Speaker 1: It's a December night in two thousand and Elena is
Speaker 1: peering through the peepole of her front door in Sydney.
Speaker 1: He's here again. Ever since she broke up with Kai,
Speaker 1: he's been turning up at her home, begging to be
Speaker 1: let in, to chat, to be given a second chance.
Speaker 1: She can tell he's been drinking, but there's something else
Speaker 1: his eyes. They look different. She opens the door a crack,
Speaker 1: and he barges the rest of the way in. For
Speaker 1: the next few hours, Kai essentially holds her hostage in
Speaker 1: her own living room. Then he goes into the kitchen
Speaker 1: and things take a sinister turn. He returns with a knife.
Speaker 1: I'm Jemma Bath and you're listening to True Crime Conversations,
Speaker 1: a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking
Speaker 1: to the people who know the most about them. Kai
Speaker 1: is not his real name. We have pretend did his
Speaker 1: identity because in this episode we have been given a
Speaker 1: rare opportunity. Not only are you going to hear Elayna's story,
Speaker 1: her version of events from that terrifying night twenty six
Speaker 1: years ago and the devastating impact that followed, but you're
Speaker 1: also going to hear from Kai he has agreed to
Speaker 1: be interviewed to tell his side of the story, to
Speaker 1: apologize publicly for what he describes as the worst mistake
Speaker 1: of his life. Elayna and Kai have moved on with
Speaker 1: their lives, but for the first time in nearly three decades,
Speaker 1: they're revisiting the domestic violence attack that changed everything. Our
Speaker 1: podcast is the first time they've revisited the incident that
Speaker 1: gave her PTSD and him a criminal record. You're going
Speaker 1: to hear from Kai in part two, so look out
Speaker 1: for that in our feed. But first, Elayna is a wife,
Speaker 1: a mother of three, an educator, and a somatic therapist.
Speaker 1: This is her story. Elena, thank you for joining us
Speaker 1: on True Crime Conversations. Why have you decided to share
Speaker 1: your story today?
Speaker 2: O great question, Genmah, thank you for having me. It
Speaker 2: has been a while since this happened. I've shared it
Speaker 2: in pieces and bits and bobs before, but it seems
Speaker 2: timely to talk about how you heal from really big,
Speaker 2: difficult things that you know, this took me out for
Speaker 2: a long time and now I kind of feel like
Speaker 2: I'm on the other side of it, and I think
Speaker 2: that's really really important to share.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the mid to late nineties, early
Speaker 1: two thousands, Who were you as a person, What were
Speaker 1: you doing with your life? Well? I was floundering in
Speaker 1: many ways.
Speaker 2: I had, you know, been a sort of a student
Speaker 2: in too University, started a career in public relations, and
Speaker 2: it had fallen down, and I had ended up working
Speaker 2: in the film industry, which was extremely exciting but pretty
Speaker 2: you know, sporadic work in Sydney, and I have been
Speaker 2: on and off jobs and you know, struggling to pay rent.
Speaker 2: And I set into this kind of really exciting phase
Speaker 2: of my life where I'd met this man in a
Speaker 2: cafe and I thought he was just amazing, and he said,
Speaker 2: come away with me.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got a van.
Speaker 2: So I gave notice on my apartment and the night
Speaker 2: before he said, ah, actually maybe I'm just going.
Speaker 1: To go on my own. Oh why does I feel
Speaker 1: like every twenties? He was a really good looking Okay.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I kind of moved to my mom's house, went
Speaker 2: to New York for a month on like borrowed money
Speaker 2: and visited my dad who was living there, which was
Speaker 2: pretty amazing. So I was having a really amazing time,
Speaker 2: but also didn't really know what was going on or
Speaker 2: where I was going to land, And the night before
Speaker 2: I went to New York, I met a guy and
Speaker 2: when I got back, we kind of connected and I
Speaker 2: ended up moving in with him for a while. And
Speaker 2: it was a pretty interesting time. I was trying to
Speaker 2: establish myself in my work in film, but also trying
Speaker 2: to make money in other ways, you know, working in
Speaker 2: administration or temp contracts of you know, various things, and
Speaker 2: so it was sort of precarious, but I was very
Speaker 2: grateful to have somewhere to live. I moved to Bondai
Speaker 2: and moved in with a really cool couple of people,
Speaker 2: one of him it was a DJ, and so my
Speaker 2: life was good and also weird. I once again, I
Speaker 2: think that's every twenty year old, twenty something year old's life,
Speaker 2: all my life back in my twenties. So the guy
Speaker 2: you met was Kai. Yeah, what attracted you to him?
Speaker 2: What was he like when you first met him? A
Speaker 2: very unusual person, really, yeah, an ex pro athlete and
Speaker 2: culturally different to me, Pacific islander, and you know, a
Speaker 2: really inspiring human actually, and someone who seemed to me
Speaker 2: like a protector, someone who wanted to kind of take
Speaker 2: care of me and give me safe harbor, which at
Speaker 2: that point in time was really compelling.
Speaker 1: So you met he him, went away, and basically moved
Speaker 1: straight in with him. Yeah. Well I didn't have a house.
Speaker 2: I didn't have anywhere to live, and he was like,
Speaker 2: we've got a spare room, you know, but it was
Speaker 2: it was our shared room.
Speaker 1: Like it was just straight in. So it really would
Speaker 1: have fast tracked your relationship. Do you remember those early
Speaker 1: days of the relationship. What was it like. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was fine.
Speaker 2: We were kind of making house, but also he worked
Speaker 2: nights and he was a doorman, and so it was
Speaker 2: kind of lonely as well.
Speaker 1: It was a real mix.
Speaker 2: I was fairly i mean, unstable in my life, right,
Speaker 2: so he'd given me a place to stay. I don't
Speaker 2: even think I was paying much rent. He was going
Speaker 2: out to work every night, and there was an expectation
Speaker 2: that I stayed home and waited for him.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: There was a little bit of a power dynamic. I
Speaker 2: think some of that was cultural. I think there was
Speaker 2: an element of wanting to take care of me and
Speaker 2: protect me and keep me safe. But it was a
Speaker 2: definite imbalance. I felt a little kind of on the
Speaker 2: kept side, or like in debt to him. Yeah, most,
Speaker 2: and that's not a kind of a healthy way to
Speaker 2: kind of live. And when I think about that, that
Speaker 2: makes sense, doesn't it? What comes later? So, for example,
Speaker 2: I would be at home and he'd be going to work,
Speaker 2: and he'd sort of imply that I shouldn't go out
Speaker 2: or I should stay home. And at the time that
Speaker 2: didn't raise any alarms. I was kind of like, Oh,
Speaker 2: this isn't that sweet that he wants me to wait
Speaker 2: for him. I was really naive about that. In hindsight,
Speaker 2: a bit of a red flag.
Speaker 1: It's almost got a little bit of the coercive control
Speaker 1: tendencies to it, which I grew up in a family
Speaker 1: with so very familiar to me, almost Oh my definition
Speaker 1: of love, you know, that's what families are like.
Speaker 2: I didn't even recognize that until much much later in
Speaker 2: my life. The nature of coercive control is quite insidious
Speaker 2: and sneaky, you know, and you know, weirdly, the people
Speaker 2: even in it don't realize it's happening.
Speaker 1: Had Kai shared much with you about his life story?
Speaker 1: Did you know much about him? A little?
Speaker 2: So in pieces, And I wasn't really aware of the
Speaker 2: breadth and depth of his situation at that time, and
Speaker 2: he had his own really deep traumas and adverse circumstances
Speaker 2: going on in his family, some loss and you know,
Speaker 2: it was quite tragic what happened in his family, but
Speaker 2: I didn't really know anything about that at the time.
Speaker 1: How did things start going downhill in your relationship?
Speaker 2: So I started to cotton on that, you know, he
Speaker 2: was out most nights, so we were sort of ships
Speaker 2: in the night. I also started to cotton on that
Speaker 2: I wasn't getting the full story, you know, that he
Speaker 2: was going through things that he wasn't being completely transparent
Speaker 2: with me about. And it got to the point where
Speaker 2: I realized that living with him wasn't really the best idea.
Speaker 2: So a friend of mine had a spare room in Bondai,
Speaker 2: and I moved there. And it was a really good
Speaker 2: decision to do that, and to move in with my friend,
Speaker 2: who was a very dear friend who was also going
Speaker 2: through a breakup, you know. So I started the process
Speaker 2: of kind of leaving the relationship and saying, this is
Speaker 2: a really intense relationship. I think you've got some things
Speaker 2: going on. I think I've got some things going on,
Speaker 2: So I'm going to move out let's just keep it really,
Speaker 2: you know, there was no big drama there, but he
Speaker 2: didn't really accept the end of the relationship.
Speaker 1: How did he react, Well, I don't really.
Speaker 2: Remember any big fireworks, but I do remember him coming
Speaker 2: over a lot to my new place too much and
Speaker 2: me saying, you just can't keep coming over here all
Speaker 2: the time, and he would say, I just want to
Speaker 2: sleep on your floor, and I just you know, I
Speaker 2: was his safe spot as well at that time, I think,
Speaker 2: or one of.
Speaker 1: When he was coming over. Was it ever? Were you
Speaker 1: ever scared of him? Was he ever aggressive? No?
Speaker 2: I mean he's physically a very large human, so there
Speaker 2: was always, I guess awareness of that. And I had
Speaker 2: always felt quite safe around him. But when he began
Speaker 2: to unravel a little bit less so, a little bit
Speaker 2: less so, not so much that I didn't feel safe,
Speaker 2: but more I was concerned and I could see something
Speaker 2: was going on and I didn't really exactly know what.
Speaker 2: And he would, you know, go to the pub and
Speaker 2: then call me at midnight and say I need to
Speaker 2: come and see you, and I'd be like, I don't
Speaker 2: want you to come over.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So we then sort of started in this thing where
Speaker 2: I was being kind because he'd been kind to me
Speaker 2: and taken me in and you know, kind of attempted
Speaker 2: to help me out, and so I felt a little
Speaker 2: bit of an obligation there, which was an interesting kind
Speaker 2: of situation.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So then my flatmate would go, why is he coming over?
Speaker 2: All the time they go, well, he's having a hard time,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't like you were trying to, oh, like,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll give him another chance, I'll take You'd not
Speaker 1: the decision. I know, the relationship was over. You were
Speaker 1: just kind of trying to be My kindness was my weakness,
Speaker 1: I'd say, yeah.
Speaker 2: And I was probably a much more of a people
Speaker 2: pleasing person then as well, probably really scared to disappoint people.
Speaker 1: Young women hardly conditioned not to say no. Did you
Speaker 1: were late twenties? Yeah? I was twenty eight. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting to hear that lead up because the night
Speaker 1: that we're about to talk about it was very different
Speaker 1: to all of these other times. Very Yes, So you
Speaker 1: heard a knock, did you know? How did it all start? So?
Speaker 2: I got a phone call, right, and he had been
Speaker 2: at the beach with his friends and family and drinking,
Speaker 2: I think, and he was ringing me incessantly, thing I
Speaker 2: need to come over, and I need to come over,
Speaker 2: and I was saying no. I was at this point
Speaker 2: where I was like, I've got to say no. So
Speaker 2: I kept saying no. And then he showed up on
Speaker 2: my doorstep and I heard the knock on the door.
Speaker 2: Kind of knew it must be him because I didn't
Speaker 2: have a lot of friends in the area yet, right,
Speaker 2: I was fairly new to the area.
Speaker 1: Went to the door.
Speaker 2: My spidery senses were like, do not open the door
Speaker 2: already yep. I just had a feeling. And then I
Speaker 2: don't know why, something overwrote it and I kind of
Speaker 2: looked through the little peep hole saw it was him,
Speaker 2: and he looked really distressed, you know. So I felt
Speaker 2: for him, and I opened the door.
Speaker 1: And you hadn't at that stage, had any reason to
Speaker 1: fear this man.
Speaker 2: No, not really no, I mean he was a dorman,
Speaker 2: Like I knew he had to him at you.
Speaker 1: No, not at all, not at all. So you open
Speaker 1: the door, you let him in? What did he do?
Speaker 2: What was his kind of pushed past me. So the
Speaker 2: moment I opened the door, I saw his face and
Speaker 2: I looked in his eyes and I saw someone else.
Speaker 2: I was like, this is not the guy I know.
Speaker 2: Instantly knew something was going on that was different to
Speaker 2: other times that I'd seen him, So he.
Speaker 1: Was in a darker place.
Speaker 2: I think now I would say that was a psychotic episode,
Speaker 2: but at the time I just looked at him and thought,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, like, who is this guy? This is
Speaker 2: not the guy I know. He pushed past me, walked
Speaker 2: straight in. I started saying, You've got to leave. You
Speaker 2: can't come in here, I told you, and followed him
Speaker 2: down the hallway into the living room. And then it
Speaker 2: gets a bit fuzzy at this point. To be honest,
Speaker 2: there's a few things I remember. I remember he wouldn't
Speaker 2: let me leave, so I would try to leave and
Speaker 2: he would block me. And this guy you could not
Speaker 2: push past. He was not that kind of guy. And
Speaker 2: I didn't want to get into an altercation as well,
Speaker 2: So I wasn't being very physically pushy with him, right.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to.
Speaker 2: Encourage that sort of physicality, So I was talking. I
Speaker 2: was trying to talk my way out of it. I
Speaker 2: was like, I'm just going to make a phone call.
Speaker 2: Don't worry, I'm just going to make a phone call
Speaker 2: and I was going to call the police, and he knew,
Speaker 2: and so he This is when it got a little
Speaker 2: bit more hairy. I reached for the phone and he
Speaker 2: pushed me, and I fell backwards over the couch. Luckily
Speaker 2: kind of knew how to fall because I've got some training,
Speaker 2: and I fell backwards and kind of flipped, and that
Speaker 2: was actually my only injury. It was the wrist that
Speaker 2: got sort of pulled on the coffee table upside down,
Speaker 2: doing a backward arch look, trying to save myself.
Speaker 1: Because you give your martial arts at.
Speaker 2: This point, Yeah, well I wasn't training actively, but I
Speaker 2: had done for five years in an earlier time, a
Speaker 2: few years prior. Yeah, was he talking to you at
Speaker 2: this point? Was he what did he want?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I was trying to astain that right, and I don't
Speaker 2: really remember a lot of what he said because I
Speaker 2: was calculating, you know, how am I going to save myself.
Speaker 2: I could not tell you how long we were in
Speaker 2: that room, I don't know. And I was trying to
Speaker 2: raise my voice sometimes to let people around know, like
Speaker 2: to let tenants in other flats and things know that
Speaker 2: I was in trouble, like you have to leave, and
Speaker 2: things like that, like why are you keeping me here?
Speaker 2: I was saying things loudly to kind of alert people
Speaker 2: in other apartments, and I think he was.
Speaker 1: Maybe there was some yelling. Yeah, I don't really remember,
Speaker 1: so at this point, yeah, was their fear? Yeah? Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: At that point, I was like, I don't really know
Speaker 2: how I'm going to get out of this, and I
Speaker 2: also didn't understand, like where does this go? Like what
Speaker 2: happens next? This is a bit scary, So there was
Speaker 2: a lot of uncertainty. There was a lot of also
Speaker 2: just shock at the situation because he had not been
Speaker 2: like this before, and he clearly wasn't himself.
Speaker 1: So I was.
Speaker 2: I was scared and confused and calculating, yes, and trying
Speaker 2: to work out how to get.
Speaker 1: Out of it. Will you say that you flipped a
Speaker 1: way out after being pushed. It did escalate from there,
Speaker 1: and he somehow made his way to the kitchen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what happened then?
Speaker 2: So I still don't really understand why I didn't just
Speaker 2: run when he went to the kitchen. I think I
Speaker 2: was probably a bit frozen at that point. There was
Speaker 2: probably a part of me that started to get to
Speaker 2: the point of like, Okay, I don't know what to
Speaker 2: do now, and I think I got a little bit
Speaker 2: frozen at that point. I don't really remember exactly what
Speaker 2: happened there. I know he got a knife from the kitchen.
Speaker 2: It was big, it was like one of those global massive,
Speaker 2: the biggest one, and he just stood between me and
Speaker 2: the hallway and the door and held it out in
Speaker 2: front of him. And I don't remember what he was saying,
Speaker 2: or I don't really remember much else except oh fuck,
Speaker 2: Like this is a whole different level now, and I'm
Speaker 2: really in danger. You know, before that, he was an
Speaker 2: angry man and I was a little bit stuck.
Speaker 1: But at that moment.
Speaker 2: Something different had come into the picture, something far more terrifying.
Speaker 2: And you could see he had terror in his face
Speaker 2: as well, like I don't know what I'm doing or
Speaker 2: what I'm going to do, you know, there was a
Speaker 2: real confusion on his face as well.
Speaker 1: After the break, Elena tells us how she disarmed Kite
Speaker 1: to get out of the dangerous situation. So he's standing
Speaker 1: there holding a knife, kind of staring at you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how did you get your way out of that?
Speaker 2: So, Fortunately, because I had lived in King's Cross as
Speaker 2: a young lady walking home on my own. I was
Speaker 2: aware that the world is not the safest place for
Speaker 2: young women walking the streets of the city. And I
Speaker 2: had done some martial arts and I'd really loved it,
Speaker 2: and i'd done it for five years. And in the
Speaker 2: martial arts that I trained, you do learn knife defense,
Speaker 2: you learn to disarm people with knives, you learn a
Speaker 2: little bit of technique. So I knew that I had
Speaker 2: something that I could do. I was a little bit
Speaker 2: scared of doing that because then it's quite unpredictable, Like
Speaker 2: you lunge at somebody. If they want to, they can
Speaker 2: engage in something. But the martial arts that I had learned,
Speaker 2: it's a defensive martial arts. It's not really about escalation
Speaker 2: or fighting. It's about defense. So that was fortunate, very fortunate,
Speaker 2: potentially life saving.
Speaker 1: But it means you have to get into his space.
Speaker 2: Well I was in his space. He was pretty close already.
Speaker 2: So again I'm still a little bit I don't really
Speaker 2: understand how I managed to do this, but I reached
Speaker 2: towards his wrist, which is kind of one way that
Speaker 2: you can get a knife out of somebody's hand.
Speaker 1: But this man, his risks like three times the size
Speaker 1: of mine.
Speaker 2: So I kind of knew that wouldn't be effective, but
Speaker 2: it was like, I have to do something. So what
Speaker 2: was interesting about it on reflection was that it turned
Speaker 2: the tables.
Speaker 1: Shocked him absolutely right, because he wasn't expecting to come
Speaker 1: at him. No, not at all. Nobody comes at him.
Speaker 1: He's huge, you know. So you grabbed his wrist and well,
Speaker 1: I didn't grab it.
Speaker 2: You sort of do like an X and sort of
Speaker 2: it's a technique and it's just a way of moving
Speaker 2: it away without hurting yourself with the knife.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't a grab. It was kind of like
Speaker 1: a block, Okay, an intentional block in a way. Do
Speaker 1: you think it saved your life one hundred percent? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I do, because I don't think he was him and
Speaker 2: I think he was just escalating.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. I mean, I don't know. You
Speaker 1: can never know, right, how do you know? But maybe
Speaker 1: once you'd done that block and he was obviously taken,
Speaker 1: he was shocked. He was shocked that way. He ran.
Speaker 2: I ran right, I ran out the front door, and
Speaker 2: you're yelling, had alerted neighbors. Yeah, so I ran downs
Speaker 2: on the top floor. I ran down about three or
Speaker 2: four floors down a flight of stairs.
Speaker 1: Pretty pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: As I was getting down to the lobby, the the
Speaker 2: door of an apartment opened and a woman said, come
Speaker 2: in here.
Speaker 1: So she could hear you from all the way. Oh yeah, wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean also I was I may have been
Speaker 2: pushed around a bit more than I remember, so they
Speaker 2: would have been banging, like when I got pushed, they
Speaker 2: would have been banging around. So yeah, it was really interesting.
Speaker 2: She invited me into her apartment. She had a baby
Speaker 2: in her arms. She was a nurse, a courageous nurse,
Speaker 2: I would say, in that moment. She said go into
Speaker 2: the bedroom. And then her husband started flipping out and
Speaker 2: getting angry at her for taking.
Speaker 1: Me in because he was terrified. Well, yeah, they don't
Speaker 1: know who this man is terrified and wanted to protect
Speaker 1: his family. I understand that.
Speaker 2: So she and he were having an argument and she's like,
Speaker 2: be quiet. You know, I'm hiding in the bedroom. Go.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I'm in a house and they're having
Speaker 1: an argument. Now.
Speaker 2: Ultimately, I mean, I'm laughing about it. It wasn't funny, obviously,
Speaker 2: but it was kind of absurd. You know, there was
Speaker 2: a lot of absurd moments. Actually, when you look back,
Speaker 2: it's like, I can't believe this is my story. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of disbeliefs still, and so the police eventually
Speaker 2: came and then I do remember. And this is the
Speaker 2: bit that like, if you were making a TV drama
Speaker 2: series and you show the end before the beginning, this
Speaker 2: is the bit you would show. It's me crouching by
Speaker 2: the wheel of a police car on the street. It's
Speaker 2: a Tuesday night, it's dark moon. There's seven police cars
Speaker 2: and they're putting on there gear. They attactic because he
Speaker 2: was armed, so they have to put on all the
Speaker 2: So there's like seven police cars, wow, and a lot
Speaker 2: of movement. And they said just sit there, you know.
Speaker 2: So I'm crouching. I'm like, this is so ridiculous. I mean,
Speaker 2: I've just I'm shaking and you know, in a mess.
Speaker 2: And they said just stay there, you know, to just
Speaker 2: put me somewhere. I guess to hide me. So I
Speaker 2: was literally crouching on the street and sort of watching
Speaker 2: people like walk around, trying to work out what was
Speaker 2: going on. And then he was in the windows of
Speaker 2: sun room and he's in the window upstairs with the knife.
Speaker 1: You could see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were trying to negotiate with him.
Speaker 1: It was pretty bizarre. How did they end up bringing
Speaker 1: him into custody? Well, I don't really know that story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a question for him.
Speaker 2: I guess if he remembers, you know, it would be
Speaker 2: really interesting to read that in a way.
Speaker 1: But if they had placed you at the car and
Speaker 1: all left you there, does that mean I guess they
Speaker 1: didn't all leave me.
Speaker 2: There's usually someone coordinating, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They then took me to the police station for statements,
Speaker 2: and my beautiful flatmate came with me, and we were
Speaker 2: there till two in the morning.
Speaker 1: And yeah, do you remember that time in the police
Speaker 1: station and giving statements? I remember this kind of in
Speaker 1: it's like polaroids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's like I don't remember it in
Speaker 2: a in a fluid sequence.
Speaker 1: Memory does strange things, doesn't it, especially when there's trauma involved. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are my memories. It is my experience.
Speaker 2: And you know, I still get some of those postcards
Speaker 2: flashing up, you know, because I still do.
Speaker 1: I do martial arts again. Now.
Speaker 2: I had a twenty year break with children and sorting
Speaker 2: myself out, and now I'm a second degree black belt.
Speaker 2: So when you train, you know, you do you train
Speaker 2: with knives, and if I'm on the floor of the
Speaker 2: you know, on the mats and I'm training, I'm highly
Speaker 2: sensitive to the instructor's you know, sense of safety, how
Speaker 2: he holds that space or she holds that space. Sometimes
Speaker 2: you get you know, occasionally someone who's not aware of
Speaker 2: my situation or my history, and they can be a
Speaker 2: little insensitive, you know, and I often just have to
Speaker 2: sit down and kind of you know, breathe through it,
Speaker 2: or sometimes just stop training. You know, I take care
Speaker 2: of myself. I have a different sensitivity to that kind
Speaker 2: of training now, which.
Speaker 1: Is completely fair.
Speaker 2: But it's also really good that I have that training
Speaker 2: and I can still do it. You know, It's taken
Speaker 2: some doing. I have had moments where and this is
Speaker 2: a really interesting other conversation, is that movement, martial arts
Speaker 2: intense movement and confronting some of those fears in a way,
Speaker 2: or bringing those fears with you. I wouldn't say I
Speaker 2: confront them. I would say bring them with me onto
Speaker 2: the mats. And there are times where I fall apart,
Speaker 2: you know. And the people I train with, fortunately for
Speaker 2: the most part, are amazing, and they will say just keep.
Speaker 1: Moving and I'll spa crying. You know, really, do you
Speaker 1: think that retraining after twenty years, has it's brought all
Speaker 1: of that back for you? Maybe brought what back? The
Speaker 1: emotion if you're crying while sparring. Yeah, I don't know if.
Speaker 2: It brings it back, because it's always there, all right,
Speaker 2: But maybe it allows me to move through it. Differently,
Speaker 2: It gives me the opportunity to move through it, which
Speaker 2: is something I really believe in. We don't go round,
Speaker 2: We don't suppress, I mean we do, but ideally we
Speaker 2: find a way to express and move through those deep emotions,
Speaker 2: those past hurts, those wounds that we carry.
Speaker 1: When you think back to once you'd had a chance
Speaker 1: to catch your breath and you've done all the police
Speaker 1: stuff and you were alone again, do you remember how
Speaker 1: it felt? Yeah, when you tried to, when you were
Speaker 1: like what just happened? So the year following was, you know,
Speaker 1: a year of PTSD. Because when you get attacked in
Speaker 1: your home, particularly something you know, there's no comparison between
Speaker 1: adverse events, right, every single one is different, But when
Speaker 1: it's at home, your safe place isn't safe anymore, so
Speaker 1: you never feel safe so the PTSD's pretty intense.
Speaker 2: It's very physical. But of course I didn't know I
Speaker 2: was in PTSD. No one told me that for eleven months.
Speaker 1: Wow. So my life was.
Speaker 2: An utter binfire for that year, and no one knew
Speaker 2: what to do. God loved them the people around me.
Speaker 2: I mean I didn't have a lot of people around me,
Speaker 2: but the people that loved me didn't know what to do.
Speaker 2: So I isolated and I drank, and I tried really
Speaker 2: hard to stay in employment.
Speaker 1: It didn't really work.
Speaker 2: I moved multiple times, I get kicked out or you know.
Speaker 2: It was just it was a nightmare. I was hallucinating.
Speaker 1: Wo.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was a really intense experience. I could
Speaker 2: spend an hour telling you what it's like to have PTSD.
Speaker 2: For me, what that was like, it's very bizarre.
Speaker 1: So it was it was very physical but mental but psychological.
Speaker 1: It's like everything in your bod'm screaming, but not because
Speaker 1: you're numb, right, So so the brain protects you from
Speaker 1: retraumatizing yourself.
Speaker 2: So you go into this kind of weird lalla land.
Speaker 2: And I literally was hallucina. I remember driving part while
Speaker 2: I was on a bus going past a building site
Speaker 2: and you know when you see those spiky pieces of
Speaker 2: metal before concrete goes in and they have yellow. I
Speaker 2: saw a field of daffodils, and I was like, I
Speaker 2: remember this so distinctly because I was shocked that I'd
Speaker 2: never noticed this beautiful field of flowers on my bus
Speaker 2: route before. Wow, Like that's how I know that. You know,
Speaker 2: you're it's so beautiful. Really, what your brain does to
Speaker 2: protect you just takes you to another place.
Speaker 1: In that eleven months, Had you sought help?
Speaker 2: I mean I was in complete denial. Okay, there was
Speaker 2: no help to seek, honestly. I mean it's year two thousand.
Speaker 2: I'm a young woman. The police were my only people.
Speaker 1: I could talk to about it. Like, who else do
Speaker 1: you talk to about it? They're not interested? You know.
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to go to the police station so
Speaker 1: I can have a chat.
Speaker 2: There was no counselor or female violence person or any
Speaker 2: of those things.
Speaker 1: It was none of that.
Speaker 2: But I remember a few things. I remember my flatmate,
Speaker 2: who was just beautiful one night just said I can
Speaker 2: see you're really hurting. I'm just gonna lie next to
Speaker 2: you and just lay next to me on my bed
Speaker 2: the whole night and just like held my hand. That
Speaker 2: was the only person that actually was and then soon
Speaker 2: was like, you know, because I was a mess, and
Speaker 2: so he sort of said, I think you might have
Speaker 2: to find someone else to live who's going through his
Speaker 2: own stuff, you know, so I couldn't pay the rent,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. It was just awful. It
Speaker 2: was an awful year, clinging to jobs and losing them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and at the same time, he was going through
Speaker 1: the court system because he was charged, so there.
Speaker 2: Was an av O in place, which which was broken. Actually,
Speaker 2: at one point he followed me home one morning and
Speaker 2: I skillfully led him to a hotel lobby so that
Speaker 2: it wasn't on my own and then went to the
Speaker 2: police station reported it.
Speaker 1: And that was really scary because that would have been
Speaker 1: the first time you'd seen.
Speaker 2: Probably yeah, yeah, I'd say, so, yeah, yeah. He was
Speaker 2: just like it was five in the morning. I was
Speaker 2: coming home for friends place i'd stayed at, and he
Speaker 2: was sitting outside a cafe that we used to go
Speaker 2: to a lot, just sitting there on a milk crate.
Speaker 2: I probably quite drunk, and I was, and it was
Speaker 2: like two blocks in my house and so I thought,
Speaker 2: you know, it's no one around.
Speaker 1: I just casually walked to a hotel lobby and.
Speaker 2: Walked around secretly, like quietly, going help me, help me,
Speaker 2: please call the police. You know.
Speaker 1: That was pretty for long. Do you remember did you
Speaker 1: Did you go twenty of the court proceedings? Yeah? I did.
Speaker 2: I think they wanted me to, and I don't remember
Speaker 2: a lot about it. I remember waiting in a room
Speaker 2: to be called. I remember going in there and being
Speaker 2: pretty kind.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did understand on some level that what he'd
Speaker 2: done was not intentional. Weirdly, even though he threatened your life. Yeah, weirdly,
Speaker 2: Like I don't know. I'm a deeply compassionate person. I've
Speaker 2: experienced some things in my life, and so I think
Speaker 2: I had some compassion for him. I also was very
Speaker 2: clear that he needed to go to court and he
Speaker 2: needed to face the consequences. I didn't want to protect
Speaker 2: him from that, and I didn't want to protect him
Speaker 2: from the natural consequences of what he'd done. So I
Speaker 2: think I was just quite a matter of fact, you know,
Speaker 2: I was honest without Yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: Con forty did to you? Yeah, I got a criminal record.
Speaker 1: Were you able to move on a bit after the
Speaker 1: because what was caught, like, for you, what was dealing
Speaker 1: with all the police and all of those systems? What
Speaker 1: was that?
Speaker 2: Remember March? I don't remember much. I think there was
Speaker 2: a woman next to me, and I think it was
Speaker 2: fairly brief. They just pulled me in, got me to
Speaker 2: say something, and I left like there wasn't They didn't
Speaker 2: put me through the whole thing, which is which is great. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: And that's why I actually didn't even know he was convicted.
Speaker 2: Didn't until recently. Yeah, we spoke recently when I said
Speaker 2: I'm doing this podcast about you. Let's have a conversation,
Speaker 2: and we spoke about what happened after this event.
Speaker 1: So you didn't even know what had happened? Not really?
Speaker 1: Oh well, I hadn't remembered. Y let's put it like that. Well,
Speaker 1: you had your own stuff coming on.
Speaker 2: It wasn't my key focus what was going on for him,
Speaker 2: that's for sure. No, Yeah, I was a complete mess.
Speaker 1: It wasn't.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until I think eleven twelve months later. I
Speaker 2: went to a GP and I still remember her her name. Actually,
Speaker 2: I was not so straight. I remember it very clearly.
Speaker 2: And she listened to my story and she said, you've
Speaker 2: got PTSD.
Speaker 1: Do you know what that is?
Speaker 2: So I'm pretty sure from what you've told me. Even
Speaker 2: now I get chills because no one had named it.
Speaker 1: This is a bit where I cry. Was it a
Speaker 1: turning point for you? Well? I had been like I
Speaker 1: had become like anarexic.
Speaker 2: People would stare at me when I walk down the
Speaker 2: road like I honestly, I felt like I wasn't really
Speaker 2: worth anything.
Speaker 1: I felt like my.
Speaker 2: Not really, I wasn't worth anything. But there was no
Speaker 2: point eating. That's how it felt.
Speaker 1: Like. What was the point?
Speaker 2: I just felt so lost, so deeply lost, and pretty unsupported.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there was people that were trying to support me,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't getting to me. And it was a
Speaker 2: really hard time, and I felt very alone and vulnerable
Speaker 2: and being a sort of single young woman experiencing trauma
Speaker 2: without the right support, you know, in a community of
Speaker 2: people that know you as well, like it's kind of
Speaker 2: visible and seeing, you know, people would see me.
Speaker 1: His family was in that area.
Speaker 2: I remember one of his brothers saying something really nasty
Speaker 2: to me when I walked past him on the street.
Speaker 2: I felt very exposed and kind of blamed actually, because
Speaker 2: he was like someone who was generally a great guy.
Speaker 2: So there was this kind of inference that I was
Speaker 2: somehow at fault.
Speaker 1: Right, how gross is that? It is gross?
Speaker 2: And so I, being so weak and vulnerable and at
Speaker 2: my worst moment, I think, took some of that on
Speaker 2: and that was awful, and so I.
Speaker 1: Felt very very.
Speaker 2: I don't know, guilty or or like like I was
Speaker 2: a terrible person or had somehow brought upon myself or
Speaker 2: made a mistake or you know, not clearly thinking those thoughts.
Speaker 2: But that was at the heart of it, and that
Speaker 2: had come from things earlier in my life as well.
Speaker 2: Let's be honest, I had my own stuff that that
Speaker 2: was activating. Yeah, you know from earlier in my life,
Speaker 2: earlier life traumas, family traumas, like other things, and this
Speaker 2: is what happens. Something happens, and all the other traumas
Speaker 2: light up. So I was in that place, very dark place,
Speaker 2: and so when this woman said to me, I think
Speaker 2: you've got PTSD, I was like, oh my gosh, like
Speaker 2: there's a name. And somehow that ability to be witnessed
Speaker 2: and seen in the pain that I was experiencing was
Speaker 2: absolutely transformative. And she put me on sickness benefits you know,
Speaker 2: she gave me some time to just recover, you know,
Speaker 2: and a little bit of care.
Speaker 1: I can imagine that's only the start. Yeah, what did
Speaker 1: that healing journey look like? How long have you got there?
Speaker 2: I continue to make some poor decisions and end up
Speaker 2: in difficult situations, not as bad as that, But I
Speaker 2: had another relationship, which again beautiful, amazing man, but we
Speaker 2: brought our traumas to the table and it was difficult.
Speaker 2: And so I had a child at thirty one and
Speaker 2: at four months he was four months old, whisplit up.
Speaker 2: And I was a single mother for about seven years.
Speaker 2: But in that first two years I was recovering from
Speaker 2: so many things, and it culminated in a period of homelessness,
Speaker 2: and you know, I had a caseworker and then ultimately
Speaker 2: eventually that that was my kind of ultimate turning point,
Speaker 2: to be honest, where I went, what is my lot?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: What has my life become? And he's my beautiful little boy,
Speaker 2: you know, and he's like eighteen months old, and I'm homeless,
Speaker 2: and I'm still in really precarious situations and there's it's
Speaker 2: nobody's fault, it's nobody's doing.
Speaker 1: This is my life. I have to do something, and
Speaker 1: that was the.
Speaker 2: Point where things really really changed for me and I
Speaker 2: got some different support and went on this like quest,
Speaker 2: personal development quest, and that was kind of that seven
Speaker 2: years five to seven years, well, I guess was five
Speaker 2: years was my was my quest, and that was a
Speaker 2: lot of things.
Speaker 1: When people hear about really violent things happening like this,
Speaker 1: I think it's hard when you've never experienced this to
Speaker 1: really understand the long tail it can have. Yeah, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, yes, Like we're talking to you twenty six
Speaker 1: years after the fact, I'm still feeling it. I'm like
Speaker 1: my bellies and to hear how it kind of affected
Speaker 1: the next decade and then the decade after that. Like
Speaker 1: this one traumatic event, the power it has to kind
Speaker 1: of shatter so many different aspects of your life.
Speaker 2: It does, and I always see it like it connects
Speaker 2: the dots. It's sort of to me, I feel like
Speaker 2: it's like festoon lights, you know, those string lights, and
Speaker 2: I feel like this is one of the bigger ones, right,
Speaker 2: but there's all these other little ones and they connect.
Speaker 2: There was a series of events that led up to
Speaker 2: me being too kind to say no to a man
Speaker 2: that I knew had the potential to hurt me at
Speaker 2: the door. I can take full responsibility for that. I'm
Speaker 2: not blaming myself in any way, but I can see
Speaker 2: how that occurred. You can see I can connect the dots,
Speaker 2: and that's where the work for me.
Speaker 1: Was to be done. Up next, Elena tells me how
Speaker 1: she feels about Kai today and about the power of forgiveness.
Speaker 1: When I first started talking to you, yeah, I was
Speaker 1: really surprised to hear the way you spoke about him.
Speaker 1: You weren't. Usually when someone does something that violent, it's
Speaker 1: very like I, you know, we hate that person, we're
Speaker 1: not talking about that person. And immediately I saw that
Speaker 1: you didn't feel like that and that you had had
Speaker 1: some sporadic contact with this man. Can you explain that
Speaker 1: a bit? Because this man, this man held a knife
Speaker 1: to you. How did you get to that point where
Speaker 1: you can we talk about forgiveness? Yeah, So this is
Speaker 1: a tricky topic. Okay.
Speaker 2: It's a tricky topic because when something like this happens,
Speaker 2: that's not when you do the forgiving, Okay, And forgiveness
Speaker 2: is not something you can fake like this. Forgiveness is
Speaker 2: a process, and for me, it's a process that I
Speaker 2: do actively do for myself, and I do that because
Speaker 2: when something happens that is traumatic, that wounds you, that
Speaker 2: leaves a big hurt behind, you know, the trim thing
Speaker 2: that we talk about now often is Drama's not the
Speaker 2: thing that happened. It's the wound that it leaves and
Speaker 2: the wound that it leaves. In my opinion and my
Speaker 2: understanding is that we hold this experience that we had,
Speaker 2: a part of us stays there, and we hold it
Speaker 2: inside us, and when we do that, we stay connected
Speaker 2: with it. You know, if you say point to my chair,
Speaker 2: I can point to the chair. If you say point
Speaker 2: to gem Or, I can point to Gemma. If you say,
Speaker 2: point to this experience. It doesn't live here. It's not
Speaker 2: real here. It's only real in here in my head
Speaker 2: and heart. And so it only lives as long as
Speaker 2: I give it that attention and stay connected with it. Now,
Speaker 2: you don't get to choose to some degree how connected
Speaker 2: you are with an event, certainly not in the first
Speaker 2: years after it or maybe ever. Okay, But for me,
Speaker 2: I was aware the amount of energy that I was
Speaker 2: spending keeping this thing going inside me, on staying connected
Speaker 2: with that, on keeping a part of me there. So
Speaker 2: the work that I've done over the years, and it's
Speaker 2: a lot of years, you know, and very decisive and active,
Speaker 2: intentional work, and certainly not on my own. With a
Speaker 2: lot of help, I have come to understand that when
Speaker 2: we forgive, and actually the next step of transformation is gratitude.
Speaker 2: Like this is a weird one. I'm extremely grateful for
Speaker 2: these experiences, and that's very strange to say out loud,
Speaker 2: but it's not. If you bear with me that when
Speaker 2: I can forgive the situation and the person and myself,
Speaker 2: I reclaim that energy. That energy comes back to me.
Speaker 2: I get to use it in the present. It gets
Speaker 2: to be my vitality. It gets to be my courage
Speaker 2: because it takes so much courage to do this process,
Speaker 2: to forgive something so awful that's courage, and courage is hard.
Speaker 2: So I want to use that energy for the courage.
Speaker 2: I want to use that energy for my life now,
Speaker 2: for my kids, now, for this to be able to
Speaker 2: tell the story, to be able to work with other
Speaker 2: people with their past heurts and wounds. So that's my choice.
Speaker 2: The gratitude step is that now I understand how those
Speaker 2: things made me who I am, that woman that let
Speaker 2: him in the door is this woman.
Speaker 1: And without that woman, I wouldn't be me now.
Speaker 2: So I'm incredibly grateful that this occurred, as weird as
Speaker 2: that is, and that doesn't come quickly, and that doesn't
Speaker 2: come immediately maybe ever, and that's okay.
Speaker 1: Is there a difference between forgiving the experience and forgiving
Speaker 1: the man? Though? I don't know? Maybe, because how do
Speaker 1: you feel towards him now? Ah, this is.
Speaker 2: A strange question, right. I feel affection towards him, and
Speaker 2: that's because I know him, and he and I have
Speaker 2: been in a community, you know, for years and years
Speaker 2: and years, and we were before we met. That's how
Speaker 2: we met. And his best friend I've known since I
Speaker 2: was eighteen. We were in this really cool subculture of
Speaker 2: like hip hop and music and clothing and parties in
Speaker 2: the in the late eighties and early nineties. It was
Speaker 2: a really special time. It was a really tight knit community.
Speaker 2: And so I still see that man my friend, and occasionally,
Speaker 2: very occasionally I still see Kai, not very often. But
Speaker 2: it was funny not that long ago, I was at
Speaker 2: a gig and I was meeting my friend and Kai
Speaker 2: was there first, and so we hung out a little
Speaker 2: bit and it was interesting.
Speaker 1: But he's said sorry to me. He said sorry to my.
Speaker 2: Whole family, as he's told my family if they ever
Speaker 2: need anything, he's there. He's told me if I ever
Speaker 2: need anything, he's there. He knows what he did and
Speaker 2: he is happy to make amends for it, and he's
Speaker 2: had his own reckoning in his own way, which I
Speaker 2: can't speak to obviously. But we spoke before this because
Speaker 2: I called him to say I was doing this and
Speaker 2: to let him know about it, and we spoke for
Speaker 2: the first time about what happened afterwards, you know, and
Speaker 2: that was an incredible experience as well.
Speaker 1: And with your blessing, we're going to speak to him.
Speaker 1: But what was it like for you to hear his side?
Speaker 1: It was fascinating.
Speaker 2: Actually, I didn't know what it ensued for him, you know,
Speaker 2: I knew, I guess a little more than originally the
Speaker 2: reasons that he had become psychotic that evening. I understood
Speaker 2: later what had led up to that for him. I
Speaker 2: don't excuse his behavior in any way. I don't condone
Speaker 2: anything that he did, but I forgive it because I
Speaker 2: need to, because it serves me, because it allows me freedom,
Speaker 2: the energy that it gives me to not have to
Speaker 2: stay there and hold that is worth it. And it's
Speaker 2: like I say, it takes a lot of courage and
Speaker 2: it has led to me being a much more understanding,
Speaker 2: like the breadth and depth of my experience is so
Speaker 2: much greater for it. And so that's a true gift
Speaker 2: and I use that in my work now every day.
Speaker 1: Not all women survive they're attackers. Not all women are
Speaker 1: in relationships that it would be healthy to go back
Speaker 1: and talk to that person. And I do think we
Speaker 1: need to acknowledge that while telling your story. This is
Speaker 1: a very nuanced and individual situation. But there are so
Speaker 1: many women out there who are terrified of their attackers course,
Speaker 1: and they should never engage with them again. And I
Speaker 1: don't want anyone to listen to this and think, oh,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I should reach back out. I just want.
Speaker 2: To state really, really clearly that the way that you
Speaker 2: navigate what happens for you is absolutely yours. No one
Speaker 2: can tell you what's right, no one can tell you
Speaker 2: how to do it. It's so personal. You know, I
Speaker 2: mentioned that I went on a quest that was my quest.
Speaker 2: Nobody will be the same, No to are similar. And
Speaker 2: this is not me saying this is how you do it.
Speaker 2: There is no This is how you do it. There's
Speaker 2: no roadmap. The quest is not mapped.
Speaker 1: That's part of.
Speaker 2: It, right, and absolutely every single day I will say
Speaker 2: to anyone who comes in and says, oh, what should
Speaker 2: I do?
Speaker 1: Are you safe? That is the question? Are you saying?
Speaker 1: One question? Always?
Speaker 2: Because if you're not safe, you can't do shit, There's nothing.
Speaker 2: Safety is the only prerequisite to anything else. So safety
Speaker 2: in your body, in your circumstances, physically, emotionally, is underpins
Speaker 2: the whole story.
Speaker 1: You now help other people, don't you. You're tell us
Speaker 1: what a somatic therapist is firstly, so.
Speaker 2: I answer this question differently every time I do it,
Speaker 2: because every session is different. I do something called root
Speaker 2: cause therapy, which is a very specific modality, but I
Speaker 2: also am a somatic therapist, which essentially means that I
Speaker 2: do therapy where we go through the body first. So
Speaker 2: I am teaching people. Are helping people to understand the
Speaker 2: signals their body is sending them, and I'm helping them
Speaker 2: to interpret those signals and learn the language of the
Speaker 2: body and become more whole as a result. Because parts
Speaker 2: of us, like I said, fragment off when we have traumas,
Speaker 2: parts of us stay there, and trauma is a word
Speaker 2: that is a bit controversial. Let's just say wounds or
Speaker 2: past hurts, unprocessed emotions, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: But there's a big link.
Speaker 2: We know now there's a lot of research into the
Speaker 2: way that there's a big link between very real mental
Speaker 2: emotional physiological symptoms and the way that we have experienced
Speaker 2: emotion or experienced our past, or experience our emotions day
Speaker 2: to day. So you know, the suppression of emotion or
Speaker 2: the inability to deal with things in our past can
Speaker 2: become symptoms, very real symptoms.
Speaker 1: Do you think our current systems are set up to
Speaker 1: support people that are experiencing these hurts, these big violent
Speaker 1: hurts at the hands of other people. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've got to say I'm not an expert on the systems.
Speaker 2: I'm an unconventional I'm an alternative, alternative health practitioner, So
Speaker 2: I can't speak as an expert. I can tell you
Speaker 2: what I hear from my clients every day and friends
Speaker 2: and family that there appears to be a gap. And
Speaker 2: I don't think this is anybody's fault. I don't think
Speaker 2: a doctor, a nurse, a police woman, a policeman. I
Speaker 2: don't think any of these people are at fault here.
Speaker 2: I want to be really clear about this. I think
Speaker 2: that the frameworks that some of them are given are limited.
Speaker 2: Even psychologists, psychiatrists, they do a great job of what
Speaker 2: they do, but I think some some of their frameworks
Speaker 2: have a gap. And that's the gap I'm noticing day in,
Speaker 2: day out, And it's something to do with the interaction
Speaker 2: between our own conscious mind, which I believe is our body.
Speaker 2: Our body holds an innate wisdom. I mean, I say,
Speaker 2: I believe there's a lot of research into this. It's
Speaker 2: not just me that believes this. There's you know, psychotherapy
Speaker 2: is built on this. There's a whole lot of stuff
Speaker 2: that's built on this idea. Traditional Chinese medicine are evetic medicine,
Speaker 2: forms of medicine that are thousands of years older than
Speaker 2: ours acknowledge this. So when we start to bring in
Speaker 2: that kind of understanding that the body is our unconscious
Speaker 2: and that it holds things for us, and we start
Speaker 2: to interact with that, and we allow nurture and save spaces,
Speaker 2: and we allow the power of a witness, a caring,
Speaker 2: compassionate witness, it is transformative and that sometimes just in
Speaker 2: the busyness of you know, a crisis situation, like emergency
Speaker 2: workers and doctors and specialists, and you know, they're busy,
Speaker 2: they're doing their little piece of the pie, and I
Speaker 2: get that, but it sometimes gets lost and missed. And
Speaker 2: I speak to people every day who experience that.
Speaker 1: And you're kind of seeing these people after those services
Speaker 1: haven't helped them. Sometimes, yeah, yeah, sometimes.
Speaker 2: It's a huge variety of people. I see men, women
Speaker 2: sometimes in crisis, sometimes dealing with a crisis that happened
Speaker 2: many years ago because it's starting to come up, starting
Speaker 2: to be activated for them by their life at the
Speaker 2: current time, or they just get symptoms. They don't know
Speaker 2: what's going on and they need help to work it out,
Speaker 2: Like why is this happening to me?
Speaker 1: You know, given what happened to you and then the
Speaker 1: work you do watching our world right now, the fact
Speaker 1: that a woman is dying at the hands of usually
Speaker 1: a man, every once a week, what's that like for
Speaker 1: you to see that playing out?
Speaker 2: I feel helpless, I feel motivated. I do sometimes volunteer,
Speaker 2: and I do what I can. I feel at times
Speaker 2: overwhelmed by that fact and the way that I've chosen
Speaker 2: to approach it is that I don't know. My skill
Speaker 2: set is not suited to prevention. I have some really
Speaker 2: amazing friends working in that space. The only way that
Speaker 2: I can help with prevention is to empower women, or
Speaker 2: to help them know themselves, or to help them trust themselves.
Speaker 2: You know how I said, I had a spidery sense.
Speaker 2: Body told me I'm a somatic therapist. My body told
Speaker 2: me do not open that door. But at that point
Speaker 2: I wasn't trained in listening to it. Our body gives
Speaker 2: us so much information that we don't listen to. So
Speaker 2: my approach now is to give people that I'm really
Speaker 2: motivated to work in the space of that gap with
Speaker 2: people in that system as well. I would absolutely love
Speaker 2: to find a way to advocate for the people in
Speaker 2: there doing this work where the first responders, whether it's
Speaker 2: the martial arts instructors, you know, because a lot of
Speaker 2: people end up doing martial arts after while in incidents,
Speaker 2: to learn to be just a bit more trauma informed
Speaker 2: and to understand how to show that care even amidst
Speaker 2: all the hustle and bustle, and how to understand I
Speaker 2: guess you know what people in those situations need and
Speaker 2: in a way that goes beyond just the practical.
Speaker 1: It's hard because I want to talk about martial arts,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I was thinking, I don't women shouldn't have
Speaker 1: to learn martial arts, but well, it's interesting because it's
Speaker 1: not on us to stop violent men. They need to
Speaker 1: be working on themselves. Martial arts isn't only that I
Speaker 1: was going to say, tell me about why we all
Speaker 1: need to be doing martial arts.
Speaker 2: Look, there's a huge, huge place when you're dealing with
Speaker 2: any kind of deeply difficult emotional situation. Movement is medicine.
Speaker 1: Like we know.
Speaker 2: You ask anyone who has done even high performance athletes
Speaker 2: or weightlifters or dances, anyone who's done really intense physical
Speaker 2: activity that they will tell you it's more than just that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a whole it's a whole self activity.
Speaker 2: So you know, I mentioned that having past hers and
Speaker 2: traumas can can fragment us, it can keep part of
Speaker 2: us in the past. Or when you bring it all
Speaker 2: back together and become fully present in something that's transformational.
Speaker 2: And I often say that you won't be able to
Speaker 2: call yourself back from your wounded past unless you are
Speaker 2: able to build safety in the present. So building safety. Yes,
Speaker 2: self defense is safety. I do not feel afraid, rightly
Speaker 2: or wrongly. If I walk down the street at night,
Speaker 2: I don't feel afraid. I always get a shock when
Speaker 2: my friend says, oh, well you walk me to my car,
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh really, because I don't think that way.
Speaker 1: Don't you.
Speaker 2: I just don't because I would ask you. Most women do,
Speaker 2: that's right, most women do. A man recently who I
Speaker 2: sort of sometimes work with, said do you want me
Speaker 2: to walk you to carr And I sort of burst
Speaker 2: out laughing.
Speaker 1: Here's trying to be nice, you know. I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't think. I don't think I need you to.
Speaker 2: I can protect you if you want, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, Like, I feel confident in my ability to
Speaker 2: protect myself.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's brazen, but I'm trained, you know.
Speaker 1: And martial arts. From what I understand is it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter the size of the person. It's about the skill.
Speaker 1: I'm that big, yeah.
Speaker 2: And I train with very big men for the most part,
Speaker 2: very big strong men. No, it's it's technique.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a little harder if you don't get
Speaker 1: the technique right, that's for sure. But when you're.
Speaker 2: Training martial arts. You're in a place of complete immersion.
Speaker 2: You have to be you got someone you know.
Speaker 1: It's high stakes.
Speaker 2: So when I'm training ideally, when I walk on the mats,
Speaker 2: everything stays outside. I'm in an interaction. It's a collaborative.
Speaker 2: It's a group again.
Speaker 1: Groups.
Speaker 2: I think groups and other people have a huge place
Speaker 2: in healing from difficulty. I think that, you know, doing
Speaker 2: things on your own, isolation is your worst enemy if
Speaker 2: you're going through something.
Speaker 1: So there's that.
Speaker 2: There's the community element. You build trust with men. That's
Speaker 2: amazing for someone with my history, and physically it makes
Speaker 2: me strong. Emotionally it makes me strong. It's not easy,
Speaker 2: but there's a resilience element, and there's a consistency. I'm
Speaker 2: not great with consistency, but I kind of have to
Speaker 2: show up. If I want to grade to a second
Speaker 2: degree black belt, I have to keep going. It makes
Speaker 2: me show up. So it gives me a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it gives me a lot. It's not really about the
Speaker 2: self defense and the fighting. In the end, it's about
Speaker 2: meeting yourself. It's about becoming whole in more moments. That's
Speaker 2: how it feels.
Speaker 1: I think I need to start martial arts. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think everybody does.
Speaker 2: I'm really interested in the intersection between martial arts and
Speaker 2: healing from trauma, and this is something that might come
Speaker 2: into that advocacy. I'm sort of something's hatching. It's hatching. Yeah,
Speaker 2: watch your face.
Speaker 1: Your son. You went on to have two more children, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have three kids. How has everything you've experienced, particularly
Speaker 1: going through something like that. You know you've got girls,
Speaker 1: So how how's it influenced your parenting and the way
Speaker 1: you've brought them up into the world.
Speaker 2: I guess you know, I have concerns for them at times,
Speaker 2: but they're not me as well. They've had a very
Speaker 2: very stable upbringing for the most part, and certainly the
Speaker 2: second two have. The first one a little bit less so.
Speaker 2: But we've done a lot of work to support him,
Speaker 2: and he's been well supported throughout his life. And my
Speaker 2: current husband, who said he might not listen to this podcast,
Speaker 2: by the way, is an amazing man and has become
Speaker 2: a safe space for me and a protective for me
Speaker 2: in a way and for my kids. And so we
Speaker 2: are lucky, very fortunate to have that experience, extremely fortunate,
Speaker 2: and I think my kids are aware of that. I'm
Speaker 2: pretty honest with them. My young boy, he's nine, He said,
Speaker 2: I told him a little bit about this just in
Speaker 2: case someone heard it, you know, And I told him,
Speaker 2: you know, there was a man who was going through
Speaker 2: really hard time and then he got a knife and
Speaker 2: mummy got away and she was fine. And then he said, yesterday,
Speaker 2: are you doing that thing with the man who had
Speaker 2: the hard time tomorrow? So you know, I do my
Speaker 2: best to kind of give them what they need to
Speaker 2: understand the world, but also in kid not.
Speaker 1: Dump them innute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'm pretty honest with them about it. And
Speaker 2: you know, I worry sometimes for the world. That is
Speaker 2: obviously like all of us. But I choose the love
Speaker 2: and not the fear. To me, that's the that's the
Speaker 2: choice from an internal level.
Speaker 1: You have so many hats. And the other hat that
Speaker 1: we haven't brought in yet is that you're an educator. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've worked with a lot of teenage boys, and I'm
Speaker 1: interested in your perspective on the next generations. Yeah, given
Speaker 1: we are seeing these statistics around, we're seeing a lot
Speaker 1: of this mannisphereund give us some hope. What's the next generation.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a good segue, love not fear, you know,
Speaker 2: young men young boys. They are exposed to a lot
Speaker 2: and they are also, I think, sometimes quite isolated.
Speaker 1: I've noticed.
Speaker 2: What I've noticed is that you know a lot of
Speaker 2: people as a result of what we hear and as
Speaker 2: a result of the society we live in. There's not
Speaker 2: a lot of intergenerational places. There's not a lot of places,
Speaker 2: but we get to know people at different ages.
Speaker 1: So I've you know, just casually.
Speaker 2: Heard comments from like midlife women of I hate teenagers,
Speaker 2: or you know, it's the parents fault, that sort of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I understand why, Like I don't blame them for
Speaker 2: thinking that. But my approach to this is we need
Speaker 2: to stay close no matter what. We need to stay close.
Speaker 2: We need to stay close with our families, with our
Speaker 2: extended families, Our young men and women. They are growing
Speaker 2: up in a really crazy world that I think we
Speaker 2: barely understand that we didn't grow up in right, and
Speaker 2: we don't have to understand all of it to know
Speaker 2: that connection between us and them is absolutely key. That said,
Speaker 2: it is not safe for these men and boys to
Speaker 2: be exposed to what they're exposed to. It is not
Speaker 2: safe for a lot of young women. The statistics are
Speaker 2: abominable and I'm not going to be a Pollyanna and
Speaker 2: gloss over that it's abominable. And I hope that we're
Speaker 2: going to be intervening more and more in this. I
Speaker 2: think there are interventions coming more and more. Social media
Speaker 2: has a part to play, but I don't blame social media.
Speaker 2: People use social media. I think we need to take
Speaker 2: some responsibility for our disconnection with our young people, and
Speaker 2: I think we need to step in. But in the moment,
Speaker 2: I mean, I've had hairy moments with groups of young men,
Speaker 2: as a lot of people surely have. And it's challenging
Speaker 2: to be around a group of young boys in a
Speaker 2: pack and they do gee each other up. It's in
Speaker 2: their brains and nervous systems to do that at that age, right,
Speaker 2: So we got to be careful how we handle that.
Speaker 2: And it cannot be allowed and it must be addressed
Speaker 2: and it must.
Speaker 1: Be called out.
Speaker 2: And I'm big on ethical bystanding, big on ethical bystanding
Speaker 2: that we need to you know, one person getting surrounded
Speaker 2: by a group, what do not walk past that?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Stand with them, Yeah, talk to them, look at them,
Speaker 2: just witness it. Power of witnessing is very underestimated.
Speaker 1: I think if someone has been listening to this podcast.
Speaker 1: What are you hoping that they take away from it?
Speaker 1: If they were to take one thing.
Speaker 2: That's a hard question and it's so personal, right, I
Speaker 2: hope they feel less alone. I guess my intention in
Speaker 2: telling this story. You know, stories are really important. Humans
Speaker 2: have a collective journey through challenge. That's what it is
Speaker 2: to be human. Life doesn't stop. Bad things happen, okay,
Speaker 2: But when the bad things happen, when the horrible, unimaginably
Speaker 2: bad things happen, it's really important that we know that
Speaker 2: it changes that we move through and that there are
Speaker 2: infinite ways to do that, and that if you can
Speaker 2: and when you can find the right support, get to
Speaker 2: the point where you can accept what's happened to you
Speaker 2: and find the right support and reach out and not
Speaker 2: be isolated and understand who you are through that, how
Speaker 2: your identity has changed, what it's done for you. That
Speaker 2: is where the magic is the magic and the transformation
Speaker 2: doesn't come from anything else but within you. It's in
Speaker 2: there already. That's what I kind of want people to know.
Speaker 1: We've asked you to kind of go back and relive
Speaker 1: in creating this podcast, in asking you to come on
Speaker 1: what's that been like for you. It has been twenty
Speaker 1: six years and we've asked you to kind of go
Speaker 1: back into your memory. I'm not gonna lie, it's uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I felt really good about doing this, and I
Speaker 2: do still feel really good about doing this. Actually, I
Speaker 2: feel privileged to be able to to have the ability
Speaker 2: to speak about it, to have the ability to tell
Speaker 2: the story from the other side. I think that's kind
Speaker 2: of remarkable. Wasn't ever able to speak publicly or openly
Speaker 2: for a really, really long time about anything, So it's
Speaker 2: a skill and a privilege. But also I guess I
Speaker 2: feel supported. I just feel like you guys have been
Speaker 2: amazing as well. That it kind of gives me a
Speaker 2: good feeling that these stories can be heard and can
Speaker 2: be told in a way that is gentle and safe.
Speaker 2: And I'm really grateful that I feel supported enough to
Speaker 2: tell it, even by the man that did it. So
Speaker 2: that's remarkable to me, and I don't discount that in
Speaker 2: any way. So a lot of things go into it.
Speaker 2: It's been pretty hairy to tell it, but I also
Speaker 2: think that it's sufficiently important to experience that I brought
Speaker 2: my courage, I bought my resilience.
Speaker 1: Listeners are also going to hear Kui's side of the story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have allowed us to do that. I felt a
Speaker 1: bit of trepidation asking you that I felt because of
Speaker 1: the conversation we'd had and how you'd spoken about him,
Speaker 1: I felt comfortable asking you. And your response to me
Speaker 1: was that's a great idea. And I thought, what a
Speaker 1: unique kind of situation. What do you hope people get
Speaker 1: from hearing his side? Because often in these scenarios, we
Speaker 1: don't hear them. Man, we don't hear the apology, We
Speaker 1: don't hearing that the kind of journey from their side.
Speaker 2: I have to get whatever they need. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't know what that is, and I don't know what
Speaker 2: he'll say. I have an idea what he'll say.
Speaker 1: What are you hoping he says?
Speaker 2: Actually, I'm not invested in what he says. Funnily enough,
Speaker 2: I hope he can tell his truth. I think the
Speaker 2: world needs more truth. I think we need to be
Speaker 2: more able to tell our stories. Stories are something that
Speaker 2: humans carry and have a lot of power, and they
Speaker 2: help us connect with each other and understand what we
Speaker 2: have in common. And I don't think there's enough of
Speaker 2: that in the world, So stories for me are connective
Speaker 2: and I believe in that.
Speaker 1: I really believe in that. Thank you to Elena for
Speaker 1: joining us on this episode. You can find links to
Speaker 1: her work in our show notes. This is part one
Speaker 1: of this episode. Part two is my interview with Kai,
Speaker 1: the perpetrator in this case. You can find a link
Speaker 1: to that in our show notes. I'll see you over there.