When thinking about Resilience, many people think of a spring that is pushed down and then immediately springs back. However, it is not always that easy. It is more like bending and breaking. Jadie Jo experienced more during her first 5 years of life then many people go through during their whole life. We are grateful for her vulnerability and honest as she shares the hardships she has been through as well as how we can learn how to bend and not break.
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Trigger Warning: Domestic violence, death, witnessing death, trauma, drug use.
Trigger Warning
Hey listeners, this episode contains discussions on sensitive topics that may be difficult to hear and may not be suitable for young ears. Check our show notes for more specific details of what is covered in this episode. Take care of yourself.
Jen: Welcome to the Parents Place podcast with Hilary and Jen.
Hilary: Welcome to the Parents Place podcast. Thank you, guys, for being here and thank you for tuning into our episode. We have a story of resilience for you today and if you are an active listener to our podcast, you know that these stories, as Jen and I like to like to joke, are the best part of this podcast. They are our favorites. They come with some of the most powerful content that we cover in this podcast and some of the best lessons that our individuals, our audience can take. And so we're so excited to share this information with you today. I am flying solo today by the way, Jen is unable to be here with us. She's got another work obligation she's taken care of so you just get me and our wonderful guest that we have. So, this is, this is Jadie Jo and thank you for being here.
Jadie: Thank you for having me having me.
Hilary: Yes, we love the fact that you are here. And before we start our story, let me just preference preface to our audience. Pardon me again if you are an active listener and if you've heard our stories before, you know that with these stories of resilience and we talk about very personal, very intimate experiences in people's lives. And I think we can learn a lot through these experiences. And I know that we will learn a lot through the experience that Jadie will share with us. But her story, as you will, you will hear very soon, it's quite heavy. So, if you are there and you're there with some little ones and you're listening at home or in the car or wherever you're listening, just know that they're with those sensitive ears, we're going to cover a topic that might be a little bit tricky for our little ones. So just wanted to give you that heads up but. I'm going to turn it over to you, my dear, and I'm going to let you just share a little bit about you and then if you want to tell us a little bit about your story, so go ahead.
Jadie: Absolutely. So, before I dive into it, I do want to mention that this is obviously not a story I share often, but when I do, it can come off a little bit, I guess robotic in a way or emotionless. And that is something I've learned with therapy. It's because I this is so probably because of what happened to me. So I just don't want to think I'm not being genuine or anything. All this absolutely happened, so I just wanted to point that out that for my story. I feel like I have to give some of a background first. My mom just dated my dad. They weren't ever married or anything. He was very abusive to her. He would force her to inject drugs, and if she didn't, he would abuse her. And she had me, I've lived in this house with them even very, very young. I still experienced seeing this in this kind of environment. So that kind of plays into my story as well. She finally got away from my dad and we lived with my grandma for a while until she got back up on her feet. I remember her trying to be sober and trying to get her life together. I do have a brother I need to mention as well. He had a different dad, so he was very much back and forth between our life and that life of his. But once my mom finally got on her feet a little bit more, we were able to get in a home, government housing and kind of start living more like normal people. And so, at this time, she's just a single mom for me and then shared custody with my brother. But this is when the story kind of starts. She started dating a man who obviously wasn't great. He had some alcohol issues, probably some drug issues, I don't quite remember too much about him. I know I didn't like him. And he would come around a lot and he just wasn't very nice to her. And she put up with a lot with many men in her life. So just it seemed normal to her. It seemed normal to me. Fighting, abuse, all of it. But so, one night he came over and I woke up to them fighting. I just heard them screaming in the middle of the night. And he didn't come over every single night, so every so often he did. And I knew he was there obviously at this time. And I got out of bed, I went into her room and she was yelling at him because he had come over drunk and she didn't want him there, I guess drunk. I don't know if there was more to this story of why they were fighting, but he was getting mad at her saying he wasn't drunk and just yelling at her, backing her into walls. She seemed very terrified. There was a lot of back and forth with me running up to her, hugging her and her hugging me but pushing me away kind of just having a feeling that maybe it wasn't good area for me to be in at the time. So I just stood in the doorway and waited and screamed and cried and watched him hover over her on her bed as she tried it back away from him. And then he just put his hands on her throat and started strangling her and I didn't know what to do. She stopped moving. I didn't quite understand what happened. He then went to the closet and grabbed a gun out of the closet. I don't know if he had kept some of his stuff there. I can't imagine my mom having a gun. Or maybe she did. I don't know. But he started loading it and I just went up to him and just started hitting him and screaming at him, telling him to fix her. I didn't completely understand death at this point. Also, I'm sorry, I was five years old.
Hilary: OK. I was gonna ask cause I couldn't remember if you had said earlier.
Jadie: I forgot it. So, I was just. I was just young, so I wasn't. I didn't quite understand what was going on, but I knew it was terrible. He turned to me and told me to go away in the kitchen. And so I did. I went and sat in the kitchen. I remember watching the clock. I remember the tick of the clock. And I remember not hearing anything. And I waited. What felt like forever. And I walked into down the hallway and I went to go in her room to see what was happening and the door opened maybe like a foot and it hit something and I tried to open it again and it hit something again, so I peeked my head in. I could barely just get my head in, looked around the door and he was laying there and the door. Every time I tried to open it would hit the top of his head and every single time it hit his head his mouth would open and close, and I remember hearing his teeth every single time the door hit his head, I remember thinking that was really strange and I was very scared. I looked over at the bed and this is all very relevant to the later in the story, but I looked over at my mom and she was just laying on the bed. It looked like she was breathing. I wanted so badly to go up to her. And cuddle her. But I have this very strong feeling not to, so I didn't know what to do. We had this phone. I don't know if you're familiar with those old phones back in the 90s that were like, see through with the colorful cables and stuff. We had one of those and all the numbers were kind of rubbed off and I knew what 911 was. I knew I should have called it, and so I tried, but because the numbers were off, I kept going. Star 11, thinking the last number is a nine, right. The last squares and 9. So it kept getting just. Seeing the number can't go through, so I hid for a minute, which seems very silly, but I don't know what else to do. I hid behind the garbage can.
Hilary: You're five, it doesn't seem silly in the moment.
Jadie: Exactly. Nothing happened and I realized nothing was going to happen, so I figured I need to go outside and get some help. But again, this was the middle of the night. I was very scared of the dark. I've been told not to talk to strangers. We just moved into this house. I don't know the neighbors. So, it took a lot of courage for me to open that front door. I stayed outside for a long while trying to decide like what am I going to do? I remember all of this so vividly that I remember thinking, OK, if I just run fast enough, no one can catch me. I will go. I have this full on plan in my head. And go find some woods and survive and camp and just live like a lost child. I don't know. So without any shoes, without holding anything. I was in a care bear nightgown and I just started running down the street and I just was screaming at top of my lungs because I don't know what to do, and I turned a couple of corners and then all of a sudden I hear someone yell “Hey!” and I stop in the middle of the street. And look over and there's this guy there and he says come, come here. And I asked because I've been taught, don't talk to strangers. So I asked, are you a stranger? He laughed and said no. And so I walked up to him because he's not a stranger anymore. And he took me in his house. I told him what happened. He had a daughter my age and he had a wife and they called the cops. And the cops came. And I told the cops what had happened and I stayed overnight there and just played with his daughter, stayed overnight and the next day my cousin came to pick me up to me and my grandma's house. And all this while I'm thinking they're working on her. They're going to fix her. I'm going to go back home. I didn't understand she was dead. I'd witnessed abuse my whole life, so I didn't understand this wasn't some that she can't come back from. So eventually, I mean, I lived with my grandma for a little while, but my grandma wasn't doing well health wise already. Her youngest daughter had just been murdered. So, my aunt ended up taking me in and. Yeah, I lived with my aunt from then on. She ended up adopting me when I was almost 7. And all my cousins became my siblings and it's kind of a weird mix of the family now. But why all of those details in the beginning were a little relevant is because it's really interesting. One day when I had first moved into my aunts house, my aunt asked to tell her the story of what I remember happening. So I told her. I explained her. I went in the kitchen. I waited. I went in the room and I told her what I saw and she was really surprised. She's like you didn't hear any gunshots, which I remember looking at the gun. I don't remember hearing it. And she's like, you didn't see any blood. I'm like, no. And she told me later that when I was in the kitchen, he shot my mom in the stomach. She was already dead. He had broken her neck like shot the stomach, and then he shot himself in the head and she said that she saw all the pictures. His head was half gone and the rest of it was all over the walls. And her stomach had been blown. So, which is really interesting because what I saw was the door hitting his head and his mouth moving every time, when in reality half his head was gone. I looked over at my mom and I saw her breathing, but she didn't even have a stomach. So, it's just it's really interesting. Kind of what the brain can do, and I'm really grateful for that because I don't know where I'd be mentally if I had seen something like that, but yeah, that's the story.
Hilary: Wow, I'm just sitting here, just kind of taking it all in.
Jadie: Because I told you I am dissociated with it.
Hilary: But you're right, the brain does do I mean it is. It is both amazing and unusual that our brain does it. But like you said, it's almost a gift that you have just these snippets of memories of sitting in the kitchen and remembering just the way that you described the telephone and remembering the telephone so vividly and the button so vividly. But then having such a blurry memory as to like the actual scenario you know.
Jadie: Well right, what's weird is I even remember I remember seeing her breathe so vividly, too, like my mind has actually created something so vividly for me to remember that wasn't really there.
Hilary: Yeah. Well, let me just start by saying, and I say this on behalf of both Jen and I, as well as the Family Place stuff in general. We were sorry that you had to experience what you experienced, that that loss is something that no one should ever and that experience is something that no one should ever have to go through. Especially being a young child and you know I have a 5 year old myself and I'm thinking about. His thought process of what he would do in that moment, and I think you were a 5 year old working with a 15 year old's brain process to be honest with you because I don't know if my 5 year old would ever think I need to leave my house. I need to go get help. I need to find some. I think he would have like you said. I think he would crumbled in a corner and cried, which is very appropriate for any funeral, for anyone honestly to experience in that moment. So I think you were working with, with, with divine. You know, if you believe in a higher being or inspiration or whatever it is, there was something that was assisting you through that process. As well as being able to find that particular person that helped you on that particular night.
Jadie: I absolutely agree.
Hilary: So, wow, you know, with these stories that we share. There's always lessons to be learned, and so let's focus in on some of those lessons that maybe you've learned and well, let's start you mentioned you know that you've worked at, you've gone through therapy to help you through this process. So, let's talk about. Some of the things that you've done through your life that has kind of allowed you to rebuild and move forward, what are some of the, what are some of the tools that you could suggest to other people having gone through traumatic events?
Jadie: I mean, therapy has been a big thing for me of the right therapist. I have been to a few different therapists in my life. But it wasn't until I found the most recent therapist that I see that I truly started getting real help and he actually taught me a lot that I need to unlearn. So, it's interesting talking about what I learned from this. It really also is what I unlearned because just watching my mom go through everything she did with all the men she did, which I truly believe in um like a cycle, I believe in like generational cycles. And I've watched my aunts do the same kind of stuff, my grandma, like every we're all such independent women, but we get in such scenarios with men more often that are bad. So, I have to kind of break these cycles and unlearn how to be too hyper independent. Like I can say I'm independent and I had to be independent because even after this scenario that happened, yeah, I was taking in with my aunt, but she was the oldest in the family and my mom was the youngest. I very much was still felt all my own and I'm sure she didn't intentionally make me feel this way, but I very much also felt like the adopted kid, like I wasn't. It just wasn't normal, but so I felt like I had to grow up really quickly and take care of myself. But with that came a lot of hyper independent with my therapist has recently taught me that I do. Something that my need to unlearn. So, therapy has been a huge, huge aspect in my healing process.
Hilary: Was that something that you that happened as an adult or were you involved in therapy even as a young child after the situation?
Jadie: It's such a good question. So, my aunt, she said, she claims. I don't remember this. She claims she took me to a therapy session. Therapist said I'm fine. And that was it, I know. I'm like how? How?
Hilary: Not fine here.
Jadie: Not Fine. Thank you. I think I also obviously very much learn to disassociate, so I can pretend fine anything. But in reality there's so much behind all of it. It's being masked by things protecting me. So no, I didn't see it there. This as a young child, I absolutely should have. It wasn't until being an adult getting in relationships, abusive relationships, kind of seeing myself in the same cycle and wanting and knowing I went through something like this as a kid and thinking there's no way this didn't mess me up, Like I feel fine enough, sure. But there's no way that didn't mess me up so. I kind of I when I go to therapy, you know when you first go to therapy, they ask what brought you here? I give them a brief outline while I saw my mom die as a kid. And this is what I saw. So, I feel like I'm probably messed up so and then he's like, OK, have you heard of disassociation? So, as an adult, then I started diving deeper into it. And I just know that there's something that needs to be worked on. And I felt very stuck in many aspects of life. I feel like I have been trying to break through so many things to progress in life and to being more of who I am and I have felt like something's. Always held me back. And it's a lot from that. It's trauma.
Hilary: You know, and therapy and seeking out that therapeutic help, I think we've heard that. I would guess in almost every if not every story of resilience that we have, yeah, we have shared that there. I am so glad and you, you know this, I'm sure that we are we as a community, you know, therapy is becoming more there's less of a stigma associated with it, as it has been in the past, but there's still work to be done there. And so it, and I think especially having children go to therapy, I think there's still a little bit of a stigma as to a no, they don't need that you know and we'll seek that out at an older age if needs be and so. I think that there's a lot of individuals that are in that similar situation.
Jadie: For sure I even hear so many people say, Oh yeah, I've been to therapy. I'm done with that like I did it. I'm like, I don't think you can just be healing.
Hilary: And be done.
Jadie: Yeah you should be bettering yourself your whole life, right? Whether or not you go with therapy just every once in a while, it's just always such a such a beneficial thing.
Hilary: Well, you know the way that you're describing this, we've talked before, Jen and I have talked before about even just the word resilience because when we talk about resilience, a lot of people will use like this definition of bouncing back you. And they use this this visual of the spring. If you push a spring down, then it instantaneously bounces back and it looks how it was before. And I think there's a misconception to that because when we talk about resiliency, I don't think most of us want to bounce back to where we were before. Like you said, it's this idea of what can I continually do in my life to improve to become better? We don't want to go back to the way that we were and this instantaneous bounce is unrealistic. Like it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't have. And in a week or in a year, or in five years like this, is a lifelong process of bettering who I am and building new habits. And so this spring, the visual, I think we to an extent needs to get tossed out because I don't think resilience is exactly that way.
Jadie: Right. That's an interesting way, but I've always thought of it as like bending and not breaking.
Hilary: Hmm, I like that.
Jadie: Yeah, like things can happen to you. But the things that happen to you don't define you. You because of it. You learn from it. You can bend, you can adapt, but you.
Hilary: I love that that should be the new the new. You know, the new model for resiliency. So, eliminate the spring, talk about the bending and not breaking. But you know, I've talked about this in our podcast before. My daughter went to therapy for some anxiety that she was dealing with some OCD tendencies. And you know, we are not currently seeing her therapist, but at the conclusion of her last appointment, her therapist said to her. You know that you're going to have ebbs and flows. There's times where things are going to look OK and then there's times where you might get this flare up if you will, where you know her anxiety is under control. And then times where it might flare up because of certain situations. It's never going to completely go away, like you said. And so, it's not necessarily I did therapy. Check things are great.
Jadie: I wish. I wish it were that easy.
Hilary: Yeah, I know. Wouldn't that be nice, right? If we could check the box and call it good for the remainder of our lives so. Yeah, it's that's not the case. And there is power in talking to people and especially people that have had the knowledge and experience and the education to help you through that, those traumatic experiences and to help you to understand. Another common theme that we tend to get with these stories of resiliency is finding that that support system, which it was probably hard to do as a young child, but as you look back on your life and your experiences, are there certain people that stand out to you who have kind of helped and rallied towards you?
Jadie: Yeah, absolutely. One of my brothers who actually was my cousin. Who became my brother after being adopted? I grew very close to him and one of my sisters as well because I came from the youngest sibling in the family of my mom's family to the oldest. All her kids were much older than me, so I wasn't close, all of them. A lot had actually already moved out, so I'm getting married, so I was just kind of like this random little baby all of a sudden that came in. So there were a few that I do think of siblings, but there are also quite a few. There were a lot of kids. There are also quite a few that I still, think of as cousins and I don't mean that in a rude way. I just don't. I see him as much as you would see a cousin, you know. But yeah, there is a brother and a sister that I still am very close to. My aunt unfortunately not a burden to her. To be honest, than anything but as I have gotten older, it's been a little bit different. She has been a support system to me in some aspects now as an adult. Child. No, I'm a kind of person who's gravitated toward friends. So many friends and my friends have become my family. And so I think that's helped a lot. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not a religious person, so not religion.
Hilary: Mm-hmm. And that's OK. I think we all find what works for us, right? And everybody's experience is different. So yeah, I think that's important to make note of. You know, you mentioned kind of working through this process of because I along with you know, shifts in our community, I think there's a big push to be independent. Like you said, you know. I can take care of myself. I don't need anybody else to tell me what to do. Sort of. And I do. We have this mindset that if I am unable to provide that on my own, then I am almost inadequate in a way. And so. Is there anything that you've learned from this experience of finding that balance between, you know, having that independence, but also recognizing that we can't do it alone.
Jadie: Yeah, you know that has been such a struggle. Most of my life because I have been so I didn't even know. Hyper Independence was a thing, a bad thing. I'm working through things with my therapist and he brings up this to me and like, Oh my gosh, this makes so much sense. But it's been so bad to the point where getting gifts. Like therapists I've seen in the past have told me that I have a problem getting gifts because I don't feel worthy. Eh, I think I feel pretty worthy. But still always been something around gifts. I'm like when people give me gifts a lot of times I actually get angry. I get so weird for me, so I came to learn that type of independence. It's I don't want gifts because I can get this for myself. So, and everything comes out. You know everything you need to work on comes out in relationships, you know, exist by myself and be just fine. But it's when you're trying to coexist with other people. Everything gets crazy. You feel nuts. So I my relationship I'm in right now. Actually, he is so sweet and got me an amazing custom gifts. It's very thought through so much meaning behind it. And the first thing I did was tell him to go home back and go home. And it's like, it's so weird to me that these are the kind of reactions I would have. So I bring them up to my therapist and he tell me it's because of hyper independence and there is a balance like I did have to learn that I can accept help from people. I can accept gifts. I can be independent and still have all of that. So it's been, it's been a lot of mind work just constantly telling myself these things, I guess.
Hilary: Yeah, yeah. And I can see that being like you said, a lifelong process because it's been ingrained in your brain. That and that's interesting that it comes out in this sort. Yeah, just your example of gifts that I would never think about that, but how. Then do we say, oh, we don't need that or even a compliment that you know and we just kind of brush it aside as like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, you don't need to say that you don't need to do that. Like I I've got this so.
Jadie: Exactly, exactly. Even acts of service my working. And he took my car and cleaned it once, and I was mad. Like he's such a giver. And that's one of his, you know, beautiful love languages. And it's so that has forced me to then work on it harder to accept these things and it makes him feel good. And that is one same thing. I have to remind myself it makes him feel good to do these things for me. So it's not about me. Calm down, Jadie. It's not about you.
Hilary: It's just different forms of showing love, but like you said, you've had your experiences that have kind of shaped you into how you see and view the world. And he's had his experiences and it's hard when you're trying to blend those experiences together so.
Jadie: Exactly, but I'm thankful for it, because now it makes me realize things I need to work on. It's just made me such a better person for it.
Hilary: So, you know, we talked in our office a lot and I'm so glad that you brought this up. This idea of this generational cycle and it is very real that that we can, that we tend to pass on those same traits and characteristics and habits of what we see and then we continue to do what we've seen in the past, and that's incredibly hard to break. Have you cracked the code?
Jadie: I don't know it's. Just a lot of realizations, I think, yeah, it took, I guess it just took me stepping back and seeing a big picture I've actually thought about this before. I don't know. It took. It took a lot of going through different terrible things to get to that point where I can look at the whole picture. But I go. No, that's not. Right. So obviously my generational cycle is abusive men like there really hasn't been a positive role model in my life.
Hilary: Yeah, yeah.
Jadie: All my own dad, who, by the way, I forgot to mention after my mom died. I obviously should have gone to him. But he didn't want me, so that was also very hurtful because my mom never talked ill of him. I actually wondered where he had gone. And she, she never said anything bad. So, I was like. Why am I not with my dad? So, I didn't understand that. So, he wasn't a good guy. My grandma. My grandpa died before I was born. So, I saw her single. My aunts, same thing, all through relationships. We're terrible. My aunt was adopted too. She was actually the only religious one in her family, so she kind of went extreme one way while everyone else went the drugs alcohol another way. So, she's religious, and even then my uncle, I was adopted to was abusive. So, I went from one terribly abusive childhood to an abusive childhood in a whole another life. So, I did not see any male role model that was positive ever. So that was something that would just seem normal to me. So I had been in multiple abusive relationships and it took one very abusive relationship where my sister I told her I was close to, who was my cousin, heard about someone being killed once on Valentine's Day by her boyfriend in downtown Salt Lake City. And she called me to make sure it wasn't me and this, like, this boyfriend. There had been incidents where he would get his gun out and threatened to shoot himself if I didn't talk to him or I don't know, silly things like that. And the swap. I called the cops. Swat team came so I would open up to her about this stuff so she knew that there were situations. He hit me and made me bleed. So, she knew about this kind of stuff, so she instantly thought it could have been me. And I feel like that was maybe a wake up call of like umm. It actually could have been me. And then I thought about my mom. Like, yeah, how it's very possible. So, I got out of that relationship instantly, got to another married this one totally bamboozled. He ended up not being great either and abusing me as well. He was extremely mentally abusive as well as physically abusive, but I kept thinking to myself well, my relationship. Before this was way more physically abusive. So this isn't that things every now and then. I thought of it as more normal because it's not as bad as my last relationship. But then one day. He we were fighting and he put his hands on my neck and chocked me against the wall. And that was my breaking point because like that must be a trigger of mine. Go figure. And that's when I left. And then after I left, I was able to see this big picture and also friends open up to me and be like I didn't like how I said this to you. This, and I'm like you know what? And he also did this and he did hit me once and I don't know just but I started to realize the true abuse that was happening and I didn't even see. So, it's not like something that happened just slowly. Stepping back, getting so buried in it like that, that bending and not breaking and slowly getting away from it and seeing this whole picture and just realizing it's not normal. And it's actually ohh sorry.
Hilary: No, you're gonna keep continue what you're going to say.
Jadie: I just want to mentioned this as well because it's really interesting. Since then and the healing I've done, I've gotten into a relationship and it's probably my first truly healthy relationship. It's absolutely my first truly healthy relationship I've ever been in, and it was actually a process of getting used to like, again, someone working with my therapist. I'd get bored. It wasn't chaos that I was used to. It's different. So sometimes it's feel that way after you're used to chaos.
Hilary: So, I want to ask you because I know, I mean we know that the abuse and particularly domestic violence is real and it is a problem for many people and the way that you speak of your experience, you know that you had individuals on the outside that clearly knew what was going on. But living that scenario, you were still. Maybe somewhat unaware of the severity of the situation. So, for somebody being in an abusive situation. And maybe they know that they are, maybe they don't know. What advice would you give to somebody who's living that situation? How? How do we get to the point where we can kind of step back and look and evaluate?
Jadie: I think one thing for me that helped a lot kind of change my perspective, my mindset on this was in there after the fact. In therapy. I was talking to my therapist, telling him how I was treated in a specific scenario, and he looked at me and he said he's truly sorry. And I said, oh, it's OK. And he stopped me right then and there and whenever anyone says sorry, I don't say it's OK anymore. Because he stopped me right then and there and said it's not OK. Like it's and it's OK that it's not OK, but you shouldn't have been treated that way. You can say you're OK now that it's not OK you're treated that way, and he brought up a perspective for me, he said think of your traumatized little self. Think of five year old Jadie. The most beautiful little innocent kid who I think back of my childhood and I do feel sorry for her and everything she went through. But I'm thinking about me now and I'm still that same cute little kid, you know who doesn't deserve that. So that kind of like put me a step back and it hit something in me. It made me realize different. So I think that's a good trick. That, yeah. Well, I've heard people say think of. What would you tell your best friend if your best friend said this is. So and so treats me. What would you say to them? But, and I've heard that before, but that didn't do it as much as thinking of my tiny self.
Hilary: Yes. Ohh that's powerful to think about. Yeah, we can't change the past. Obviously we can't go back and even do things differently in the past week and just move forward. But I guess maybe for an individual who if we are, if we are an adult and we are in the process of helping somebody, it's particularly a child that's gone through a traumatic event. Is there anything that you wish was done differently in that experience of people coming and helping and transitioning you to different homes and is there anything that that you look back on and think man, if only dot, dot, dot, it would have made my life just a little bit easier?
Jadie: Well Therapy would have been great.
Hilary: Uh huh at a young age?
Jadie: Yeah. It would have been wonderful talking to someone because like I said, I learned to disassociate so young. I don't know. That's a hard question. I'd have to think more about that. It's a really good one, but I think feeling it so alone to being ripped from one life, there's always me and my mom. Thrown in another, that wasn't great. And just feeling so, like the oddball just not truly like a part of the family, I think just feeling loved. I don't think I felt a lot of that growing up and like. Yeah, I do wish it had been different.
Hilary: Ohh, I feel like there's a lot that we just need to sit and process after this and I thank you so much for sharing everything that you have shared because I think there is so many layers to your story. It's not just like you said it it's, I mean the death of your mother is obviously a huge layer to this experience. But like you said it, the relationships, the domestic violence, the, you know, all of the things that have happened, the isolation that, I mean, there's just a lot that we can see and we can that we can learn from. But I guess just to kind of one final question I want to ask you to those that are listening. Obviously, most of us will never experience what you have experienced, but for our audience that has dealt with tough things. What would be your final kind of lessons learned, takeaways that if you could provide some piece of a pieces of advice or feedback, what, what, what would you what would you tell us?
Jadie: I think asking for help is huge, something I never knew how to do, but I'm learning to do. Asking for help is really big, opening up to people don't be closed off. Keep your heart open just because something terrible has maybe happened in your life doesn't mean to shut down. Not feel anything anymore, but continuing to love and find love and. Learn to trust people. I think that's big.
Hilary: Yeah, thank you. I always like to ask how are you doing now things now?
Jadie: Obviously, much better therapy is great. Honestly, it's been so wonderful. I keep bringing up therapy. Things are working really well. Breaking those traumas. And like I said, a very healthy relationship that I'm learning to navigate but really well, thank you.
Hilary: Good, good. Well, we wish you all the best for you and for this, this individual that you're dating as well too. Yes. Yes. We haven't talked a lot about him, but we wish you all the best in your future relationships and I can see by your by your fire and by your passion that you have big things in store and there's a lot of people that are going to learn from you and from what you've been able to overcome. So thank you for sharing your story with us today
Jadie: Of course. Thank you for letting me.
Hilary: And thank you to our audience as always for listening and tuning in and supporting us and all that we do. We love you and we love that we can have this strong, committed community to building and strengthening better families and building a better society. So thank you guys for listening in. As always, whether you are new or existing listener, we thank you. And please reach out to us if you have any questions about the Family Place in general. Be kind to one another and we will see you again next week.
Jen: Thank you for listening to the Parents Place podcast. If you would like to reach us, you can at parents at thefamilyplaceutah.org or you can reach Jen on Facebook, Jen Daly – The Family Place. Please check out our show notes for any additional information. Our website is thefamilyplaceutah.org. If you're interested in any of our upcoming virtual classes, we'd love to see you there.
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