Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi. This is Rachel Ray recovery. We're back with TJ, and she's going to tell the rest of her story.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:09] Speaker A: How has this affected your parenting?
[00:00:12] Speaker B: So I don't have kids.
When I was little, and, you know, at the age when girls play with dolls, I did not play mommy to a doll, and I did not ever want a house. And I think that I kind of of knew what happens to children and families, and I didn't want one of my own, so I kind of grew up without that ticking clock that a lot of women have. I think kids are fine for other people, but I have nothing in me that had any desire to have children. I didn't realize what that maternal instinct was until I got a dog, and being completely in love with my dog is the closest I have been to whatever it is that mothers have that makes them want children. I heard often when I was younger, people would say things like, oh, well, you'll love it when you have it, and a lot of things like that. And I always thought, well, what if you don't? And I knew I didn't really have the tools to be a good mother, and so I'm not sure I would probably be one now because I'm stable, but that ship has long sailed. Yeah.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: How has this affected your marriage?
[00:01:36] Speaker B: My husband is a saint for his patience.
He had a little bit of a family situation growing up, not the same kind of mine. And so he understood coming from a unique and unusual family situation. And so I'm not sure why, but he stuck with me and he loved me during the times when I was having problems with my mother and just not knowing what to do about it. And then during the estrangement, I had almost like, a little bit of a nervous breakdown because my entire relationship with my mother was not what I thought, and I just did not know how to deal with that. And I had grown defenses for things like I had grown a lot of defenses in other areas of my life, but I didn't have any defenses for my family because I was in a different kind of relationship with my mother than she was with me. And so my husband has been so patient and kind as I have gone through my life, as I've gone through our relationship, working things out. So he's probably been he's had it, I guess, worse with me than I have had with his thing.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Fair enough.
How has this impacted your finances?
[00:03:06] Speaker B: When I was in my height, of all of the adult things I was doing, I had plenty of cash, and in order to get my mother's approval, there were times when I paid her rent, I bought her her first cell phone. And I remember back then, she said, oh, I don't even know when I'm going to use this and I would kind of buy my way into approval. And when I quit that industry, I mentioned how difficult it was. And now in my life, my husband and I own a business and so we are fortunately, we're not living in a mansion, but we're comfortable.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Fair enough.
How has this impacted your overall long term health? And I mean physical health. We'll talk about mental health later.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: So I try to be healthy. I am a vegetarian. I've been a vegetarian since I was 14. And I try to work out regularly. Sometimes life gets in the way.
So my mother is not she's chronically ill with something.
And I have lived a different lifestyle than her. He had a lot of jobs where she was on her feet. She worked catering for many years, which is lifting heavy things and being on your feet. And so she has some issues that were the result of labor. And I have not labored in the same sorts of ways with my body. So I think that I am in pretty good health. Near the end of my time with her, I would very frequently give myself pink eye with a bad tube of mascara so I could go to the nurse. They immediately send you home. And so I would give myself pink eye, go to the nurse, and my mother, of course, couldn't come pick me up, so I'd get to walk home. So I ended up skipping a lot of school that way. But I think that I'm in generally good health now because I am able to take care of myself okay.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Because a lot of us end up with autoimmune diseases and things along the way, which is a trauma response. But yeah.
How has this impacted your social life?
[00:05:36] Speaker B: So when I was in my had not a lot of friends, but my friends were women in the business like I was. And then sometimes I would become friendly with photographers or other people that were also in the business and various jobs because at that age I had just come out of foster care and so I felt completely different than everybody. I sought out friends with problems because I had problems and I was, I guess, intimidated and uncomfortable being around people that I thought were normal people. And those were just people who didn't have horrific family experiences. And once I got out of the business and started meeting people that had regular jobs and didn't live through the situations I had, I kind of blended in when I was working in corporate. And so I knew that I was different and I knew I'd had a much different history. But working in corporate, I adopted a persona who was still me, but it was just me without everything I had been through. And so I have a couple of close friends that I have maintained and they're aware of some of the things they maybe have written some of the article, read some of the articles I've written for outlets like Huffington Post and Insider. But now that I have more going on in my life than things that are driven by trauma, I have a wider circle of friends that are not necessarily also driven by trauma. Okay.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: How has this affected your long term mental health?
[00:07:28] Speaker B: I have pretty recently realized, as I mentioned a little while ago, that my mother is a flawed human being. And before that, I was just driven to seek her approval. And sometimes I would leave her house with so much anxiety, I would feel like I was going to crawl out of my skin, and I didn't know why. And I had anxiety in other areas. I had panic attacks, and I thought my panic attacks were mood swings. And I didn't understand that I was having panic attacks because I was working a cruddy job or because my family situation was just giving me anxiety. And so I have gone through a lot with mental health as far as just not being okay. And a while ago, I found a psychiatrist who properly diagnosed me with a mood disorder rather than previous psychiatrists giving me SSRIs, which made me worse, and I didn't understand why. So I've been properly medicated, and I'm very happy with the results, but I think that I'm always going to be a person that has triggers, and that came from a background that is unfortunate.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: So I try to be gentle with myself, but I think I'm always going to have something fair enough to other victims out there.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: What advice would you want to give them?
[00:09:09] Speaker B: Part of it may be my big AHA moment. So if we think about ourselves as humans walking the earth right now, whether we have parents or not, whether we have children or not, we have flaws, we have desires, we have idiosyncrasies that make us all human. And in relation to our parents, believe it or not, when we were growing up, our parents were not solely existing as our parents. They had outside thoughts and feelings, they had relationships, and they had things that make them human. And many of these things gave them flaws. And so realizing in this great light bulb moment that my mother didn't exist solely to parent me or solely to be damaging to me, realizing that she had a tool belt that might not have come with all the tools in it, and she just used whatever she had at her disposal. Maybe made some poor decisions that were very impactful.
But realizing that she's just flawed and maybe shouldn't have been a mother, maybe should have made better decisions, it has helped me a lot, because otherwise, we can go around thinking, why did my parents do this to me? What possessed them to be the kinds of people they were toward their child or toward their children? And giving my mother, allowing her these flaws kind of it doesn't make it any better and it doesn't excuse it. But it allows me some peace to know that maybe these things weren't done maliciously and it come back to the decisions I've made. And if I had had children, say at 18, if I had had a child then when I was in the thick of not being a great person to myself or others, I can't even imagine what sort of life that child would have had. And I think about things like that.
So if a survivor can take away considering a different perspective on the people that they grow up with, it might offer some peace because it is so hard to forgive people. But if you can have a little bit of an understanding of what might have been going on and we'll never know. But that has offered me some peace that I hope other people will consider. And I hope that listening to this from me may be down the road or maybe right now a little bit of a light bulb moment for others when they stop to consider who their parents are as humans rather than just as parents.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: How has this impacted your faith for.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Let'S say, a year or so?
When I was much younger, in elementary school, probably fourth or fifth grade, we went to an Episcopal church. And I think that my mother took us there because things were pretty bad in the house. And going to church regularly was like a checkbox that everything's okay. We go to church once a week. And in my Episcopal church there was a large crucifix that hung from the ceiling near the front. And they tell you in Sunday school that Jesus loves you and all of the things that they say to that effect. And then after Sunday school, we would go into the church and I would sit with my mother and I would stare at the crucifix wondering if Jesus loves you so much as they just told me, why am I going home to what I'm going home to? And so I kind of grew up with a lot of questions about why some people have more trials than others. And I have found as an adult, through assessing my life, that there is some sort of a higher power that has allowed me to pull through. I've been in many situations that I shouldn't have made it out of in one way or another.
And so I believe more not necessarily from like a twelve step program, but I believe there is some sort of greater being that is in some sense watching out for me and is not necessarily performing miracles in my life, but has allowed me to go from growing up the way I did to the pendulum swinging so far to the other side to allow me to not only have some sort of identity that's not my trauma but also to live a good life now and have some self awareness, to know what that means and how to live as that person.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: Thanks for coming on our show, TJ. Is there anything else you would like to add before we close out?
[00:14:57] Speaker B: I would like to add that I wrote my book so that others might maybe have an AHA moment about their lives when they find a character that they relate to and then see that by the end of the story, the character has some sort of control and some sort of agency.
And I hope know, even if people don't read my book, which is cold dating Silky Maxwell, I hope that people will turn to other things to model behaviors that are healthy, whether that is other forms of media or whether that is seeking out creative pursuits of their own, writing, drawing, et cetera. So I think that is it and thank you so very much allowing me to share my story.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: All right, guys, thanks for listening to Rachel Recovery. Back next Thursday at 10:00 a.m.. Always follow us on your favorite social media platform and podcast platform. If you have any questions, reach out to rachelandrecovery.com and always subscribe to us on YouTube. Thanks.
