Breaking Generational Trauma- How A Grandchild Raised By His Grandmother Found Healing

"Love, Leadership, and Healing"

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the show, John Zell. In your work, you advocate for the power of storytelling to heal, you say, and disrupt. Many of our listeners, including myself, are currently raising grandchildren who are trapped in these, we'll call them soundtracks of trauma and neglect that we didn't write, that they didn't write. And I'd love to hear how you deal with that and how we can audit these trauma scripts to write new legacies and new soundtracks, if you will, when we're right in the middle of the fire of trauma.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Yeah. So the I guess of course the verbiage of like soundtrack and rewriting, it's it comes from, you know, my debut book came out a week ago at the time of this recording. Uh it's called Mixtape and Memoir. It spans from like about the the months leading up to my birth to about 31. And a uh pretty consistent uh character in the memoir is my grandmother. Uh in the book, uh, her name is Miranda Hale. Um she uh she grew up in trauma. My grandmother is a uh, she's complex. You know, it's not as simple as saying she's the hero of the story because just like any of us, we have our good times, we have our bad times. In the earlier parts of my story, my grandmother was my first example of being loved. You know, despite being raised by, you know, a single mother and whatever boyfriend she had at the time and with a uh a brother, those people were not my comfort. My grandmother was. So as the abuse and neglect kind of escalated as I got older, my grandmother was the kind of constant, even though at times she was the abuser, you know. And then as I became an adult, as I got successful with my career, I was able to kind of get back and like to this day, I, you know, pay her rent and like I bought her last two cars and just make sure that she's taken care of. But um, the relationship has uh, I guess, ebbed and flowed based on, you know, just our complexities as humans. But my trajectory would have been a lot different had I not had her support through my my childhood.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

We know that we're not perfect human beings, and oftentimes neglect or abuse has been passed down from one family to the other. And we're learning. I chose a life path that I thought was removed from all that, and then saw myself repeat it or or or recreated it in my own life. So then to a degree my life was settled, I thought, and then I got the grandkids, and that triggered me. It was my desire to leave something greater for my children, and especially for my grandchildren, because they suffered severe abuse and neglect. And I thought this has to end, you know. But how do I deal with the anger that's going on inside of me? Identifying these rhythms within ourselves that allows us to see our inner child again before we leave us earth and admitting what I see at this stage in our life is that we have wisdom and experience if we choose to draw upon that and be very vulnerable to these children to talk to them about why we react that the way that we do. How is your communication with your grandmother about all of that, even in later years? Was she able to listen to what your experience was about your relationship with her and your family's past experiences with trauma?

SPEAKER_02 3:49

Great question. So my grandmother is 83 now, and you know, my book came out last week. She bought a copy when I was doing my pre-sale, and she knew I was gonna change the names in the book, but she, and I'm trying not to analyze her from the fact that I'm a therapist.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

I don't want to diagnose, but it must be difficult.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

Yeah. Uh she has compartmentalized, I think, uh denial, but being kind of stuck in a shame-guilt cycle. She read, I would say, maybe like 20% of the book, and she couldn't, she couldn't, uh, she broke down. She literally made a show of returning the book to me. She's like, I can't read this. But I've known even when I was going through it, when I was being abused as a child, when I would tell my grandmother, like, my brother is assaulting me and things like that. It was kind of like a helplessness. I don't know what to do about this, or you're being too dramatic, or it's not that bad, or I've been through worse, you know. But I think to see it and to read it in uh in a more complete, concise form, there's a lot of things that happened to me that she didn't know. And so then, you know, seeing that or reading about that, and then she's like, oh my goodness, I missed that. Or I mean, I didn't write it for her. I didn't write it for anyone in particular. I wrote it as, like you mentioned, healing your inner child, parenting your inner child. This was my journey of exploring my inner child and us working together to tell the story. So I I spoke my truth. And um I think I did a pretty good job of speaking the truth, but letting the reader decide what they thought about people, versus being like,

Healing Generational Trauma

SPEAKER_02 5:38

you should feel this way about this person or whatever. It's like say what happened, and then the reader can draw their own conclusions, right? But she struggles. Um, and and and I'm I'm okay with the fact that she returned the book. I don't think she's gonna give it another try. I've learned not to tether myself to other people's healing journey or lack thereof. But oftentimes having it to answer your question, to have a conversation about this thing happened to me, or, you know, I experienced this or I felt this way. And there's not, there's not space for me to just express. So I often just find myself not speaking about it. You know, I go to places where there's safety and reciprocity. I don't really get um that from her, and I'm okay with that. We're at the stage in our relationship where I've done a lot of healing and I I know where to get support from and where to just exist. And I'm okay with that.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

What do you find was the transition for you? One of I think our greatest fears in raising these children is that we're not going to make a connection with a child that needs a connection to recover from the trauma that they've gone through. Now, in your case, your your grandmother obviously did not help you do that, but something within you drove you to process what you had experienced in a healthy way. What do you think was that shift for you? What caused that shift for you?

SPEAKER_02 7:04

The shift to process what I had been through.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

The shift to change the cycle.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Having my own child.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

And in the book, there's it's very clear that once uh Maya Jane got here, I had I think I was 27 when she was born. And you know, in my twenties, I did a lot of unlearning and deconstructing. When my daughter got here, and the the dysfunction of my my mother, and there was a uh resurgence of my father who wasn't involved, and then my abusive brother from childhood, and then my grandmother and her interaction with her own daughter,

Healing Inner Child Through Storytelling

SPEAKER_02 7:52

and you know, and then all of that circling around new life. When my daughter was born, I was like, okay, y'all didn't protect me, but I'm gonna protect mine. And almost like arrested development or a refusal to evolve. And my my mother and my brother, and uh, a lot of the people in the story, grandmother was the only one that wasn't on the chopping block. So I ended up having to sever relationships for my own peace, but also and accepting that some people are not interested or because I don't like to say they're not capable of, because they're capable, they're just unwilling, you know?

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

And so grandma, I ended up moving her to the Richmond area in Virginia when my daughter was just dating, right? So she she got she moved here maybe a couple months before MJ was born. And that first year was kind of when I was like, okay, I can't, I can't have my mother involved with my child because of certain things, and I didn't want the harm to continue down. But even, you know, with my grandmother, sometimes, you know, being around my daughter, I'm finding myself needing to protect my daughter from things such as um, because we have the whole mixed race dynamic. Like my I'm half white and half uh West African. So my grandmother is white. My daughter is uh biracial. When I was growing up, my grandmother would refer to my hair as nappy, or you know, these like kind of racist, ignorant, you know, perceptions about blackness. And so then my daughter is born, she has big, like, you know, kinky afro hair, and she's like, Oh, you have to do something with her hair. And I was like, actually, don't speak about my daughter's hair. You don't touch her hair. If you're watching her, don't do anything to it. I have done a lot of acceptance and and compartmentalizing of what occurred for me. But when it comes to my child, I'm responsible for making sure that she's okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

And oftentimes parenting for me is doing the opposite of what was done for me. And so far, six years in, she's doing pretty well.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

So Does your grandmother see that as love? Does she she take it as a form of rejection or does she receive it as love? Do you know?

SPEAKER_02 10:04

When I set boundaries about how she interacts with my daughter, she takes it as rejection because long ago I accepted and stopped apologizing for I have these, okay. Let me say this. I have this uh, and I say this in the letter at the end of the book, but I tell this to people. I have three rules of interpersonal relationships. My three rules of interpersonal relationships, rule number one, speak your truth. Rule number two, without being a jerk. And if you followed steps rules or rules one and two, the rule number three is you're not responsible for how they react. So um if I say, Don't speak about her hair, I'm speaking my truth without being a jerk. If she receives that is you're irritable, you're in a bad mood, you're you've got an attitude, I detach myself from that because I spoke my truth without being a jerk. Same thing goes with, you know, kids when they eat a lot, they have like their belly sticks out or something like that, right? And so I've noticed she'll be like, oh yeah, she's eating too much. And yeah, and I was bullied and body shamed by her and my mother and others as a child. And I'm like, do not speak about my child's shape or anything like that ever. I'm speaking the truth without being a jerk, but if she s perceives that as rejection, I can't do anything about that.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Right. And I definitely agree with you on those issues. I was just curious because I think it's very important when we break these patterns in families that it's important that we recognize where our truth is, how to speak it, and how to process the reactions that are involved for ourselves. Yeah. For ourselves, because this is a pattern. All of this stuff has to do with shame, guilt, and fear, the issues that we're helping change. It sounds very healthy. So that's why I do the show because my recognition was in this process of raising my grandchildren, this is all about mental health and addiction being passed down in families. And what are we doing to change that? So it also has to do with how we are communicating with the generations that abused us. And there is no lack of love, as you say. You know, I mean, it's really tough because one of their parents goes in and out of jail, one has had no contact with them. And my oldest granddaughter, who's 10 now, she takes it all so personally. It's so hard. One of the things that I enjoy communicating with them the most is is to learn how to feel self-love. I I have to tell them that it it's it's okay for you to love them. To learn how to love without accepting behavior, right, is is a very challenging thing for human beings to understand. And it sounds like you're teaching that to your daughter, and you've learned it yourself, which is which is beautiful. You were able to change the pattern of trauma in your own life. I mean, the statistics show that people that have been abused are most likely to be the abusers in their own child's life, which is really shocking, but makes sense when you think about it as a therapist. You know, you probably understand why that

"3 Rules for Relationships"

SPEAKER_00 13:24

is so. If we were to pass that on to our grandchildren, what would what would be the narrative that you would say to the child of an abuser like yourself when they experience themselves repeating what was done to them that they hated so much? There is obviously something that made you say, I'm not gonna do that to this child. And so therefore, I'm going to learn how to change this narrative in me. And that's a precious thing.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

Speak to the parent who may have passed down or didn't quite cease that pattern from repeating.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

For grandparents, there are many of them that struggle still and and maybe don't want to learn or struggle with facing the abusive narrative that's still in their head. What is the message of love that you would give to them to be able to help those that are struggling with being able to pass a message, if nothing more, to their children? Because not all people are going to completely heal and it doesn't happen. We're healing until the day we die. But what is the message that you would give them?

SPEAKER_02 14:38

So the thesis of mixed tape and memoir, I'll break it down for you. Humans are wired for connection.

Breaking Family Patterns

SPEAKER_02 14:45

And because of that, when our connections are unreciprocated, it hurts because it's not sustainable. Sustainability and the connection is essential to survival because humans need connection. We're wired that way. So there are three ways that that connection occurs. The connection is broken down into love, like and understanding. So there's internal, there's external, and then there's receiving. And then we have the ability because we're wired for connection to love like and understand other people. And then other people have the ability to love like and understand us. So this love, like and understanding is going in three directions. When something goes wrong in one of those directions, whether it's internal, external, or receiving, there's an issue. Suffering will occur because we're not getting reciprocity. So the child of a parent who abuses them is not getting reciprocity. They may not know how to love like and understand themselves. They may be giving love-like and understanding, but they're not receiving it consistently. One or more of those directions going wrong causes suffering. And so the message or the encouragement would be to either the child, to the grandparent, to anybody is we are worthy of reciprocity. We are worthy of love-like and understanding internally, externally, and receiving. We're not entitled to it, we're worthy of it. So not every person that you give love, like and understanding to is willing to. I don't like to say can't or isn't able to. I say it, not every person you give love, like and understanding to is willing to reciprocate. Um, so you're not entitled to reciprocity, but you're worthy of it. So we have to put ourselves in spaces where you can get that reciprocity. And the painful thing is sometimes recognizing that something was unreciprocated, and then you have to move along from it. Mixtape and memoir is full of examples of me finding myself in unreciprocated relationships and what did I learn along the way and how it kind of developed into how I seek connection, because I'm not going to stop seeking connection because it's wired into being human. But the hopeful part is that if we know better, we can do better. And just because we know better and try to do better doesn't mean that our do better is perfect.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

If it's a grandparent that is in some way, whether it be verbal, emotional abuse, and they're experiencing that happening with a grandchild because it was what was done to them, and it's their form of communication, unhealthy communication, if they recognize it as a learned behavior and they want to correct that and cause reciprocation, how do they do that?

SPEAKER_02 17:34

Be mindful of our human nature to avoid suffering. Human nature is to avoid suffering. To do something that causes pain, even if it means we can grow from it, we tend to avoid because that creates suffering, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Like Now we're getting to the heart of it.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

Yeah. Like I went on a run before this interview, right? I'm tired because I've just had my launch week last week and I've been doing all the different promotions and running my business and being a single dad and you know, all the things that life brings to you, right? So getting out of bed, my daughter came in and she's like, we got to get ready for school and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I don't want to get up. I don't want to put my, you know, get, you know, I don't want to do all this and then go running. There's suffering. I human nature would be to avoid it, to sleep longer, to just not do it. Uh but the health benefits and the routine and the stress relief that I get, it's it's a path of resistance, but it is better for me than the avoidance. So when you think of, I say the answer to the question of someone who's finding themselves repeating the cycle is to be mindful of avoidance. Awareness is half the battle. As a therapist, I'm not your typical therapist. I'm a very blunt person, but I can't stand when adults say, I did the best I could, when blatantly the evidence you're giving is not the best that you could. And it's not to judge, but sometimes the avoidance or the scapegoat is, well, I did the best I could. Not really, because the best you could probably wouldn't involve abusing that child. That happened when I was growing up. That happened when my grandma read the book and couldn't handle it, right? It's like, oh, well, I did the best I could. And it's not for me to beat her over the head and be like, no, you didn't. But I can internally know that it wasn't the best. But I think the step from awareness, when I say that's half the battle, if you have awareness of, okay, you've stepped into some of these patterns, you need to then, if you know better, then do better. Knowing better is half, doing better is the other half. And the

"Seeking Connection and Reciprocity"

SPEAKER_02 19:37

doing better is not a one and done. I'll give an example. Right. In the letter at the end of the book, I I give a I'm writing a letter to myself, right? And so I give these different things that I've learned throughout time. One of the things is you have a daughter, and I was writing a letter to a younger version of myself. Um, I was like, you have a daughter, don't spank her when she misbehaves. That pattern stops with you, right? And I I've experienced the the wiring. I grew up with being beaten or, you know, hit when the parent perceived that I was doing something wrong. Oftentimes I didn't understand why they were hitting me, which means that it wasn't clearly communicated of what was happening. But I learned with my own child, it's like, okay, she's gonna do things wrong because she's a child. It's my job to teach her. What ways do I choose to correct her without harming her? And that is how, you know, we do better. It's not always perfect, right? You're gonna get frustrated sometimes. You're gonna not do it right. And I think the accountability versus the avoidance, if you find yourself as a cop-out or a scapegoat and saying, like, oh, well, I did the best I could, you have to ask yourself if you're telling the truth there. Because the best you could is hard work. You know, we want to avoid it.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

It's a fine line that we ride between that and perfection, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:01

Yes. We're not gonna be perfect, but are you striving for the best you could and being honest and constantly going back to it?

SPEAKER_00 21:11

I've I'm curious because of a particular situation that um I'm going through and I selfishly do a lot of these interviews to learn myself and pass that information on.

SPEAKER_02 21:24

I don't think that's selfish. I think that's generous to your grandchildren.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Is my passion, which is why I do it. If you have a parent of one of these grandchildren who's repeating behavior, oftentimes they go in and out of jail in my particular situation, the mother is, and so she's broken parole again. Right? And probably doing other things I'm not aware of, but she's repeating her patterns that are affecting her children because she's in and out of their lives, and the kids say the obvious, they say, Why doesn't mom love us enough to stop? Because I get my mother and every six months I don't have my mother. And why doesn't she? Why can't she stop? Why can't she follow the rules for me? And I've heard this from other people. I want to know what you have to say about it. They'll say their mom's doing the best she can.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

Okay, so I felt my wounds kind of cracking a little bit, and that's okay. Because we're constantly being broken to be put back together again in a more evolved, mature way. Through writing and editing, and imagine the process of editing, reading your book over and over and over again. You have to confront everything in an intense way. It was healing, but it was also like training for

Breaking Generational Patterns

SPEAKER_02 22:43

a mental marathon.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Can imagine.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

The reason I focused on unreciprocated relationships in the book is it's not to be like, I didn't want it to be this like, look at all these bad things that happened to me. Feel sorry for me. That's not fun. That doesn't benefit anybody. The hardest thing as a human, I can't even I I won't even speak to the the children's part, I'll do that in a second, is to not be chosen because we're wired for connection, right? So rejection hurts too. However, in adapting with our circumstances, acceptance of if your parent is gonna neglect you, there are you can either keep begging or you can get to a sense of acceptance that this person's not gonna show up for me, or this isn't gonna be reciprocated in a sustainable way. What can I do with that information? And then often you like you mentioned, the grandparents are often a supplement, right? Well, my mother was inadequate, my grandmother was a supplement. You know, there were times where my grandma was inadequate, so I supplemented with friends, or I supplemented with like a person that came into my life kind of like as a second mom figure. And, you know, think of parenting, you know, when a unit splits apart, not so much to say like there needs to be a supplement to restore or anything like that, but naturally when a family is divided, there are going to be supplements on both sides or whatever to continue to be the village for the child. The I guess the takeaway here is that I have a belief that closure is a myth, and so is normal. Normal is a myth. The idea of like a normal family, there's no such thing. A family can be grandparents with the grandchildren. It could be two dads, it could be two moms, it could be a mom and a dad who are married, aren't married, it could be, you know, there's a million and one different ways that you can have family. Normal is a myth, closure is a myth. Closure of what didn't go right, you'll never get it. But I think the the truth that is hard to accept, but that is the most beneficial as in answering your question, is we have to teach kids to find acceptance and to feel a range of emotions when someone chooses or is unwilling to show up for them. And that's what I learned through my story is sometimes people are gonna abandon you. Sometimes people are gonna hurt you, sometimes people are unwilling to do the work. But as ra, you know, people with the responsibility of raising children, I can only speak for my daughter. I like to think that I had all of my life as a boot camp to be the best person to show her this, but she won't have to worry. Did my dad love me? She won't have to struggle as hard about her body image because I won't be the one abusing her and being like, you're too fat, or your hair is nappy. Like she won't hear those messages as much as I can protect her. Like, I can't control the world. But, you know, I can use what didn't go right in mind to, you know, help her to understand that. But she's gonna go in the world and she's gonna be rejected. Mm-hmm. There's gonna be someone that she wants to connect with that doesn't want to connect with her. She's six, but she doesn't quite understand that, you know, my parents were together and now they're not, you know, the connection between my parents was severed, right? And and have her own things about that. And she's

"Unreciprocated Relationships and Acceptance"

SPEAKER_02 26:05

going to go through her own rejections and and harms and and things like that. And I can't completely protect her from that, but she will learn from me that sometimes what you want or the connection that you crave or whatever doesn't work out like you want it to, but it will not end you. And I think that's the message of mixtape, as much as you hear these unreciprocated relationships, is that it's not gonna kill me. So thinking that something is permanent, things can always change. Sometimes people aren't gonna want you. Sometimes it's not gonna work. And the message I want my daughter to know, and that I want myself to know, and that I want your listeners and you to know, is that even when things don't work out, like a parent doesn't act right, that's not gonna be the thing that ends it for you. You can learn from it and then you can supplement. If someone's inadequate, you can supplement.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

I think that's great. I think that encaptures really the conversation that I wanted to have with you, which I didn't realize before we got on the show. But as we got to talking, there's a couple of other things I'd love to talk about. I'd love to hear about your mission to Ghana. And but I think I'm gonna have to say that for another time. Um I think we talked about some important things. And before we move into some of the systematic questions that I'm asking all of my interviewees this year, which are going into the book that I'm writing, I want to make sure that everybody knows a little bit more about mixtape and where they can find it, because your book, Mixtape, a memoir, encapsulates a lot of what we've spoken about and more. So would you share with the audience a little bit more about the book?

SPEAKER_02 27:46

Yes. So uh mixtape a memoir is again, I don't know if they can see video, but this is the cover.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Um we'll do clips. I do clips in the social media.

SPEAKER_02 27:55

Yeah. So it is available wherever you buy books. I think Bookshop, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, you know. And I have all the links and stuff on my website, which is johnzell.co. Um, so if you go there, you can see because it's like it's an audiobook too, so you can get the links for wherever you want to get the

"Lessons on Love and Resilience"

SPEAKER_02 28:15

audiobook and stuff like that. The book itself is a coming of age story. I base it around a playlist. I love music. So at the beginning of the book, you have some QR codes. Yes. Uh you have a QR code to the actual playlist, and each chapter, instead of chapters, I call them tracks. Each uh track begins with a song. So, like a mixtape. Like when you make a mixtape for a friend, there's meanings in there that are significant. You know, there's a sentiment, there's a feeling, there's a vibe, right? And so I put these songs at the beginning of these chapters to resonate with what is going on. Sometimes it's very specific. Sometimes it is an encouragement to that version of myself that's going through those experiences. But then also for the reader, it's an opportunity to kind of make your own interpretation. You hear this song, you read these stories. What does that mean for you? Because I believe that as a storyteller, your job is not only to speak, it is also to connect. You know, we talked about that love-like and understanding. I want my readers to be love-liked and understood through uh reading my story. Uh, and I, and I do that by going into the cringe, going into the painful, right? But also talking about the funny. I joke that my alter ego is a comedian, a DJ, a part-time assassin, and a librarian. So um, you know, that character and that humor uh is shown through this. But, you know, I share my cringiest moment, which is the fourth grade talent show. And everyone can relate to feeling like an outsider and wanting to impress people, but feeling like you don't have the support. I talk about moments where I am clearly feeling like my back is against the wall and I end up cussing people out, right? I talk about even in my adulthood, like being physically assaulted in my marriage, you know? And then there's like lighthearted things like buying my first car or my childhood teddy bear or getting my first job or graduating with my master's degree, becoming a therapist. There's good and then there's difficult. There's development, there's unlearning, there's confusion. And I I believe I don't like a memoir that ends with happily ever after, because like you said earlier in the interview, we're constantly in evolution. You know, for me to end the book and be like, and he lived happily ever after, who who could say that? I'm only 33. You know, who who could say that it's going to be happily ever after? And even after the book was finished, you clearly see the marriage didn't work out. And, you know, but that's a that's a evolution, right? So readers will be able to see elements of themselves in my story, even if you're not a biracial black uh, you know, guy that grew up in Southwest Virginia in the 90s. A good story can connect with readers for different reasons. That's what I love about art. You and I can look at the same thing and get something different from it. And we can have similarities of what we get from it. And that's what I like about being a storyteller, but I also like that about being a reader is that I can connect. Connection is at the root of what being human is so that we can be love, liked, and understood. It's probably why I read over a hundred books a year, because I like connection. So I think that kind of explains what mixtape is.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

I'm looking forward to reading it. I've gotten to know you a little bit through this interview. I've gotten to know what your passion is and your message as a therapist. You obviously love art and music. I see it mostly as a form of communication, your desire to connect. Am I wrong? Or do you see it as an entertainment piece?

SPEAKER_02 31:47

It's not an it's not only an entertainment piece. Um, just like being a human, just like I I'll say being John Zell Anderson, right? I joked earlier, comedian, DJ, part-time assassin librarian, right? And that's the alter ego. You know, by day, I'm a therapist and a storyteller, but I'm also a father. I'm also a taxpayer, I'm also a consumer of music and a reader and, you know, all these things. But connection is the point. The thesis is what happens when you don't get the connection that you're worthy of. I said worthy, not entitled, right? We're worthy of it because we're wired that way. We didn't ask to be wired to need each other. But if we try to seek that connection that we're wired to have and it doesn't work out, what do you do with it? It would be the takeaway would be we are worthy of reciprocity. We're worthy of connection. And the journey of finding connections that are sustainable, that are reciprocal, is what it is to be human. That is how we survive. But also when we're wounded by reciprocity that isn't given, by not receiving the

Life's Cringe, Growth, Evolution

SPEAKER_02 32:57

connection that we're worthy of, especially from the people who made us, it requires some work. It makes the experience of being human more difficult. But the story, it is entertaining. It does have elements of art and music, and it is in essence like a literary version of me. It's a literary mixtape, but it also gives hope that you can go through some pretty bad stuff and still have hope. You can have severed connection sometimes because you choose to sever the connection, sometimes because someone abandons you or neglects you or harms you, and still have hope that you can find and that you can supplement where other people fall short. And that is that's the essence. I mean, even though my life continues on after the stories in this book stopped, this book is the book that I didn't know I needed as a child. This is the book that I didn't know I needed when I was getting ready to submit it to the publisher and I was blindsided by a separation less than 24 hours before the U-Haul arrived, right? And this is the book that I need now as a person who has been dating. And I think it's like I've been official with this person that I'm dating now for about three weeks. And it's almost like a blueprint for me of like, I am not settling for anything less than reciprocal love, like an understanding, connection, honesty, safety, you know. And I'm not begging. And so that shows me that by going through it, I am more evolved and that I can be more direct about what I am worthy of rather than going through the motions. So it all comes back to connection.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

It's a great message. Thank you for sharing it. Thank you for having me. So I do have some systematic questions I want to ask you because I'm asking everyone.

unknown 34:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:47

As a therapist and a man of color raised in the 90s South, what do you think is the biggest glitch in our current mental health infrastructure that prevents kinship families from accessing these healing rhythms that we need? I sort of think we answered that in our conversation.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

Yeah, I'll I'll revisit something that I said. I talked about how it's human nature to avoid suffering. A barrier to doing the healing is understanding that things will sometimes feel worse before they feel better. And the only way you can get to the better is if you go through the discomfort of having awareness that something is not right and being brave enough to face that discomfort so that you can clear out what continues to cycle back to hurt you. This is an example I gave is my grandmother. I wrote this story not as a revenge tour. You know, I handled her with care in a sense that I said what happened, but I changed her name. You know, her default, and I don't, it's not my journey to tell her what she ought to do, but her default is avoidance or scapegoating or the I did the best I could. So the barrier that sometimes people have is that I am a person who has strengthened the muscle of embracing the uncomfortable to grow and heal. And and by my profession as a therapist, we have to talk about what doesn't feel right so that we can get to the good part. I talked about running this morning. I have to go running, you know, a morning 5K in the cold so that I can get to the part of, you know, feeling good when it's, you know, swimsuit season, right? Um and and I think the barrier is that it's in our human nature, two parts. We we are wired for connection, but we're also wired for self-preservation that we want to avoid suffering. So if we want that connection, we have to go against our nature to avoid

"Hope and Healing Through Connection"

SPEAKER_02 36:44

suffering. And sometimes that avoidance of suffering is actually perpetuating our suffering.

SPEAKER_00 36:49

Yeah, it always is. But yeah, that's I think that's a great message. I can't wait to put that message out there. Thank you. The taboo is a good thing. It was a good question.

SPEAKER_02 36:58

It required a complex answer. So we had to we had to find it.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

Put it together. We found it. So the the taboo question that I want to ask you is in your book, You're unflinching about childhood abuse and the silence of survival. Why do you think the shame of that is so difficult for people to overcome?

SPEAKER_02 37:14

I'll use the example of my grandmother. Yeah, I'll use the example of my grandmother. My story and my overcoming, I am her descendant, right? But to see your descendant having found peace and healing from part of what you inflicted, someone else's healing illuminates your woundedness sometimes. It's not intentional. It's not like a look at how I healed and how you're broken, you know? But naturally, if someone is doing something different, someone's going against the grain, someone is not accepting the status quo, it will create discomfort in the system for people who are going through the motions, right? So going back to grandma, I think the shame of that is difficult because she sees herself in my story. She sees how her mom had limitations. She sees her own abuse with the men that her mom dated, the things that happened to her, her attempts at creating family, and the three divorces that happened in her own life. And then she fell into the role of parenting her grandchildren, right? And then my story shows hey,

Healing Through Discomfort

SPEAKER_02 38:25

your daughter that you raised abused me.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

And so then she becomes a failed mother.

SPEAKER_02 38:30

Yeah, and her it's like, okay, my child was abusing him, but then I was abused, you know, and and then and I was part of that. And and I imagine it could be very overwhelming.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Yeah. It's hard because it's debugging a pretty complex motherboard.

unknown 38:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:52

And not everybody is willing to embrace that discomfort in order to get to the good part. I was because it was essential to my survival, but I can't expect her to.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

You saw it as eventually I'll get through this pain and I'll find peace. I'll find the love within myself to love myself. And that was more important to you than covering up the pain and and and believing in a false sense of peace. Because for a lot of people that is.

SPEAKER_02 39:19

Yeah. And I think peace for me is accepting that I'm the only one that I can change. I'm the only one who can heal. I'm the only one who I have control over the healing. My healing doesn't have to be tethered to someone else's. I can be okay and have worked through my stuff and written written a book or gone to therapy or whatever it may be. And I can also accept that grandma chooses to be wherever she's at. And and I don't have to burden myself with being like, you need to go get therapy or you need to, I'm not making someone else's journey my responsibility. But as far as me, embracing that discomfort was how I found the key to one, being a more mature person to know better and do better. But also the peace that comes from accepting, like you said, we were talking about the grandchildren and how they they they struggle with, well, why doesn't my mom act right? The peace that comes for me in that example, and what I hope to teach my daughter is that you can be okay even when people don't act right.

SPEAKER_00 40:31

Right.

SPEAKER_02 40:31

But feel those emotions when they don't act right. But you can learn from it and then evolve.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

So yeah, yeah, yeah. I like the emphasis on feeling how that feels. You know, they have to visualize well, you have to see yourself as that person that does not depend upon the healing of that other person. The policy question I have for you is if you were COO of country of the country for one day, what one policy shift would you implement to ensure that every parent had the resources, every grandparent had the resources they needed to help their grandchild rewrite their life's story.

SPEAKER_02 41:11

Universal health care.

SPEAKER_00 41:13

Yeah, it's pretty simple.

SPEAKER_02 41:15

That's your therapy, that's your primary care, that's your birth control. All of the things that are implemented in these family systems could be solved with universal health care.

SPEAKER_00 41:24

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 41:25

One last bit of encouragement to you and to your listeners is that parenting or influencing the next generation is one of the most powerful and important responsibilities that we have before us. There's no roadmap. Podcasts like this are a support, but it's not a roadmap. My book is a support, but it's not a roadmap, right? Therapy is a support, but it's not a roadmap. But it is also by caring for the next generation, you're changing the world as they develop. Try your best not to downplay the magnitude of what you're doing every day. When you pack those lunches, when you clean up toys, when you uh have a breakdown after they have a breakdown, you know, you're changing the world. That's my encouragement.

SPEAKER_00 42:12

Thank you. Thank you.