051 A Wildfire That Ended An Abusive Marriage

In this episode, Angela Legh opens up about her experience of abuse during childhood and later one in a toxic marriage. After a terrible fire, called Tubbs Wildfire, destroyed their home, Angela was forced to confront the devastation not only externally but also internally. This unexpected event became a catalyst for her to reassess her life and make the courageous decision to leave behind the toxicity of her marriage.

Through vulnerability and strength, Angela recounts how she navigated through the darkness, found the courage to prioritize her well-being and practice self care.

She is now a children’s book writer, where she teaches healthy ways to manage emotions through storytelling.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I did get married at the age of 20 to a man who was 32. It was my first act of self-love, choosing myself over someone else's needs.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hi guys, Janneke here from Multispective. Today I'm here to share with you our 51st episode where I interview Angela Lee. She was raised in an abusive environment with a very angry father to going into a very, very toxic and abusive relationship until one day she decided to leave that marriage, rebuild her life. She talks about some details about the abuse, so trigger warning there for you. But stay tuned, be inspired by the wonder she's got to offer and how she's She's taken all the anger that was around in her life and turned it into something so beautiful. I really hope you enjoy this episode. Please don't forget to subscribe. Drop a comment letting us know. Every single comment that you send us is feedback for us to do a better job for you. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you. Welcome to Multispective. I am so, so excited to have you here.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Thank you so much. I am really excited to be here and just chat with you and see how we can uplift and empower your audience.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

I feel like you have such a story. You've been through so many different waves of adversity. And I think like, you know, again, it's one of those like reminders of what life really looks like. It's like, you know, you overcome one hump and then another one comes along and it's just like these little waves. But then the beauty

SPEAKER_01 1:40

about you... Life is a roller

SPEAKER_00 1:47

coaster.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Right. So in a way, you know, it's starting

SPEAKER_00 2:39

from your father being abusive, the way that you took it as a as a child was to hide, to be as invisible, to make yourself as small as possible so you would not be the next target.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Yeah, pretty much.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Do you have siblings?

SPEAKER_01 2:53

I do. I have three sisters and I have one younger. She was the baby so we all kind of protected her as best we could. And then my older sister, she had to take a lot of the brunt of the abuse because she would stand up for us. And so as much as I experienced, she experienced more. I've never been asked that question and it's food for thought, right? I think that my whole mission in life right now is to understand what children are going through and empower them to overcome the adversity.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

I love how where you are now, where you stand now, and we'll give you a chance to tell our audience a little bit about that, but I love how this sort of inspiration for you was turning it into helping little children you know because i think the way i definitely agree with you on a lot of ways i always see that a lot of the reasons why people experience um or make certain decisions as an adult it always comes from their childhood trauma very much so it really starts from the beginning yeah yeah yeah

SPEAKER_01 4:30

yeah

SPEAKER_00 4:33

tell me about your mom and in all of this

SPEAKER_01 4:35

so my mom was like the light in our life she she was the one who um showed us love, showed us what love was, and did her best to keep the family whole and strong. But she was also the one who had to go to work, because my father was not a very good provider. And so, I think my parents divorced when I was 10 years old, which was a liberation. You know, a lot of children see divorce as, oh, you know, what did I do to drive my parents apart? or they'll look at it as, I don't get to see mom or dad. For me, it was like, oh my gosh, I don't have to see dad anymore. And that was very liberating. But my mom, she got to that point after she had so many calls from the kids, like after school, in the daytime, dad's doing this, dad's doing that. And she couldn't stand the pull between her responsibilities at work and her responsibilities to her children.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Yeah, I can imagine that being really difficult. And for you guys, what was some of the kinds of abuse that you were facing? Was it very physical or was it more emotional? It

SPEAKER_01 5:55

was more emotional, though one of the things that has come to my understanding is that there's a good chance that I was sexually abused as a very young child and I repressed it. And sometimes those experiences because it's so traumatic it becomes like it happened to somebody else or it's you know you disassociate from that experience so I have no memories of it and yet I have like a knowing that that probably happened so interesting

SPEAKER_00 6:31

how did you come to understand that or feel that or know that

SPEAKER_01 6:36

you know it's interesting my current husband when I first met him he he asked me If I had been sexually abused, and I told him, you know, I don't know, he says, Well, you're carrying that energy. So I'm like, Okay, let me explore that.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Wow. So your husband was able to tell that this had potentially happened to you? Was it in sort of like your demeanor, the way that you were handling, say, intimacy?

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Not, not especially, it was that the level of my voice, because Because in his, he's a former doctor. And in his practice, he noticed that ladies who were sexually abused, their voices were higher. So, yeah. Very interesting.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

What about, did you ever speak to your sisters about that?

SPEAKER_01 7:29

You know, we have never talked about that. And the thing is that, like one sister is so disassociated from her emotions that she doesn't even want to talk about anything. And my older sister, we probably could talk about it, but I haven't like broached that subject with her.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

No, yeah. It's one of those things where you've just sort of been around each other on a very different kind of level that dredging up something like history is just, it's not only painful, but it's kind of re-traumatizing and you're listening to parts of the story. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Yeah. And so I, it's not that I feared a trick. I don't want to cause– in fact, as we're talking on this podcast, I'm like, hmm, I wonder if my sisters are going to hear this. I don't know. And if they do, it would have been better if I said something beforehand, but the cat's out of the bag.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Hey, maybe this might just start a conversation. You never know.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Do you think that– Processing and reprocessing trauma or talking about trauma. And I ask this because you've done a lot of podcasts where you've talked about your childhood. Does it get easier?

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Yes. And, you know, one of the things that I teach is how to be with your emotions, because what I realized from my father is that he drank because he didn't feel like he was a good person that that, you know, his father had instilled in him that he was a loser. So he lived up to his father's expectations, but he couldn't live with himself in that expression of his life. So he drank. And that numbing of emotions through alcohol or drugs or self-harming or overeating or bulimia or anorexia or shopping or gambling or any of these addictions or behaviors that we adopt to numb ourselves from the pain of our emotions. And the thing is, an emotion is energy, and it only takes about two minutes for the full cycle of the chemistry of an emotion to flow. But our minds get caught in the circumstances. And so our minds revisit the circumstance and bring the emotion up again and again and again and again. If we can disconnect our mind and just focus on the emotion, it can flow. And how I teach that is focused attention, you just focus on how you're feeling. And you put all your mind on it, like, where is it? What does it feel like? Is it sharp? Is it a dull pain? Is it crunchy? Is it you know, how to explosive? How does it feel? And when you're doing that, your mind is not focusing on the circumstances. And so that at that point, you're giving yourself permission to feel and that giving permission to feel is life transformation.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

How

SPEAKER_01 10:40

long did it take you to get to this sort of place? I had a friend who was doing energy work on me and she would be like, you have to feel this. And I'd be like, no, I hated that feeling. I don't like it. And so, yeah, she introduced me to the idea that it's okay to feel a feeling.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

I really, really like that. I think that's such an interesting way to look at it because I know for myself, and I'm sure there are a lot of other people out there who feel like the start Absolutely. The Body

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Never Lies by Dr. Alice Miller is a book that talks about severe childhood trauma and repressed feelings. And she says that you cannot heal it until you feel it. And so, you know, what happens with children who are abused, they don't have a voice in what's happening to them. They don't have a voice. They don't have the ability to say, hey, this isn't right. You shouldn't be doing that. triggers that memory that is still buried in them, then they are reactive, not only to what's happening in front of them, but all that history of their emotion. So they need to be able to express how they felt about what was going on. And I didn't do that until I was, gosh, 55, I think. Being able to scream at him for what I went through.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Can you tell me about what was life like after your mom and your dad got a divorce? And I suppose you and your siblings moved to stay with your mom.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Yeah. So we moved from San Francisco, a very metropolitan area, to Sonoma County, which is just 60 miles north. And it's a beautiful place and more rural than I grew up in. So, it was a shock to move into, you know, this cow town of Petaluma and, yeah. So, life was, it was, there were less crisis happening. It was easier. And we were financially constrained because, you know, my mom could only earn what she could earn and she had four kids to support. So, yeah, without state aid, we wouldn't have made it, but we did. And that her choice to take us away from the emotional abuse of my father was probably the best choice of my young life.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

did your mom ever find anyone else

SPEAKER_01 13:53

nope she no she's very catholic and so she was like if i if i marry anyone else i will be um an adulterer by the church and so basically she just um she had a boyfriend for a while but she she did not marry again yeah

SPEAKER_00 14:14

wow yeah and i can only imagine how difficult that must have been for her did any of you ever try to encourage her to find someone else or move on and have the life that she could have had for herself?

SPEAKER_01 15:08

You know, my mom's very, she's a devout Catholic. And so it would have been, I don't want to say useless, but I wasn't going to change her mind on how she thought about the fact that she divorced my father. And so I just let her live her life and didn't try to introduce her to anybody or anything.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

What was it like now? Navigating

SPEAKER_01 15:33

romantic relationships for you. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, like

SPEAKER_00 16:35

without even knowing it, maybe it was like, that made you go and choose a partner that was so reflective or just mirroring that that you'd known of.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Yes, absolutely. And I think that that is a pattern of behavior that many people who experienced abuse in their childhood, they kind of get stuck in that pattern. And I remember it was like these cycles of, you know, I left that marriage and that's a whole story in itself. And then the next boy Right. Yeah. And you

SPEAKER_00 18:16

know what? I can imagine it getting even harder because not only did you experience this as a child and you're having this battle that you're already facing where you're not loving yourself, but then you go into one relationship, two relationships where if there's anything that's coming out of it, it's like they're validating the lack of self-love or they're validating the lack of self-love. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

somewhat abusive. It was very emotionally abusive, never physically abusive. I probably would still be in that marriage if a wildfire had not destroyed our house. And that happened in 2017 in Sonoma County. There was a terrible wildfire called the Tubbs Wildfire. And overnight, it destroyed 5,000 homes, one of which was ours. And having that rug pulled out from under me, put me into what I call a dark night of the soul. And I started questioning if life can shift in 10 minutes, if you can go from a homeowner to homeless in 10 minutes, then why are you living a life that you're miserable? And so what I ended up doing is talking to a psychologist, I talked to a life coach, and I basically just continued to answer ask these deep questions. What do I want from life? Who do I want to be? Is this the life that I want to live for the rest of my life? And the answer, it was a resounding no, I didn't want to live that way for the rest of my life. So I ended up, it took me six months, but I did end up leaving that marriage. And I started really a long healing journey, just trying to understand Why was I reactive in the way that I was reactive? Why did I allow myself to be treated in that way? And really, if the fire didn't happen, I wouldn't have asked those questions. And I wouldn't have decided that I wasn't living the life that I was meant to live. I had this general idea that everybody deserves love. And so I stayed because I didn't want to hurt him. And it wasn't until after I left that I realized that I was giving love to everybody except myself because I was not choosing my needs ever.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Yeah, I was about to actually kind of intervene or interrupt when you said everybody deserved love because I was like, where do you fit in that equation?

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Thank you. And

SPEAKER_00 21:34

in a way, I think by doing something like that, you're relieving the other person of an unhappy, toxic marriage, too. And I think we often lose sight of that, because we think that if we stick around, we are giving that person a life that they need. But, you know, when you step out of it, you're like, actually, I've saved this person,

SPEAKER_01 21:50

you

SPEAKER_00 21:51

know, from being so unhappy for so long as well, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Yeah, and the burden of the judgment, because I judged his anger. And Now he's free of

SPEAKER_00 22:09

that. You know,

SPEAKER_01 22:33

it's like, had to share like a little bedroom with a little twin bed. And that was pure hell for me. After that, we moved into a 900 square foot house. And that was better. I had a little breathing room, but that wasn't enough. And then we ended up purchasing a 4000 square foot house. And then I had enough breathing room. And what I realized is that being in the same room with him would bring my energy down. And I realized this right before I left that when he walked in the door, my stomach would drop because I didn't know what to expect from him. I walked on eggshells constantly. Maybe a month before I left, my massage therapist suggested that I read a book called The Narcissist's Worst Nightmare. And I was shocked by that book. I saw my life in the pages. And that, well, I'll tell you the one thing that sealed the deal. The weekend before I left on a, I think it was a Monday. So the weekend before his childhood best friend and his wife came to visit. And my former husband treated me so well during that weekend. And after they left the next morning, I said, why is it that you can treat me so well when your friend is here, but you don't when they're gone? And he said, I can only wear that mask for so long and I was like oh my god that's like the most honest thing anyone's ever said to me and that sealed the deal yeah

SPEAKER_00 24:42

I just want to like sort of go back and before we before we talk about the actual ending in what ways can you give me some more examples of like how it was sort of toxic how how was he treating you badly

SPEAKER_01 24:54

I don't like revisiting these but I remember that we were going to visit my daughter she was in college and it was a six-hour We were supposed to leave at noon, and he was delayed at work and came at 2 p.m., loaded my son, our son, up in the backseat and started driving. He was vociferously complaining about this guy at work who made him late. And he was talking about how he could physically injure and kill this guy who made him late. And I said, our son is in the backseat. Please tone down. And for the next six hours, he screamed at me for not supporting him. And then two days later on the way home, he screamed at me for another four hours about the same thing. That was the kind of behavior that I allowed myself to experience.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Did you ever try couples therapy? Or did you ever encourage him

SPEAKER_01 26:31

to check and do some therapy?

UNKNOWN 26:33

No.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

You know, one of the problems with couples therapy is both people think it's the other person's issue. And that was definitely the case in our, you know, and I was in so denial. I had no idea how my childhood was influencing my triggers, emotional and behaviors, that I really did think he was the problem.

UNKNOWN 26:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

And I could probably say the same for him. point in time that they were probably angry with me because they had always had me in between them and dad. And so they had this buffer zone trying to keep them from experiencing that raw anger energy. And when I was not there, they had to experience it. So yeah, who could blame them for blaming

SPEAKER_00 27:51

me? Did you notice he was very different with you and your son versus his own daughters?

SPEAKER_01 27:55

No.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

No.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

No, he loves his children and he would never purposefully harm them, but he doesn't understand emotions and he doesn't understand how his behavior harms others.

SPEAKER_00 28:11

Walk me through that day, that day that you decided, I'm done with

SPEAKER_01 28:18

this. So that day, two days before I had transferred some of our insurance money into an account in my name only. And I changed the password on our online banking so he didn't see that. I went grocery shopping and I came home and I sat on the couch across from him for 40 minutes trying to work up the nerve to tell him I was leaving. And finally I stood up and I said, I can't do this anymore. I'm leaving. I was surprised. You know, I have to preface this by saying that he lashed out at others when he was hurt. And so So I had no idea how he would behave when I chose to let him go. So I packed a suitcase and I walked out the door and I left. And I went to a friend's house and stayed there for a night and cried. And there are a lot of days filled with crying because I felt like a failure. I tried to love him as best I could and I tried to help him understand how his behavior affected others. And there was no room for that. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

Do you know where he is now? And what's he up to? Is he seeing anyone now? I just wonder if they did

SPEAKER_01 29:37

actually. My son rents the downstairs apartment in that 4,000 square foot house. And so I know that he's still there. I don't know if he's seen anyone. I wish him the best. I still love him. And I just know that I cannot be with him. And, you know, I'm remarried. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

So

SPEAKER_01 30:00

it's

SPEAKER_00 30:03

a done

SPEAKER_01 30:09

deal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

When did it go from being like an outward motion of like you taking the actions to self-love to actually internalizing

SPEAKER_01 30:34

that? Yeah, this reminds me of a conversation I had with a really good

SPEAKER_00 31:20

friend the other day, who's such an empath as well. Like every time we would catch up, he would just talk about like his care towards like the world and make it work. making the world a better place. But I've seen that growth in him as well, because I've known him for a really long time. And he talked about, I need to be able to do enough self-care for myself so I can give the world. So I need to look after myself.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

Exactly. You cannot give from an empty

SPEAKER_00 31:42

cup. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

I love that. Because I think that was like, that was like a wake up moment for me as well, realizing that, hey, like, it is okay, for example, to say no to somebody if you just simply don't have the capacity for it, because you're also not going to be able to help the other person Absolutely. Yeah. And

SPEAKER_01 31:59

it's also just knowing that... When you're coming from your heart, you're in service. But you don't have to cut out a chunk of your heart to do that. You can leave your heart whole and be in service.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

And also the fact that other people are generally more open than you think they would be. So what I mean when I say that is if somebody is calling out for help, and if you were to turn and say, I love you, I care about you, I'm here for you. I just don't know if I would be able to give you the help that you need right now. Give me two days or three days. I'll call you back. Most people are pretty okay with that you know they understand that

SPEAKER_01 32:41

right because one of the things that is so obvious to me is how we project our own stuff onto other people so when you're an empathic person the burden of carrying your own problems and someone else's can get so darn heavy and that's what i did all throughout my marriage you know he needed me so that he could feel calmer because I would absorb that energy and I am yeah I think the last thing I ever told him and this was after I left him was that I just I couldn't take his energy anymore

SPEAKER_00 33:22

when did you start did you ever sort of start therapy you talked about energy healing can you walk me through all of those you know processes

SPEAKER_01 33:29

all the different things yes oh

SPEAKER_00 33:30

my

SPEAKER_01 33:30

gosh okay so I saw a psychologist first and And she was very instrumental in helping me see, you know, because one of the things and I don't really want to go into this because I don't want to embarrass my former husband. But one of the first clues to me in our marriage that there was a toxicity problem was when he was screaming at my two year old about how he held the fork. And I told my therapist this and I said I should have left him then. And she said, yes, and what would have happened if you did? How much time would your son have been alone with him when he's angry? How much time would your son have not had you to intervene on his behalf? You made the choice that you made with the information you had. And you cannot second guess that. She's very wise.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

And this was sort of more on the therapy side, right? The psychology.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Yeah. So that's for your head, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

energy is really about moving the emotions because emotions are energy so the energy healing was I would do zoom calls with this woman that I met through mind valley and she would move the energy as you know she would tell me basically to stay in that emotion and then she would work to move the energy and that was that provided some profound healing space for me. But I got to the point where I'm like, you know, shouldn't I be able to heal myself? Do I have to rely on others to move my emotions? I don't think so. So I took a course on energy healing for three years called Mastering Alchemy. And I did the exercises and I let go of a lot of victim energy in doing that course. But also I learned about victim energy. And what is the first place I heard of the victim triangle, which is a concept that people kind of have a hard time with. So the concept of a victim energy triangle is that there's the persecutor, there's a victim, and then there's the rescuer. And how does the rescuer add energy into the victim triangle is by seeing the victim as a victim and needing to So, they're adding to the energy triangle with that expression. And I talked about that when I was living in England, because after the fire, I moved to England for a year, which was fun. I was talking about it with a group of people and a psychologist was there and she's like, wait a minute, I can't rescue kids who are being abused by their father. And I said, no, but you must understand that if you're in a grocery store and you see a child being physically abused by the father or mother, and you intervene, that child is going to get in that car and go home with that parent. And from my experience in intervening for my son, the hurt parent, the one who is attacking, is going to double down when they get home. So is your intervention helping or hurting? I mean, if you can physically take them away and get them out of that, then yes, that's a good intervention. But if you're just trying to stop a behavior, in a moment, just know that that behavior will continue when you're not there.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

Yeah. One of those things where the intention is good, but what can be the after effects can be way more devastating.

SPEAKER_01 37:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:19

But it's also really hard to just sit back and watch something like this happen.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

Right. You can't. So what I tell kids in my children's books is that when you see a conflict, you send love to both sides of the conflict. And that opens up the opportunity for each side of the conflict to choose love. And the more people we have on this earth who are sending love to people in conflict, the less conflict we'll have.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

I

SPEAKER_01 37:47

really like that. Yeah. It's like, don't pick sides. Just love them all.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

Yeah. I mean, it's a very, very difficult idea to sort of actually put into practice when you are right in the midst of someone bashing you, potentially physically hitting you. How do you send love to someone like that, especially when you've never been raised in an I don't

SPEAKER_01 38:09

want your listeners to think that that is what I'm suggesting. Because when you're in it, all you can do is survive. And when you're away from it, then you can have time to be introspective and make other choices. But if you are in a situation where you are victimized by someone else, then survival is the only thing you can do. You can't choose higher consciousness. You know, oh, well, I know he's projecting his behavior onto me. And so I'm just going to tell him, I'm your mirror. It all goes back to you. That doesn't work when you're in it.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

Now, I'm really intrigued as to how have you delivered this message in your books for little kids to sort of understand?

SPEAKER_01 38:56

So in the first book, which is Bella Santini in the Land of Everlasting Change, there is a chapter in which Bella ends up in an alternative land. And that alternative land is peopled by emotions and so sadness drops on her at one point and fear drops on her and at another point and anger drops on her and so as she's maneuvering through this world she's talking to her compatriot and they're giving each other advice about how to get through the different feelings and then another chapter later when they get back to the school the whole group of friends are talking about oh well you know my dad used EFT tapping and my mom used breathing techniques and she says that box breathing will calm your nervous system and so it's really about opening up awareness that you don't have to be victim to your feelings you can face them and you can accept them knowing that you have tools to get through them

SPEAKER_00 39:59

some very complex concepts here explained to little kids

SPEAKER_01 40:06

I can imagine

SPEAKER_00 40:07

I'm really interested in this because I myself am a teacher. I teach little kids.

SPEAKER_01 40:37

Yeah. Yeah. I think that, I don't know whether this

SPEAKER_00 41:26

is a cultural thing, but I do think that over here in China, I live in Shanghai, China, the concept of emotions is still felt. Yeah. So there's

SPEAKER_01 41:50

self-expression is so important. And expressing emotions is part of that self-expression. So there's negative emotional expression, which we've all experienced. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I

SPEAKER_00 42:41

like that. I think, yeah, I think one of the very important sort of practices that at least I try to implement in my classes is really boiling it down to the reasons, right? So oftentimes, you know, I ask the whys of the whys and I will keep asking the whys. And so I think my students have come to a place where they're like, well, why miss? Why miss? Why miss? Why miss? But I try to encourage that because I think that that sort of rationalizes why they feel a certain way, or at least they were able to sort of dig into that themselves.

SPEAKER_01 43:06

Yeah. Yes, which is wonderful. And that whole aspect of curiosity is encouraged. And that is also wonderful. I, you know, your classroom, if you're seven, eight, maybe a little young to have my books read to them. But I have to tell you that one of the most powerful experiences of my youth was having my second grade teacher read The Hobbit to us over the course of weeks. And

SPEAKER_00 43:34

so

SPEAKER_01 43:35

you never know. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

I'm going to keep a note of this for classes. All right. I'm going to end with one last question and I'll give you a chance to plug in some of your work as well. But for parents listening to this or people that are planning for children, what can we do to sort of provide our children with a very sort of secure upbringing where they are well in touch and in tune with their emotion? What can we do to support our children when we do see them?

SPEAKER_01 44:02

You know, the number one thing parents can do is model positive emotional expression. And most people are like, what the hell does that mean? And I'm like, okay, so if you are escaping an emotion, that's a negative expression of the emotion. If you are lashing out, that's a negative expression. A positive expression is to take the emotion and express it in a way that doesn't hurt you or others. So maybe you paint a picture. Maybe you go running down the street. Maybe you scream for five minutes. Maybe you punch a pile of pillows. There are many ways to express emotion through art, music, writing, or some of those physical activities that allow the energy to flow without, like I said, hurting yourself or others. And that if we can teach our children that, we have given them a huge gift.

SPEAKER_00 44:55

Yeah, I really like that. And that would also mean, say, with your child, hey, I can see on your face, you don't look very happy. Can you tell me how you're feeling? They tell you how they feel. Okay, let's do this together. Let's sort of punch it out. Let's get some pillows and let's start punching it out or something. So you sort of are not only doing it yourself, but you're doing it with your child, helping them release that emotion.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

Yes, that is beautiful. And yeah, that's the best way. But also being aware of how you deal with your own emotions. So do you crack that bottle of wine at the end of the day after a long, hard day of work? Because that is a negative expression of emotion. And so just being aware, you know, and knowing that you as a parent or teacher can say, look, I'm having a bit of a hard time right now and I need a minute to collect myself. So back off and I'll be with you in a minute. And that is modeling self-care. It's modeling that I'm honoring my need to express my emotions in a way that isn't going to hurt you.

SPEAKER_00 45:56

I really like that. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about some of the work that you're doing now?

SPEAKER_01 46:01

Yes. About a year ago, I started co-hosting on a television show called Every Child Can Learn. And it's really looking at re-imagining education of children. And it's an exciting show to be on. When you said that you're in China, I was like, oh, we talked about there's this, they use AI in the classrooms in some of the schools and it's like bands that the kids wear on their heads. And in America, most people are like, what? But it's monitoring their attention and reporting to the school and the parents How much attention kids are paying to their lessons. So while there's perhaps benefit, that's a little bit big brother to a lot of Americans. But so I'm on that show and just as a co-host, but I decided to launch my own show called Children's Lives Matter. And it's really looking in depth at issues that children face. So like today I was writing the script for the show that will be on Child's sexual abuse and what parents need to know about that. And, you know, how can they, what are the signs that their child might be abused and how can they intervene and how do they listen to a child? Because one of the biggest energies that children who are sexually abused experience is, is it okay for me to tell the other parent? Is it okay for me to tell my mom that her brother is abusing me? Is it okay? Is she going to believe me or is she going to believe him. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 47:37

And with this, do you interview adults who've gone through this when they were younger? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

My friend, Melissa Osorio, is going to be the guest on that show. And she has a book out called Hidden Memories. I think it's the name of it. But she was abused by her father from the time she was three until she was 16. And that led to really emotional disassociation from relationships so you know she she didn't realize it and she was like slowly going down in this rabbit hole of self-destruction and she went in desperation and did an ayahuasca ceremony and that's when she realized that she had been abused so yeah she brings a powerful story to

SPEAKER_00 48:28

it wow i love this can't wait to can't wait to to listen in on this

SPEAKER_01 48:34

now fortunately it's a streaming tv So it's available on Roku and Apple TV. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 48:42

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for being on this podcast with us. It's been such an honor to have you on the show. Oh,

SPEAKER_01 48:49

thank you.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

If you enjoyed the episode and would like to help support the show, please follow and subscribe. You can rate and review your feedback on any of our platforms listed in the description. I'd like to recognize our guests who are vulnerable and open to share their life experiences with us. Thank you for showing us we're human. Also, a thank you to our team who worked so hard behind the scenes to make it happen.

SPEAKER_01 49:15

The

SPEAKER_00 49:18

show would be nothing without you. I'm Jenica, host and writer of the show, and you're listening to Multispective.