Why did you Survive? Purpose in the Pain and Hope in the Journey
Mar 27, 2024Season 2Episode 11
Tina and Ann
This week's episode has never gone this deep before. Ann shares things she has never shared in this raw, unfiltered depiction of why she believes we survive the unthinkable. She shares why she dropped to the floor and found herself in a ball on the floor unable to get up. She finally found it within herself to get up and move, but what put her there and what helped her realize that she was able to rise up and be stronger than the pain.
This episode takes you on a journey through the valleys of personal adversity, where the strength to rise again is not just possible but an inevitable part of the human experience. Tina shares some of her very personal experiences and talks about a quote that deeply touched her and why she realized that one can only survive without hope for three months.
The goal is to move forward and realize why you survived through. Pain is movement (Ann) and there is no time stamp on pain. (Dawn Serra)
You will hear how strength often emerges from the darkest moments. Tina's reflection on the importance of hope underscores the essential role it plays in our ability to endure and overcome challenges.
This week's episode has never gone this deep before. Ann shares things she has never shared in this raw, unfiltered depiction of why she believes we survive the unthinkable. She shares why she dropped to the floor and found herself in a ball on the floor unable to get up. She finally found it within herself to get up and move, but what put her there and what helped her realize that she was able to rise up and be stronger than the pain.
This episode takes you on a journey through the valleys of personal adversity, where the strength to rise again is not just possible but an inevitable part of the human experience. Tina shares some of her very personal experiences and talks about a quote that deeply touched her and why she realized that one can only survive without hope for three months.
The goal is to move forward and realize why you survived through. Pain is movement (Ann) and there is no time stamp on pain. (Dawn Serra)
You will hear how strength often emerges from the darkest moments. Tina's reflection on the importance of hope underscores the essential role it plays in our ability to endure and overcome challenges.
Welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne. I am Tina and I am.
Speaker 2:
Anne, you know when the world kicks us, when we are down and it feels as if we can't go on for one more breath or moment. There is a reason why we did. There's a reason why we're here. I think everyone has been through times in their life when it hits you in the gut and somehow you find it within yourself to get up and do another day. You know, I can remember being on the floor like someone had kicked me so hard that I couldn't even get up, and it was over a devastating emotional blow. Nothing physical had happened to me, but I was actually in a ball on the floor and it felt like somebody had just kicked me in the depths of who. I was in my core. There are a couple moments in my life that I can say I didn't know I could make it, but I obviously did.
Speaker 1:
Oh yes, it takes me back to a couple of times where I felt the same way the day our baby was born, still the day my dog died oh my gosh, my forever best friend, it came out of nowhere the days, weeks, months leading up to my mom's official early onset Alzheimer's diagnosis, which, honestly, I've still not fully recovered from that last one. You know, sometimes I think you can be kicked down and you get up, but you're just not quite as strong as you were before you fell. That makes sense.
Speaker 2:
You know, I think that those times in our lives, even though they're so difficult and it just feels like we have been kicked, that, you know, somehow we figure it out and we just keep moving and that's what this episode is about. You know, a lot of people do not know this story about me because I don't really share it, and I decided I'm going to tell it and I'm not going to tell the whole entire story yet because I'm just not ready but at one point in my life my husband came home on his birthday and I said to him you know, what do you want to do for your birthday? And he said you're not going to want to do this after you hear what I have to say. And you know, have you ever had life just hit you so hard that it instantly goes in slow motion? Everything just slows down.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I feel like for the last year plus that's how it feels. It's almost like everything is spinning around me, but yet this longest goodbye with my mom is so slow and it just slows everything down in a grueling emotional way. And there are just certain points in time that have really taken my breath away, where I instantly feel like I'm just I don't know if trapped is the word, but probably just exactly what you used Almost like frozen, like you're trying so hard to process what's going to be said or what's going to happen or what just happened, and you can't, you just can't be prepared for it.
Speaker 2:
You know, I always think of this accident that I witnessed. That was a fatal car accident and I was driving right next to the man and I saw that it was going to happen. And I'm driving and I'm like looking at him and I'm like, can you see that this car is not stopping in this stop sign, that it is flying? And he was just looking and I was trying to wave to him and I just watched him go right into the windshield and it was instant and I cannot tell you I had to go to court because I was a witness and everything. But I cannot tell you how many times everything, just, and why, what? And you go through that survivor guilt. Even though I didn't even know him, I still had, like this survivor guilt and you know it really does make you question. But that slow motion thing I have remembered that so many times and it always goes into slow motion. I want to go back to my husband for a second, because when that happened it was like I couldn't even hear him after he said he was leaving me.
Speaker 2:
I had someone who I thought that I trusted as a friend and I called them and I said you know, I have nowhere to live. Because I didn't, he literally kicked me out of my own home. So these people said you know, fine, you know you can come and you can stay with us for For the next four years in their basement. I lived there and, like I said, I'm not going to say the rest, but there was a moment when I called him when I was living down there and I said to him that I loved him and he said I never loved you.
Speaker 2:
I literally fell to the floor and was not able to get up because the situation I was living in was so horrible and it was the realization that he wasn't the answer either and I was just kind of stuck in this situation. I didn't know what or how I was going to get up off of the floor and keep going. At that moment, you know, I eventually, of course, found my way out of the worst situation of a four-year abusive environment and if anyone wants to know why I stayed in it, you can be stuck and abused in plain sight and can't find the strength to even move because you simply don't have it. I was already breathless, voiceless, and everything just kept adding layers on top of the pain, and I couldn't even access the bottom layer in order to move.
Speaker 1:
I think sometimes people get in a bad situation or an abusive or traumatic situation and at the time you don't even realize it because you're right there in the middle of it. It's only hindsight, after so long of such abuse, that it really clicks and you think, oh, my gosh, yeah, this isn't right. And then there's so many layers upon layers, and with my mom's early onset Alzheimer's diagnosis, it's something that is so multi-layered, constantly changing flares up, calms, down, a true roller coaster, layers just added, you know. Or there is also the anger that I once had toward my biological dad for giving me up for adoption without a care. You know, so it's. I can relate to just the layers of emotions and the layers of feelings based on the way you're treated, the environment that you're in, the people who you think love and care about you, and then you realize they don't and it's like how could I not see it?
Speaker 2:
you, realize they don't and it's like how could I not see it? Yeah yeah, I mean, sometimes you just don't even realize what's happening. I mean I can remember one morning when I was living in that situation, a friend of mine she was my counselor, slash friend she helped me get out of that situation and helped me get an apartment on my own. Now you have to remember this was a different time for me. I wasn't even 30 yet and I was really immature and still traumatized from a lot of my stuff from my childhood. I was a different person than I am now, so she helped me get the apartment.
Speaker 2:
I was finally able to see a light at the end of my childhood. I was a different person than I am now, so she helped me get the apartment. I was finally able to see a light at the end of my pain. I woke up one morning and I can remember this like it was just happened and I just said to myself I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. And, long story short, my husband and I we did end up getting back together and even though I felt like it, I still could not breathe completely because I mean that was a gut punch.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:
And from everything that had happened, you know we ended up. We did end up adopting our older two kids. I had to move with my family, eventually to my mom's for a lot of different reasons, but one was because she wasn't able to take care of herself in her final years and we wanted to be there for her financially and physically. And I ended up getting a master's degree. I wrote a book, became a journalist for hard news, became a preacher in the jails, which had led me to where I am today, raising our three younger kids with one of the best.
Speaker 2:
I wrote a book, became a journalist for hard news, became a preacher in the jails, which had led me to where I am today, raising our three younger kids with one of the best friends who lives here on a full-time basis with me helping. But I have to tell you, everything has gotten us here. Every single breath, every single pain where you feel like you can't even move, got me, gets us to the next step in our life. And as long as we keep moving, we will move out of the pain, no matter how bad it is.
Speaker 1:
You know, I read about a woman who was one of only four survivors in a Colombian plane crash and I don't remember the year that this happened, but she said that storms are what make us and she carried a lot of guilt because she had switched seats with her brother. They fought over the window seat, she got the window seat and he was across the way in a different seat, and so this very topic she thought about for a very, very long time and, after a really long recovery for her, she wasn't supposed to ever be able to walk again. She said that crash made her feel like she can overcome anything. Wow, it was really powerful. One of only four survivors of, I believe, 155 people on the plane.
Speaker 2:
And doesn't it make you wonder, sometimes, like what I talked about with the accident. You know, I mean we were side by side and I very well could have been, and the only reason was because I saw it coming and I slowed down enough so I missed the complete. You know, there were things that flew all over the highway, there were all kinds of things that happened, but it does make you wonder why sometimes, but it does make you wonder why sometimes?
Speaker 1:
Oh it sure does make you wonder, because there can be Christian people or not on the same aircraft and one lives and one dies, and you have one family saying, oh God, saved this person, and you have one saying, but why not mine? You know, I've heard a story similar to that before on a talk show. That was just that very example of you know, how does, how is it chosen? The person that lives and dies? And I don't think we're ever going to really know.
Speaker 2:
It was a real visual for me when I saw the bridge fall. If you saw the bridge fall in Maryland- yes. And I actually, when I was watching it, I was watching cars go across the bridge and I was seeing cars go off the bridge before it fell and cars going on the bridge as it was getting ready to fall and I was just like, wow, I mean see that can make all the difference.
Speaker 1:
I know that's. When I saw that happen in Baltimore, I thought that very same thing. I was looking at the cars like, oh my gosh, nobody knows this is coming.
Speaker 2:
And I was like you know, it's almost. You know you want to yell and say you know, get off the bridge. This is a little bit lighter than what we're talking about right now, but one of the quotes that has always stuck with me is Dick Van Dyke, and sometimes when I've been in the absolute worst situations and he's in his 90s and he still dances and he's very active. But one of the things that I keep telling myself is his voice saying just keep moving, just keep moving. And of course he's talking about his physical body, but that applies to our environment, our mental movement as well, just all parts of our life. Just keep moving.
Speaker 1:
I think that's some of the best advice that can be shared. You have to keep going, because we'll never know the reason. You know, most of us have to trust or think and believe there is one, and it's good that the world keeps moving. If you look at it in hindsight, when something bad happens to you, I used to wish that everything would just stop and give me a moment. And while there are still times, I do wish that hindsight is, it is best that the world keeps moving, because if it didn't, we would all just be stuck. If we all took a moment for our pain and everyone else's pain, we wouldn't move. And so you get back up and you find it within you to move. Somehow we just do, and I feel like maybe resiliency is the reason why. That's what can describe so many survivors who are listening.
Speaker 2:
That's a great word. You know I never want to revisit. But you know, tina, what it feels like to feel a pain where you can't move. But you get up and you find it within yourself to move.
Speaker 1:
You just do it, you do.
Speaker 1:
You know, for me, I can remember sitting on the very bench I'm sitting on right now recording this podcast, and I remember sitting here week three after we had lost our baby, and I remember looking in the mirror, looking at myself, and I just told myself you got to get up, you have to keep moving, you can't stay here any longer or you're never going to get out.
Speaker 1:
And it brought me back to, interestingly, several months before this happened. I did a yoga retreat and on that retreat there was a naturalist who was there with us showing us about some of the local greenery and if you go on a hike like what this plant is and what this plant can do, and things like that, and so he shared something that stuck with me and I remembered in that moment, sitting here, you can survive three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food and only three months without hope. And so, as I sat here, I was on week three of this intense sadness, and I know he said three months without hope, but I knew if I did not climb out now, the longer I stayed, the harder it would get. So I allow myself time to feel what I need to feel, because I believe that is how we heal. But I also know you have to keep going, because the longer you stay in the hard place, the harder it is to climb out it is to climb out.
Speaker 2:
You know, there's nothing wrong with being in it for a minute or two or three weeks or whatever you need to be, but it's just as long as you don't live in it for very long, because I do think the longer you're in it, the harder it is to move. And I know that, yeah, we make it, though I really believe that we do because we have purpose and it's just trying to find that purpose and God is going to use us for good. He wants our pain to be used to benefit others. We have a story that needs to be told so other people don't feel alone. You know, whatever it is, there's a reason why we're here and we survived it. You know, I can remember when I was in treatment I felt the answers to being was for me to numb. I thought that was the only way that I was going to make it not feel. You know, I learned after many gut punches that I needed to feel in order to move forward.
Speaker 1:
Feel it to heal it. That's what I came up with when we lost our baby boy, and I truly believe that. I remember being in the hospital that day and they said we give you any medication you want to numb the pain.
Speaker 1:
And I looked at him and I said I don't need any medication, I have a broken heart and that's just going to take time. I said so, please, let me just feel what I need to feel. And they just kind of were like shocked that I didn't request anything, I wasn't trying to numb, I just need to feel it. And now you mentioned the million dollar question of why, and I think more often than not I've stopped asking that question because I really don't believe, for the most part, that we will ever know why, at least not on this side of heaven. And so I've often changed the question now or the thought to well, how do I move on? What do I do next? What am I supposed to learn from it? Instead of asking why so often and you know, sometimes those questions are helpful and beneficial, and sometimes you know I'm in the same boat as the why you just don't have an answer.
Speaker 2:
You know, when I was thinking about all of this, it just came to my head pain is movement, and I'm not sure where it came from, but pain is movement. And just think about if you would have numbed like that just in. That's not moving forward. There is movement in that? I don't think I don't either. So we do have to feel it in order to move forward. I can tell you the time that I tried to numb with chemicals or whatever it was that I was doing in order to try not to feel with chemicals or whatever it was that I was doing in order to try not to feel, you know that I just realized really late in life, unfortunately that I needed to really feel the pain instead of trying to block it out and numb.
Speaker 1:
The thing that I have been thinking about, as we've been talking about, you know, pain, is movement. I am going through all of my last firsts with my youngest son and at the same time I'm experiencing all of my last with my mom, oh wow, and it's a lot of laughs and it's really giving me all the feels and I think it's kind of why lately, for the last few months, I've really felt I am feeling very zombie-like, kind of just moving throughout the day doing the motions, because I'm mourning all of these lasts and I desperately want to hold on to them. They're just slipping away.
Speaker 2:
I understand that when it comes to my youngest, and when he went to kindergarten now he's in first grade, I mean it. Just it's hard, it's really hard to let go of. You know, he still likes to sleep in my bed. He starts off in his bed and eventually ends up in mine and I'm just like come on.
Speaker 2:
I'm just, you know, I'm just forward and I think that benefited me later in life. I didn't have a quitting spirit. I never have, no matter what's happened to me. It's just like I just get up. And you know, one of the things I look back at too is, you know, I always say a lot of things about my mom and what happened with her, but one of the most positive things that she did to me it was positive and negative, but my dad died and the next day we just kept going and you know I didn't understand at that time. I was just like wait a second. You know, everybody's just living and doing their thing, but she just never complained. She got a job, she did what she had to in order to, you know, provide for us. And you know that really taught me something to just keep moving, no matter how bad the pain is, and that's got to be hard Gosh, I couldn't imagine being a single parent, you know.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, there were a lot of things that shouldn't have happened, but I'll tell you that was something that I really looked back on, even till the day she died. She was on her deathbed and she was calling people and canceling appointments that she had made for doing taxes, because she did taxes, taxes, even, you know, into her 80s, and she's like, you know, I have to cancel because I'm dying. And it was just, like you know, real matter of fact, yeah, just very matter of fact, and she just and that's the way she always was, that's how she handled everything. But you know, that's how I learned. That was one of the ways that I learned how to just keep going, no matter what it was that you were facing. You know, a lot of things were really hard and I didn't really feel worthy in a lot of ways, but I had to come to the conclusion where I did end up finding within myself that I was worthy. I was worthy of making it, that somehow I found it to feel that I was and I continued on.
Speaker 1:
To turn it around, though, and then to feel that worth and I think you have to work hard to feel that a lot of the time it's definitely worth it.
Speaker 2:
It really is. I mean worthy, I mean that's a big word, and to believe in yourself that you are worthy to move forward, to make it, to feel that we have a purpose in others' lives is such a miraculous realization.
Speaker 1:
I can't even imagine and I don't want to honestly what my boys would do without me. The purpose that I have in being mom is such a beautiful gift. I really try not to take it for granted. Exhausted, need a break at times Absolutely Don't get it, sometimes, most of the time. So you know you really feel it, but at the end of the day it's such a blessing to be able to do that, to be able to have a great job, you know, to be there for people in ways you know, like with my mom, in ways that I never saw coming. You know just losing her each day. It is a beautiful gift to feel worthy, to feel needed, to feel just those big words. It is a gift.
Speaker 2:
No, I have found myself standing in front of large crowds, and every time I am reminded why I went through what I did. I don't think I was destined to go through that necessarily. I think choices led me to where I was, but I do believe that God wanted to use my pain and that was where my life had meaning. We all go through things. We have all felt a great deal of pain when I have had to deal with my disabilities in a way where I felt like I was never going to be able to do the things that God called me to, somehow I've been given the tool.
Speaker 2:
You know, when I used to preach, one of the sermons I used to talk about was when we feel that we are drowning and our head is going under and we call out to him and we're like you know, help me, I'm going under, I'm going to drown. And he sends us, he throws us a life preserver, but we don't take it, for whatever reason it is. We're like well, that's not what I was really looking for. I wanted this over here, and so we're going under again and he throws it again another one and we're like no, I thought that you would be sending me this, and so we don't take it again. And then we drown, and then we go to heaven and we say to him why didn't you save me? You know, I mean, you're God. Why didn't you save me? And he's just like well, I sent you so many life preservers along the way. I threw them to you, but you chose not to grab them.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I, I. That's such a good visual. Absolutely it's uh, I've you know I've heard that story before, but it's such a good reminder that how often I'm sure that happens all the time.
Speaker 2:
I mean we think, because we think that this way is the answer. So that's for the life preserver that we're waiting for, and it's something completely different, and so we don't grab it when it's right in front of us sometimes.
Speaker 1:
Or it looks different than what we thought would be sent our way.
Speaker 2:
Right, exactly. Another message we talked about was not to compare. You know, there were so many women in the jail where I worked and they all would look at each other's wrongdoings and compare. They all felt unworthy in one way or another. I think why I loved working in the jail system was because everyone was willing to realize how unworthy they felt and get to a point of brokenness in order to start over. You know, that feeling of being reborn is an actual feeling. I can say I felt like when I'm laying on that ground that I talked about earlier and I can't move, and getting to the other side of that, the hardest pain get up and start moving is what I think it feels like to start a new life. No matter how you imagine a new life, it's a new life. It's a new beginning.
Speaker 1:
And back to your first point, one of my favorite quotes that changed my life is comparison is the thief of joy, and I truly, truly believe that that's really good. Yeah, there's no reason to compare. You know, we're all so different.
Speaker 2:
But the point for this entire podcast is just to move, feel, do anything to move forward. I can remember the saying in treatment was do anything but use, and this is do anything to get up off that floor and make it to the next day. There are times in our life that we are going to get through and, you know, we just feel like it's been a big KO and we just can't get up for another moment, and that's important too. I laid on that floor for a while and I talked about that a little bit ago, about living in it for a minute, but I didn't live there and I ended up getting up and I'm much stronger for it.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely. There is purpose in the pain. There can be joy in the journey. I'm not saying that I am enjoying my mom's diagnosis, but you still have to find things in life that bring you joy, that make you smile. It is a purposeful thing to be able to do that. You have to purposefully look for the joy during the hard seasons and you kind of have to force yourself to move. You just do, Because if you get stuck for too long, think of it like quicksand. You sit in it, you stand in it for too long and it's going to swallow you up.
Speaker 2:
It kind of reminds me of exercising or when you start a new sport or something like that, and when you first start it and how sore you are the next day and how just you know it's really hard to get back in it and do it again and again until the point where you're finally have trained your body in order to be able to be that strong again and move without being without the pain that's so good it's worth.
Speaker 1:
it is what I hear. You know it's worth it is what I'm hearing you say.
Speaker 2:
Well, purpose? You know we all have a reason that we made it to the other side of that pain. Mine was so much and I have been put in front of so many people who needed help to the other side, and that's what I just kept thinking is that you know, my entire purpose is to help others and that keeps me going.
Speaker 1:
I believe that one of my purposes on earth is a conduit and being a conduit connecting people to people or people to resources, and so I love that I have a job in the media and on the radio, that I'm able to do that on a pretty consistent basis, and so that purpose is something that helps keep me going, and I know that purpose is what will help keep someone else going. So, whatever that would be for you that's what I would say is find your purpose, because that is what will keep you going.
Speaker 2:
So for our listeners. What is your purpose? Why did you make it?
Speaker 1:
through. So we always like to leave you with a quote, and I think I've said this one before, but it seems so fitting today and we're going to do it again. So it is there is no timestamp on trauma. There isn't a formula that you can insert yourself into to get from horror to healed. Be patient, take up space, let your journey be the balm, and that's a Dawn, sarah quote.
Speaker 2:
Well as usual. We thank you so much for listening. Thank you for tuning in week after week and doing this journey with us.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for joining us for Real Talk with Tina and Anne. We look forward to seeing you next week.