Real stories, told by real people.
Embracing the authentic human experience. Today, we're joined by Adeline. She's got a story to tell. From growing up in a household that was anything but supportive and loving. To being separated from her biological mother due to a prison term which ultimately gave way to an abusive upbringing. Under the hand of a step mother who was manipulative, and controlling. Adeline was left to figure it out on her own and alone.
Sometimes through the tragedy, despair, and black skies, something beautiful can be born. Adeline has ART. That's her medicine, and a big part of how she was able to endure the trauma as a child. She's also since been reunited with her biological mother, and they're both building a beautiful and meaningful relationship together.
Adeline's doing the self work, and making an honest effort to be and do well. And she has without a doubt found a place as one of the GIANTS AMONGST US.
'Til next time
and very soon,
PEACE!!
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Twitter : https://twitter.com/adolones
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Background music by : @bnoizemusic
00:00:00
Now, this is a little story I got to tell.
00:00:03
I'd like to welcome everybody to another episode and another story.
00:00:09
These are real stories and they're told by real people and this is Giants Amongst Us,
00:00:16
where we embrace authentic human experiences.
00:00:21
Today, Adeline joins us and she's got a story to tell.
00:00:28
She talks about growing up in a household that was anything but supportive and loving.
00:00:33
From being apart from a biological mother due to a prison sentence, which gave way to
00:00:39
an abusive upbringing, under the hands of a stepmother who was controlling and manipulative.
00:00:46
She was left to figure it out on her own and alone early on in life with a lot of misdirected
00:00:52
energy and pitfalls along the way.
00:00:54
Despite these things, you can listen to her growth and how she dealt with it emotionally
00:01:01
and at last, that desire in her to want to be well and do well.
00:01:06
Let's get into it.
00:01:07
Ladies and gentlemen, Adeline and her story.
00:01:12
Hey, hey now.
00:01:15
Today, we are joined by Adi.
00:01:18
Adi, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to spend with us and share your
00:01:23
story.
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How's it going?
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How's everything going?
00:01:26
Things are going pretty good with me right now.
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Just chilling, kind of painting as we go.
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Yeah, all right.
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It's an everyday thing for you.
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Yeah, definitely.
00:01:35
That's right.
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The expression is important.
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So why don't you tell us a little bit about where you come from and how it was for you
00:01:44
growing up?
00:01:45
Yeah, of course.
00:01:46
My full name is Adeline.
00:01:49
I grew up in Dallas, Texas.
00:01:53
I spent a couple of years in Austin, but I'm back in Dallas now.
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I was born to my mom, Sarah, my father, Brian, and my mom was actually my dad's student.
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He was her professor at college.
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Yeah, he was like 36 and she was 20, 21 when she had me.
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They didn't really have the best marriage.
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They kind of just got married because my mom was pregnant with me and my dad's parents
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are super like, you have to be married to have a kid or a real relationship.
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So they kind of jumped up married then.
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I divorced pretty early on in my life.
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I was like six or seven.
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And then my dad married another student of his.
00:02:42
That was his MO, huh?
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He has a type, you know?
00:02:47
That's right.
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She came with my two step siblings, Kai and Talia.
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Kai was my age.
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Talia was about four years older.
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And life with them at first was pretty chill.
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There was a bit of a grace period, but their marriage kind of started going downhill when
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I was in like the fifth grade.
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My stepmom had a drinking problem and my dad just kind of, I don't know, he part of my
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friendship.
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He was kind of a posy.
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He didn't really stand up to her much and she was kind of violent.
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She was running the show, huh?
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Yeah, yeah.
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And whenever I was with them in like the fifth grade, my step sister also had developed a
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drug problem and that was kind of a lot to deal with because like addiction is just such
00:03:41
a hard thing to struggle with.
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And it was kind of hard to see her go through that.
00:03:46
Was she older than you?
00:03:48
Yeah, four years older.
00:03:50
And then we moved to a new house when I was like 11.
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And once we moved, my mom went to prison for methamphetamine and I think credit card fraud.
00:04:06
So I spent the next, I think it was like, say 2012 to 2016, about four years without
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my mom and I was alone with my stepmom and my father and my step siblings.
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And during that four years, my stepmom's mental health just kept going downwards and downwards.
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And my therapist has said, if you threw the DSM-5 at her, every page would stick.
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Like pretty intense.
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And I assumed she's been labeled as a narcissist by multiple health care workers I've been
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with and she did have a drinking problem and she also suffered from a lot of delusions.
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Like she was convinced that my mom and my grandmother and my mom's side hacked our phones
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through the Wi-Fi.
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She was convinced that everybody was spying on us.
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So that was like a bit of schizophrenia going on.
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Yeah, it was a whole bucket of things.
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During this time, would you still keep in contact with your mother?
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Like I mean, even if it was through writing?
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I tried.
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Me and my mom would send each other letters and they were fine with it except for one
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time I poured everything that I was upset about and what was happening.
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I just spilled all of it to my mom on a letter and my dad intercepted it and found it and
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I got in so much trouble.
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They made me feel so bad about it and it's like they were forcing me to be quiet in school.
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Like they never let us have friends over.
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They were trying, my stepmom at least was trying everything to keep our life under wraps.
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So once they found that letter, they didn't let me speak to my mom anymore.
00:06:06
And after that, my stepmom just kept feeding me lies and poison about my mom and it got
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to a point where I started going against her as well.
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And at this time, when I was about 11 years old, I was also developing an eating disorder
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that my stepmom didn't help with at all because both her and my mother suffered from eating
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disorders as well.
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My stepmom would always be making side comments about my older sister, about her weight and
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everything and I lived with my step-grandpa who was also not related to my stepmom but
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he acted like a father to her and he was a traditional Japanese man and I know he really
00:06:49
didn't mean any harm when he would call me a fat ass but as a teenage girl, you know,
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it's like, well shit.
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Yeah, yeah, you think you had your eating disorder and you were doing that to cope with
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everything that was going on, that was your...
00:07:03
Yeah, no, it was one of the few forms of control I did have and I also self-harmed a lot during
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that period and like during my middle school years, so from 11 to 14, 15, my stepmother
00:07:20
turned a lot of things against me.
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I was kind of the black sheep.
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I was the person who...
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She just pinned everything on me, like everything was my fault and she grounded me for years.
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I wasn't allowed to have an iPad, I wasn't allowed to have a phone, I wasn't allowed to
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watch TV for a bit, I wasn't allowed to read or draw.
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She took all of that away from you?
00:07:45
Yes.
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Damn.
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Of course I didn't.
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With the reading and drawing part, nothing can ever take me away from that and I was
00:07:54
like, if there's a rule I think is stupid, I'm not going to follow it.
00:07:58
Yeah, right, right.
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Now I mean, was she working?
00:08:02
How would she keep total control over you?
00:08:05
Would she come into your room and check or she was always around?
00:08:08
She was always around and she would have my older sister...
00:08:12
She was putting cameras in the home.
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She would have my older sister spy on me and she would have my older sister look through
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all my stuff.
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If I ever said, I used to curse online with my friends, I got in trouble for that.
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I got in trouble for the friends I had in general, even though they were my only support
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system.
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In fact, she had me and my step-brother move to different schools multiple times because
00:08:40
she didn't like the friends I had ever.
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So everything was pinned on you?
00:08:48
Yes.
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At least...
00:08:50
Wow.
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But whenever I was in freshman year of high school, something kind of turned and I remember
00:08:57
the night it happened.
00:08:58
It was kind of a weird thing to explain, but she found this website called TADS Wholesale
00:09:06
and it would let you buy used furniture for dirt cheap.
00:09:13
She spent thousands and thousands of dollars of my step-grandpa's savings to get all of
00:09:19
these used pieces of furniture.
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They literally filled up the house.
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The entire kitchen was covered in packing peanuts for a long time and she had this
00:09:30
grand idea that she was going to sell all of these things and start her own business.
00:09:36
But the furniture, all of it came pre-prepared.
00:09:42
We had to build the furniture basically from the scraps.
00:09:48
Okay, yeah, piece by piece, you had to put it together yourself.
00:09:53
She would have me and my step-brother putting together furniture for hours and hours and
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we'd be done at like 5 a.m.
00:10:04
We would get maybe a couple of hours of sleep, sometimes no hours of sleep before she took
00:10:10
us to school.
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And she was also convinced that our laundry machine, like our washing machine was, and
00:10:21
she was convinced that we were going to get really sick if we wore our clothes.
00:10:25
So on top of the furniture stuff, she would also take us to laundromats at ungodly hours
00:10:30
of the night, no sleep, drop us off at school.
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I remember one time I just sat down in front of a biology exam and I just started crying.
00:10:41
What do you think it was from?
00:10:43
Was it from the drinking or she had a severe mental disorder?
00:10:48
Severe mental disorder, definitely.
00:10:50
Damn, and nobody else was around like any outside family members that would come around
00:10:55
the house and say like, what the hell is going on here?
00:10:58
No, she wouldn't let them.
00:11:00
Oh, wow, so pretty much had you isolated?
00:11:03
Exactly, yeah.
00:11:05
And all of her family, her and my step-siblings are from Hawaii.
00:11:11
So any of her family was far away in Hawaii and same with my step-siblings family from
00:11:17
his dad's side.
00:11:18
And she didn't let my around his parents and she didn't let me have any contact with my
00:11:24
mom.
00:11:25
But yeah, no, I remember distinctly whenever she started to kind of change the focus on
00:11:34
me over to my dad was when I was 14.
00:11:38
Her and my dad got in like a really big fight because she was having me organize boxes that
00:11:46
this furniture came in and it was really late at night and my dad came downstairs and told
00:11:52
me that the boxes were fine, whatever.
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She came downstairs and the boxes weren't to her liking and she got really mad at my
00:12:00
dad because she felt like he was going easy on me and just saying things to like appease
00:12:07
me and her at the same time.
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And she got really freaking mad at him and she took a knife and she cut herself all the
00:12:16
way up to her forearms.
00:12:19
But yeah, no, she kind of overnight took the focus off of me and started pinning everything
00:12:25
onto my dad and they would get in fights all the time and me and my step-siblings kind
00:12:31
of started taking her side, kind of like a Stockholm syndrome thing.
00:12:36
And she also kind of developed, like have you heard of munchausen by proxy?
00:12:40
I haven't.
00:12:41
What is that?
00:12:42
So it's like a sort of mental disorder where you're convinced or you do it for attention
00:12:51
and say that your child has a physical illness that they don't actually have and sometimes
00:12:57
they'll even go to the links to like make the child have symptoms of.
00:13:03
Ah, okay.
00:13:04
Got you.
00:13:05
Mm-hmm.
00:13:06
Yeah, she developed that sort of thinking when I was about 14.
00:13:11
She was convinced that we all had staph infections, that we had Ehlers-Danzlo syndrome.
00:13:18
It's like a syndrome where you have really stretchy skin.
00:13:21
She was just convinced that we had this whole array of illnesses and she would take us out
00:13:25
of school, take us to the doctors and sometimes she'd be taking us to the ER again.
00:13:30
That just ungodly hours of the night.
00:13:32
And every single time the doctors would send us away but she was just convinced that we
00:13:36
had something and she wouldn't let that go.
00:13:38
Me and my brother liked it because we got to skip school all the time.
00:13:42
That is out of this work.
00:13:45
And your dad, like he wasn't, he was pretty much taking a back seat.
00:13:50
He didn't really have a say so in a matter.
00:13:52
Yeah, she was definitely the one calling the shots.
00:13:56
He was a professor at UT Dallas and she got him frowned from his job because she would
00:14:02
keep him up so late fighting and dealing with the furniture and taking us to the laundromat
00:14:08
or the ER, whatever it was.
00:14:10
Then he would just show up to work and sleep and have his TAs do all the work.
00:14:15
So he got fired pretty quickly.
00:14:18
And then he started working at Amazon and she would like track his phone all the time because
00:14:24
she was convinced that he was cheating on her and like she would let me and my brother
00:14:29
in on all of this drama that we shouldn't have been involved with.
00:14:35
And by the time I was 14, my step sister, I ran away from home.
00:14:40
The second she turned 18, she didn't even wait the month that she had to wait to graduate.
00:14:45
She was just out of there and she got married.
00:14:47
So yeah, she was long out of the picture and me and my step brother really, really relied
00:14:52
on each other for a lot of what was happening.
00:14:55
Like support, right?
00:14:56
Yeah.
00:14:57
If you didn't have anybody else, you had each other.
00:15:01
Yeah, exactly.
00:15:02
And then when I was about 15, my mom had gotten out of prison and she was fighting to not
00:15:11
even just have custody of me.
00:15:14
She just wanted to visit.
00:15:16
Visitation rights.
00:15:17
Yeah.
00:15:18
And my step, like she was trying to take us to court and to avoid getting served court
00:15:24
papers.
00:15:25
And my step mom would book hotels to take us to.
00:15:28
So she was that desperate to not have me see my mom.
00:15:31
She would just like book hotels and take us there.
00:15:33
And that was kind of weird.
00:15:35
And it really hurt my mom because whenever my mom tried to see me, I would yell at her
00:15:40
and I would be very cruel to her.
00:15:42
Yeah, that was awful to think about.
00:15:46
You felt like you were like lashing out.
00:15:49
That was like you're, you know, you taking it out on someone and it was really...
00:15:53
Yeah, exactly.
00:15:54
And looking back on it, I feel pretty bad about it.
00:15:57
I know it wasn't really my fault, but my mom ended up being one of the best people on the
00:16:02
planet.
00:16:03
I really love my mom.
00:16:04
But she knew what was going on and she knew that she needed to get me.
00:16:13
She knew that she needed to get me out of that house.
00:16:15
So she tried for about a year.
00:16:18
And during that time, my step mom was just so desperate to not have me be with my mom
00:16:24
that she tried to get me married at 14 or 15.
00:16:30
What?
00:16:31
Yeah, she tried to get me to get married.
00:16:33
Oh, she was all the way out there.
00:16:37
Yeah.
00:16:38
My God.
00:16:39
She definitely was.
00:16:40
Now, how can you get someone married at 14?
00:16:43
Is it by parental consent?
00:16:45
How does that work out?
00:16:46
Yeah.
00:16:48
She wanted to take me to Missouri because that's where it's legal to get your kid married
00:16:53
at youngest of 14.
00:16:57
And she was willing to pay a friend of mine that I went to high school with like a couple
00:17:02
thousand dollars and he would get his citizenship if he married me.
00:17:07
So she was trying to make it a win-win deal.
00:17:11
That plan fell through.
00:17:12
She was planning on just basically kidnapping me because she was trying to move to Washington
00:17:20
and they ended up actually moving to Washington.
00:17:24
How long did you, because you said you're 14 at that time, but how long have you been
00:17:29
dealing with this type of abuse and craziness for how many years up until then?
00:17:34
I thought it was about eight.
00:17:35
That's a long stretch.
00:17:37
Yeah, yeah, it really was.
00:17:40
But yeah, no, she tried getting me married and then she just tried straight up kidnapping
00:17:44
me.
00:17:45
So she got this wild idea to move to Washington because one summer my stepbrother and I, I
00:17:52
spent about three summers in Hawaii with this family.
00:17:54
Okay, cool.
00:17:55
What part?
00:17:56
Oahu or were you on a different island?
00:17:59
Kauai.
00:18:00
Kauai, okay, right.
00:18:02
I always wanted to visit Kauai.
00:18:03
I was on Oahu for a while, but I never got to visit Kauai.
00:18:07
Oh, Kauai is beautiful.
00:18:08
Definitely check it out at some point.
00:18:11
That natural beauty.
00:18:12
And it was cool living with the locals too because my stepbrother's family, his mom is
00:18:18
white, but he was half-Polinese and Japanese and Chinese.
00:18:23
And they all knew the best places to hang out, like only the locals knew.
00:18:27
That's always a place.
00:18:31
But yeah, no, one summer, it was the last summer we went there.
00:18:36
My stepbrother and I, it was just the two of us with his dad's family.
00:18:40
And we both hated being at home so much that he decided to just not go home.
00:18:47
And his family supported it because they hated my dad.
00:18:51
And they knew that Emma wasn't exactly the most healthy individual.
00:18:54
So I tried to stay too, but Emma, my stepmom threatened to take away my electronics that
00:19:02
I had just gotten back.
00:19:04
And she said that she would make my life a living hell.
00:19:05
So I was like, okay, I'm going home.
00:19:08
So he went AWOL.
00:19:09
Yeah.
00:19:10
So he stayed there for a couple of months.
00:19:12
And finally she went down there to get him.
00:19:16
And on their way back, they had to stop in Washington.
00:19:20
And they missed their flight in Washington.
00:19:22
And I don't know what possessed her to do this, but she rented a car or something.
00:19:27
And she drove down a bunch of the Pacific Coast Highway and got a flight back home from
00:19:33
California, and she was so enamored by the beauty of the West Coast that she just got
00:19:40
this wild idea to move there.
00:19:43
And she had this plan to just take me.
00:19:45
But before she was able to do that, they had one more court hearing.
00:19:51
And the cops actually picked me up from school for this.
00:19:56
And they took me to the courthouse, and they had me wait in the judge's office.
00:20:01
And I distinctly remember eating his yogurt from the fridge.
00:20:06
I don't really feel bad about that.
00:20:09
That was crazy.
00:20:10
And...
00:20:11
Hungry, huh?
00:20:12
Yeah.
00:20:14
I got out of the room and went to the courtroom and they were like, okay, you're just going
00:20:19
to spend like one week with your mom.
00:20:21
That's it.
00:20:22
See how you like it.
00:20:23
And if you don't like it, fine, whatever.
00:20:26
She had been out of prison for about a year at this point.
00:20:29
So immediately when I got to her place, she gave me a phone, which I had not really had
00:20:38
for a long time.
00:20:40
I did have one, but it broke.
00:20:42
And my parents really didn't want to fix it.
00:20:44
But you know, she immediately gave me a phone.
00:20:47
And I remember she packed me a giant lunchbox.
00:20:53
She filled that thing to the brim.
00:20:54
And I showed up at school and all of my friends just surrounded me, staring at it.
00:20:58
And they were like, oh my God, she gave you food?
00:21:01
Because my stepmom and dad never made sure I had food for lunch.
00:21:08
And yeah, she...
00:21:10
So you were going to school on an empty stomach that never really made sure, like to look
00:21:15
out for you to make sure you had anything to eat when you went to school?
00:21:18
Right.
00:21:19
That's cold, but...
00:21:20
I actually had food and she took us to...
00:21:23
It just happened to be the week before spring, but she took us to meet my friends to Six
00:21:29
Flags.
00:21:30
She made home-cooked meals every day.
00:21:33
Oh, that was a beautiful time then.
00:21:36
Yeah.
00:21:37
She took me...
00:21:38
Big contrast.
00:21:39
Yes, very much so.
00:21:43
She took me to my therapist at that time.
00:21:47
And before this, my stepmom had always rehearsed what to say to my therapist before I got there.
00:21:55
So I wouldn't be incriminating her at all.
00:21:57
But this time, my mom took me and I didn't have anybody to scare me into saying what
00:22:03
they wanted.
00:22:04
So I told my therapist everything.
00:22:07
And she was just shocked, like, and angry at my dad specifically because my dad was
00:22:14
the one who had engaged with her the most.
00:22:16
He was my biological father and she was really upset with him.
00:22:21
And I also told the court-ordered reunification therapist that they had assigned for me and
00:22:27
my mom.
00:22:28
I told her everything and she didn't believe me because my stepmom was just so good at
00:22:32
being a chameleon.
00:22:34
She could get along with anybody and they would never know.
00:22:37
And that was pretty rough.
00:22:38
She knew how to play the game.
00:22:40
I put on her face and played that role to make people believe whatever it is.
00:22:46
She wants them to believe at that time.
00:22:48
Exactly.
00:22:49
So this was in 2016.
00:22:52
And after that week, I said I wanted to live with my mom and it was over.
00:22:59
All it took was a single week to just end all of it.
00:23:02
And my stepmom and my dad and my step-siblings ended up moving to Washington.
00:23:06
And my dad actually divorced her in 2019.
00:23:12
And my dad and I actually lived together for a couple of years after the pandemic started.
00:23:18
After he spent a couple years in Washington.
00:23:20
And it was really hard dealing with it because I felt like he had abandoned me for my stepmom.
00:23:28
And I don't know, it was difficult.
00:23:31
It was also weird seeing him for the first time in like three years on graduation day.
00:23:37
And when we hung out, he just like brought out a bunch of pot, like weed, and it was
00:23:42
really weird.
00:23:43
Like my mom.
00:23:44
Yeah, yeah.
00:23:45
Was he before you had, before you had hooked up with him then, were you guys still like
00:23:50
talking on and off on the phone or anything like that?
00:23:52
No.
00:23:53
Oh, so it was just, it was a cold silence.
00:23:55
And then three years later, you actually like seeing him face to face again, live and in
00:24:00
the flesh.
00:24:01
Yep.
00:24:02
Wow.
00:24:03
Yeah.
00:24:04
And he had a bag of weed with him.
00:24:05
Yeah.
00:24:06
It was weird too, because like I had never known my dad as a pot smoker.
00:24:12
He had been sober my entire life.
00:24:14
So that was kind of funny.
00:24:16
Definitely weird though.
00:24:18
After all of, I guess he probably had some unwinding to do.
00:24:22
Very much so.
00:24:23
Yeah.
00:24:24
And he's still unwinding, honestly.
00:24:26
I think after years and years of being married to someone like that, it causes a lot of trauma.
00:24:33
You might do.
00:24:34
I'm curious.
00:24:35
I mean, you can answer if you want to, or if you feel comfortable with doing so.
00:24:41
But I wonder if you ever brought it to his attention.
00:24:44
Like, why did you allow a lot of this to happen?
00:24:49
Yeah, I have brought that up with him.
00:24:52
And he doesn't really have a good answer besides the fact that he was weak and he was trying
00:24:58
to make it work with her and I don't know, after.
00:25:02
So that was 2016.
00:25:04
I met my current ex-boyfriend in November of 2016.
00:25:11
My relationship with him, it wasn't violent, but it was definitely mentally abusive.
00:25:16
I dated that guy for two years and it gave me a lot of perspective on, you know, why
00:25:21
my dad stayed and seeing my mom's relationship with her ex, why she stayed.
00:25:26
I mean, sometimes you just think it's a go.
00:25:29
Yeah.
00:25:30
Yeah.
00:25:31
But yeah, I know, I'm glad I didn't end up going to Washington with them.
00:25:34
I mean, my dad told me it just got worse from there.
00:25:39
She whipped him with a phone charger so hard that he almost got blinded.
00:25:43
Oh, so it would get physical with them as well.
00:25:45
It wasn't just a mental warfare.
00:25:48
Yeah.
00:25:49
No, it got physical.
00:25:51
How about when she also hit you or it was the same thing?
00:25:54
It was like mental abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, manipulation, all of that.
00:26:00
Thank God.
00:26:01
I mean, but that was enough.
00:26:04
Like what it sounds like.
00:26:05
And I mean, I'm sure that's just the tip of the iceberg, but damn, I mean, you had to
00:26:09
go through the ringer.
00:26:12
Yeah.
00:26:13
Yeah.
00:26:14
And then after you met up with your father again, were you able to forgive him and kind
00:26:20
of move on and build or how was your relationship with him now?
00:26:25
My relationship with him right now is good.
00:26:27
Okay.
00:26:28
He pitches in a lot monetarily, although I feel like mentally he's kind of checked out
00:26:35
a lot.
00:26:36
My mom, my biological mom, she has put a lot of work into our relationship emotionally
00:26:43
and it's done wonders for us.
00:26:45
But with my dad, I just don't know if he's capable of doing that kind of emotional work.
00:26:51
He's heavily medicated.
00:26:52
He smokes a lot of pop.
00:26:53
He's probably got his own skeletons to work out himself.
00:26:57
Yeah, exactly.
00:26:58
And he's had to live and learn and move on super easily.
00:27:05
My mom more so is reflective and she wants to work to make things right.
00:27:10
So we've been really focused on building our relationship over the last couple of years
00:27:13
and it's paid off a ton.
00:27:16
So your mother came around and you said you were in an unhealthy relationship for quite
00:27:21
some time and you, did you make the decision to break those ties or how did that work?
00:27:27
How did it work out?
00:27:28
Or how did it end?
00:27:29
How were you able to kind of get out of that web?
00:27:33
I met my ex about seven or eight months after I moved to my mom's and we hit it off pretty
00:27:41
instantly.
00:27:42
We started being boyfriend and girlfriend just a couple of days after we had met and
00:27:48
it was definitely the strongest connection I had really had with someone ever.
00:27:54
And we spent two years together and so I met him November of 2016.
00:28:04
Then in May of 2019, he went to prom with me and he met a good friend of mine there
00:28:13
and they started handing it off and it kind of freaked me out at first.
00:28:20
It really bothered me and he was like, no, there's nothing to worry about.
00:28:23
I got it out or whatever.
00:28:24
But then came a phone call between the two of them where basically she told him like
00:28:29
everything I've really lied to him about and it wasn't really anything intense.
00:28:33
It was like, oh, I watched Game of Thrones finale before I saw it with him and there
00:28:39
is the worst one.
00:28:40
The worst two was I got drunk at a party.
00:28:42
I told him I didn't get drunk at and the other one was that I sold feed pigs.
00:28:46
Okay.
00:28:47
Well, I mean, yeah, that's not, it's not the end of the world type of stuff.
00:28:50
Right.
00:28:51
But he called me and he was just furious with me, like threatening to break up with me,
00:28:58
all this, all this shit.
00:29:00
And she had just told him everything that I told her in confidence.
00:29:03
We ended up making up, but then he started telling me, hey, like we need an open relationship
00:29:08
or I'm going to break up with you before college.
00:29:12
And I, I, you know, stupidly said, okay.
00:29:18
And he was like, no, but we only can have an open relationship with this girl and her
00:29:22
boyfriend, the friend of mine.
00:29:25
And it bothered me, but I, you know, was really attached to him.
00:29:29
So I said, okay.
00:29:30
And the whole summer of 2019 just consisted of us fighting, you know, dealing with jealousy.
00:29:37
He took her in because she was, um, she was being abused by her ex-boyfriend now.
00:29:45
And like she stayed with him for a while and it was just a whole mess until I said, hey,
00:29:51
like I'm not comfortable with this anymore.
00:29:53
We got to stop.
00:29:54
And he was like, okay, but it didn't stop him.
00:29:58
She messaged me a couple months later with screenshots of everything.
00:30:02
And I pretty much broke up with him right then and there.
00:30:05
But yeah, no, he was just very mentally abusive.
00:30:09
And I guess I kind of have made up with him a little bit, but there's no way I'm ever
00:30:14
going to be with him as a friend or as a partner.
00:30:18
Okay.
00:30:19
It's probably for the better.
00:30:20
Yeah.
00:30:21
Yeah.
00:30:22
Listening and hearing some of, some of what you had to go through.
00:30:27
What, like what was a, I know you said you had an eating problem and you had, that was
00:30:31
something that you felt like you had control over.
00:30:34
And it was like a coping mechanism, but was there anything else that kind of helped you?
00:30:40
I know you, you paint.
00:30:41
That's, that's like one of your, that's your baby right there pretty much, right?
00:30:46
Yeah.
00:30:47
Yeah.
00:30:48
Absolutely.
00:30:49
Um, I've always turned to art as a coping mechanism.
00:30:53
I, my friends have always been, I've always had amazing groups of friends, honestly.
00:30:58
Um, and like, so you always, always been to art even at a young age, like I'm talking
00:31:04
five, six, seven years old or absolutely.
00:31:07
Yeah.
00:31:08
Um, it runs in my dad's side of the family, definitely.
00:31:12
It's in the blood.
00:31:14
Yeah.
00:31:15
But yeah, no, I, whenever I was 11, I started, I started anorexic and it kind of transferred
00:31:23
to bulimic, but thankfully I have not relapsed since 2019.
00:31:28
Oh, good.
00:31:29
Good.
00:31:30
And I'm really happy about that.
00:31:32
And I haven't kept, I haven't self harmed and even longer.
00:31:36
Um, sometimes it's hard, but I'm just so far into my recovery now that I have enough strength
00:31:45
to, um, not relapse, which is really nice.
00:31:49
But yeah, no, definitely art has been my healthiest coping mechanism over the years.
00:31:55
I know some people, that's a way for that.
00:31:58
That's a sense of relief, whatever it is, if it's frustration, if it's tension, if it's
00:32:02
it, whatever it is that they feel they're able to express themselves and kind of just,
00:32:06
ah, I'ma let it go through my art.
00:32:09
Exactly.
00:32:10
Yeah.
00:32:11
And like I, so I broke up with my ex in 2019 and pretty shortly after COVID happened.
00:32:19
And while during the onset of the pandemic, I moved in with my uncle and my father, um,
00:32:25
because my father had divorced my stepmom and moved back to Texas.
00:32:30
So I stayed with them for a few years, uh, and it was pretty peaceful during that time.
00:32:35
I was able to just relax and I know the pandemic was hard for some people, but for me, it was
00:32:41
kind of a blessing in disguise, honestly.
00:32:44
I really enjoyed it.
00:32:46
Um, and life was pretty chill.
00:32:48
I was an art instructor.
00:32:49
I bartended for a while, um, have a lot of friends.
00:32:54
Um, but then last year in June, I entered a manic episode for the first time and it
00:33:03
kind of turned my life upside down.
00:33:06
Um, my father is bipolar and I got diagnosed with bipolar and I really didn't want to believe
00:33:12
it.
00:33:13
I was suffering a lot from like delusions.
00:33:17
I didn't sleep at all.
00:33:19
I was drinking all the time and just being really reckless with my life and, um, it just
00:33:25
tore everything apart.
00:33:27
Uh, I was supposed to move into an apartment and that fell through my cart just died, happened
00:33:33
to die.
00:33:34
Um, I got a bunch of shit stolen from me and all of it just kind of turned into a perfect
00:33:41
storm that landed me in a retreat or a treatment center for about five months.
00:33:47
And I actually got out of it less than a month ago.
00:33:49
I got out in February.
00:33:50
Okay.
00:33:51
Did you check yourself in or?
00:33:53
Uh, it was a mutual decision with me and my parents.
00:33:56
Okay.
00:33:57
Like an intervention type of thing.
00:33:59
Yeah.
00:34:00
So I've been getting treatment for it for the last five months and I'm on medication
00:34:05
for it and I'm stable, but it was definitely a really scary time, not just for me, but
00:34:11
for everybody around me because they saw me be such a completely different person out
00:34:17
of nowhere.
00:34:18
I was angry.
00:34:19
I was mean.
00:34:20
I thought that there was nothing wrong with me and it was everybody else that was in the
00:34:25
wrong and it was, it was, how long did that last?
00:34:28
How long did that go on for?
00:34:30
Um, about three months.
00:34:31
Okay.
00:34:32
And you were just, you were like a loose cannon.
00:34:35
You were out of control.
00:34:36
And I'd always felt ever since I was like younger and since I got out of that house
00:34:43
with my stepmom and dad, I have always felt like there is something wrong with me or just
00:34:50
something that he fist surfaced that not a lot of people noticed besides me.
00:34:55
Um, because I'm, I was very good at hiding some of my behaviors.
00:35:00
Um, I was very risky with my life.
00:35:02
I drunk drove a lot.
00:35:04
I was very with my safety and there was just a lot of things leading up to it that you,
00:35:11
that definitely identifies as bipolar.
00:35:13
But like I said, I was just so good at hiding it.
00:35:15
Yeah.
00:35:16
I'm really happy to hear that you're doing better now, especially like with the recklessness
00:35:20
I know firsthand because I mean, I've been through my fair share of running a muck.
00:35:26
And like you said, when you brought up just the drinking and driving, my goodness, I would
00:35:30
do that.
00:35:31
Like it was, like it was a thing to do.
00:35:33
I mean, I, I couldn't drive with, that was a time how crazy and insane it sounds.
00:35:39
There was a time that I couldn't drive without drinking or smoking weed.
00:35:44
It was, I mean, it, it's thank goodness that nobody was ever heard that you can always
00:35:50
put an innocent bystander in the middle of your recklessness and, um, yeah, it can be
00:35:55
a sad story.
00:35:56
Yeah.
00:35:57
Yeah, absolutely.
00:35:58
I made a pinky promise with my mom that I would never drunk drive again and I haven't,
00:36:03
I don't know, it's just something about my mom.
00:36:08
Like I can't lie to her.
00:36:09
Has it been hard for you to, I don't know how it is with your drinking.
00:36:12
Like for instance, is it hard for you to keep it under control?
00:36:16
You feel like that's, that's not really an issue anymore.
00:36:18
Um, I'm not sure.
00:36:20
Honestly, uh, I haven't, I've been sober for almost six months now.
00:36:25
All right.
00:36:26
Part of my agreement with my mother since I'm living with her now is that I have to be
00:36:30
sober.
00:36:31
I have a very plan on, um, drinking and smoking in the future, but right now I just think
00:36:36
I need to really take time to work on my mental health before I even think about returning
00:36:43
to that.
00:36:44
Do they, um, do they smoke weed in Germany?
00:36:46
I mean, they do, but it's not like it is in the States, especially like in California,
00:36:51
Washington places where it's legal.
00:36:53
But yeah, it's not really something that they do.
00:36:55
Of course, you know, they're doing everything in, in the streets and thing, but it's not,
00:37:00
it's not something that, that's done out in the open.
00:37:03
I mean, it's not like, say when I go back home to visit family in California, if I go
00:37:07
to Venice Beach or wherever I'm at, and you can just smell it in the air when you're walking
00:37:11
around.
00:37:12
It's not like that over here, but over here, what they do, it's like Vegas, you can drink
00:37:17
out in the open a beer and it's not a problem.
00:37:20
Like when you're in the train, when you're at the, the bus station, when you're at the
00:37:25
bus stop, wherever it is, you're at the park, people just have beers you're walking around
00:37:29
and you can crack open a beer and drink it.
00:37:31
That's not an issue.
00:37:32
Yeah, it is not like that in Texas.
00:37:35
Yeah.
00:37:36
It's not the only place I know it in, in the US is probably like New Orleans and Las Vegas.
00:37:41
Yeah.
00:37:42
But over here, it's the normal, like you can drink, I mean, yeah, what is it?
00:37:46
16, I think 16 or 18.
00:37:49
They are, they let you drink beer, but it's like a certain amount of alcohol that it could
00:37:54
have and then once you're 21, you could drink all of it.
00:37:57
Yeah.
00:37:58
It's a little different.
00:37:59
But for sure with that, with the weed, you know, it, it's not something that you smell
00:38:03
in the air like that everywhere.
00:38:05
Right, right.
00:38:06
It's not out in the open.
00:38:07
Yeah.
00:38:08
I really want to go to Europe one day.
00:38:10
I went to England when I was like 13.
00:38:11
Okay.
00:38:12
Yeah.
00:38:13
I've never been to England.
00:38:14
How'd you like it over there?
00:38:15
It was nice.
00:38:16
Um, I went on a school trip and, um, you guys had a school trip and went to England?
00:38:22
Yeah.
00:38:23
It was like a choir thing.
00:38:25
Um, that's a real school trip.
00:38:27
And I like they're going, we're going to the park today.
00:38:29
We're going to go to Disneyland, like right down the street, but to actually go to another
00:38:35
country.
00:38:36
That's, that's cool.
00:38:37
Yeah.
00:38:38
My grandma paid for it and it was a really nice of her, um, to do.
00:38:42
And, um, it kind of sucks cause all I really have is memories from there.
00:38:48
My stepmom destroyed my SD card from the camera I used and my just did everything else.
00:38:55
And all I had were a couple of necklaces and both of them fell off and I never was able
00:39:00
to find them again.
00:39:01
So like I've been to England, but I have nothing to show for it besides a couple of
00:39:04
tea bag wrappers.
00:39:06
Wow.
00:39:07
Whatever, whatever's still living inside of your, your mind and your heart as far as
00:39:12
memories, but it's like anything to hold or photos that doesn't exist.
00:39:18
Wow.
00:39:19
So you still, you, you said that your, your father and your stepmother divorced.
00:39:24
She's come, is she completely out of the picture now?
00:39:27
Uh, yeah.
00:39:28
She did text me a while ago before I went to the treatment center, but I just, I didn't
00:39:33
have like the words to reply to her and I went into the center the next day and I didn't
00:39:39
have my phone until, um, late January of this year.
00:39:44
So late September to early January, I just had no phone at all.
00:39:48
So you pretty much been like off of all of the social media is like no kind of internet
00:39:53
distraction or you have a laptop or a tablet that you can still plug into.
00:39:57
Yeah.
00:39:58
No, I had no internet, but honestly it was kind of nice.
00:40:01
It was nice.
00:40:02
Yeah.
00:40:03
That's like a digital detox.
00:40:04
Yeah.
00:40:05
Absolutely.
00:40:06
Um, and I think we all need that.
00:40:09
I, uh, let go of all of my old Instagrams.
00:40:11
I made new ones.
00:40:13
I made a new tick talk just because I wanted a fresh start and when I was manic, this is
00:40:19
apparently a common phenomenon, but I just totally embarrassed myself online.
00:40:24
Like, oh my gosh, the kinds of posts I was making, like I was so obvious off my rocker.
00:40:32
It's so hard to deal with the shame from that, but you know, it's over and I'm starting again
00:40:37
and I'm just glad I turning over a new leaf.
00:40:40
Yeah.
00:40:41
So how has it been with your recovery?
00:40:43
You're, are you, um, you're doing treatment or it's pretty much you're doing things on
00:40:48
your own just a day at a time?
00:40:50
How has that been?
00:40:51
I, I have my therapist.
00:40:53
Um, I've had her since 2017.
00:40:56
So we have a pretty good relationship.
00:40:58
Um, okay.
00:40:59
The same therapist the whole time.
00:41:01
Mm hmm.
00:41:02
And I have a psychiatrist.
00:41:04
It's been, you see them weekly.
00:41:06
Yeah.
00:41:07
Okay.
00:41:08
Um, psychiatrists kind of bi-weekly, but you know, it's, it's been a journey.
00:41:13
Um, it kind of sucks because you know, living with my mom and her whole like, her thing
00:41:20
is I need to be on medication and I need to be sober.
00:41:24
It's kind of rough seeing all of my friends go out and you know, have fun on social media
00:41:30
and I'm kind of build my life back up.
00:41:32
And I know that one day I'll be able to have that kind of fun again, but right now I just,
00:41:37
I need to live a quiet kind of life for the moment.
00:41:41
So it's been a little rough.
00:41:42
I get some serious FOMO, but I'm just, yeah, I could imagine.
00:41:46
I'm just that I'm getting to work on my relationship with my family, my little sister, half sister.
00:41:51
She is 14 and my little brother is three and a half.
00:41:56
Meaningful relationships with family.
00:41:58
How old are you?
00:41:59
I'm 21.
00:42:00
That's like the prime age.
00:42:01
I could understand what you feel like you, you want to be out and about and I can understand
00:42:06
that, but it takes some self-control and discipline and that's, that's also like, it's good to hear
00:42:11
that you're at least appreciating the fact like, well, I have time to kind of sit back,
00:42:16
reflect, take care of myself and get everything in order.
00:42:19
And then I also have family here that I can build a meaningful relationship with because
00:42:25
a lot of us, we can take that for granted.
00:42:27
And even if we have family around, but it's like we, we choose to make other people more
00:42:34
important and we put them over them.
00:42:36
And then even sometimes it's, it could be friends on social media that we're not even
00:42:40
seen on a daily basis, but we're giving them more time.
00:42:42
If it's online, then the people that are around us, like our own loved ones, that's good to
00:42:46
hear that you're, you know, you're appreciative of that.
00:42:50
Even if it took you going through what you're going through right now, but that you're conscious
00:42:54
of that and making an effort to build and make that a strong bond.
00:42:59
Yeah.
00:43:00
It's definitely a challenge, you know, just accepting the fact that I do have bipolar,
00:43:05
but it's also kind of nice to understand this is kind of what's been building up and this
00:43:09
is kind of what, you know, has been happening over the years.
00:43:12
It's just been slowly building up.
00:43:14
And I finally have something that I can say like, Oh, this is what was wrong with me.
00:43:19
This is why I felt like there is always, I try to channel my energy into things that
00:43:27
are helpful instead of harmful.
00:43:29
In 2021, I actually took myself to Alaska for two weeks in the dead of winter, just
00:43:35
because I wanted to.
00:43:36
Okay.
00:43:37
We're at, we're at in Alaska.
00:43:39
Fairbanks.
00:43:40
Fairbanks.
00:43:41
That's it.
00:43:42
Yeah.
00:43:43
Over there they deal with the six months darkness, right?
00:43:46
Oh yeah.
00:43:47
It was crazy.
00:43:48
Did you get to see the Aurora lights?
00:43:50
A little bit of them.
00:43:51
Yeah.
00:43:52
I've been there a few times, but I've never been to Fairbanks, but I know it gets cold.
00:43:55
It got, it got to 40 below.
00:43:58
How do you go?
00:43:59
Can you actually go outside in that?
00:44:00
I mean, you put four, five, six layers of clothing on.
00:44:03
I don't know how.
00:44:04
Pretty much.
00:44:05
I used Facebook Marketplace to buy most of my clothes and I booked a hostel and I went
00:44:13
and it was super fun.
00:44:15
You just went on a whim.
00:44:17
You just wanted to do it?
00:44:18
Yeah, pretty much.
00:44:21
And some people might say like, that's, that's a sign of mania.
00:44:24
And I mean, I might, I can kind of agree.
00:44:27
I can kind of see where people are coming from, but to me, it would be mania channeled
00:44:31
in a like positive way.
00:44:35
Yeah.
00:44:36
I would think so because you're out there, you're going for the experience.
00:44:40
I mean, not too many people, you know, you're actually, you're getting out there, you're
00:44:44
leaning into life, so to speak.
00:44:47
Yeah.
00:44:48
I do have a dream of living in a van for a while.
00:44:53
I really want to do that.
00:44:54
And I really do want to hike.
00:44:56
Have you heard of the Pacific Crest Trail?
00:44:59
I have.
00:45:00
Yeah.
00:45:01
I really want to try and hike that before, before I'm 30.
00:45:05
So you've got a couple, already some things on the bucket list.
00:45:09
I actually had a co-worker who hiked the whole thing last year.
00:45:13
And it took her seven months.
00:45:15
And I would just like ask so many questions about it.
00:45:18
And she had beaten breast cancer and she started a GoFundMe and raised a couple thousand
00:45:27
dollars for all the supplies and everything.
00:45:29
And she beat the trail and she would get emotional talking about it too.
00:45:33
One time she teared up because she just missed the trail so much.
00:45:37
And I would really love to experience.
00:45:39
That's what you have on your radar.
00:45:41
You have that on your scope.
00:45:42
Yep.
00:45:43
That's right.
00:45:44
Yeah.
00:45:45
I think you can.
00:45:46
Why not?
00:45:47
Right?
00:45:48
But as far as the treatment and also you said that, that the art painting, that's always
00:45:55
been something that you can fall back on and that's, that's been, if it's not just a coping
00:46:00
mechanism, but it's a way you can express yourself, you can.
00:46:04
Yeah.
00:46:05
It's a form of expression.
00:46:06
I'm sure it really is.
00:46:09
And like, and you're doing everything like the charcoal, the acrylic, the oil, I mean,
00:46:15
but probably water paint also.
00:46:17
Yeah.
00:46:18
I like to experiment with everything, but I think my favorite medium is oil paint.
00:46:25
I'm still kind of like learning how to work with it and things like that, but I just love
00:46:31
the way they blend.
00:46:32
And I love the detail you can get out of them.
00:46:34
I was looking at a couple of them before we started talking.
00:46:37
One of them was that, I want to say was it an oil painting or acrylic?
00:46:42
I have it on my phone.
00:46:43
I could pull it up, but it was a nude body that's leaning, leaning back and it almost
00:46:48
looks like the head is branching off into the tree of life and it's real colorful that
00:46:54
really stuck out.
00:46:55
You do have a lot of cool stuff.
00:46:56
And even that one where it was a self portrait of you in your old room or your old house.
00:47:01
The one with like the swirl for a face.
00:47:05
Yeah, right.
00:47:06
That one, exactly.
00:47:07
Yeah.
00:47:08
That's a portrait of me at the house I lived in with my stepmother and my father.
00:47:11
So that was you pretty much putting on canvas, like your emotions or what you were going through
00:47:16
with that at that time of your life?
00:47:19
Yeah, I appreciate that.
00:47:21
It really took a lot of people like my work.
00:47:25
No, yeah.
00:47:26
No doubt.
00:47:27
I mean, it kind of sucked.
00:47:28
Before I had to go to the treatment center, I was making good money off of my art and
00:47:33
I'm kind of starting to get back into shows and stuff in Dallas and I'm excited to just
00:47:39
kind of enter the community again.
00:47:41
And I already, I have like three shows lined up, so I'm pretty excited.
00:47:45
Is it one of those things like for the night you get to display your stuff on a wall?
00:47:48
Yeah.
00:47:49
All right, cool.
00:47:50
And you said you're teaching too?
00:47:52
You're still doing that?
00:47:53
Teaching art?
00:47:54
Yeah, I applied to a couple of them up in Dallas.
00:48:00
I'm still waiting on them to get back with me, but I didn't interview and everything.
00:48:05
So I'm hoping.
00:48:06
Yeah, doing a lot of stuff with your medium right there.
00:48:09
And I always bring it up and I think about it also just that I'm always just appreciative
00:48:14
of anybody who's willing to speak on any kind of podcast about something that's personal,
00:48:20
just the fact that you're willing to share this.
00:48:23
I appreciate that.
00:48:24
I mean, it takes it takes a lot of courage and yeah, I'm always thankful and respectful
00:48:29
of people that are willing to do this.
00:48:31
So thank you for that.
00:48:34
First of all, and second, is there any, any advice that you can offer to somebody who
00:48:42
maybe is going through something similar, whether it's an eating disorder, self harm
00:48:49
or in a unhealthy and toxic environment and they either feel alone or they're not, they're
00:48:57
not knowing what to do.
00:48:58
I would say for anybody who's going through a toxic situation, one day at a time, I remember
00:49:06
thoroughly like my stepmom on top of everything.
00:49:09
She'd always had me cleaning like it was kind of insane.
00:49:13
I would come from school.
00:49:15
She made me take out everything from the cabinets, wipe it, steam clean it, maybe scrub all tiles
00:49:19
and all that shit.
00:49:21
I would just tell myself it's already over.
00:49:25
I mean, all you have now is the present moment and I know it seems like it'll be a long time
00:49:30
if you have no control over it, but just repeating to yourself that it's already over.
00:49:34
It's already over.
00:49:35
I mean, one day you wake up and it's years later and you're out of it and you're like,
00:49:39
oh shit, it's already over.
00:49:41
And I would also say just find at least one coping mechanism that isn't disruptive, whether
00:49:46
it be working out, journaling, drawing, exercise, like dancing, whatever it may be, getting
00:49:52
out in nature.
00:49:54
Just finding that one thing, that one niche you can put yourself in that is helpful.
00:50:00
It opens a whole door of possibilities, whether it be for your career or just something that
00:50:06
gives you peace of mind.
00:50:08
Having a coping mechanism like that is always worth it.
00:50:12
That's something that it always seems to be like the underlining factor that I've heard
00:50:17
with the few people that I've already spoken with and then even people outside of the podcast,
00:50:22
but that they have something or they found something, whether it's art, whether it's
00:50:28
music, it can be even just a family member.
00:50:32
It could be someone who was looking at their niece and saying that, you know, I just want
00:50:37
to be that better uncle or I want to be that better father.
00:50:41
And whatever it is that is there why to start, you know, making some changes and putting
00:50:48
things in order to where they can be either a better role model or they could be around
00:50:53
long enough to watch life pretty much going a better direction.
00:50:59
I'm going to leave.
00:51:00
I know you said you just started your Instagram and I just put mine up as a matter of fact,
00:51:04
but I'm going to leave links to your work.
00:51:07
You have a couple of platforms, right?
00:51:09
Where you're displaying your art.
00:51:11
And one of them is Instagram.
00:51:13
You still have any for sale or you have all my stuff is for sale.
00:51:19
Oh, everything is okay.
00:51:20
Yeah, some of the stuff I've sold already.
00:51:23
But if anybody messages me, I'm pretty good at reasoning with prices.
00:51:27
I don't really have set prices, but it's hard that that's the thing.
00:51:31
How do you always always something that I had on mind like how do you how does an artist
00:51:35
put a price on their art?
00:51:36
Is that something that's hard for you to do?
00:51:39
Not really.
00:51:40
Honestly, it's kind of funny being an artist.
00:51:44
It's very common for my most popular paintings to be paintings.
00:51:47
I like the least.
00:51:51
It's pretty easy with that.
00:51:53
What a platform have you had the most success with or the ones, you know, the most traffic
00:51:57
is as far as people getting in contact with you and wanting to buy something.
00:52:02
Instagram is definitely best.
00:52:04
I used to have a TikTok with a couple thousand followers, but I deleted it or a couple thousand
00:52:08
followers, but yeah, Instagram is definitely the best.
00:52:12
Addie, thank you.
00:52:13
I appreciate your time.
00:52:15
I know you had a couple obligations beforehand, but we still worked it out and we got together
00:52:20
and we were able to hook up so you can share your story.
00:52:23
Is there anything else before we wrap it up that you'd like to leave off with?
00:52:28
Nope, just that whoever's listening to this.
00:52:30
I love you.
00:52:31
And I hope you have an amazing day.
00:52:33
Oh, that's beautiful.
00:52:34
Thank you so much, Addie.
00:52:35
Appreciate it.
00:52:36
Yeah, no problem.
00:52:41
To express oneself, be it through art, song, dance, poems can be in its own right therapeutic.
00:52:51
At a line, she has art.
00:52:53
She does it through painting, sometimes through the tragedy, despair, through those black
00:53:00
skies, something beautiful can be born.
00:53:03
And for her, the brush, oil or water paint to a canvas does it.
00:53:10
She's been through a lot.
00:53:12
The pain of broken relationships, a mentally deranged stepmother with no support or respect
00:53:20
offered to her.
00:53:22
It'd be easy to lose hope emotionally, mentally, spiritually.
00:53:28
She was beaten, even broken, but she wasn't finished.
00:53:34
And that's the heart of what we're about over here.
00:53:37
It's not whether or not you get knocked down, but it's whether or not you get back up.
00:53:43
Even if what's left in us is a little bit, we can give that little bit some love, care,
00:53:50
and inertia.
00:53:51
That is enough to turn a seed into an oak tree.
00:53:56
To those of us that are treating the smallest of things as if they're big, more shall be
00:54:01
given.
00:54:02
Let's not forget that.
00:54:03
At a line, she's doing the self-work and she's making the effort.
00:54:09
She's got a mother back in her life, her biological mother, and she's found a place as one of
00:54:14
the giants amongst us.
00:54:17
You can find her on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.
00:54:22
Share you can connect and check out more of her artwork or just say hi.
00:54:26
All of those links will be for you to find underneath this episode in the description
00:54:32
box.
00:54:33
I'd like to again thank her for taking time to share her words and her story.
00:54:40
And to everybody listening, let me know what station you are plugged into.
00:54:46
Is it Spotify?
00:54:47
Is it Google?
00:54:48
Is it Amazon Music?
00:54:50
And to help spread this show organically, share it with a neighbor, a loved one, and
00:54:56
give it a review or rating, good or bad, it's all good to me.
00:55:00
And before I check out, if you'd like to share your story, or maybe even a story of someone
00:55:07
in your life that has impacted you in a positive way, you can always reach out to me via email.
00:55:14
I'd be happy to connect.
00:55:16
Until next time, and very soon, peace.