Losing My Daughter to Medical Negligence, and Finding Hope in a Baby at 57 | Barb Higgins

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Welcome to the Human Experience, a podcast about the stories we live out

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every day and the importance of championing the vulnerability and courage

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of the storyteller. I'm your host, Jennifer Peterkin, and it was through my own

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lived story of experiencing domestic violence that this podcast was

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created. By traveling the globe and interviewing each guest in person,

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I am convinced now more than ever, that stories have the

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power to change the world. Thank you for being here. In a

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world full of noise, to listen with intention is an act of resistance.

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Barb, thank you so much for finally meeting with

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me. And that finally is on me. I'm the one that took forever to get

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to New Hampshire. That's okay. But we've been in touch for a couple of years,

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actually, and I have been wanting to come and wanting to sit

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down with you and hear your story. And so I'm so happy that we made

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it happen finally, finally, finally in my messy, messy office.

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Oh, I love it. I love it. Thank you for hosting. In your home.

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That's always such a pleasure to be able to come and see where you live

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and be in your space. It's extra special. So thank you.

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Thank you. So I really want to just jump

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off the cliff here and get started. I. You have a lot of facets

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to your story. I do indeed. And you

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have your own podcast called A Thousand Tiny Steps. Correct.

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And I know that you do a lot of work born out of your own

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experiences and your own story. So if I ask you to

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tell your story, where does that start for you? It starts when I was about

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seven years old, quite honestly. Perfect. Let's go. So I grew up

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about 200 meters as the crow flies from this house right on the other side

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of the park. I've traveled far. Yeah. And, well, I did take the long way

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to get here. Thousands of miles. There you go. A thousand tiny steps. Exactly.

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And so Concord, New Hampshire, is a very, very typical New

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England town. It's a capital. It has some government and lots of lawyers and Italian

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restaurants owned by Greek families, which I think is endemic to America.

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And so my childhood was really, really normal until it wasn't. And so

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I was the victim of childhood sexual abuse, which in 1971,

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when it began, to 76, when I

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finally had the guts to tell, no one talked about it. I didn't even know

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it was wrong until I, like, read an article. I was having my hair done,

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and I read True Story, you know, that magazine. And it was about a girl

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who had been, you know, sexually assaulted by her stepfather. And I'm reading the article

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and, and all of a sudden it dawns on me that what's happening to me

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is illegal. So, you know, I'm 10 or 11 at the time now and

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it's like really hard to go through all that. So the lucky part for

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me, and this is another thing I do a lot and people sometimes don't understand,

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but in the disgusting reality of childhood sexual abuse,

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I was very lucky because I was never physically hurt. I was never belittled or

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made to feel stupid or ugly or bad. I mean, you bring those things onto

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yourself. And my abuser, when he wasn't being abusive, was kind

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and wonderful and in many ways a really father.

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Except he wasn't. And so, and so for me, growing up in that confusing

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reality, I became a very confused, you know, teenager and adult.

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So I, I, you know, I told my mother and my parents divorced and,

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and life sort of went on for me in, through middle school and high school.

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My parents then remarried, which still remains

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difficult for me. Cause I don't, I don't know if I have that level of

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forgiveness to take somebody back. Yeah, if somebody hurt Gracie like that, I'm not sure.

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I'm not my mom. I don't live inside her head. I didn't have her circumstances.

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So I've, it's been a life time challenge of forgiveness

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to my mom. But I also have to acknowledge that she did the best she

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could. She still does. So I go off to,

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I go to high school. I'm asthmatic and skinny and always,

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you know, troubled and messed up. And I find running.

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And so I start running. Now another little piece to the story is

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the reason I started running is I fell madly in love with my biology teacher,

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who was one of those creepy teachers that had relationships with students.

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I didn't think he was creepy at the time. I still don't think he's creepy

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again. He brought to his messed up life his entire journey.

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So my first true love and relationship was illegal,

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which matches a lot of child abuse victims.

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Shouldn't happen, you know, somebody much older sort of fit a narrative that

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I didn't even know existed at the time. Yeah, so. But I started running.

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And so lo and behold, I was really good at it. I was the first

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high school girl to break five minutes in the mile in the state of New

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Hampshire. Wow. 1981, long time ago. I still hold the school record over

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there at my high school. Well, that was life changing for me. It was the

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first time that I felt okay with my body. You know,

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anyone who's been abused, hates their bodies. And so it was the first

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time that I could look down at myself and think, oh my God, I'm so

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glad that I live inside here. So I went off to college, full scholarship athlete,

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you know, in the 80s. So the 80s was all about partying and dating and,

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you know, it was like post birth control, pre aids, you know, so it

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was like five years of like, yay, you know,

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from what I recall. And so

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then I came home and. And for a year, sensibly, to get out of debt

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and sort of straighten up. I was excessive partier, drank a lot. I still

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struggle with alcohol sometimes. So I went to AA for seven years. Like I just

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came home and decided I need to fix myself. Another very common strategy

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of abuse victims. So my. So going through my 20s, I got a teaching

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job here in Concord. I was continually, you know, had a

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gazillion boyfriends and, you know, never gonna settle down, that sort thing.

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And then I met my first husband. And he was in some ways

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just a carbon copy of my father, which is in hindsight,

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incredibly troubling, but also in hindsight, gaining perspective

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in years of therapy and talking to people and listening to other stories, not at

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all uncommon. So that marriage did not last very long. I met him

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in June, married him in September, you know, so we'd only known

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each other a few months. And while we were fully legally

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married for five years, it only lasted really about two and a half years.

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We both belong to the same religion, the Baha' I faith. And fortunately, that religion

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has a really, really healthy view of marriage. The marriage

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is like an entity itself. So say it's a bird. So the husband is a

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wing and the wife is a wing. And you can't have one that's got more

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clout than the other or the bird won't fly. So it really, really was about

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communication and talking and all. And so I think it's why we were able

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to end the marriage amicably and all of this. So then I meet Kenny and

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we get married and well, yeah, we meet and date and get married. And so

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now I have this sort of picket fence life, right?

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And I feel like this is what I'm supposed to have. And so I begin,

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I'm teaching and I have Gracie. Then I have Molly. Now before I had Gracie,

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Kenny and I had a surprise pregnancy, which is

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much more well known now that I've lost Molly. I didn't know I was pregnant.

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I didn't find out I was pregnant until I was 14 weeks pregnant. Which nowadays,

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you know, you can. You know you're pregnant before you've even missed a period.

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And so I had. I knew I was gaining weight. My. My behavior was

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erratic. I suddenly had boobs, which was wonderful, but I wasn't really sure

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why. And all of a sudden, it dawned on me, okay, this could be something

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different. And sure enough, I was pregnant. But I was on the pill at the

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time, so I, of course, didn't at all think I could be pregnant, you know,

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and drinking and partying and not. Not living a life that would be

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good, conducive to a baby. Now, none of those things are why

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baby Gordy didn't make it. But when I went to have an amniocentesis,

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because, you know, I was 36 at the time, or 35, so that was considered

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a geriatric pregnancy. I had to have all these tests, and one was an amnio.

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And when I had the ultrasound with the amnio, the heart was not right.

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There weren't four chambers. They couldn't get a good view of it. So, long story

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short, Baby Gordy had a heart defect that would not.

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He would. He would be born and then drown. He. He had a good fish

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heart, not a good person heart. Um, so we. We. What do we do?

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What do we do? I had every test imaginable, so I induced labor at,

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like, 22 weeks, and he didn't even make a round of contractions,

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and he came out this teeny, perfect thing. And so we made the hard decision

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to donate his body to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia because they had an amazing cardiac

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care unit. And so they were able to take his little, teeny, tiny broken heart

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and print it on, like, a 3D printer and manipulate it. So now

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I think 11 babies have been able to have surgery, like,

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reparative enough so they can be born because of that little, teeny, tiny heart.

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Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, for a long time, I think

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it's how I've sort of justified deciding to give birth, you know,

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instead of letting it all play out. But I. But, you know,

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in hindsight, he. You know, it's been a good thing for him, and he comes

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back into the story. Okay? He's connected to Jack, believe it or not. So we

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do that, we lose baby Gordy. We get pregnant with Gracie, get married, have Gracie,

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have Molly. And my life is marching along. Having read this book,

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the Body Keeps the Score. A very, very common problem with child

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abuse victims. And hypervigilance is the reason we are hyper vigilant is because when we

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let our guard down, something bad happens and we assume it's us. So when

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I was a child, if I stopped paying attention, if I stopped cleaning

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my room just right, or if I wore the pajamas that I wore when the

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abuse happened, if I let my guard down and it happened again, I immediately thought

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it was my fault. So whenever things got too comfortable, something bad would happen.

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So the adult version of this, which doing my podcast has sort of helped

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me learn, is that when things get good in your life, you gotta

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find a way to create a drama or fuck it up. So right around

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the time Molly and Gracie were, you know, maybe 3 and 5.

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No, actually like 1 and 3, 2 and 4, I met a family,

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a very, very crazy, crazy family, and became really good friends with the mother

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and, and our friends, daughters played together and all this. And that

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sort of led me down a path of, you know,

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one of my podcast episodes is called the Note in the Backpack. And the note

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was from this little girl's mother saying, ooh, we'd love a playdate.

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And I met this family. And so it began. And so from, I would say,

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2005 or so to 2009,

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2010, 2011, like that chunk of time,

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five or six years, I was in this really unhealthy relationship with this family and

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getting so of pulled into helping them and helping with their kids and getting

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sort of triangulated between the husband and the wife and. And it was.

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I talk a lot about it in the podcast. So they separate,

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there's restraining orders, the kids are in trouble. I've, you know, had to call social

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services. It was all of this stuff going on. Long story short,

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at the end of, I, I ended up, Kenny and I were struggling, you know,

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separated back together, started spending time with the

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man in his family, got really pulled into a relationship with him.

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I made my decisions. So I ended up losing my teaching job, 20, 20 year

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teaching career because this. The mother went up to the high school and said all

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these different things that some enough truth that she could get away with

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saying it, but very, very spun and just. It was sort of

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the perfect storm of a very corrupt superintendent and a principal that was

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angry at a decision I had made about a student. Like all these things that

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can only happen in public education in America. So I end being forced to resign.

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And so that felt. I remember when I lost Molly and

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thinking, oh my God, this doesn't even. This hurts about the same as my job

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loss hurt. Because at the time that was my biggest loss. Yes, I'd lost The

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baby. But I'd never met Gordie, so it wasn't the kind of loss

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like that Molly was. Yeah. So the reason I'm including all

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this is. Cause it really feeds into sometimes in looking at why did Molly

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die, how even though it's not my fault, a million left turns that could have

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been right turns, like, where might that have led me? And I think that's the

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beauty of life sometimes is you change. One turn, one action,

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and 50 things behind it change. So I went through several years of not teaching.

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I taught at a charter school. I worked for an event management company. I got

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into CrossFit. I let go of running at that point because it was just too

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painful for me to, you know, I coached cross country and track for all those

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years, got into CrossFit, which was life saving, and then

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was sort of on again, off again with Kenny, on again, off again with Roy,

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the. The father of the kids that we helped.

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And then Molly dies. And so my

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world just, you know, it's like an explosion. It just blows up. And that was

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probably the event, the course of events that really, truly hobbled me. Like,

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do you ever watch Stephen King movies? So Kathy Bates,

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Misery. Yes. And she hobbled him.

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So that was the metaphorical chopping off my foot, Molly's death. And that's how

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it felt. I just felt like everything just stopped. And it stopped for me for

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a long time. Roy and I completely stopped seeing each other.

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We communicated on again, off again a little bit after that, but not at all.

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It was just too much. And then I went into a really dark sort of

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two year span of drug use. I was on everything known

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imaginable. But I had a friend here in my town who has a lot of

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clout and a lot of money. We have this idea that the only people that

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do drugs are homeless people that live in camps and really wealthy,

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successful, upper class people participate

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in pretty heavy drug use. And I got pulled into a community of people.

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So I was high every day for like two years. And, you know,

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I could beat myself up about it, but there were days that I think I

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might not have lasted, I might not have made it if I wasn't under the

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influence of something. But along while

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that was all happening, and I was trying to, you know, keep Gracie okay,

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and put together a life without Molly and do a lawsuit. We filed a

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lawsuit and sued the hospital in the pediatric practice.

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So for reference, Molly started getting headaches

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in late 2015, early 2016, and we took her to the doctors

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over and over again. And she was thin and she was, you know, anxious and

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your typical 13 year old type A personality. And she really just got blown off.

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Spent 16 hours in an emergency room being denied care.

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Basically they gave her migraine medicine and told us to stop asking for scans.

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They weren't going to scan her head in a Hospital here. 16 hours

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and then a brain tumor ruptured in her head and killed her. That's how she

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died in the hospital, like in the hospital.

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So it was horrifying. So they sent us to another hospital.

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She spent a week on life support. They knew that she wouldn't wake

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up, but they also knew that Molly was 13. So even though you think,

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you know, you try everything. So the tumor came out super easily. Had they just

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done a scan at 11 in the morning, they would have taken out the tumor

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and you and I wouldn't be talking right now, you know, like. So that

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whole experience was horrifying.

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Now I said I was lucky. In the child abuse reality, in the child loss

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reality, Molly didn't kill herself. Molly wasn't raped and murdered. Molly wasn't kidnapped.

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And we don't know where she is. She was alive and happy and then she

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was dead. So to me, there's a measure of good fortune in that if I'm

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gonna lose a child. Her tumor wasn't cancerous, so she wouldn't have had to go

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through chemo or anything like that. It was just this benign tumor in a bad

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place. And the community

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support was incredible. Her funeral was a variety show. Molly B. The musical.

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Like 1300 people came. It filled a theater downtown, Capitol center for

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the Arts. It was amazing. Again, huge support,

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but utterly hobbled. So in the two years

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after her death, Gracie and I slept on the living room floor for those whole

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two years. We just didn't go upstairs. Couldn't. Another weird thing I couldn't do for

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like six months is I could not shower here. I just couldn't.

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I went into labor with Molly in the downstairs shower. And the upstairs bathroom I

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didn't use for probably a year and a half. I just didn't use it.

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So I would shower at the Y or I wouldn't shower for days

250
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and days and days. Like, you know, it took me a long time to just

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be able to. And even so. So today I went upstairs to shower and when

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I sit on the toilet, you know, I look at the floor where Molly laid

253
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sick so much that last year and I get upset. Yeah, it's,

254
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it's. I'm 10 years from those days now and it's still there.

255
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It is. You know, I can't sit on that toilet without immediately looking down.

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That's where her water bottle was. You know, like, all of it just stays.

257
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So during, like, 2016,

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2017, beginning of 2018, I kept having this recurring dream

259
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that I was supposed to have a baby. So the dream was actually mostly intense.

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In the LATTER Part of 2016, I had it, like, five or six times.

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And, you know, I'm high all the time, and I have no money.

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I'm not working. You know, we're on Medicaid. Kenny's on disability. He needs a

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kidney transplant. Poor Gracie. Like, our family is just. It can't get any

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worse. So we think. So I had

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this dream, so I went to a nurse practitioner that I'd gone to for years

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and said, look, I've been having this dream and this and that. Could you check

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me out to see if I could potentially have a baby? And she screamed at

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me, like, that's disgusting. That's the grief talking. You need

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to get a therapist. Like, she really let me have it. So I thought,

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well, okay, thank you for nothing.

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So I went. So I didn't do anything. That was July.

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So maybe two or three months into the fall, I just sort

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of. The dreams just kept coming, and sometimes it was a voice and sometimes it

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was an intricate dream with dance moms and neighbors and, like, those dreams

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that don't make sense. So I finally made an appointment with my OBGYN

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that I'd known for years and years. He had practiced with the doctor that

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delivered Gracie and Molly. So I go see him, and he does a bunch of

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blood work, and he said, well, you know, you're not gonna be able to.

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I can't just give you, you know, Clomid and all this.

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You're going to have to have egg extraction and IVF and a lot of hormonal

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support to make this work. But, you know, this. I was 52 at the time.

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And he said, but you're 52, so I don't know that anyone's

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gonna see you do this or whatever. Or maybe I was 53. So you gotta

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find a practice that does older women. So I have a friend that knew somebody.

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So I called this clinic and I. And I went down and I had,

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like, a general physical and all this. And that doctor, this great Italian guy,

287
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Vito Cardon, love him so much.

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He's just this Italian grandpa. Yeah, What a name. Yeah. Oh,

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00:18:08,200 --> 00:18:11,980
yeah, yeah. And so he's like, here's. You have to go through all this testing.

290
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So I did. I went through. I had colonoscopy, I had. Oh, just all

291
00:18:16,680 --> 00:18:20,460
of it. I had all the testing I had to have. Oh, wait, let me

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stop for a minute. Let me stop for a minute. All I did was the.

293
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The beginning stuff. And he told me everything I would have to do and how

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much it would cost. And we weren't there yet. I wasn't. I knew that if

295
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I was gonna have a baby, I couldn't be getting high all the time.

296
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I wasn't ready to not. Like, we weren't there. And plus, we had no money

297
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and we were just new in the lawsuit. So I just sort of said to

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the sky, enough. I can't have this dream anymore. Stop. I've done.

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When I can, I will. And the dream went away. So all of 2017

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and the first half of 2018, we spent in the lawsuit

301
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and just trying to get by. In the meantime, Kenny's getting sicker and

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sicker and sicker. He's got kidney disease. He's on dialysis. He's.

303
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Dialysis is great in the beginning, but then it beats the crap out of you.

304
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And so he basically slept, vomited, went to dialysis.

305
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Like, that was really just his life. So we settled the

306
00:19:10,580 --> 00:19:14,720
lawsuit in 2018, end of June, and it wasn't maybe

307
00:19:15,220 --> 00:19:18,240
10 days. And the dream came back, which is, you know,

308
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bizarre. Yeah, so I was still sleeping on the living room floor down here.

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So I'm having my coffee on the porch and Kenny comes down and I said,

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hey, guess what dream I had last night? And he went, baby, dream. I'm like,

311
00:19:29,150 --> 00:19:31,850
yes. He goes, I woke up thinking about it. I don't know why. I woke

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up and just was thinking about it. So we decided to start the process.

313
00:19:36,170 --> 00:19:39,770
So that was the fall of 2018. So by

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00:19:40,270 --> 00:19:43,570
that time, I had given up using any hard drugs. I was

315
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still on all my prescriptions, of course. So I went to my

316
00:19:48,410 --> 00:19:51,810
doctor, primary care doctor, and we set out a plan. It was

317
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like three months it took me to get off all the medicine I was on,

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the anti panic medicines, the sleep medicines, the wake up medicines, the depress,

319
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you know, antidepressants, all of it. It's amazing. They just keep adding them in.

320
00:20:02,470 --> 00:20:06,070
So that was. And during that time, my face started to hurt again.

321
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So I have a nerve condition called trigeminal neuralgia.

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And it causes extreme. You have a nerve in your face and it just

323
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causes extreme, horrifying pain. And who knows why your

324
00:20:17,650 --> 00:20:20,870
trigeminal nerve is behind your ear. I had A root canal that went wrong,

325
00:20:21,370 --> 00:20:24,210
like, and so they think that once the nerve is fired, it never stops firing.

326
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So you just have like a knife in your face all the time. So they

327
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give you anti seizure meds to treat it and they're fairly effective. But I was

328
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taking a lot of them. And those medicines I could not take at my

329
00:20:36,670 --> 00:20:39,730
age. I'm not epileptic. If I had epilepsy, they would never have let me even

330
00:20:40,230 --> 00:20:42,250
have the baby. Do you know what I mean? Like, I couldn't use those medicines.

331
00:20:42,750 --> 00:20:45,850
So I found a surgeon in New York City, another great guy,

332
00:20:46,350 --> 00:20:49,620
Imad Eskandar, another great name. And I emailed him and said,

333
00:20:50,120 --> 00:20:52,420
a friend of mine, you know, when you worked in Boston, you did this surgery,

334
00:20:52,920 --> 00:20:55,220
would you look at me? And he said, yep, go get an MRI and we'll

335
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take a look. So I get the MRI and I'm sitting at the kitchen

336
00:20:59,520 --> 00:21:02,620
table with Kenny and the phone rings and it's Concord Neurological Associates.

337
00:21:03,100 --> 00:21:06,340
So there's never good news an hour after a procedure. You know, it was like

338
00:21:06,840 --> 00:21:10,380
an hour after the mri, it was December now. And basically said,

339
00:21:10,940 --> 00:21:14,540
you have three brain tumors. What? Which is what Molly

340
00:21:15,040 --> 00:21:18,500
died from. Right? Right. So I'm sitting at the kitchen

341
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table and I'm just like, okay, okay, okay. Molly's dead,

342
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Kenny's dying. And my poor daughter just wants to have a normal

343
00:21:26,050 --> 00:21:27,910
senior year of high school. She doesn't want to be the girl with a dead

344
00:21:28,410 --> 00:21:31,710
sister. She just wants. She wants to go to school and feel like she's normal.

345
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Which of course she's never going to ever be normal. She's always going to be

346
00:21:35,010 --> 00:21:37,950
her. So that whole day was just me thinking like,

347
00:21:38,450 --> 00:21:42,110
what the heck do I do? So I went, I had a pre op appointment

348
00:21:42,610 --> 00:21:45,710
that was going to be to look at the trigeminal nerve. Because that's also brain

349
00:21:46,210 --> 00:21:49,030
surgery. They go in and they cushion the nerve and reroute the arteries back there.

350
00:21:49,270 --> 00:21:52,660
But now I have this big brain tumor. So I email him and say,

351
00:21:53,160 --> 00:21:55,460
here's the deal. He's like, come on down. He was fantastic. So a friend of

352
00:21:55,960 --> 00:21:58,900
mine had gone to college in White Plains, New York. So she drove me,

353
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she drove me to all my appointments initially. Cause she'd gone to college there.

354
00:22:02,460 --> 00:22:05,820
And so down we went. And he took

355
00:22:06,320 --> 00:22:09,620
a look at it and was basically a meningioma, which is the best kind

356
00:22:10,120 --> 00:22:13,020
of tumor to get if you're gonna get one. Cause they're not malignant.

357
00:22:13,420 --> 00:22:16,740
He said, 75% of humans have meningioma, brain tumors. And Never

358
00:22:17,240 --> 00:22:19,700
know it. They live their whole life and never know it. It's like a cyst

359
00:22:20,200 --> 00:22:24,000
or it's just. It's interfering with something. You don't know you

360
00:22:24,500 --> 00:22:27,840
have it. So mine was sitting straight in my eye and

361
00:22:28,340 --> 00:22:31,880
straight in my ear. So right at the junction of the auditory and optic nerve.

362
00:22:32,280 --> 00:22:35,480
But it was putting pressure on my carotid artery. And so he was amazed that

363
00:22:35,980 --> 00:22:39,400
I hadn't had any weird symptoms. And I'm like, well, I get vertigo

364
00:22:39,900 --> 00:22:42,840
sometimes, like non positional vertigo. But, you know, I do the Epley maneuver. I do

365
00:22:43,340 --> 00:22:45,520
these different things and it helps. And he said, no, if you were having vertigo

366
00:22:46,020 --> 00:22:48,940
from that, nothing would help. And so he said, well, we'll take it out.

367
00:22:49,730 --> 00:22:53,490
And so he did. January 10th of 2019. I had this

368
00:22:53,990 --> 00:22:56,650
giant brain tumor taken out of my head. So the pictures are horrible. They're on

369
00:22:57,150 --> 00:23:00,450
my social media. He said, don't cut your hair. It'll be a little incision,

370
00:23:00,950 --> 00:23:03,810
no big deal. And then I woke up and I had no hair and a

371
00:23:04,310 --> 00:23:07,850
giant black eye and bruising everywhere. And this scar that went like my whole entire

372
00:23:08,350 --> 00:23:11,130
head. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, it was insane. Kenny walked in because he was doing

373
00:23:11,630 --> 00:23:15,250
dialysis. So they set dialysis up for him down there. So he comes in expecting

374
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to see a normal looking me. And he sees, he goes,

375
00:23:19,320 --> 00:23:21,740
it just looked like they hit you with a hammer. And he just started sobbing.

376
00:23:22,240 --> 00:23:24,940
So I wake up and he's crying. And I had some college roommates come up

377
00:23:25,440 --> 00:23:29,540
that lived in the area to hang with me. So that was incredible.

378
00:23:29,620 --> 00:23:33,420
Like, why did they end up having to do that? Because it was much bigger

379
00:23:33,920 --> 00:23:37,060
than they thought and much more intricately. They couldn't just sort of pull it out.

380
00:23:37,540 --> 00:23:41,100
They had to move brain tissue around. And you don't wanna

381
00:23:41,600 --> 00:23:44,380
move brain tissue around more than you have to. Sure, yeah. It wasn't as easily

382
00:23:44,880 --> 00:23:48,460
extractable as they thought. And they knew going in. And I remember afterwards saying to

383
00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:51,940
him, why didn't you tell me? And he said, I was gonna give you this

384
00:23:52,440 --> 00:23:54,860
horrible news, then you were gonna fall asleep. What a horrible way to fall asleep.

385
00:23:55,360 --> 00:23:58,660
I just needed you not to worry. I would've told Kenny more before

386
00:23:59,160 --> 00:24:01,340
he left, but he had to go to dialysis. So he was gone. You know,

387
00:24:01,580 --> 00:24:04,780
he wasn't there. So it's better that way. Kenny would have sat

388
00:24:05,280 --> 00:24:07,580
in dialysis all day, 9,000 times more worried.

389
00:24:08,460 --> 00:24:11,980
So I recover from that. And then I had

390
00:24:12,480 --> 00:24:15,260
to have radiation. Cause the two on the other side were a lot smaller.

391
00:24:15,760 --> 00:24:18,060
Too small and too deep to go in it wasn't like chemical radiation. It was

392
00:24:18,560 --> 00:24:22,000
like, blasted them and like, radi. What's it? I can't think of the word now,

393
00:24:22,500 --> 00:24:25,480
but they chopped them up. It was like they blew up in there.

394
00:24:25,980 --> 00:24:29,080
They didn't melt, you know, and it didn't radiate like. Like that would burn you.

395
00:24:29,480 --> 00:24:32,520
So I had to have an MRI and have go for, you know, the Hannibal

396
00:24:33,020 --> 00:24:36,440
Lecter mask and the radi. That was probably worse than the surgeries because I'm really

397
00:24:36,940 --> 00:24:40,120
claustrophobic, and you cannot move, so you have to lie there and

398
00:24:40,620 --> 00:24:43,160
it's like pushing really hard in your face. It was. It was yucky. They played

399
00:24:43,660 --> 00:24:47,080
cheesy 80s music, which was good. But throughout this. This whole experience,

400
00:24:47,400 --> 00:24:50,530
I would run into people that I knew. And this happens to Gracie a lot

401
00:24:51,030 --> 00:24:54,250
as well. So I feel sometimes like the veil is thin between here and the

402
00:24:54,750 --> 00:24:58,170
other side and that we get a lot of support from whatever the energy is

403
00:24:58,410 --> 00:25:01,850
that people still have after their bodies die. You know, Deb had those

404
00:25:02,350 --> 00:25:06,170
connections. Every nurse or someone I had in the hospital had some

405
00:25:06,670 --> 00:25:09,810
similarity to my life. Either their kids names were Molly and

406
00:25:10,310 --> 00:25:13,770
Gracie or just weird connections always. And the

407
00:25:14,270 --> 00:25:17,370
guy that did the radiation knew my college boyfriend's family. Like,

408
00:25:18,330 --> 00:25:21,430
okay, that's weird. You know, they had all these

409
00:25:21,930 --> 00:25:25,910
similarities. So anyway, I get through that, and then a month after that, I have

410
00:25:26,410 --> 00:25:30,030
surgery on the other side of my head for the trigeminal neuralgia. So I don't

411
00:25:30,530 --> 00:25:32,910
recommend two craniotomies in four months. It was a lot.

412
00:25:33,790 --> 00:25:37,390
It took me like a year and a half to really feel okay.

413
00:25:37,790 --> 00:25:40,670
My vision was weird. I had all these different things. However,

414
00:25:41,310 --> 00:25:44,550
I came through just fine. My mouth still hurts, like right now.

415
00:25:45,050 --> 00:25:47,767
I can feel the condition, but I don't take any pain medicine now. None of

416
00:25:48,267 --> 00:25:51,750
that. And I couldn't have functioned without medicine.

417
00:25:51,910 --> 00:25:55,550
So this is now the spring of 2019. So April 10th, I have

418
00:25:56,050 --> 00:25:59,190
the brain surgery number two. April 20th,

419
00:25:59,750 --> 00:26:02,950
we drive to Florida to Disney. Cause, you know, why wouldn't you?

420
00:26:03,350 --> 00:26:07,070
And so poor Kenny now is just so sick, and I'm bald

421
00:26:07,570 --> 00:26:11,110
and feeling horrible. So we went with another family. And so they're all at the

422
00:26:11,610 --> 00:26:15,080
parks, and we're just lying passed out on the lawn chairs next to the pool

423
00:26:15,550 --> 00:26:19,390
at the house that we were renting. And I go online, and I see that

424
00:26:19,550 --> 00:26:23,110
a girl that Molly used to dance with named Rachel is on live

425
00:26:23,610 --> 00:26:26,670
support. And she'd gone out to eat with a friend, went to a Chinese restaurant,

426
00:26:27,630 --> 00:26:30,990
ordered her typical egg rolls. Cause it was safe. She's allergic to peanuts.

427
00:26:31,070 --> 00:26:34,430
And they had changed from some sort of oil to peanut paste.

428
00:26:34,930 --> 00:26:38,030
And not put it on the menu, not updated the menu. So she went into

429
00:26:38,830 --> 00:26:42,590
anaphylaxis. And two EpiPens didn't work. They sent a transport ambulance.

430
00:26:43,090 --> 00:26:45,910
Like, everything that could go wrong. Very similar situation to Molly.

431
00:26:46,410 --> 00:26:50,170
Like, everything be done wrong was. So we did a whole

432
00:26:50,670 --> 00:26:52,970
fundraising thing. We just took care of them like people took care of us.

433
00:26:53,770 --> 00:26:56,850
So Jen and I, Rachel's mother, have become good friends, and she's on the board

434
00:26:57,350 --> 00:27:00,090
of directors for my foundation now. And she lives like, two miles up the road.

435
00:27:00,970 --> 00:27:04,610
So, long story short, we meet, we come home and we

436
00:27:05,110 --> 00:27:09,050
meet, and they end up needing to take Rachel off life support. And so they're

437
00:27:09,550 --> 00:27:12,810
planning on when to do that. Rachel's birthday was May 7th. Molly's unplug day is

438
00:27:13,310 --> 00:27:16,790
May 7th. So they shared that sort of day. And so

439
00:27:17,110 --> 00:27:20,590
in the process of saying goodbye to Rachel, I was spending some time with

440
00:27:21,090 --> 00:27:24,470
Jen, and she asked me if we had donated Molly's organs.

441
00:27:24,970 --> 00:27:26,950
And of course, we weren't allowed to because they didn't know if her tumor was

442
00:27:27,450 --> 00:27:30,790
cancerous, which it was not, which means we could have. And I said, the big

443
00:27:30,870 --> 00:27:34,230
sad thing is Molly could have. Kenny could have had one of Molly's kidneys.

444
00:27:34,390 --> 00:27:37,430
And Jen's like, oh, what's Kenny's blood type? And so I tell her,

445
00:27:37,510 --> 00:27:40,670
and she says, well, that's Rachel's blood type. So we're at the

446
00:27:41,170 --> 00:27:44,150
cemetery putting balloons to the sky. Cause it's three years for Molly.

447
00:27:44,310 --> 00:27:47,850
And Jen calls and Kenny for his kidney

448
00:27:48,350 --> 00:27:51,530
transplant coordinator. And I know this is a hard one for me to tell

449
00:27:52,030 --> 00:27:55,610
it without crying. And so Kenny got one of Rachel's kidneys. So Rachel

450
00:27:56,110 --> 00:27:59,530
and Molly danced in a ton of musical theater numbers together. So I

451
00:28:00,030 --> 00:28:04,050
always say the kidney that danced in Molly's funeral now lives in Molly's

452
00:28:04,550 --> 00:28:08,130
dad. Like, yeah, it's crazy connection. That's what I

453
00:28:08,630 --> 00:28:12,130
mean. It's just. Yeah, sometimes. So I'm driving down to

454
00:28:12,630 --> 00:28:15,170
have my brain looked at on May 8, and Kenny's driving to Boston to have

455
00:28:15,990 --> 00:28:18,390
to be put in the hospital for a kidney transplant.

456
00:28:18,790 --> 00:28:22,230
So all of this, all of these things are occurring

457
00:28:22,310 --> 00:28:24,750
in the way they occur because I'm trying to have a baby, you know,

458
00:28:25,250 --> 00:28:28,870
like, just the whole process of it all. Had I not been trying to have

459
00:28:29,370 --> 00:28:31,950
the baby, I wouldn't have been trying to fix my brain. I might not have

460
00:28:32,450 --> 00:28:35,590
seen the posts, you know what I mean? Like, just all the things that leak.

461
00:28:36,090 --> 00:28:39,270
So I go back in like July now of 2019.

462
00:28:39,770 --> 00:28:42,990
And the Dr. Cardoni says, yep, we can go ahead and try

463
00:28:43,490 --> 00:28:46,550
to do an IVF transfer. So we do all the hormones and stuff for that

464
00:28:46,710 --> 00:28:50,850
first transfer. Didn't work. Now, Kenny's sperm extraction was

465
00:28:51,350 --> 00:28:54,770
before the kidney transplant. So when we went down to say why it maybe didn't

466
00:28:55,270 --> 00:28:59,010
work, Dr. Cardani is like, it wasn't you. You are not the problem we need.

467
00:28:59,090 --> 00:29:02,690
It's him. So, you know sperm extraction

468
00:29:03,190 --> 00:29:06,090
is a needle in your testicles for like 30 seconds. Right. Big deal. So poor

469
00:29:06,590 --> 00:29:09,930
Kenny's like, oh, no, no, I don't want to hear it. Yeah, you just be

470
00:29:10,430 --> 00:29:13,790
quiet. You know what I've had to go through here? Yeah. So. So we

471
00:29:14,290 --> 00:29:17,670
did. We redid. We redid it. And then the next time, it worked.

472
00:29:17,830 --> 00:29:20,790
So in the summer of 2020.

473
00:29:21,350 --> 00:29:25,510
Right, right. I got inseminated three days before my 57th birthday

474
00:29:25,590 --> 00:29:29,110
and found out I was pregnant August 5th, which was the day we

475
00:29:29,610 --> 00:29:32,790
conceived Gracie all those years ago. Oh, wow. Yeah. Weird little connections.

476
00:29:32,870 --> 00:29:36,430
And so then I had the baby. Well, I grew the baby. And in

477
00:29:36,930 --> 00:29:40,800
the process of growing Jack, of course, every test imaginable was done

478
00:29:40,880 --> 00:29:44,400
because so my thoughts were I'd make the pregnancy very

479
00:29:44,900 --> 00:29:48,320
public to give other women hope and this and that. And so the first 12

480
00:29:48,820 --> 00:29:51,520
weeks, we were quiet about it because if it was not gonna work, that's when

481
00:29:52,020 --> 00:29:53,560
it would fail. So I thought, when I get to 12 weeks, I can tell

482
00:29:54,060 --> 00:29:57,640
people. So I get to 12 weeks and you immediately go off. All the hormones

483
00:29:58,140 --> 00:30:00,640
at that point, they don't wean you off. You just stop. Oh, wow. And I

484
00:30:01,140 --> 00:30:03,200
guess your body has to kick in and if it doesn't, it's not going to.

485
00:30:03,280 --> 00:30:07,060
So obviously mine kicked in. But Dr. Chaudhary up

486
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:10,700
here, that's my other doctor, Ashish Chaudhary. Don't I have my doctor?

487
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:14,180
Yeah. Great names. Yes, I do. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Imad.

488
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:18,500
Ashish. Vito. I'm on. I'm in it. Yep. So. So he

489
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:22,220
says, you will say nothing until 22 weeks. And so I'm.

490
00:30:22,300 --> 00:30:24,860
What? Wow. And he said, look, it's.

491
00:30:25,900 --> 00:30:28,620
You're a well known person. People love you or they hate you.

492
00:30:28,860 --> 00:30:32,100
There are people out there that would love nothing better than to judge you and

493
00:30:32,600 --> 00:30:35,390
criticize you. You don't need the stress. So you're not going to say anything.

494
00:30:36,030 --> 00:30:38,750
Fine. And so I didn't. I wore baggy clothes.

495
00:30:38,910 --> 00:30:42,390
Some people knew. My coaches at CrossFit knew because, you know, I'm in a tank

496
00:30:42,890 --> 00:30:45,350
top and they should know yeah, so they didn't. We didn't talk about it.

497
00:30:45,850 --> 00:30:49,190
I just said I had menopause belly, which was very believable. People didn't question it

498
00:30:49,690 --> 00:30:53,150
at all. Like, oh, that's so interesting. Like, you gassy today. I am so

499
00:30:53,650 --> 00:30:57,070
gassy. So gassy again every day for the next nine months.

500
00:30:57,570 --> 00:31:00,590
Yes, exactly. One massive fart. Yeah, yeah,

501
00:31:00,990 --> 00:31:04,280
yeah. So one of the last tests we had

502
00:31:04,780 --> 00:31:07,680
to have was a fetal echocardiogram. And so we had to go to Children's Hospital

503
00:31:08,180 --> 00:31:11,560
in Manchester. It's Dartmouth. It's a, you know, a branch of Dartmouth

504
00:31:12,060 --> 00:31:15,400
Hitchcock. And that was the last test we had with baby Gordy before we

505
00:31:15,900 --> 00:31:19,840
decided to, you know, induce labor and end the pregnancy. So I

506
00:31:20,340 --> 00:31:22,720
go. And of course, I remember the glass hallway. Here's where I had the.

507
00:31:23,220 --> 00:31:26,160
Here's where I sat and cried. Like, I remembered all of it. So we're talking

508
00:31:26,660 --> 00:31:30,050
to the ultrasound tech, and we're talking about Molly. Cause Molly died at Dartmouth.

509
00:31:30,440 --> 00:31:33,800
Well, was unplugged at Dartmouth. And she said, oh, we all know Molly.

510
00:31:34,300 --> 00:31:38,120
We all know Molly's story. Whenever a parent comes in and feels not listened to,

511
00:31:39,480 --> 00:31:43,160
we think about Molly. Okay, what are we missing? Which makes me happy,

512
00:31:43,660 --> 00:31:47,120
because kids deserve to be believed. And so I go through all

513
00:31:47,620 --> 00:31:50,640
of that, and I talk about that I lost a baby. That the last time

514
00:31:51,140 --> 00:31:53,000
I was here having this test was for a baby that I had to give,

515
00:31:53,240 --> 00:31:56,480
you know, terminate the pregnancy. And it had

516
00:31:56,980 --> 00:31:59,780
this four different hearts, heart defects all in one and this and that, this and

517
00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:03,740
that. So she goes off. So the cardiologist comes in, she sits down,

518
00:32:03,900 --> 00:32:06,580
and she says, first of all, everything here is fine. This looks fine, but I

519
00:32:07,080 --> 00:32:09,460
have some questions for you. So I said, okay. You know, and she said,

520
00:32:09,960 --> 00:32:12,900
tell me about the baby that you lost. So I told her all about baby

521
00:32:13,400 --> 00:32:16,540
Gordy and Dr. Rockenmacher and all the different transposition of the

522
00:32:17,040 --> 00:32:19,820
great arteries and basically upside down and backwards and all the things that were wrong

523
00:32:20,320 --> 00:32:23,140
with the heart. And she said, and when was this? And I said,

524
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:27,550
1999. And she said, august. And I'm like, yeah. And she said,

525
00:32:28,050 --> 00:32:30,710
okay. So I retired from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia,

526
00:32:31,030 --> 00:32:34,710
and I moved up here, and I'm working part time, and I have

527
00:32:35,210 --> 00:32:39,030
not done pediatrics because after 20 years of working with sick babies,

528
00:32:39,270 --> 00:32:41,909
I needed a break. So the deal was,

529
00:32:42,870 --> 00:32:46,350
I won't do peds. So she said, I never work on Tuesdays.

530
00:32:46,850 --> 00:32:50,670
I never do pediatric ultrasounds. But someone called out, so I'm here on

531
00:32:51,170 --> 00:32:53,750
a day I'm not Supposed to be here. And when I saw your age,

532
00:32:53,910 --> 00:32:57,060
I thought it was a mistake because what 57 year old is going to

533
00:32:57,560 --> 00:33:01,060
have a fetal echocardiogram. So I shouldn't even be here. But the

534
00:33:01,560 --> 00:33:05,060
long story short is I was at the hospital when baby. When your baby

535
00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:08,980
arrived and instrumental in like learning from

536
00:33:09,140 --> 00:33:12,820
him. I wish I could say I'm making it

537
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:16,820
up because you know what? I, you know, I can't

538
00:33:17,320 --> 00:33:20,660
tell you how many times I've had chills. As you told yourself. It's just,

539
00:33:20,790 --> 00:33:23,910
just, it's like, well, I just must live right on

540
00:33:24,410 --> 00:33:26,430
the edge of the veil is what I think. Like, I just, I, you know,

541
00:33:26,930 --> 00:33:30,990
I. Anyway, yeah, so Kenny and I couldn't talk. Like, we, we literally couldn't

542
00:33:31,490 --> 00:33:34,750
utter a word for hours. Like, if I wasn't pregnant, we would

543
00:33:35,250 --> 00:33:37,230
have gone to a bar, you know, like, and just had a drink. Yeah.

544
00:33:37,730 --> 00:33:41,030
Like what? Oh my God. Like we couldn't even wrap our heads

545
00:33:41,530 --> 00:33:45,030
around it. That, that there was that connection and she, she couldn't

546
00:33:45,530 --> 00:33:48,730
wrap her head around it. Like I called in at the last minute. I always

547
00:33:49,230 --> 00:33:52,450
check to see if there's kids. If I had known you were really. If I

548
00:33:52,950 --> 00:33:56,410
believed what I read, I wouldn't have come. So clearly she was supposed to come.

549
00:33:56,910 --> 00:34:00,330
Yeah. Yeah. Truly. Yep. So that was that other sort of weird

550
00:34:00,650 --> 00:34:03,770
connection. So the rest of the pregnancy was pretty uneventful.

551
00:34:04,010 --> 00:34:07,170
He was due April 13th and I had

552
00:34:07,670 --> 00:34:11,050
to be induced March 20th because he had. I had preeclampsia,

553
00:34:11,130 --> 00:34:14,250
which wasn't necessarily age related. I did have

554
00:34:14,750 --> 00:34:17,930
some aging of the placenta. When the placenta came out, I'm like, wow, that's not

555
00:34:18,430 --> 00:34:21,750
as pink as I remember them being, but that's not uncommon either.

556
00:34:22,390 --> 00:34:25,430
And so I had to deliver early, which made me really angry because

557
00:34:25,930 --> 00:34:28,550
I wanted Dr. Shottery to deliver the baby. Gracie and Molly are both born in

558
00:34:29,050 --> 00:34:31,790
April. I wanted another April baby. Like I had all these. Yeah. You know,

559
00:34:32,290 --> 00:34:35,190
I had been so zen about it. Like, I'm just a passenger on the train.

560
00:34:35,690 --> 00:34:38,710
Whatever happens, happens. And I really had been that way. And then all of a

561
00:34:39,210 --> 00:34:42,390
sudden I wasn't like, no. So. But his birth was great.

562
00:34:42,630 --> 00:34:46,270
It was all women. Two the OBGYNs that covered

563
00:34:46,770 --> 00:34:49,230
were all women. And I had all these. At one point There was like six

564
00:34:49,730 --> 00:34:52,130
women in there and the young was like an 18 year old LNA. And then

565
00:34:52,290 --> 00:34:55,570
the Colin obgyn was filling in and she was like, you know,

566
00:34:56,070 --> 00:34:59,770
55. And so it was just a blast, the whole birth. And he

567
00:35:00,270 --> 00:35:03,970
came, he came easily. They Gave me magnesium for blood pressure and I fell asleep.

568
00:35:04,470 --> 00:35:06,329
And I woke up in the morning and I'm like, I guess I'm not having

569
00:35:06,829 --> 00:35:08,770
a baby today. Because I would have thought they would have woken me up and

570
00:35:09,270 --> 00:35:12,570
Pitocin and everything else. And I went into labor without it. I just

571
00:35:13,070 --> 00:35:16,730
went into labor in the middle of the night. So, yeah, so I had breakfast

572
00:35:17,230 --> 00:35:19,730
not knowing I was in labor. Cause I didn't really feel much. And then they

573
00:35:20,230 --> 00:35:21,810
said, no, no, you're in labor. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I guess my stomach

574
00:35:22,310 --> 00:35:25,550
is hot. So they broke my water. And then

575
00:35:26,050 --> 00:35:28,430
the labor, of course, intensified massively. Kenny came.

576
00:35:29,070 --> 00:35:32,830
He came at like 11. And at noon I'm like, I really want an epidural

577
00:35:33,330 --> 00:35:34,870
this time. I don't need to be a hero anymore. I'm too old for this.

578
00:35:35,370 --> 00:35:37,430
Blah, blah, blah. And they're like, no, you're really. You're going to have him any

579
00:35:37,930 --> 00:35:41,870
minute now. So one push. One big giant CrossFit push. Wow. And out

580
00:35:42,370 --> 00:35:45,670
he came. And then my lunch came. So it was like, you know, have some

581
00:35:46,170 --> 00:35:49,630
breakfast, watch the news, have a baby, have lunch.

582
00:35:50,130 --> 00:35:53,950
Yeah, yeah. So. Right. And so, you know,

583
00:35:54,450 --> 00:35:57,030
those are all sort of the big events. It's like child abuse and dealing with

584
00:35:57,530 --> 00:36:00,990
child abuse and going to college for free and, you know, having an amazing athletic

585
00:36:01,490 --> 00:36:04,270
career and then settling into where I grew up and then, you know, losing my

586
00:36:04,770 --> 00:36:08,390
job and creating drama and then from the relationship that cost

587
00:36:08,890 --> 00:36:12,230
me my job. You know, I feel being very distracted as a mother,

588
00:36:12,730 --> 00:36:16,440
but now a dead child and, you know, just all of the things they

589
00:36:16,940 --> 00:36:20,320
just, you know, I've spent a lot of time asking why.

590
00:36:20,820 --> 00:36:24,160
And I think sometimes our biggest misconception as humans

591
00:36:24,660 --> 00:36:28,760
is that we're supposed to know why. That why even matters at all. Why doesn't

592
00:36:29,260 --> 00:36:32,640
change anything. Maybe it would give me a measure of peace, maybe it wouldn't.

593
00:36:32,960 --> 00:36:35,520
But in the process of trying to find out why,

594
00:36:36,480 --> 00:36:39,760
I've met amazing people. Here you are sitting in my living room. Right.

595
00:36:40,640 --> 00:36:43,510
I've had amazing experiences. I've had horrible,

596
00:36:44,010 --> 00:36:47,150
horrible days and amazing days. And I have a child.

597
00:36:47,470 --> 00:36:50,270
I'm a 62 year old still nursing mother.

598
00:36:50,910 --> 00:36:54,590
Just won't stop. Yeah, I know. A couple times a day. I know

599
00:36:54,670 --> 00:36:57,430
part of me doesn't want to. It's a big ego boost. Like I'm old enough

600
00:36:57,930 --> 00:37:01,230
to collect Social Security and I'm nursing a baby. Hey,

601
00:37:01,310 --> 00:37:04,950
you know what? Good for you. Yeah. Yeah. So that's

602
00:37:05,450 --> 00:37:08,910
sort of my story. And sometimes when I go through it all,

603
00:37:09,990 --> 00:37:12,510
I think people are just gonna think I'm making all this up. And there are

604
00:37:13,010 --> 00:37:16,190
people that do think I make things up. I don't know. I can

605
00:37:16,690 --> 00:37:18,910
prove all of these things. Yeah. I do have the child, and I do have

606
00:37:19,410 --> 00:37:22,950
the brain tumors, and, you know, I did lose the job, and, you know.

607
00:37:23,450 --> 00:37:26,150
Yeah. That's wild. Yeah. Yeah. So now,

608
00:37:27,350 --> 00:37:31,070
really, my biggest mission is to honor Molly's legacy through

609
00:37:31,570 --> 00:37:34,230
helping kids do the things that she loved to do. A very basic foundation.

610
00:37:34,470 --> 00:37:37,480
My bi musical instruments, camp tuitions,

611
00:37:37,980 --> 00:37:41,360
dance scholarships, all that kind of stuff. And not just dance and music,

612
00:37:41,760 --> 00:37:45,560
anything. If a family comes and needs financial help and something, if we

613
00:37:46,060 --> 00:37:49,320
have it, we give it. And then I do the podcast and a

614
00:37:49,820 --> 00:37:53,200
blog, and that's mostly, you know, I spend a ton of money.

615
00:37:53,700 --> 00:37:57,600
I don't make money on it at all. But I really love the feedback,

616
00:37:58,100 --> 00:38:01,600
even if it's one person, you know, and sometimes the feedback and

617
00:38:02,100 --> 00:38:05,310
the. The little messages from people come from the most unexpected places,

618
00:38:05,810 --> 00:38:08,830
which is what I love the best, you know, so my life is just.

619
00:38:09,330 --> 00:38:12,790
I'm. You know, we're financially stable because of the lawsuit. I hate the

620
00:38:13,290 --> 00:38:17,190
money. I call it dead Molly money, but it provides us the ability to

621
00:38:17,690 --> 00:38:21,790
spend a ton of time with Jack, to be supportive to Gracie. It allows

622
00:38:22,290 --> 00:38:25,670
us to, you know, spend time promoting the foundation,

623
00:38:26,170 --> 00:38:29,440
and I get to hang out and talk to people like you. Yeah.

624
00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:32,800
Well, I love that. Yeah. Yeah. So. So that.

625
00:38:33,300 --> 00:38:36,640
That's my little story. Just. Just a little. Yeah, just a little story.

626
00:38:37,140 --> 00:38:41,680
Yeah. No, I. First of all, thank you so much for your candor

627
00:38:42,180 --> 00:38:45,600
in telling that story, because there is a lot of vulnerability

628
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:49,040
in that On. On many different levels. Oh, yeah.

629
00:38:49,920 --> 00:38:54,160
Going back to your childhood, did your mother believe

630
00:38:54,660 --> 00:38:57,880
you when you told her? She. Absolutely. She had. She had grown up in a

631
00:38:58,380 --> 00:39:01,660
very. She had grown up in a very abusive

632
00:39:01,740 --> 00:39:05,460
reality. Not her biological father, but a

633
00:39:05,960 --> 00:39:08,980
grandfather on one side and a grandfather on the other. Oh, geez. Yeah. And the

634
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:12,820
one grandfather, you know, assaulted every female in the

635
00:39:13,320 --> 00:39:16,500
family. You know, he was clearly a troubled human. Yeah. So I think.

636
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:20,340
I think, no, she believed me right away. I think with my mom, her biggest

637
00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:23,820
thing was she had no. No sense of self.

638
00:39:24,060 --> 00:39:27,020
You know, she really. I think she just did what she was told, you know,

639
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:30,810
and, you know, she was a generation ahead of me around sexual assault,

640
00:39:31,310 --> 00:39:34,330
and she got pregnant her senior of high school and didn't get to graduate and,

641
00:39:34,830 --> 00:39:37,850
you know, married my dad because of the baby. And, you know, so it was

642
00:39:38,330 --> 00:39:42,090
really a classic story of a baby coming along and kind

643
00:39:42,590 --> 00:39:46,370
of changing a Trajectory in a way neither of them wanted. So she believed

644
00:39:46,870 --> 00:39:49,450
me from the get go. Never didn't. But she also. Just.

645
00:39:50,490 --> 00:39:54,170
So the other interesting piece of my story is after I told my mother that

646
00:39:54,670 --> 00:39:57,910
I was being abused, we used to spend a lot of time with this older

647
00:39:58,410 --> 00:40:01,670
man who, what we called Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom was actually somebody

648
00:40:02,170 --> 00:40:05,670
my mother was in a 15 year relationship with. Oh. So he's my biological father

649
00:40:06,170 --> 00:40:10,230
and my brother Jonathan's biological father. So in the wake of being honest

650
00:40:10,730 --> 00:40:13,990
about the sexual abuse, she and Tom decide it makes sense to

651
00:40:14,490 --> 00:40:17,550
tell me, oh, well, daddy's not your daddy. Actually, Tom's your dad,

652
00:40:18,050 --> 00:40:21,350
you know, so I'm 13 now and I remember thinking, are they telling me this?

653
00:40:21,850 --> 00:40:25,080
Cause they think it will make me feel better. Like, like it's just one more

654
00:40:25,580 --> 00:40:27,920
thing I have to be quiet about. And here's the other thing too.

655
00:40:28,480 --> 00:40:31,680
As bad as the abuse was, my abusing dad

656
00:40:32,180 --> 00:40:35,480
actually apologized and spent his

657
00:40:35,980 --> 00:40:39,280
life trying to make himself better. And when I said,

658
00:40:39,780 --> 00:40:42,200
look, I don't want you. You've lost your right to be alone with my grant,

659
00:40:42,700 --> 00:40:45,360
with my daughters, he was like, you're right, I have. And he never, he didn't

660
00:40:45,860 --> 00:40:49,760
feel bad about it, didn't try to convince me otherwise. He really owned it as

661
00:40:50,260 --> 00:40:53,480
the abuser. He just owned it. There's no excuse. I will pay for it

662
00:40:53,980 --> 00:40:56,480
when I die. You know, he really had a lot of fear about dying because

663
00:40:56,980 --> 00:41:01,000
he was afraid of what awaited him. I think my mom just had no agency

664
00:41:01,500 --> 00:41:05,400
and so she's in this relationship with my bio dad. So now my parents

665
00:41:05,900 --> 00:41:08,920
divorce and so my mother doesn't want to marry him.

666
00:41:09,420 --> 00:41:13,920
Like, so I just think she sort of got talked into it. And you

667
00:41:14,420 --> 00:41:18,160
know, for all the ways he remained broken, I can,

668
00:41:18,560 --> 00:41:22,040
I can see that she would be trusting enough to bring him back. I just

669
00:41:22,540 --> 00:41:26,200
can't imagine ever being with somebody that had done that. Sure. But you know,

670
00:41:26,700 --> 00:41:31,359
she had. Had things done to her that far out. Out yucked

671
00:41:31,360 --> 00:41:34,880
my abuse, you know, and so I think, I just think that

672
00:41:35,380 --> 00:41:39,320
is evidence of her damage. Absolutely. Yeah. No, I think that

673
00:41:39,820 --> 00:41:43,320
that kind of stuff is generational until you actively put a stop to

674
00:41:43,820 --> 00:41:47,380
it. Yes. And it's very true. I mean, women's age is,

675
00:41:47,880 --> 00:41:51,740
is quite recent in terms of even

676
00:41:52,240 --> 00:41:55,780
like legally being able to, to survive on

677
00:41:56,280 --> 00:41:59,420
your own. So. Oh yeah. So yeah. I mean, while, you know, we could sit

678
00:41:59,920 --> 00:42:02,860
here and judge all, all we want, like, how could you make. Let that happen?

679
00:42:03,260 --> 00:42:06,860
Or how could you take him back? Right. She, that was survival mode

680
00:42:07,360 --> 00:42:09,660
for her. Yeah. I still have these two younger kids I have to raise.

681
00:42:09,820 --> 00:42:12,380
I can't, you know, I can't afford this house on my own. Like, all of

682
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:15,890
the things. The hardest part for me though, was the secret keeping. Because I wasn't

683
00:42:16,390 --> 00:42:18,770
supposed to tell about Uncle Tom, even though I knew we'd spend the weekends with

684
00:42:19,270 --> 00:42:22,450
him. I'm not. Don't tell daddy that we were with Uncle Tom. Right. And then

685
00:42:22,950 --> 00:42:25,890
I'd get molested. Well, don't. You can't tell anyone about this. Yeah. You know,

686
00:42:26,390 --> 00:42:29,130
so the two parents in my life are telling me to lie all the time.

687
00:42:29,630 --> 00:42:32,370
And then I know I have this father, I'm supposed to lie about that.

688
00:42:32,870 --> 00:42:35,490
And then my mother was insistent that I not tell people I was molested.

689
00:42:35,990 --> 00:42:39,410
That I. That nobody would believe me. Like, so, so I've.

690
00:42:39,910 --> 00:42:43,170
I have spent my life feeling like I'm not secret keeper. Like,

691
00:42:43,670 --> 00:42:46,810
why is this my job? Like, why do I have to not hurt everybody when

692
00:42:47,310 --> 00:42:50,610
it's hurting me really badly? So when I was in

693
00:42:51,110 --> 00:42:54,410
my early 20s, I had a therapist that said, you need to tell your Higgins

694
00:42:54,910 --> 00:42:58,370
dad. It's not your job to keep the secret. Because it was becoming a

695
00:42:58,870 --> 00:43:02,290
bit obvious just in looks, physical looks. And Jonathan and I looked so much different

696
00:43:02,790 --> 00:43:06,290
than my other siblings. And I told Jonathan

697
00:43:06,790 --> 00:43:09,450
and he was quite hurt by it and angry and got mad at my mother.

698
00:43:09,950 --> 00:43:11,730
And my mother's like, why did you tell? I'm like, why did you tell?

699
00:43:12,420 --> 00:43:15,860
So I'm not your. See, you're the grownup here. I'm not the secret keeper.

700
00:43:16,180 --> 00:43:19,100
So we ended up telling my father and my mother had a very hard time

701
00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:21,820
and bailed at the last minute. So I'm the one that ended up telling him,

702
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:25,220
you know, like. And, and, and again, he just,

703
00:43:25,720 --> 00:43:29,140
he. I think, I think it's

704
00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:33,340
so funny. Cause you know, what he did was horrifying. But he just owned it

705
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:37,500
to every. Every fiber of his being and just used it

706
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:40,980
to make himself better. He didn't use it as excuse to be bad. Do you

707
00:43:41,480 --> 00:43:43,940
know what I mean? He quit drinking. He got very deep into his rel.

708
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:48,240
He worked hard, he helped people. You know, he really tried to

709
00:43:48,640 --> 00:43:51,520
make it right. I mean, you can't make it right, but he tried to.

710
00:43:52,020 --> 00:43:55,440
Yeah. And I think my mom has just

711
00:43:55,680 --> 00:43:59,600
suffered. I really do think, you know, she's had a wonderful life, but never,

712
00:43:59,680 --> 00:44:02,880
you know, My father died in October, so we're coming up on a year.

713
00:44:02,960 --> 00:44:06,400
Oh, wow. And she doesn't quite know what to do. Yeah. You know,

714
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:09,800
so I'm Moving her into a house that I own that's nearby, which will be

715
00:44:10,300 --> 00:44:13,600
good, but it'll be the first house that she's ever lived in without

716
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:17,440
anyone else. Like, she's still in the apartment, but he lived there too, you know,

717
00:44:17,940 --> 00:44:20,560
like. So, yeah, she's living alone now, but she's never lived in a home in

718
00:44:21,060 --> 00:44:24,680
her entire life that she was the first person to live in without someone

719
00:44:25,180 --> 00:44:28,400
else in her family. So I think she's overwhelmed by that. You know, she's 83,

720
00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:32,120
so she's not super young, but I think it will be good for

721
00:44:32,620 --> 00:44:35,840
her. Yeah, but, yeah, but she, I was always believed. That's another thing with.

722
00:44:36,160 --> 00:44:39,880
No one ever didn't believe me. That's great. Yeah. I mean, I have

723
00:44:40,380 --> 00:44:43,720
to say, I have to imagine, you know, you talk about the

724
00:44:44,220 --> 00:44:47,500
left circle and rights in life and how things happen,

725
00:44:48,060 --> 00:44:51,500
you know, that, that I think is one of them. Right. You know how

726
00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:55,220
your mom reacted to that and, and for better or worse down

727
00:44:55,720 --> 00:44:59,100
the road, too. Yeah. Do you think the pressure to

728
00:44:59,600 --> 00:45:04,020
keep those secrets when you were a child has really bolstered

729
00:45:04,520 --> 00:45:07,860
your desire to be somebody that's so open

730
00:45:08,360 --> 00:45:12,340
and vulnerable? Yes. Don't tell me to shut up. I will not.

731
00:45:12,840 --> 00:45:16,160
Yes. Yes. I have always. Yes.

732
00:45:16,400 --> 00:45:20,040
I, I, I absolutely say it. I, that was the hardest

733
00:45:20,540 --> 00:45:22,440
part for me when I, when I first went to AA and gave up the

734
00:45:22,940 --> 00:45:26,480
really unhealthy sort of binge drinking and blackout drinking. And I would talk, you know,

735
00:45:26,980 --> 00:45:30,200
you go up and you tell your stories. And I always felt for me that

736
00:45:30,700 --> 00:45:34,360
the hardest part was the secret keeping and that in my unhealthy fallout

737
00:45:34,860 --> 00:45:38,480
of that abuse, I created situations I had to lie about because I was

738
00:45:38,980 --> 00:45:42,160
only ever comfortable if I had big chunks of my life that nobody knew about.

739
00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:45,870
It's a horrible way to live. It's just, just. So now I'm just, I'm an

740
00:45:46,370 --> 00:45:49,510
open book. There's no freaking secrets. And if. And if

741
00:45:50,010 --> 00:45:53,230
I choose to do something and, and I have to keep it secret,

742
00:45:54,110 --> 00:45:57,070
I won't do it now. And it's taken. I'm in my, you know, I'm 62

743
00:45:57,570 --> 00:45:59,830
now. It took me a long time to get here. And that was a big

744
00:46:00,330 --> 00:46:03,470
corner term for Jack. Like, you know what? I just, if I'm gonna do

745
00:46:03,970 --> 00:46:05,950
it, then I'm gonna tell people I'm doing it. Yeah. And so can I do

746
00:46:06,450 --> 00:46:09,190
that? Okay. So maybe I won't do that. Sure. And I haven't actually had any

747
00:46:09,690 --> 00:46:12,780
challenges like that at all. All. But yeah. Being told to be quiet not tell

748
00:46:13,020 --> 00:46:15,860
has been a huge piece of, you know, and in my job loss, I was

749
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:20,180
quiet. I got so bamboozled and set up. I've done some podcast episodes around the

750
00:46:20,680 --> 00:46:24,300
truth of it, but not 100%. So I might.

751
00:46:24,380 --> 00:46:27,260
I might either. I might do, like, an online book about it. You know,

752
00:46:27,340 --> 00:46:30,380
you just write it chapter by chapter and invite people to pay a buck and

753
00:46:30,880 --> 00:46:34,180
read the next chapter, that kind of thing. Because there are lots of

754
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:37,900
people that have gone through in their jobs what I went through with, like,

755
00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:41,020
forced resignations and being set up and lied about and that sort of thing.

756
00:46:41,420 --> 00:46:44,360
But also, you nailed it. I'm completely open.

757
00:46:44,920 --> 00:46:49,600
And people say, why do you tell everything? I'm like, because everything

758
00:46:50,100 --> 00:46:53,120
is what everyone goes through. If I just tell the parts that don't make you

759
00:46:53,620 --> 00:46:57,280
uncomfortable, I'm helping you be comfortable, but that's not helping you. Yeah,

760
00:46:57,780 --> 00:47:01,200
absolutely. Yeah. It's really interesting. I think I do

761
00:47:01,700 --> 00:47:05,600
a lot of work around domestic violence advocacy, and I will have

762
00:47:06,100 --> 00:47:09,440
people tell me straight up, like, I think it's great that

763
00:47:09,940 --> 00:47:13,790
you do that, but I don't want to listen. And it's not because of their

764
00:47:13,940 --> 00:47:17,300
own trauma necessarily. It's just like, I can't handle that.

765
00:47:17,800 --> 00:47:21,300
Right, right. And, you know, I do have grace and

766
00:47:21,800 --> 00:47:24,820
compassion for that at some level, for sure. But also,

767
00:47:25,300 --> 00:47:28,900
like, you know, you're not experiencing it.

768
00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:32,340
The least you can do is hear about it and be educated about it.

769
00:47:33,140 --> 00:47:37,340
So I think it is. It's anybody saying you're

770
00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:41,730
better off being quiet or you're better off, you know, not. Not telling

771
00:47:42,230 --> 00:47:45,570
the truth, whatever, is either afraid of telling the

772
00:47:46,070 --> 00:47:50,010
truth themselves or is just in a really angry

773
00:47:50,510 --> 00:47:53,450
and dysfunctional place, I think. Right. That's. That's my opinion.

774
00:47:53,850 --> 00:47:56,810
And, you know, I think that people have the right to be.

775
00:47:57,690 --> 00:48:00,810
To. To do that in whatever capacity makes sense for them.

776
00:48:01,310 --> 00:48:04,490
You know, not everybody wants the online space to be their.

777
00:48:04,650 --> 00:48:08,170
Their, you know, domain, but it could be with

778
00:48:08,670 --> 00:48:12,010
your own family and friends. You know, even just being open with the people,

779
00:48:12,340 --> 00:48:16,100
with. With a core group of people counts. Yes. As being open and

780
00:48:16,600 --> 00:48:20,100
vulnerable. Yes. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And I do that. And. Yeah.

781
00:48:20,340 --> 00:48:24,300
And on all the different levels. You know, I remember shortly after Molly

782
00:48:24,800 --> 00:48:28,179
died, someone told me that I shouldn't cry in public because it makes people uncomfortable.

783
00:48:28,679 --> 00:48:32,260
Oh. And I'm like, okay, well, it's not my job to make sure they're comfortable.

784
00:48:32,760 --> 00:48:36,140
Like, yeah. You know, and. And, yeah, that's when I work

785
00:48:36,640 --> 00:48:39,320
with child loss moms that the. When, like,

786
00:48:39,480 --> 00:48:42,720
I'm in a lot of Online groups, when people say, what should

787
00:48:43,220 --> 00:48:45,120
I do? It's been five years and I still couldn't get out of bed today.

788
00:48:45,620 --> 00:48:48,520
I'm like, well, then good for you for staying in bed. If you wake up

789
00:48:49,020 --> 00:48:51,400
and wanna stay in bed, stay in bed. Like, no one, no one is you

790
00:48:51,900 --> 00:48:55,320
in there, you know, and we just, we spend so much

791
00:48:55,820 --> 00:48:59,840
time in all manner of trauma recovery trying to make sure everything is okay

792
00:49:00,340 --> 00:49:03,320
around us and sometimes nothing is okay. Yeah.

793
00:49:03,820 --> 00:49:07,690
You know, and so. Yeah, absolutely. I think the other thing too is

794
00:49:08,190 --> 00:49:11,490
within our culture, everything is so production based as well. Yes.

795
00:49:11,570 --> 00:49:15,890
So what healing looks like is also

796
00:49:16,390 --> 00:49:20,370
gets pulled into what you can produce from your healing. Yes. Which is,

797
00:49:20,870 --> 00:49:23,490
you know, not a great way. No, no, no,

798
00:49:24,290 --> 00:49:27,610
no. Because I get sucked into that sometimes. Like, oh, my God, her daughter's only

799
00:49:28,110 --> 00:49:30,730
been dead two years and she has this huge foundation and Molly's been gone nine

800
00:49:31,230 --> 00:49:34,400
and I'm still spending mostly my own money on everything. Like, I suck,

801
00:49:34,480 --> 00:49:37,680
you know, and it's like, well, no, no, yeah, I don't suck.

802
00:49:38,180 --> 00:49:41,480
But no, not at all. Yeah. So you mentioned therapy when

803
00:49:41,980 --> 00:49:46,080
you were like 20. So how did you kind of

804
00:49:46,580 --> 00:49:49,600
acknowledge that you needed to start healing and what did that look like for you?

805
00:49:50,080 --> 00:49:53,080
It was a lot of external suggestions. So when.

806
00:49:53,580 --> 00:49:55,680
When I first told that I was being abused, my mother made me go and

807
00:49:56,180 --> 00:50:00,220
I hated it. And then my biological father did medical

808
00:50:00,720 --> 00:50:04,220
hypnoanalysis, so hypnotherapy. So as boundary crossing as that was,

809
00:50:04,300 --> 00:50:07,780
I did a lot of hypnosis therapy throughout high school with

810
00:50:08,280 --> 00:50:11,820
him. Oh, wow. Yeah. And actually cured a lot of my emotional

811
00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:15,660
asthma through hypnosis, which was amazing. It's an incredible

812
00:50:16,160 --> 00:50:19,540
form of therapy. But talk about vulnerability, you know, you have to really be willing

813
00:50:20,040 --> 00:50:23,460
to open up your subconscious and the person that's guiding

814
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:27,340
you needs to be a good person, you know, so. So that was super helpful.

815
00:50:27,840 --> 00:50:30,500
And then I went off to college and I didn't have therapy in college at

816
00:50:31,000 --> 00:50:34,700
all. And then I was dating one of my coaches.

817
00:50:35,200 --> 00:50:38,092
So here we go again. So this amazing guy, Sev Bob, 70,

818
00:50:38,188 --> 00:50:41,180
he was 20 years older than me and I was all over the place.

819
00:50:41,680 --> 00:50:45,060
And he was a Vietnam vet. He was a mess. I mean, but he could

820
00:50:45,560 --> 00:50:49,140
look at me and say, okay, I have my issues

821
00:50:49,640 --> 00:50:53,660
because I'm with you and you're 24 and I'm 44, but you

822
00:50:54,160 --> 00:50:56,500
need therapy and you need to go to a psychiatrist. And so I found this

823
00:50:56,580 --> 00:50:59,460
psychiatrist in Newton, Massachusetts. Norm.

824
00:50:59,940 --> 00:51:03,340
Norm. His last name began with an. I wasn't

825
00:51:03,840 --> 00:51:07,620
Abramson. Ibram. I don't know. Anyway, he was unbelievable.

826
00:51:08,020 --> 00:51:11,300
He was great. Just, he was as Jewish as he sounds and

827
00:51:11,800 --> 00:51:15,260
he had just. Oh, he was fantastic. I love Jewish culture,

828
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:19,040
by the way. It's like Italian culture, you know, it's the same but

829
00:51:19,190 --> 00:51:22,950
different. So. So, but it's just thick and rich and it envelops

830
00:51:23,450 --> 00:51:26,950
everything. So he was the one that really made. Wanted me to come clear about

831
00:51:27,450 --> 00:51:30,670
my mother. And so that was super helpful. And he was the first one

832
00:51:31,170 --> 00:51:35,229
to put me on medication. So I took Trazodone, which is primarily

833
00:51:35,729 --> 00:51:38,510
a sleep aid, but it helps with depression. And it was life saving for me

834
00:51:39,010 --> 00:51:41,750
because I finally fell asleep and slept. I'd get like 10 hours of sleep a

835
00:51:42,250 --> 00:51:48,970
night, which was wonderful. So. So I went through that and then, then that

836
00:51:49,470 --> 00:51:52,250
was probably my biggest, biggest chunk of therapy. And then.

837
00:51:52,730 --> 00:51:56,170
I don't recall. Oh, yes, no, no.

838
00:51:56,330 --> 00:51:59,570
Then I married Eric after, you know, 12 weeks of knowing him and

839
00:52:00,070 --> 00:52:03,650
realized, oh my God, I've married my abusive father. Eric wasn't a sexual abuser,

840
00:52:04,150 --> 00:52:07,490
but he was not. There were issues that once I was.

841
00:52:07,990 --> 00:52:10,820
I'm like, what have I done? This is awful. He's a bit narcissistic. And so.

842
00:52:11,050 --> 00:52:14,850
So I found a therapist, Judy. And I went to her. I went to

843
00:52:15,350 --> 00:52:19,210
her off and on my entire. All through leaving Eric,

844
00:52:19,710 --> 00:52:22,770
all through meeting Kenny, then all through Roy and my

845
00:52:23,270 --> 00:52:26,570
job loss. Like, I'd go back to her and she was fantastic. And she was

846
00:52:27,070 --> 00:52:30,770
a sex therapist. I didn't pick her for that reason, but she just ended

847
00:52:31,270 --> 00:52:34,930
up being this amazing, amazing therapist. So I did that all the way

848
00:52:35,430 --> 00:52:38,970
through. And then after Molly died, my best therapist of all, Elizabeth Moulton, she was

849
00:52:39,470 --> 00:52:42,710
fantastic. And she just. When I told her my life whole. Whole. Because her office

850
00:52:43,210 --> 00:52:45,470
was in the office of my bio dad. Like, it was the same office in

851
00:52:45,970 --> 00:52:49,590
the same building downtown Concord. So we're sitting there once and we're doing

852
00:52:50,090 --> 00:52:53,310
some emdr, which is trauma, which was fantastic. And I said, oh,

853
00:52:53,810 --> 00:52:55,710
this just makes me so funny that this is my safe room. And she's like,

854
00:52:56,210 --> 00:52:59,070
why? And I'm like, well, let me explain my history with this room. So I.

855
00:52:59,570 --> 00:53:02,510
And because my bio dad also did hypnosis on my abuser dad.

856
00:53:03,070 --> 00:53:06,750
Like, talk about crazy. Intermingled lack

857
00:53:07,250 --> 00:53:11,130
of. Yeah, like, yeah, yeah. So maybe some lack of boundaries there.

858
00:53:11,210 --> 00:53:14,290
How about. That was helpful. Yeah, yeah. So I told her

859
00:53:14,790 --> 00:53:17,650
the whole story and she, she really, she just said, based on your life,

860
00:53:18,150 --> 00:53:22,250
I'm amazed that you aren't dead. Like, or. Or truly, truly drug

861
00:53:22,750 --> 00:53:26,010
addicted and selling yourself. On a street corner in some hideous part of some hideous

862
00:53:26,510 --> 00:53:29,770
town. I can't. I can't believe that you're okay. And so that

863
00:53:30,270 --> 00:53:34,210
made me feel better. But she was an incredible grief therapist. She did. She really,

864
00:53:34,710 --> 00:53:38,380
truly, truly helped me dealing with those years after

865
00:53:38,880 --> 00:53:41,380
losing Molly. She knew all about the cocaine use and how I was getting high

866
00:53:41,880 --> 00:53:45,220
all the time, and she. She was fantastic. She just really knew how to

867
00:53:45,720 --> 00:53:48,580
work through it and keep me sort of stable. She was wonderful. And then she

868
00:53:49,080 --> 00:53:52,380
retired. Damn it. Yeah, I know. What the heck?

869
00:53:52,860 --> 00:53:56,540
So. So I haven't had a therapist since. But really, you know,

870
00:53:57,040 --> 00:53:58,820
when I record a podcast, I'm on a. You know, I use zoom. Right.

871
00:53:59,320 --> 00:54:03,140
So I'm looking at myself. Yeah, it's therapy sometimes. Like, I've. I've. I've just

872
00:54:03,640 --> 00:54:06,940
read so much and learned so much and met so many people that I'm constantly

873
00:54:07,440 --> 00:54:10,580
in a state of mindfulness and process as I run around like a crazy woman.

874
00:54:11,080 --> 00:54:13,780
But. Well, I think, too, you know, you've been in therapy. You do have some

875
00:54:14,280 --> 00:54:17,300
of those tools. So I don't think that people have to be

876
00:54:17,800 --> 00:54:21,940
in therapy in perpetuity. Right. But. But I do think that it's

877
00:54:22,440 --> 00:54:25,860
helpful as a guideline for getting, you know,

878
00:54:26,360 --> 00:54:30,060
knowing how to process things yourself. Yeah, exactly. And have

879
00:54:30,560 --> 00:54:33,140
those tools. So as far as Molly,

880
00:54:33,780 --> 00:54:36,900
Molly's illness, how long was she

881
00:54:37,380 --> 00:54:40,900
symptomatic? Well, in hindsight, some.

882
00:54:41,400 --> 00:54:44,140
It was a fetal cell tumor. Meaning? Meaning she'd had it since she was born.

883
00:54:44,640 --> 00:54:47,980
Oh, my gosh. So she had some weird leg issues

884
00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:52,060
and balance issues. She got wicked car sick. So the

885
00:54:52,560 --> 00:54:56,220
tumor was on her brainstem. So it's all those basic body functions. She had massive

886
00:54:56,720 --> 00:54:59,700
overproduction of saliva. Sometimes, you know, I'd wake up in the night and she'd be,

887
00:55:00,200 --> 00:55:02,490
like, choking. I'd have to roll her over. She's got all this saliva. Oh,

888
00:55:02,560 --> 00:55:06,680
you know, just funny. Funny stuff. But she. Her active. Active symptoms.

889
00:55:07,180 --> 00:55:11,360
She got Bell's palsy, like, in the spring of 2015,

890
00:55:11,520 --> 00:55:14,080
so a year before she died. Okay. And then that got better,

891
00:55:14,800 --> 00:55:18,320
and she was. Started to have headaches, and she just would be dizzy.

892
00:55:18,559 --> 00:55:22,240
Then she started. So by about December, she'd wake

893
00:55:22,740 --> 00:55:25,520
up in the morning. Sometimes she'd started throwing up, and then she'd throw up,

894
00:55:26,020 --> 00:55:28,080
like, for two hours, and then, boom, stop. And I'm like, all right, that sounds

895
00:55:28,580 --> 00:55:30,880
like a migraine. I had migraines where I'd puke, and then in an instant,

896
00:55:31,380 --> 00:55:34,280
I felt better. So I just thought, okay, she has migraines. That was my assumption.

897
00:55:34,600 --> 00:55:37,920
But those that continued. And then she started standing up.

898
00:55:38,420 --> 00:55:41,560
And if she stood up too quickly, she'd grab her head and just hold it

899
00:55:42,060 --> 00:55:44,000
for a while. So that's when I took her to the doctor. And then so

900
00:55:44,500 --> 00:55:47,960
began six weeks of weekly appointments where they just kept sending

901
00:55:48,460 --> 00:55:50,600
us home. And I'm like, can you just X ray her head? Like, just X

902
00:55:51,100 --> 00:55:53,560
ray, it doesn't have to be. If you put her head in front of an

903
00:55:54,060 --> 00:55:56,800
X ray machine, would you see inside? Like, why can't we, why can't we do

904
00:55:57,300 --> 00:56:01,130
this? And, and they just kept, so the symptoms

905
00:56:01,630 --> 00:56:04,410
got, then her back started to hurt in the morning. Dizziness, we'd tease her like,

906
00:56:04,910 --> 00:56:07,210
oh, morning sickness, you know, and it was like every seven days or so,

907
00:56:07,930 --> 00:56:11,530
which is the seven day time frame is fairly consistent with a

908
00:56:12,030 --> 00:56:14,890
lot of fluid, brain fluid issues and aneurysm issues and things.

909
00:56:15,290 --> 00:56:18,610
So these things were all just ignored and pushed

910
00:56:19,110 --> 00:56:22,090
aside. So when I went away, it was school vacation week. I went away with

911
00:56:22,590 --> 00:56:26,260
Roy to Amsterdam. The last week of her life, which was, I still have a

912
00:56:26,760 --> 00:56:28,980
hard time with that. So I missed it, you know, I missed her last days

913
00:56:29,480 --> 00:56:32,140
alive. And when I came home, she was already at the ER and she was

914
00:56:32,640 --> 00:56:35,580
already semi conscious. She knew I was home. We said, I love you. I said,

915
00:56:36,080 --> 00:56:38,020
I'm sorry I left you. And she, it's okay. We had a good week with

916
00:56:38,520 --> 00:56:41,220
daddy. Everything's fine, you know. And then she died. Like, you know,

917
00:56:41,780 --> 00:56:44,820
so the symptoms just exacerbated.

918
00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:49,220
And what finally made us call 911 was the projectile vomiting, like in her sleep.

919
00:56:49,300 --> 00:56:52,770
And the fact that she was in her sleep. They just, in all of the

920
00:56:53,270 --> 00:56:56,370
medical documents, they just keep saying she's anorexic. They did a pregnancy test, they did

921
00:56:56,870 --> 00:57:00,090
a drug test. Like, how about you look inside her head, right? Like, and it

922
00:57:00,590 --> 00:57:03,930
was just awful. I, I, to this day, I don't know why. Why?

923
00:57:04,170 --> 00:57:07,370
Yeah. Makes no sense. It doesn't make sense. Why?

924
00:57:07,450 --> 00:57:10,890
Why there's so much resistance to just doing

925
00:57:11,050 --> 00:57:14,770
a CAT scan. Yeah, it would have three minutes. And had they

926
00:57:15,270 --> 00:57:18,530
done it even two hours before she died? Had they done it and seen a

927
00:57:19,030 --> 00:57:23,090
tumor, they could have put a drain in and airlifted her to hand

928
00:57:23,590 --> 00:57:25,570
over and had the tumor taken out and she'd be fine. Oh, God. Yeah.

929
00:57:26,290 --> 00:57:29,410
Was it the same doctors, like telling you

930
00:57:29,910 --> 00:57:32,930
no, or did you have multiple doctors saying, no, I'm not, no. So it was

931
00:57:33,430 --> 00:57:36,450
her pediatric office. So it was two doctors there,

932
00:57:36,690 --> 00:57:40,370
one doctor three times, but never our doctor. And he was on vacation

933
00:57:40,850 --> 00:57:44,250
and he saw that we'd been in, and he meant to call. So he

934
00:57:44,750 --> 00:57:47,090
was just like, I'm so sorry. If I had called. If I had called and

935
00:57:47,250 --> 00:57:49,570
heard any of this, I would have sent you. I would have sent you right

936
00:57:50,070 --> 00:57:52,600
in for us. Because he loved Molly, and he knew my Molly when she had

937
00:57:53,100 --> 00:57:56,600
the Bell's palsy. Oh. And then they thought she had Lyme disease. Like, she had

938
00:57:57,100 --> 00:57:59,840
a tick bite, which. Then the Bell's palsy. So they thought it was Lyme disease.

939
00:58:00,340 --> 00:58:02,600
And the other doctor's like, okay, you're in here all the time with her.

940
00:58:03,100 --> 00:58:06,000
She's clearly making it up. No. No. So he called me that night and said,

941
00:58:06,500 --> 00:58:09,920
I've called the prescription in. It's 30 days. Antibiotic. Take the antibiotic. Don't get Lyme

942
00:58:10,420 --> 00:58:13,840
disease. That was Molly's reality. With the. With the practice up

943
00:58:14,340 --> 00:58:17,400
there. Then the ER was just. It was a hospitalist who was on his first

944
00:58:17,900 --> 00:58:21,430
day, and two male nurses. Nurses. And they were awful. And it's not because they're

945
00:58:21,930 --> 00:58:24,350
men, but I just feel like. Because a couple of the other doctors were not.

946
00:58:24,850 --> 00:58:28,590
They were women. But, you know, stop asking for help. She's stable and she's safe.

947
00:58:29,090 --> 00:58:32,670
Stop it. And I'm just like, oh, my God. What? And then. And then they

948
00:58:33,170 --> 00:58:34,549
made me take her in to go to the bathroom. She could hardly walk.

949
00:58:35,049 --> 00:58:37,550
She sits down. No pee comes out. And the doc, the nurse is just standing

950
00:58:38,050 --> 00:58:40,110
there with his arms folded watching her. I'm like, you know, she's kind of modest.

951
00:58:40,590 --> 00:58:42,990
I want to make sure she pees. And she looks up, and she's like,

952
00:58:43,150 --> 00:58:46,230
come here often? And I'm like, okay, she's not right.

953
00:58:46,730 --> 00:58:49,540
Can we look inside our head? Yeah. No, they just. They just.

954
00:58:49,940 --> 00:58:53,140
They wrote in the notes that she was behavioral. She was unconscious all day.

955
00:58:53,620 --> 00:58:57,460
She was unconscious all day. She was, you know. Yeah. It was yucky.

956
00:58:57,960 --> 00:59:01,220
So I. I am, like, getting angry. Oh, for you.

957
00:59:01,940 --> 00:59:06,140
But I just. What kid wants

958
00:59:06,640 --> 00:59:09,980
to spend all of their time in doctor's appointment?

959
00:59:10,480 --> 00:59:14,260
Like. Like, what is the motive behind making something like that?

960
00:59:14,730 --> 00:59:18,090
Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. No, it was crazy.

961
00:59:18,890 --> 00:59:23,290
How do you. How did you deal with what I'm sure was anger

962
00:59:23,370 --> 00:59:27,010
after she died? Well, we sued the hospital. Yeah. So I.

963
00:59:27,510 --> 00:59:30,769
The. And my attorneys were fantastic. And so a lot of my anger, I could

964
00:59:31,269 --> 00:59:34,290
get out there. Yeah. But I was. I. I got high all the time.

965
00:59:34,790 --> 00:59:38,010
I mean, I really did fall into really, basically daily.

966
00:59:38,170 --> 00:59:41,280
Daily drug use. Yeah. And. And I. And I. I.

967
00:59:41,680 --> 00:59:44,800
I couldn't help it. And it was weird, though. Cause if we'd leave town,

968
00:59:45,300 --> 00:59:47,440
like we went to Disney. I'd be gone for two weeks. I wouldn't even think

969
00:59:47,940 --> 00:59:50,080
about the drugs. You know, we had some friends that took us to Hawaii.

970
00:59:50,400 --> 00:59:53,840
I didn't use any drugs in Hawaii. The minute I was home and surrounded by

971
00:59:54,340 --> 00:59:57,920
it all. Yep. I was plummeted right back into that dark space. I'm still angry,

972
00:59:58,000 --> 01:00:01,800
you know, and here's the other thing. The. The multimillion dollar

973
01:00:02,300 --> 01:00:05,440
lawsuit, right? We. We got half of what we got, but it's. It's.

974
01:00:05,940 --> 01:00:08,760
It's be quiet money. It's don't tell money. Right. I'm not allowed. I'm not allowed

975
01:00:09,260 --> 01:00:12,610
to talk about it. If, if they listened to this podcast, they could call

976
01:00:13,110 --> 01:00:15,810
me and say, you need to stop saying stuff like that. They could, because I'm

977
01:00:16,310 --> 01:00:19,490
not supposed to talk about the fact that my daughter was ignored, pregnancy tested,

978
01:00:19,730 --> 01:00:23,490
you know, accused of lying, died in an emergency

979
01:00:23,990 --> 01:00:26,330
room. You know, a tumor blew up in her head. So I'm not making that

980
01:00:26,830 --> 01:00:30,290
up. She's dead now. Like, clearly, you know, I brought her and you didn't

981
01:00:30,790 --> 01:00:34,210
do your job. And even with all of that, the hospital malpractice is quite

982
01:00:34,710 --> 01:00:38,630
ugly. Yeah. Going through a medical malpractice deposition was,

983
01:00:39,030 --> 01:00:42,670
here's where child abuse helps. So I have to have a

984
01:00:43,170 --> 01:00:46,630
straight face. I have to be articulate. I can't jump into an answer.

985
01:00:47,130 --> 01:00:49,790
I can't let them get to me. So my attorneys were all quite worried because

986
01:00:50,290 --> 01:00:53,110
I'm, you know, this drug addicted mother that can't talk without trying.

987
01:00:53,269 --> 01:00:55,470
I'm like, oh, you don't know. I can step out. And so they're like,

988
01:00:55,970 --> 01:00:59,150
what? I'm like, I can step out. So I'm like, just don't worry about it.

989
01:00:59,650 --> 01:01:02,150
Tell me what do you need me to do and I'll do it. So stepping

990
01:01:02,650 --> 01:01:04,740
out is what you do when you're being abused. You step out, you disassociate with

991
01:01:04,890 --> 01:01:08,330
whatever I call it, stepping out. So it was just a matter of, okay.

992
01:01:08,890 --> 01:01:12,690
And so we did the. So in the, in the deposition, they said,

993
01:01:13,190 --> 01:01:16,090
don't, don't respond when they say, we're so sorry about Molly. Just stare them down.

994
01:01:16,590 --> 01:01:19,930
So I said, okay. So I just, you know, stared them down. So then

995
01:01:20,430 --> 01:01:23,770
I was answering some questions and two or three different scenarios came up, and I

996
01:01:24,270 --> 01:01:26,930
said, well, I have some thoughts. And so a couple of questions came up and

997
01:01:27,430 --> 01:01:30,410
I had my answers that I was articulate and, like, slammed it right home.

998
01:01:30,650 --> 01:01:33,490
So I saw them. My attorneys were like, covering their faces. So I thought,

999
01:01:33,990 --> 01:01:36,410
oh, no, I'm doing something wrong. So they said, we need to take a break.

1000
01:01:36,710 --> 01:01:38,270
So we took a break, and we get down to the office, and they were

1001
01:01:38,770 --> 01:01:42,110
like, oh, my God, who are you? I'm like,

1002
01:01:42,610 --> 01:01:45,150
I told you I could do this. I can step out. I can do what

1003
01:01:45,650 --> 01:01:49,230
needs to be done to get through the traumatic event. But in that

1004
01:01:49,730 --> 01:01:52,550
process, they just tried to paint me as a terrible mother.

1005
01:01:53,110 --> 01:01:56,750
Well, in 2013, you asked a friend of yours for a controlled substance.

1006
01:01:57,250 --> 01:01:59,950
I'm like, yeah, I had a toothache and I was out of pain medicine,

1007
01:02:00,450 --> 01:02:03,190
and I knew that she had an ongoing prescription, and so she brought me a

1008
01:02:03,690 --> 01:02:05,990
couple over. What does that have to do with my daughter dying in an ER

1009
01:02:06,490 --> 01:02:10,240
three and a half years later? Like, yeah, so things like that. But their

1010
01:02:10,740 --> 01:02:12,680
goal was to make me look bad so that if we did go to trial,

1011
01:02:12,840 --> 01:02:16,320
a jury wouldn't like me. And I'm like, so you only want

1012
01:02:16,820 --> 01:02:20,240
juries to like good mothers? So it's okay you killed my kid as

1013
01:02:20,740 --> 01:02:23,040
long as I'm a bad mother? And then they would just be. They would try

1014
01:02:23,540 --> 01:02:26,200
to walk around like, I was like that with. Good for you. Yeah. With my

1015
01:02:26,700 --> 01:02:31,240
responses. Yeah. Because regardless of how

1016
01:02:31,740 --> 01:02:35,320
good or. Or not of a mother you were, which is really irrelevant.

1017
01:02:35,400 --> 01:02:38,570
Irrelevant. Right. Your daughter didn't deserve to die.

1018
01:02:39,070 --> 01:02:42,010
Right. Exactly. And that's the whole point. And. And this is where,

1019
01:02:42,250 --> 01:02:46,170
too, I think I'm so disenchanted with

1020
01:02:46,670 --> 01:02:50,330
our. Our legal system. Oh, me too. And. And our medical system. Yeah. But the.

1021
01:02:50,830 --> 01:02:54,610
It's. It's pay to play. It's all theater. It's all made

1022
01:02:55,110 --> 01:02:58,410
up game. It truly is. And I have lost so

1023
01:02:58,910 --> 01:03:02,350
much respect for it, honestly, over the years. But we do love.

1024
01:03:02,500 --> 01:03:05,700
Love perfect victims. And so if. If our victims

1025
01:03:06,200 --> 01:03:09,740
aren't perfect, we have a really hard time reconciling. That's right. Them to

1026
01:03:10,240 --> 01:03:13,740
be a part of injustice. Correct. And that's not fair. No, no.

1027
01:03:14,240 --> 01:03:17,740
And that's so true in sexual assault. I was a health educator and

1028
01:03:18,240 --> 01:03:21,580
I did a whole unit on. On consent and how tricky it is,

1029
01:03:22,080 --> 01:03:25,100
which I wish I still taught health because we certainly live in a consentless society

1030
01:03:25,600 --> 01:03:27,780
right now. But I would talk about the fact that, you know, if you steal

1031
01:03:28,280 --> 01:03:31,520
a twinkle Twinkie from Cumberland Farms and you steal a Twinkie from

1032
01:03:32,020 --> 01:03:35,360
the Wawa, it's the same crime. If you rape a 7

1033
01:03:35,860 --> 01:03:38,800
year old and you rape a 90 year old, it's two completely different crimes.

1034
01:03:39,040 --> 01:03:42,400
You rape a prostitute and you rape a nun, you know,

1035
01:03:42,480 --> 01:03:45,840
okay, so maybe the victim suffers quite differently. But a rape is a rape is

1036
01:03:46,340 --> 01:03:50,160
a rape, but that isn't how it's seen at all. And that

1037
01:03:50,660 --> 01:03:54,080
just bleeds through so many levels of whatever the victimization might be,

1038
01:03:54,590 --> 01:03:57,710
you know, so. And they needed to divert for the fact that I was on.

1039
01:03:58,210 --> 01:04:01,630
I'm a school board member. I'm well known in the community. I'm a successful athlete.

1040
01:04:02,130 --> 01:04:05,230
So I had a bit of notoriety. They insisted that we have. If we had

1041
01:04:05,730 --> 01:04:08,190
a trial, that it not be in conquered because they wouldn't be treated fairly.

1042
01:04:08,690 --> 01:04:10,830
I'm like, well, Ken, I'm the one with a dead kid. So I think I've

1043
01:04:11,330 --> 01:04:15,070
already been treated unfairly. Like, yeah, it was. It was an ugly process,

1044
01:04:15,630 --> 01:04:19,470
but I helped me deal with my anger. That's good. I'm glad

1045
01:04:19,970 --> 01:04:23,010
that it was an outlet, because I can only imagine. Yeah.

1046
01:04:23,410 --> 01:04:26,970
And I. And I appreciate, once again, your candor in saying that you're still angry.

1047
01:04:27,470 --> 01:04:31,570
Because I think one of the things with grief that people

1048
01:04:32,070 --> 01:04:36,050
don't like to talk about is that it

1049
01:04:36,550 --> 01:04:40,330
doesn't ever completely go away. Hell no. And you move

1050
01:04:40,830 --> 01:04:44,610
through different phases of it, but just like anything, you know,

1051
01:04:45,110 --> 01:04:48,450
it. It ebbs and flows. Right. Based on the situation.

1052
01:04:48,770 --> 01:04:52,010
And so people are uncomfortable with that. I have my picket

1053
01:04:52,510 --> 01:04:55,180
fence theater theory. I got a big thing about picket fences, but.

1054
01:04:56,220 --> 01:04:59,500
So I will for the rest of my life have

1055
01:05:00,000 --> 01:05:03,500
one foot in utter despair and one foot in happiness. Because I'll never

1056
01:05:04,000 --> 01:05:06,540
not have a dead child. Two dead children. They will always be dead.

1057
01:05:06,940 --> 01:05:10,460
That will never change. My love for them will never change. So on a

1058
01:05:10,960 --> 01:05:13,500
good day, I look down and I just see the little pickets peeking out of

1059
01:05:14,000 --> 01:05:17,140
the dirt, Right? And I can walk, no problem. Sometimes I can even either get

1060
01:05:17,640 --> 01:05:20,000
on one side or the other because. But I don't stay that way long.

1061
01:05:20,240 --> 01:05:23,920
Cause it doesn't last. Because as happy as I am, I remember

1062
01:05:24,420 --> 01:05:27,760
my child. And as sad as I am, I realize, okay, I don't

1063
01:05:28,260 --> 01:05:30,560
always want to be sad. So it's a straddle. So a good day is a

1064
01:05:31,060 --> 01:05:34,080
low picket fence. Typical days, the picket fence is probably up to my knees,

1065
01:05:34,240 --> 01:05:38,280
where I have to moderate how I walk. Sometimes if I forget, then I

1066
01:05:38,780 --> 01:05:42,400
might bump into it. And bad days, my feet don't reach the ground. So everybody

1067
01:05:42,640 --> 01:05:45,840
pictures straddling a picket fence. It's not comfortable, right?

1068
01:05:46,160 --> 01:05:49,670
Male or female, it's not a good thing. And that. So that's the rest of

1069
01:05:50,170 --> 01:05:53,230
my life. So if the picket fence is high, which sometimes it is, I just

1070
01:05:53,730 --> 01:05:56,390
have to honor the picket fence. Like, I don't have control over that. I really,

1071
01:05:56,890 --> 01:05:59,710
truly don't. All I have control over is how I get myself to one side

1072
01:06:00,210 --> 01:06:04,110
or the other because of those points. That's probably in nine going on

1073
01:06:04,610 --> 01:06:06,830
to ten years without Molly, I can finally get to a point where I can

1074
01:06:07,330 --> 01:06:10,630
sort of alleviate the picket fence. It's not like, oh, I'll choose to

1075
01:06:11,130 --> 01:06:14,500
be happy, but I can find ways to alleviate

1076
01:06:15,000 --> 01:06:17,220
the picket fence. I don't know, maybe I put a pillow under there, you know,

1077
01:06:17,720 --> 01:06:21,340
the. Whatever the metaphorical pillow might be. Yeah, sure. But that's my

1078
01:06:21,840 --> 01:06:25,660
one. Another analogy that I've often used is a blanket. So think

1079
01:06:26,160 --> 01:06:29,060
of a sleeping bag that's like those old flannel and cloth ones and it's wet

1080
01:06:29,560 --> 01:06:32,420
and a dog peed on it. And you know, there's mud in there and it's.

1081
01:06:32,920 --> 01:06:35,620
And you carry it around. So that's like the day Molly died. Like, there it

1082
01:06:36,120 --> 01:06:39,380
is. So now most days it's clean. It smells

1083
01:06:39,880 --> 01:06:42,520
like downy. You know, it's all rolled up neatly. I can carry it like a

1084
01:06:43,020 --> 01:06:47,040
backpack, but I never don't have it. It's either a nice, neat, sweet smelling

1085
01:06:47,540 --> 01:06:51,000
backpack of death or it's the smelly blanket. Like, so I think.

1086
01:06:51,240 --> 01:06:54,480
And when people say things like, you know, the memory should make you happy.

1087
01:06:54,980 --> 01:06:57,880
Okay, well, obviously you've never lost somebody of this magnitude because,

1088
01:06:58,360 --> 01:07:02,160
you know, the memories might be happy, but they remind me that she's not here.

1089
01:07:02,660 --> 01:07:06,200
Yeah. You know, I don't have any new ones. And grief is always complicated.

1090
01:07:06,700 --> 01:07:09,810
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Right. Regardless of who it is,

1091
01:07:09,890 --> 01:07:12,970
too. I mean, because our relationships can

1092
01:07:13,470 --> 01:07:16,610
be complicated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel

1093
01:07:17,110 --> 01:07:20,650
like at 20, in 2025, it's wild that we're still telling people

1094
01:07:21,150 --> 01:07:24,210
how to grieve. Oh, I know. Oh, I know, I know.

1095
01:07:24,290 --> 01:07:28,290
Yeah, yeah. We can't. We can't seem to get away with that. And I think

1096
01:07:28,450 --> 01:07:32,010
part of it is again, in our. In our

1097
01:07:32,510 --> 01:07:36,410
culture of. Of production driven, you know,

1098
01:07:36,810 --> 01:07:38,810
production is nobility almost.

1099
01:07:40,570 --> 01:07:44,170
We can't sit in something that isn't solved. Right.

1100
01:07:44,670 --> 01:07:48,130
And so discomfort is something that is unsolved. And so to just

1101
01:07:48,630 --> 01:07:52,330
let it be and to acknowledge that it's there and

1102
01:07:52,830 --> 01:07:55,130
like, we can hold things in tension. That, yes,

1103
01:07:55,530 --> 01:07:59,450
there's discomfort here, but also that doesn't mean that these interactions aren't

1104
01:07:59,950 --> 01:08:03,200
worthwhile. We're really uncomfortable with it. We don't know how to deal with

1105
01:08:03,700 --> 01:08:08,400
it. Right, Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I think sometimes technology

1106
01:08:08,560 --> 01:08:12,080
and modern convenience, the ability to Communicate

1107
01:08:12,240 --> 01:08:15,840
around the world. All those things, as good as they are, they separate

1108
01:08:16,340 --> 01:08:19,640
us so much from our inner selves. I think if we suddenly lost all the

1109
01:08:20,140 --> 01:08:23,360
power and now neighborhoods had to work together to survive and share resources

1110
01:08:23,860 --> 01:08:27,489
and this and that. That we'd figure out so many things that would

1111
01:08:27,989 --> 01:08:31,769
help all of these things. You know, like, I think of the movie Wall E,

1112
01:08:33,129 --> 01:08:36,569
the big marshmallow guys sitting in chairs and the earth has died and all this.

1113
01:08:37,069 --> 01:08:40,249
I feel like, oh, my God. Yeah, yeah. You know,

1114
01:08:40,749 --> 01:08:43,089
and then the robot's the one that's in love with the other robot. Like,

1115
01:08:43,589 --> 01:08:46,649
okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1116
01:08:46,889 --> 01:08:50,689
It's. It's hard to navigate, and I

1117
01:08:51,189 --> 01:08:54,900
think it never. It's always been hard, but in.

1118
01:08:55,400 --> 01:08:58,740
In this moment in time, with the technology the way that it

1119
01:08:59,240 --> 01:09:02,580
is, and with the world the way that it is, it's hard to feel connected.

1120
01:09:02,660 --> 01:09:06,340
Right? Yeah. But I think that's why it's so important that there

1121
01:09:06,840 --> 01:09:10,620
are people like you who insist on telling your

1122
01:09:11,120 --> 01:09:14,660
story and insist on, you know, being a voice

1123
01:09:15,220 --> 01:09:18,260
that people can connect to. Right. Because it's something,

1124
01:09:18,340 --> 01:09:21,580
even if. Even if we don't acknowledge it, we all need it. Yeah, exactly.

1125
01:09:21,649 --> 01:09:25,129
Exactly, exactly. Right. And what I love about

1126
01:09:25,629 --> 01:09:29,289
podcasts, both podcasting and listening, is that you're

1127
01:09:29,789 --> 01:09:32,929
in charge. Like, I can talk about whatever I want, you know, so I.

1128
01:09:33,429 --> 01:09:36,729
So I have agency to say my words. If I'm listening to a podcast that

1129
01:09:37,229 --> 01:09:39,449
troubles me, I can turn it off until I'm ready to finish. You know,

1130
01:09:39,949 --> 01:09:43,609
like, it's. So it gives the quote unquote victim or the

1131
01:09:44,109 --> 01:09:47,319
quote unquote person. Person that's suffering and needs support, complete control of.

1132
01:09:47,470 --> 01:09:50,910
Over what they choose to listen to and how long they choose. Like, I love

1133
01:09:51,410 --> 01:09:54,350
that about. And it's free. Yeah. You know, so it's. It's like,

1134
01:09:55,230 --> 01:09:58,910
yeah, the podcasting world is fantastic. And I really wasn't at all involved in it

1135
01:09:59,410 --> 01:10:02,910
until I started a podcast. Same. Yeah, I mean, I loved listening to podcasts,

1136
01:10:03,410 --> 01:10:06,750
but. But I even didn't all that much. Okay. Yeah, not. Not. I listened

1137
01:10:07,250 --> 01:10:09,710
to. Wait, wait, don't tell me, because that's all the qu. I try to see

1138
01:10:10,210 --> 01:10:14,060
how many questions I could get right. Yeah, yeah. But that, you know, other wise

1139
01:10:14,300 --> 01:10:17,860
now I listen to gazillions of them all the time. I mean, before we

1140
01:10:18,360 --> 01:10:21,100
even started, we were talking about. We were doing like our six degrees of.

1141
01:10:21,600 --> 01:10:25,140
Of separation. We know so many of the same people, and it

1142
01:10:25,640 --> 01:10:29,180
really is a small world. I know. And it's fabulous. Yeah, I love it.

1143
01:10:29,680 --> 01:10:32,940
You know, it is awesome. Knowing that there are people

1144
01:10:33,260 --> 01:10:37,260
that are passionate about. Passionate enough about their

1145
01:10:37,820 --> 01:10:40,450
hobbies or their interests or their,

1146
01:10:42,520 --> 01:10:45,880
their causes that they want to dedicate the time.

1147
01:10:46,120 --> 01:10:49,680
And if you've never done a podcast, you may not

1148
01:10:50,180 --> 01:10:53,720
know how time intensive and honestly,

1149
01:10:54,220 --> 01:10:58,120
expensive it can be. Right. Right. Oh, I've spent thousands and thousands

1150
01:10:58,620 --> 01:11:02,760
of dollars on this podcast because I just record it and send it and

1151
01:11:03,000 --> 01:11:06,720
I don't have the right kind of brain to edit and all that meticulous

1152
01:11:07,220 --> 01:11:10,580
stuff. I'm a wide angle lens kind of person. Like the gestalt, you know,

1153
01:11:10,980 --> 01:11:13,700
I'm not the. Yeah. The detailed. So,

1154
01:11:14,260 --> 01:11:17,500
you know, to me, it's money well spent. Yeah. And it supports

1155
01:11:18,000 --> 01:11:21,300
somebody's craft, which I also like. Absolutely. So. Absolutely. But it

1156
01:11:21,800 --> 01:11:25,260
would be nice for me to, you know, I don't know, maybe have

1157
01:11:25,760 --> 01:11:28,500
it grow or be bigger than it is, but I can't, I can't. I can't

1158
01:11:29,000 --> 01:11:31,140
have that intention behind it or I'm not going to be authentic in what I'm

1159
01:11:31,640 --> 01:11:34,700
talking about. Yeah. So, you know, and truly, I mean, there are

1160
01:11:35,200 --> 01:11:39,030
so many podcasts, people look at podcasts and think that it's

1161
01:11:39,530 --> 01:11:42,870
a great way to make a quick buck or do a side hustle. It's not.

1162
01:11:43,190 --> 01:11:47,150
Not at all. And even having that knowledge before going into

1163
01:11:47,650 --> 01:11:50,950
it, it's still harder than I even thought it

1164
01:11:51,450 --> 01:11:55,590
was gonna be. Right. And I think too, like, because anybody

1165
01:11:56,090 --> 01:11:59,030
can start a podcast at any time. Yeah. One of the, like,

1166
01:11:59,350 --> 01:12:03,850
statistics or whatever is that, that most people that

1167
01:12:04,350 --> 01:12:07,690
start podcasts don't make it past three. It's either three or five episodes.

1168
01:12:07,930 --> 01:12:10,770
And it's because they think it's going to be easy and they think it's going

1169
01:12:11,270 --> 01:12:13,930
to, like, immediately take off and it's going to have all of this traction.

1170
01:12:14,170 --> 01:12:17,770
And that almost never happens unless you are a

1171
01:12:18,270 --> 01:12:21,370
celebrity. Right. Or a reality TV star. Right, exactly.

1172
01:12:21,870 --> 01:12:25,090
Then, you know, then you'll be fine. But, you know,

1173
01:12:25,590 --> 01:12:28,930
to be honest and really, truly, no shade to them. I don't think we need

1174
01:12:29,430 --> 01:12:32,700
more of those. No. Kind of podcast. No. Right. I just don't.

1175
01:12:33,200 --> 01:12:36,540
Right. I would agree. I would agree. So I

1176
01:12:37,040 --> 01:12:39,420
do have a question that I ask everybody at the end of each episode,

1177
01:12:39,920 --> 01:12:43,340
which is through the lens of your experience, what does

1178
01:12:43,840 --> 01:12:47,260
compassion mean to you? The first thing that comes to

1179
01:12:47,760 --> 01:12:51,100
mind would be the words loving acceptance. To have compassion for someone means that

1180
01:12:51,600 --> 01:12:55,220
you lovingly accept them or what they're going through or their experience,

1181
01:12:55,380 --> 01:12:59,020
even if you have nothing in common with it or disagree with it or even

1182
01:12:59,520 --> 01:13:03,160
are made ill by it, that if compassion. Compassion came first, a lot

1183
01:13:03,660 --> 01:13:06,880
of problems would be alleviated. I know for me, the people

1184
01:13:07,380 --> 01:13:10,520
have given me the most support are people who sometimes, I know, don't agree with

1185
01:13:11,020 --> 01:13:14,720
anything I say, but show up again and again and again because they're compassionate.

1186
01:13:15,220 --> 01:13:19,640
Because what they see is the suffering or the person or

1187
01:13:20,140 --> 01:13:24,000
the circumstance, and all the things that people can use as barriers

1188
01:13:24,500 --> 01:13:27,600
to being compassionate don't block them. So I

1189
01:13:28,100 --> 01:13:30,280
guess for me, it would be loving acceptance. And I know for me, when I'm

1190
01:13:30,780 --> 01:13:33,710
compassionate to someone, somebody, you know, we have a lot going on politically right now,

1191
01:13:34,210 --> 01:13:37,470
and I can't publicly share my compassion because then I'm called names

1192
01:13:37,970 --> 01:13:41,350
and, you know, like. And so that, to me, if we all had compassion

1193
01:13:41,670 --> 01:13:44,350
around a lot of what's going on in our society and culture right now,

1194
01:13:44,850 --> 01:13:48,230
rather than defense and name calling, and we'd be a

1195
01:13:48,730 --> 01:13:51,510
lot better off. So, yeah, just loving acceptance. I love that.

1196
01:13:51,590 --> 01:13:55,030
Yeah, absolutely. I agree. I think, you know,

1197
01:13:55,750 --> 01:13:59,990
a lot of times where we think or we're told that to

1198
01:14:00,070 --> 01:14:03,650
lovingly accept somebody is to co sign their

1199
01:14:04,150 --> 01:14:07,370
behavior or their life and that, you know, at the end of the day,

1200
01:14:07,870 --> 01:14:11,450
how arrogant is that? Right. That. That we think we even have the right to

1201
01:14:11,950 --> 01:14:15,490
co sign anybody's behavior or anybody's life. It's not our business.

1202
01:14:15,970 --> 01:14:19,730
Our only business is to show up for and

1203
01:14:19,810 --> 01:14:22,770
be a friend for other human beings. Right,

1204
01:14:23,250 --> 01:14:26,570
right, right. Exactly. And just do the best we can. Yeah,

1205
01:14:27,070 --> 01:14:30,210
yeah. And when you look at all religious teachings which get really manipulated by people

1206
01:14:30,710 --> 01:14:34,340
who want to use them for power, basically says the same thing, you know?

1207
01:14:34,840 --> 01:14:38,540
Yeah. Every. Every religion has a golden rule. And the golden rule is basically just

1208
01:14:39,040 --> 01:14:42,420
be kind. Yeah. You know, treat. Treat someone like you hope they would treat you

1209
01:14:42,920 --> 01:14:46,380
if you're going through whatever they're going through, like. Yeah. Yep. Love, people.

1210
01:14:46,880 --> 01:14:49,660
Yeah. Yeah, that's it. That's. Yeah, that's the whole thing. Yeah, the whole point.

1211
01:14:50,160 --> 01:14:53,900
Exactly. That is the whole point. So this has been so

1212
01:14:54,400 --> 01:14:57,180
fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you for doing that. You know, I'm gonna have

1213
01:14:57,680 --> 01:14:59,660
to have you on my podcast. I would love to be on your podcast.

1214
01:14:59,820 --> 01:15:03,360
Yes, absolutely. So. So we'll definitely make that happen.

1215
01:15:03,920 --> 01:15:07,520
Thank you so much, Barb. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening

1216
01:15:08,020 --> 01:15:11,560
to the human experience. Everyone has a story, and I'd love to

1217
01:15:12,060 --> 01:15:15,440
hear yours. So be sure to check out the show notes for more information about

1218
01:15:15,940 --> 01:15:18,560
how to stay in touch, do good, and love well.