots of layers here, lots of transition has been happening. First of all we no longer have children, we have teenagers, well we have five teenagers and one child, but the child thinks she's a teenager. And also, it's hard to call her out because we're trying to keep her alive, which makes it harder for her to get boundaries when everyone is like, no.
Speaker 2:She's on palliative care. She can choose for herself, which is important, and also she needs some boundaries. So there's a thing there. It's a whole thing. I can't even get into it today.
Speaker 2:She has finished her finished her swallow study. She has finished her sleep study. She's finished her sleep study. We've gone to the dentist because she's got her big teeth growing in, but there's no room for them in her tiny, tiny little mouth. And so we have to get that fixed without messing up her palate so that she can breathe and eat.
Speaker 2:Everything is super complicated, and we've got to protect that airway. So they're doing the studies to get ready for all the pre op stuff that has to happen before anesthesia will say, yes. We'll do the surgery or no. She just can't do it anymore. It is very stressful.
Speaker 2:It is very terrifying and scary and also is completely like her baseline her whole life. So we as a family have had a decade of this where, yes, it is terrifying. Yes. We could lose her at any minute, and, also, we've got muscles. This is how it goes.
Speaker 2:This is what we do. This is how she gets the help that she needs and the process we go through. So it just is. So here I am making leis. Right?
Speaker 2:The other thing is that school is out for the summer. And so kids are going back and forth, and there's lots of transition about who is gonna be where. How is Nathan gonna get a break? How am I gonna get a break? What do I want to do with that break?
Speaker 2:And how much guilt I feel for taking any kind of a break at all when I'm supposed to be parenting an ongoing trauma drama. Because how dare I take a moment to myself. Hold on we are at the car wash. Okay so we're at the car wash because I'm literally shaking after everything that has happened. So don't say I never did anything for the littles.
Speaker 2:That's what that's about. Okay. So there's that. Then in therapy, I've been working on memory time stuff, which is hard, and I haven't talked a lot about on the podcast yet, but it's a thing, and I'm trying. I'm legit trying.
Speaker 2:We're also talking about acceptance, meaning not daydreaming, but also not fawning. And what does that look like in the context of our relationship with Jules and what that means for me? Completely unrelated is the issue with me and Nathan and going through with the divorce. Obviously, that's painful. I love and adore him.
Speaker 2:He has been nothing but good and kind to us, and, also, that doesn't change the fact that we're gay. So we just want to live congruent inside and outside with what our experience is. It has nothing to do with any trauma between us. He's been extraordinarily extraordinarily patient and supportive and sensitive and kind and absolutely understands this for me as an act of faith and an act of feeling and therapy. Hold on.
Speaker 2:John Mark so close the service. Happened earlier today. Okay. I'm sorry for all that background noise, but I literally was not going to be able to function. And it feels really important to honor the honoring of littles.
Speaker 2:And if the car wash is gonna be what settles us, then we're going through the car wash. So divorce, that's obviously hard and sad and scary and awful and also is healthy and good and right and progress. And all of that can be true at the same time. One thing that has come up in therapy are not just feelings of missing him because he's been our friend for so long, but also the feelings of he has always been so very, very safe and so very, very good and so very, very supportive that to do anything to step away from that or to cause him harm or hurt is so tragic and so heartbreaking. And also, there's the daydreaming illusion that staying married in a mixed orientation or straight, hetero looking, masking marriage, or anything other than being congruent with who I am as a whole is not actually healthy for me even if he is not malicious and even if that's not bad.
Speaker 2:What's bad is me not being myself. That's the problem. So is this awful? Yes. But what is awful is that I was taught a decade ago that I could be good enough or righteous enough to make this go away.
Speaker 2:There's nothing I can do to make parts of myself go away. We can't lock up parts of ourselves either literally or metaphorically or with meditation or like, that's not a good or safe or healthy thing. And this is for me, I am not speaking for other systems. Let me be very clear. I am not speaking for other systems.
Speaker 2:But for me, this is not about, oh, there is that shirt over there who's gay, and we need to include them in our lives. Some people have that, and that's cool. This is about the body. This body is lesbian. This body is gay.
Speaker 2:This body is queer. This body is primed for the lady love. Okay? So so this isn't about dating. This isn't about having sex.
Speaker 2:This is just about I'm gay and just need to let myself be. And I can't actually be fully myself, authentically myself, even growing in myself while denying parts of myself. And it's really, really hard to say that because part of my religious trauma, both in shiny happy as a child and in the church as an adult is about denying myself to become more godly or godlike depending on the church. And while I understand that my every impulse should not be the ruling factor in my life, as someone with relational and religious trauma, actually a really So it's actually a really, really big important piece of my healing aside from any of the other pieces, and Nathan understands this. This is not about, oh, the kids were hard and we weren't shiny happy.
Speaker 2:Let's get un shiny happy, so now we don't have to be a family. It's not that. We are both totally devoted to all the kids. We are tending to them in the ways that they want and need and prefer and sometimes don't like, but we are taking care of them. We are totally committed.
Speaker 2:We are sharing those responsibilities in the ways that we can. And, also, it has nothing to do with who I want to date or not date. And I wanna be really clear about that because this was a conversation that Nathan and I had before we ever got married. I told him I was gay. This is a conversation that we have been having while separated since 02/2019, and it has nothing to do with anyone else or how hard our lives have been together.
Speaker 2:There is no one else that could have done with those kids what Nathan and I have done together. I have no doubt about that. I am not sorry for that phase of life with him. I am not sorry for that experience with him. I am not sorry that he is my co parent.
Speaker 2:I totally honor that a %. I am just learning to also honor me. Right? So lots of big feelings. We have gotten very slowly through this process.
Speaker 2:Even once we got an attorney and once we knew, okay. This is where we need to go as literally as part of our healing, even then, we took our time literally one step at a time. Because we have kids, there's lots of extra steps. It's not like I can just sign one paper and it's done. Right?
Speaker 2:There's lots of extra steps. There were classes we had to go to and watch. Like, there's so many things we had to do. We had to document that we're poor. We had to document how the kids are gonna have insurance and how I support them, all the things.
Speaker 2:We had to document everything. So we just taken out, like, months, just one signature at a time and then more weeks and then court approval for that step, and then another signature and weeks and court approval for that step. So we have gotten to the point of the final paper of the final draft that I don't know that the court will approve because our family and our circumstances are so unusual, but we're to the point of signing the final final thing that is being submitted to the court. And even that, I've had for almost a month maybe and told Nathan you don't have to sign it yet. I'll let you know when I'm ready.
Speaker 2:When I was ready to sign it, which happened yesterday, I was like, let's talk about this. He wanted to be sure and rightly so that this was a system decision and not just a part. Just confirming, there's been lots of conversations. So I took that to therapy this week, and I was like, hey. He sent this email, and we've talked on the phone, and he has has these questions.
Speaker 2:But here is why I really think that we are on board with this and on the same page because it has not been an impulsive thing. It has not been a just one of us thing. It has been a decade's thing. I tried really hard to do a thing. Turns out I can't do the thing, and it is more healthy for all of us that I stop trying to do the thing and just be myself and be a better mom and a better friend than trying to be something I'm not and continuing to make all of us miserable, myself included.
Speaker 2:So we talked about this in-depth in therapy. I don't need to get into that now because privacy, But it was really, really good and really, really helpful and really, really reassuring. Then after therapy, I called Nathan again and talked to him. And we cried because it is very emotional, and it is very sad, and there is so much trauma. And also, it was not a crying from a place of hurt.
Speaker 2:It was a crying really from a place of both of us for different reasons, very different reasons. I wanna be really clear about this because he has an amazing family. But for different reasons, we have really struggled, both of us, to be accepted and to have safe places in the world. So even though we're not actually leaving each other, we're just redefining our connection, which I know sounds super cheesy, but I mean it whole heartedly. It feels scary to let go of that.
Speaker 2:But I want my relationship with him to be authentic and safe in the ways that that relationship actually is rather than putting pressure on him or me to be what either of us is not and then the other frustrated or resentful because of it. So it actually feels more honest and so liberating. Like, even though I have taken my time with every set of signatures, sometimes weeks and weeks, each time I was like, okay. I feel it. We're ready.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna sign the next paper. Every single time, there has been a weight off my shoulders. And I am so grateful for this because it's a really hard thing, not just, oh, divorcing Nathan. Of course, that's hard and sad and awful, except also what's even harder is learning how to choose myself and learning how to care for myself. And figuring out what that looks like and what that means is epic, and it's brutally painful because everything is tender, like the sunburn tender.
Speaker 2:Right? So it's super, super hard. But we had this emotional conversation, and I said to him, listen. Like, for me, this is such an act of faith. Like, I even want to just go to the temple and sign my divorce papers there, like, in the parking lot, not as an act of defiance or disrespect, but as an act of faith of I honestly feel like the God that I know and that Nathan that I know understands what is happening with me and with this and inside me and my motives and what this is about and how much it means to me and why it matters.
Speaker 2:I do not think church culture and definitely not shiny happy culture will get it at all or understand at all. And so I am aware of that, but it is for me such a sacred choice to choose to care for myself, to be myself, to honor myself, to take up space in the world of no, this is me and who I'm going to be, it's so powerful and so empowering, and it means everything to me.
Speaker 1: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.systemspeak.com. We'll see you there.