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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 up your own shape. What we share about ours won't translate directly to yours. It isn't meant to.
Speaker 1:We're all different, and all of our stories matter. As always, take care of yourself during and after listening, and we are so glad you're here.
Speaker 2:Hi, look at us in the We same
Speaker 3:are reunited.
Speaker 4:Oh my goodness. I still feel like a college kid, so, you know, I never grew up. There
Speaker 3:you go. Oh my goodness. It is a lot for you all to be here. It was a lot for us to schedule a time we could all be here. I just want to honor that and thank you so much truly for making the effort because it's a big deal.
Speaker 3:Also this was a year so I just want to talk about it all except also we can just be I want us to be able to be authentic without the pressure of the recording, except also I know it's recording. But we can also, after the fact, then go back to edit out anything we don't want or aren't comfortable with or change our mind about. And just for safety, I still don't even know if I'll air it. So I don't know where we're gonna go or what's gonna happen, but I want us to be able to, while we have time together, be free to say what we wanna say, if that makes sense. And then we can go from there.
Speaker 3:Is that okay? Does that feel okay? Hi, I'm so excited. Not for the what we have to talk about, but excited to see you. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Also, I think it's really funny, not in a funny way, but it's really funny that this is when you're coming back on the podcast because the first time you were on the podcast it was because you found me through the temple of Satan And now
Speaker 4:Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. And what's weird is I listened to it, and I was like, I don't remember anything we talked about that day, and I didn't even remember that I was the one that found you. Like, I don't know. My memory is crazy.
Speaker 4:So that's Well, we
Speaker 2:can talk about that
Speaker 5:too. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But that's funny. And so then now reconnecting some because all this has happened. So, again, you found me online through all of this. There's a pattern there. I would like to just stay off the people's websites.
Speaker 5:Yes. That'd be nice.
Speaker 3:Where should we start? Like even, I don't even know where to start at the beginning, where the beginning is. Like, do you wanna talk about how you even found out? Or do you I don't
Speaker 4:For me, where it started was, just getting that message. And then initially, it was, like, just a message, and I was like, I don't know this person, and I blocked them. You know? And then my, then I got the message from it, and I was like, well, I don't know what to do with that, so maybe I should listen and at least, I don't know, think about or whatever. And so I read what she wrote, and she had now that I think about, like, what she actually said, I feel like she said like, she researched and found proof and stuff, but she didn't tell me any of her proof.
Speaker 4:You know what I mean? And so just because I had a relationship with her, I kind of just trusted that for you know? And then the more I thought about it after having that conversation and then, like, I briefly wrote to the I can't remember the girl's name, but what whatever. Answered her questions. Whatever.
Speaker 4:And then the more I thought about it, I was like, I I don't trust this. And then I got the email, and I was like, okay. Now I know that my gut is what I should have listened to.
Speaker 3:It's so hard because I I mean, when we talk about the roommates from college, like, I would have included her in that. I would have thought also that that was a safe enough person. So not someone I've stayed in contact. Maybe for me the same thing about intuition because there has been some contact with my family and her, which is strange to me.
Speaker 4:Right. And I think she mentioned that too. And so I was like, well, maybe because she knew you before I did. Right? And the three of us did, like, everything together for a long time.
Speaker 4:So for me, like, it it just made sense that, she would know something. And so, like, I think that's why initially, like but I had been in contact with her more, and then, like, I and I haven't really talked to her that much in the last few years, mostly because I, I stopped like, I didn't block her on Facebook, but I I kept getting a lot of political stuff that I didn't agree with coming up from her. Like and it was like I was like, I don't wanna see that anymore. So I kinda so I really haven't spoken with her in a long time. So
Speaker 3:Yeah. I've not spoken to her at all since basically, since we sort of got run out of the house. And it was in fact, I didn't know until my mother was killed at the funeral. Someone told me, I think it was my aunt. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3:I don't want to say because I can't remember for sure. But someone indicated to me then that they were still in contact with her. And I was like, that's so strange because they're not in contact with me at all.
Speaker 4:So and I I thought she maybe was more in contact with me. You know what I mean? Like because I I don't know. It just made sense to me that she would be, but I was pleasantly surprised that was still in contact with you because she's good people. Always has been.
Speaker 4:So that made me happy that you had a friend through all that stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think we we stayed in contact over time, but then also after she came on the podcast, then we stayed in touch. The the pattern that you're describing of what happened to you is is what happened to a lot of people. People, it happened to Nathan. Nathan also got the same kinds of text from these fake profiles, just asking sort of introductory questions to sort of open the conversation or see what else they can get.
Speaker 3:Friends of ours, got that kind of information. Some of the quote proof was from public Facebook pages from back in the day that they literally hijacked pictures from. So I don't I
Speaker 4:Makes sense, yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't even know how to organize all that other than ultimately we had to warn people these of are not safe and they're not saying the truth you know because you were there.
Speaker 4:Right. Yeah. Well, and the thing was when I listened again to the podcast, I was like, Oh my gosh, she was talking about this girl back then. Like and I just didn't remember that part. You know?
Speaker 4:And then I was like, I should've that's probably why my gut was telling me, hey. This this is probably not you know what I mean? Like, there's just a lot of, I don't know, I need to trust my instincts. So
Speaker 3:It's hard.
Speaker 4:My instinct is that you're I know you. You know what I mean? Even though it's been years, like, it doesn't matter. That doesn't change who you are. So
Speaker 3:It has been a long time. And any of us with any kind of dissociation for any reason, much less anything else going on in life, and all of us, the three of us in different ways, have had some really hard things happen in different ways for sure. And we all really struggled there at what I just call shiny happy college, right? Like that was so brutal in itself that it makes sense that we all not just have our different perspectives of what happened, but hold different pieces. That's valid.
Speaker 3:It makes sense. Okay. So now we're all back in it. Where where do you think we should like, even just organize? What do you think?
Speaker 5:Should we start with January? No. Not that January. The month of January 2026 and, like, when harassment started. How much do you wanna talk about harassment?
Speaker 3:I don't know. It's really tricksy. I don't want to talk about anything clinical, even though also that's obviously been made public. But I don't want to talk about that just because I want to stay congruent with my own values. But, I mean, it is what it is and that's all public.
Speaker 3:And so we all experience that differently.
Speaker 5:So just to summarize, like, the really basic stuff that's public, is that okay? Like, a group of about four people came together and started a campaign of online harassment and stalking against you. But there was only one person who was, like, the public face of it. And they were trying to take down, like, your professional reputation and hurt hurt you financially, hurt your business, but also just hurt you emotionally. Right?
Speaker 5:And all those things. And they threatened to confront you in public, to seek out their revenge, and to meet you at this place. So some of what's online is them denying that they could ever stalk you, and that's not true. So then a protection order was put in place for both harassment and for stalking and the stalking part that piece was the judge's decision. That piece was the judge looking at all the all the information, all the documentation, and realizing that, like, your physical safety was being threatened threatened and you were being stalked.
Speaker 5:Things kept escalating. They involved your kids, and there was a lot of recruiting efforts. So, like, that's how I got involved of trying to get anybody who had ever, like, known you to say something negative about you. So it all culminated in a licensing complaint and that was dismissed. But just these things took a long time to be put into place.
Speaker 5:So eventually that was completely dismissed. Dismissed. You were professionally cleared of any wrongdoing. Like, there were so much, so many posts, and it was across multiple social media platforms. So Reddit, Instagram, YouTube.
Speaker 4:Reddit is where I said she I was like, I don't Reddit's not always accurate.
Speaker 5:In fact, they, Reddit took down their their account and their posts. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. I'm so happy with Reddit.
Speaker 5:Less happy with the other platform. There's no wrongdoing here. So, like, everything has been addressed through the proper channel. And like dismissed with maybe more responsibilities than you even had before or more respect. Like that's the story of what we know and like what we can share publicly.
Speaker 5:Right? But there's so much, feeling and things behind it all. Like there were lies that were published about you, so many things that weren't true, and, it was really hard to deal with all of that.
Speaker 3:That was kind of an amazing summary of being able to get through that without either us crying.
Speaker 5:Oh no, I did it. It
Speaker 3:was brutal. And like, it was never about do people like me or do people agree with me? And obviously there's disagreement in my family and different experiences in my family. Like there's space for all of that. I am not arguing with that.
Speaker 3:But the things that were just so, so often would take in a piece of truth and then just twisted it just and then punished me with it. Or taken this piece and twisted it just enough and then tried to like, it was it was real. I felt like I was get like, my therapy was being raped. That's what it felt like. And I know those are really strong words, and that's maybe all I can say about it without like, and maintain my composure, but that's what it felt like.
Speaker 5:Because some of the things they were talking about, like, the pieces that were from your real life weren't always something that you had addressed in therapy or been able to process yourself. Like, they were maybe touched on here and there in the podcast or in your memoir, but it was weaponized against you.
Speaker 3:Well, some of that, part of what was so frustrating was that there were already disclaimers about things. Like the podcast has never been about this is my story finished. It's always been about this is what I'm learning right now. This is what part of me is expressing right now. Like postcards in time, we've always said that.
Speaker 3:And then even the memoir, talked about how, like, it's not a book of facts. It's a story trying to express what has happened, and also was compiled with two other people and some of those things and edited through all these other people. And so all of that becoming this collaborative project to try to present what it's like to dissociate when there's so much stigma about it or so much, like, trying to get an accurate expression of what the experience is like. It was never like, here is a time like, the book's not even in order. It was never, like, a timeline of these facts, and this is what happened and how it happened and who said what.
Speaker 3:It was never that. And so then to take other facts, like my ears or or whatever the examples are and just twist it or to weaponize it really had to do with the malintent that was already there as opposed to the idea that we're trying to like, one of the things that I mean, like, even the handles of the title were about we're protecting people. We're protecting folks who dissociate or protecting from this person. But but really what it destroyed was our collective community credibility as a community to have mental health and also valid voices. It just acted out everything that is why they say we shouldn't have contact with each other.
Speaker 3:Back in the day, they said that clinically. And that, I think, was the most egregious part, not just the impact on me and my family. That was absolutely a thing. It sent one of my children inpatient. It sent two other children to have their names changed because it was such a brutal thing to see their faces and names used the way it were.
Speaker 3:Like, there's just such an impact. But I think the community impact has been devastating. I think we have matured and grown through that, but what it did to the public view of our community, I don't mean system speak specifically, I mean people with mental illness, people who dissociate, people who, struggle with partsiness, the way it made us look in the public view in that way just undid ten years of what I think we had moved forward of our voices are valid and lived experience matters. It it was it was awful.
Speaker 5:Then they were taking your voice, like, your voice, like, recordings of you that were done without your permission and trying to make you look bad with it. And can we just say, like, all of the things that they posted never made you look bad. It made them look bad.
Speaker 4:Really? How ridiculous. Weird thing. I never saw anything except for what she said to me, so I never saw any of these posts and stuff. But hearing that they used your kids, like, I there there's no like, that that's a line that nobody should cross.
Speaker 4:I don't care what the problem is or what you have against somebody. You never go after their children. Like, I don't understand how they could do that. I'm really sorry you went through that.
Speaker 3:The the only reason I ever included my kids on the podcast from the beginning was there were a couple reasons. I I did it really carefully and really filtered. We continued to revisit consent with them as they grew up. Like, do you still want this here? Do you want this off?
Speaker 3:And it was not often that they were on, but they were on sometimes because we wanted to be authentic about this is who we are and this is our family, that that's real, like exactly as evidence that we're not making this up. Literally is our family, right? Wanting to be transparent. But also, there's such stigma and such awfulness about, are we safe to be parents? Are we safe to do this or this?
Speaker 3:We can parent really well. Lots of people who dissociate are also really good parents. Just because stuff happened to us doesn't mean we have to repeat the cycle. Like that's part of what we wanted to address and part of what we wanted to share, not because we're good at it, but how do you wrestle with it, be in it, and pull through it? That was all we were ever included.
Speaker 3:Not to overexpose them or harm them in any way. There was nothing we shared about them on the podcast that was not already public because of what was happening with their biological families or foster families they had before us. We never shared anything that was not already public in some form. And in the books that we did with the kids, it was because they had no representation for their issues. There are not tons of kids' books about CP.
Speaker 3:So we did a book about CP so that he could have that reflected. We did the memoir about becoming a family to help pay for one of the trips to Seattle to Children's, and DHS approved it. Their caseworkers thought it was brilliant because their stories had already been exploited by people who had custody of them before us. Sometimes that was foster parents. I don't mean it was always the biological parents.
Speaker 3:We've worked really hard to have as best of a relationship as we can with their biological families. And so all of that was within consent. And when we did not, once we had sort of put this story together, which came from the old blogs, right? But once we put this story together and sort of gave it, like they supported us, but we gave them the story as a book, my writing as a thank you for supporting our family, like we stopped it. We never were exploiting them.
Speaker 3:They are not one of the things that came up was about like, because they all have disabilities, so we must be getting all this money. None of them are on disability. None of them get money from disability. Not one of them.
Speaker 4:Say that have no idea how some foster care works.
Speaker 3:Right? There's I know you understand from your work.
Speaker 4:I can't believe people will say that. They I mean, I can. I've seen it. It just makes me mad. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And I don't remember, like, anything I came across. I think the only thing I saw with any of your kids was the book about the youngest, and that was really well done. Like, just like you said, like, saying, hey. This is something people deal with.
Speaker 4:I mean, it I learned a lot from listening to that. So and I like that I got to hear your voice.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 5:I wish you would have made billions of dollars from these books because even if you had, there would have been nothing wrong with that, but that wasn't the point. That wasn't ever the point. You were doing it for free to, give them a voice and help them be able to use what they've been through to help others. And, like, I don't understand. It was Here's what I do understand.
Speaker 5:I understand when somebody feels hurt by their therapeutic relationship. I understand that happens, and we take it seriously, and we talk about it. And if the therapist who you feel hurt you can't process it with you perhaps because you end that relationship, Then you take it to another therapist and you get more input and you work on healing from it and you maybe even figure out whether you need
Speaker 4:to
Speaker 5:report them for unethical things, but you need somebody else's perspective. And instead, like, what happened was people who already had something against you kind of made them their victim and started feeding them with lies or why you can't trust this this Emma, this this, your therapist, and made it so much worse. Like, I think it's kind of common for clients to have, like, some grievances against the therapist. Occasionally, the relationship can go awry.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. That's
Speaker 5:why you have those, all that stuff. Like everybody has to have that through a therapist, but like they took it to a level that is not common. And I just I don't understand the demonizing of you when it's it's like actually the opposite is true. Like, you're a compassionate I trust you. First.
Speaker 5:You really care for other people and you have good ethics if you take that you are cautious about boundaries and like your whole goal in life is helping people really And it was hard. It was hard to see you go through this and to kind of go through it myself too. But I learned from it. I learned a few things from it.
Speaker 3:You blew me away. You were so tough. I've never seen this side of you. You were like, I'm going to track this. I will help.
Speaker 3:You helped me not have to see it every single day so that I could literally survive. And then I would just take, like the police just wanted me to keep emailing them the information. And we had a team of people tracking it so that I didn't have to, it was one of the most powerful gifts I've ever received, where people were like, We will literally track this for you so that you don't have to, so that you are not as wounded. So every once in a while, I would have to update, I would have my therapist, and we'd be like, okay. We're gonna take it to the So I have to look at it.
Speaker 3:We'll take it, hand it over. And finally, they just gave the police just gave me my own, like, drive link where I could just upload it so I didn't have to keep going to the police station and getting new police report numbers and all the things. They were like, No, this is a clear pattern and if our Attorney General has time, we're on it. But I think of course, but having, that's part of why there was so much and everything took so long because the attacks were so pervasive. We really had to prove everything.
Speaker 3:And you skipped over that piece so fast, I actually, and I know you're trying to respect me, I really want to speak to it because that's already been up on the podcast by the time this airs. That will have been on the podcast about the background checks and what is happening. So this new fake claiming where people get a background check from someone else just using those random sites online, where it's aggregated stuff, not all accurate, and then filtered through AI to give a report. That is what happened to me after I left Idaho. And I left Idaho because I was not feeling safe.
Speaker 3:I left Idaho because I was like, I can work hard in a relationship, any kind of ship, friendships, relationships, dating, whatever. I'm willing to work hard, but it takes both people and it takes goodwill. And I was not safe. That is why I had to leave. And in response to the leaving, they got the background check on me.
Speaker 3:And then my understanding of what started it is that one of the people behind the scenes, which has also been reported for unprofessional behavior, but one of the people behind the scenes said to me that they wanted to help with the nonprofit writing grants. To write the grants, you need access to our annual report and our finances and things like that. Those were getting reestablished because I moved here and your nonprofit has to be in the state. I wasn't running from anything other than danger, but I can't have a nonprofit in a state where I'm not. And so we had to move the nonprofit here and reestablish it.
Speaker 3:And so all of our documents were new, they were not finished, it started in July. So no, donations they had made in January were not on it because it wasn't started until July. And so they got concerned because their donation was not showing up on the spreadsheet because I gave them access to it because I was presuming goodwill. And instead of having a conversation with me all of these people involved that put any of the information online all had my contact. They all had texts, all had my email.
Speaker 3:Any of them, everyone the general public can contact me through the website. Any of them could have had a conversation with me to clarify anything and none of them did. But they had concerns because they saw this, that a donation they had made was not listed on the ledger, but the ledger started in July. The donation was prior to that, is the simple reason why it wasn't there. And instead of having a conversation with me about it, they took screenshots of everything they could see in the Google Drive.
Speaker 3:That's what got published on Reddit and they contacted my ex who gave them the background check and fed them a lot of things that were from ChatGBT and a lot of things from this fake background check, and that was the seed of where everything grew from. Once I was alerted to what was happening on Reddit, I refunded all of the money that they had ever given, which cost the nonprofit a lot because they had already received those services, but I have no problem, right? That's fine. It's a button. All I have to do is click a button.
Speaker 3:So I took care of that right away. I hunted down any other donations they had ever given. I returned that. They had come to symposiums and given my family gift cards. I had not spent the gift cards.
Speaker 3:I mailed those gift cards back to them. Like, I don't know what more we could have done to address the actual concerns, but everything else came after that and it just exploded. The stuff about the previous nonprofit closing was because I cannot have a non profit where clients are on the board. I had to close it abruptly, plus politics were changing and the laws for non profits were changing. That was all accurate and we were transparent about that at the time.
Speaker 3:The person who says they were the treasurer for that nonprofit in that state was treasurer for two weeks, never had access to all of the files, and the reason they have a spreadsheet that doesn't add up, which is one of the quotes, is because I was tracking membership and the ledger on the same thing, which is like, that doesn't work. That's why I was asking for help, because that doesn't work. So I was tracking too many things on the same spreadsheet and needed help. They said they were going to help, but instead all this other stuff was happening in the background that we had to close the nonprofit and reorganize in another state. And they were never never were treasurer.
Speaker 3:They got nominated and we closed two weeks later. It's not a thing. They didn't even have access to actual documents. They had access to parts of documents, which is absolutely why it doesn't make sense. But it doesn't mean that it was malicious or that there was some kind of wrongdoing or fraud happening.
Speaker 3:All of our taxes are paid. That is public. Like, don't know what to say about those things that are so easily disproven. My friend says it's just foolishness and you don't engage with foolishness. But when official complaints are filed with insurance companies or licensing boards or, these different things, everything was dismissed so quickly because even though I had to do all of the work to prove everything, I had to prove every name change, I had to prove my fingerprints, I had to prove my marriage, I had to prove my divorce, I had to prove like all of the things, but also it was not hard to prove any of the things because it is accurate and it is real and there was not actually anything wrong with any of it.
Speaker 3:So between the court, looking at my identity and my finances and the nonprofit and the nonprofit finances and all of that, and saying, No, it's fine, this is stalking and harassment, so you need a protective order and granting that, and the licensure board looking at all the recordings and all of the complaints and my name changes and, like all the things they're like, No, you're okay. We're not worried about this. We're dismissing it as false allegations. So it was a year of having to jump through someone else's hoops to prove myself and it was exhausting and awful and violating and also the actual facts were not difficult because they're just it just is. So really the only thing I had to do was be myself and then chase down all the paperwork of this is myself that I already was.
Speaker 4:Right. Yeah. Yes. That does sound exhaustive. Can't imagine.
Speaker 3:Was that too much? Was that too defensive?
Speaker 5:No. No. I mean, what one thing that the people harassing you seem to be confused about is that because you are a therapist, it's like they think you can't be the victim. They can't be the aggressor, And that's not true. They don't know about who it is.
Speaker 5:Like, I don't There's no excuse for the things that were
Speaker 4:thought about you. It's not that long ago when they contacted me. So after when you had sent back money and all of these things, they're still telling me about that. Like because that's one of the things she said. Oh, well, I donated, and it didn't go where I said it was gonna go.
Speaker 4:So obviously, she already had everything back at that point when she's telling me this. So, I mean, yeah, that's just unconscious unconscionable to like, it's not like she made a mistake. She's purposely, like, lying about you, and that's that's, yeah, different, and that's horrible. I don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Thank you. It was really sad because they are people I believed in and people I really loved in all the appropriate ways and people I believed in and felt safe with. And so the betrayal is really, really deep and profound. And I think the grief of it all was as hard as anything.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And again, I have to apologize for even for a second, even for a few days believing that any that you could do any of those things because, like I said, I know you, and that's not who you are. And I can't imagine how much that hurts. And there was a part of me that wanted to lie about it because I didn't want to hurt you more, but I but honesty is so important. So, I mean yeah.
Speaker 4:But if I can make that mistake, I can't imagine people who didn't know you as well. You know what I mean? Like, and how much that has to hurt. I can't. I wanna give you a hug, but I can't.
Speaker 4:I
Speaker 3:think I think what you're saying is really important, though. First of all, thank you. I appreciate that. And also, that takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of courage to say, Oh, I got sucked into this.
Speaker 3:Here's why. Here's what happened. Here's what I said. And also I'm really sorry. And also, I want to be really clear that I think this is part of what's happening, though, because when I did this research, like for the episodes that are airing these recent weeks with how this new fake cleaning works and background checks and all these things, part of what gets I mean there's this what they call a dog pile, right, with the recruiting people for online harassment and cyberbullying, part of what they're violating is our values of wanting to protect those who are weak or have been victimized or wounded.
Speaker 3:So I appreciate what you're saying, and also I see it as you were also violated. Your values were violated because they're taking people's concerns and fears that they already have and exploiting that, which to me feels like reenactment, right? Like this is what we're afraid of happening to us. It's what we've already been through, so now we're going to put it on the stage instead of tending to it or dealing with it. So I think a lot of people I was really surprised there was a point at which in therapy it was like we have to go into those accounts.
Speaker 3:We had I have so many things to say about this, it's really hard. We have tried several different times to be on social media as an organization or personally or whatever, and it's been really hard. When we left that particular church and left Oklahoma and all of that, we had to leave that social media almost entirely because so much of it was wrapped up with those people, and so those people would just keep getting recommended. Like you said about politics earlier, it just wasn't even safe for us to even have that same profile. So we had to start another profile in Idaho after we left, not because we're jumping profiles, but because it wasn't safe to have the other one.
Speaker 3:Publicly, Then we've tried at different times to have different social medias for System Speak or for the nonprofit, and it has not been consistently safe. So we try, and then it's not safe, so we go away, which is the appropriate response. Then we try something else, and it doesn't work either, so we go away. So we had just opened the social media for the new nonprofit when all of this started, And so at some point I had to go in with my therapist and go to the profile where all this stuff is being posted and see who's following it and just block these people because we no longer understood or could tell who was safe. It was heartbreaking seeing the people who were involved, recognizing the names of who were involved, seeing my family involved, and then seeing who had because it wasn't that I was angry at those people for also hurting me.
Speaker 3:It was that I knew they were also being violated, and there's no way to explain that or to warn them. Like, they're going to have to go through it and learn, and it was so painful to witness that I'm sorry you're being wounded with this too, and I'm sorry you're being wounded with this too, because it felt just like a contagion spreading, except also it wasn't that widespread. It ultimately wasn't a big deal other than it was horrific, what was said. But at the same time, to see your courage, to be like, woah, this is happening and to be willing to stay in conversation about it so that relationship can be repaired is the definition of healing. And I thought that was so beautiful, I thought it was so brave of you and other people who have stayed or people who just came and asked me questions.
Speaker 3:Really the first people who let me know what were going on were the people who had been on the board the first time, the whole time. They're like, this is happening. That's not what happened. I remembered what happened, so I don't know why they're saying these things, but I'm letting you know they're saying these things. And those people, and then other people who ended up staying in the community or who just asked me directly questions, really ended up being some of the safest people in my life because they really showed up relationally in a way I didn't even know was possible, that I had never experienced.
Speaker 3:So I appreciate you apologizing. And also, I really understand that you were also violated and that it took so much courage to come full circle and talk about it and just be like, hold up. That's not real. Like, remember one of the things when they were talking about my ears, and I was like, I was talking, I was talking with and I was like, You guys were in the car with me at Vogue Rehab. You were in the car with me at these And so I was gonna make me cry.
Speaker 3:Like, you were literally there. And so why are we arguing about this? My family is going to say that I do not have hearing loss. My family did not measure my hearing loss. And I struggled through school.
Speaker 3:I couldn't ride a bike with my brother. All of that is related to the kind of hearing loss I had, and that hearing loss was progressive and got worse. I can't just go get cochlear implants at Walmart. It's Like, not a thing, And so when they're saying, Oh, that's not real or that's not true, it's not just about the facts of what happened. It is that is deprivation that you do not understand what hearing loss means to me in my life.
Speaker 3:That is part of the trauma that you don't understand what hearing loss means in my life. I don't know these different examples, you all being the people who were there through the name changes and everything that happened with that's a whole trauma of itself, right? Then getting sent to the Catholic therapist who just recently died, by the way, but getting sent to that therapist who then is like, No, I'm Catholic and your school is bad. Which maybe was true, but then having a Catholic family and a Protestant like, Why am I in the War of the Roses? I'm just trying to go to college.
Speaker 3:But everybody, all the adults were hating on each other and there was all this drama. The name changes came out of that drama. But once it settled and I was like, No, I don't want any of you. I had my mother adopt me, but did not change my name. It was an adoption, but I did not change my name again.
Speaker 3:I kept that name until I got married twenty years later, and then I had my married name for ten years until I got divorced. It's not like I had a ton of name changes. I had four. That's unusual. I did not have the others they said.
Speaker 3:That's not real. Don't know where the extra names came from. But I had the four name changes. And one was because of shiny happy, one was from the catholic family, and then I got married, and then I got divorced. That is unusual but there's nothing shady about it.
Speaker 5:And it was never a secret.
Speaker 3:Yeah, never a secret. Always public. One of the first like in the first 10 episodes of the podcast even is like the three Emmas Emma Z, Emma T, M E Z. Like right it's it's not a secret it's not something discovered or we're gonna tattle on you for being naughty it just already is there
Speaker 5:was never any confusion about your name for for me. It was it was surprising to see that being brought up as, like, a reason not to trust you.
Speaker 3:Especially on the DID world. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Stitched my history into someone else's disguise. Made a monster from the pieces that I bled for the work. Called it concerned while they watched the way it hurt. They hit up low like a match to a dry field. Every click another crack in the life I built said it's public so it's fair while they sharpen the knives.
Speaker 2:But they never stayed to watch the way it burned through lives. You turn my voices through your proof. Cut it, spliced it, call the truth. But there are things you'll never hold. The kids I tuck in the hand I fold.
Speaker 2:You can scrape my words, you can steal my face. Chase me through the Institutions sent me thoughts and prayers and PDF. Followed my body under possible risk to self. Held the doors wide open for the
Speaker 1: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.