Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: I'm Danny Shapiro and this is family Secrets, the secrets
Speaker 2: that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 2: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. My guest today
Speaker 2: is Kimberly Warner. Kimberly is the founder, director, and producer
Speaker 2: of Unfixed Media, a production company with a focus on
Speaker 2: people with chronic, uncurable conditions. Kimberly's is a story of
Speaker 2: an unfolding life that contains within it big secrets and
Speaker 2: big consequences. It's also a story of courage, resilience, and
Speaker 2: making meaning out of very hard things. And by this
Speaker 2: I don't only mean personal meaning, though that would be plenty,
Speaker 2: but rather the meaning that comes from illuminating and changing
Speaker 2: the lives of others through advocacy, generosity of spirit, and art.
Speaker 2: Tell me about the landscape of your childhood.
Speaker 3: I grew up in Wisconsin in the mid seventies and eighties,
Speaker 3: and everyone thinks of Wisconsin, and we think of football
Speaker 3: and cheese. But we were more like the tofu eating
Speaker 3: goddess groups type of family, so we didn't quite fit in.
Speaker 3: My dad was a cardiac surgeon in a small college
Speaker 3: town in Wisconsin, and my mother was a psychotherapist, and
Speaker 3: they through a tumultuous slash growthful marriage.
Speaker 4: They went through about.
Speaker 3: Five wedding bands, which might explain the sense that they
Speaker 3: were falling out of love with each other, breaking commitments
Speaker 3: to each other. They actually had five years where they
Speaker 3: or exploring other relationships in an open marriage and made
Speaker 3: it through all those years, but also learned a lot
Speaker 3: of tools, and so they became kind of leaders. And
Speaker 3: I knew this as a child. This wasn't a secret
Speaker 3: to us. So I knew that my parents were very
Speaker 3: much into teaching conscious loving workshops and growing through the
Speaker 3: pain that they had experienced together. So there was a
Speaker 3: lot of growth, a lot of yelling, a lot of
Speaker 3: big emotions.
Speaker 4: In the house.
Speaker 3: That said, we also were sort of the perfect family.
Speaker 3: And I'm making air quotes as I say that, because
Speaker 3: of the status of my father and my mom and
Speaker 3: the sort of the leadership roles that they carried. My
Speaker 3: brother was very popular. I was a straight A student
Speaker 3: in Ballerina.
Speaker 4: We lived in a.
Speaker 3: Beautiful log home on a lake. We were kind of
Speaker 3: looked at as the perfect warners, and I shied away
Speaker 3: from that big time it was very scary to.
Speaker 4: Feel that label.
Speaker 3: I didn't feel it in myself, and that is probably
Speaker 3: where most of the truth lies. It's just there was
Speaker 3: a really big schism between this deep onnoored sense that
Speaker 3: I felt in my own identity, in my own being,
Speaker 3: and the confidence with which our family was presented to the.
Speaker 2: World as a child. How did you understand that schism
Speaker 2: inside of you? You know, sort of the outsides not
Speaker 2: matching the insides.
Speaker 3: That's a great question. What I did is I buried it.
Speaker 3: I became a people pleaser. I validated myself through my
Speaker 3: surroundings instead of through my own intuition. I made sure
Speaker 3: that everyone else around me was valid and happy, and
Speaker 3: I would became so good at it that I really
Speaker 3: didn't feel that schism myself. Eric is three years older,
Speaker 3: and it was a very popular, charismatic, just social guy, extroverted,
Speaker 3: and I couldn't have been more opposite than that.
Speaker 4: I was the introvert.
Speaker 3: In fact, we were just speaking the other day and
Speaker 3: he said when our parents would argue, when it would
Speaker 3: just blow up downstairs, he found an escape route through
Speaker 3: his window, and that was his way of dealing with
Speaker 3: it because it was just too much to tolerate, and
Speaker 3: I remember those arguments too. But my technique was to shrink.
Speaker 3: I call it sort of the shrink wrapped version of
Speaker 3: myself or the fight fight er freeze.
Speaker 4: I was the freezer.
Speaker 3: So I would just freeze and shrink down as a
Speaker 3: coping mechanism.
Speaker 2: So your brother would literally leave the house and you would.
Speaker 4: Of yourself exactly.
Speaker 2: It's kind of an amazing irony that your parents were
Speaker 2: leading these conscious loving workshops and at the same time
Speaker 2: had this really volatile relationship themselves. I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: know what a conscious loving workshop is. Did you know
Speaker 2: as a child? Did you Were you aware of kind
Speaker 2: of what your parents were doing as leaders in that community.
Speaker 3: Partially I knew that it was very psychological. My mother
Speaker 3: would bring in that aspect of it through her marriage
Speaker 3: and family counseling training, and it was also a lot
Speaker 3: of stress management techniques that my father was bringing in
Speaker 3: through his work with as a cardiac surgeon. But extending
Speaker 3: beyond that into more of the energy medicine, biofeedback, some
Speaker 3: of the things that are more common now, breathing exercises,
Speaker 3: they do, these crash courses of Okay, we've got a
Speaker 3: weekend workshop coming up at Wagging Wheel, and we need
Speaker 3: to bullet point what we're going to be discussing with
Speaker 3: our couples, and so I would these large, colorful blodderboards
Speaker 3: and they would basically have exercises, techniques, a lot of
Speaker 3: eye gazing, a lot of journaling, a lot of truth telling. Later.
Speaker 3: I know that my father got involved with the Tantra
Speaker 3: community in Hawaii, and while they didn't teach Tntra, I
Speaker 3: know that my dad was learning a lot from that
Speaker 3: community as well. My mom was a little more hands
Speaker 3: off with it and so it wasn't brought into their
Speaker 3: work as leaders, But I know that my dad was
Speaker 3: learning a lot from that space as well.
Speaker 2: Tell me about your mom, I mean, the mother of
Speaker 2: your childhood.
Speaker 4: Oh my mom.
Speaker 3: Well, this is hard to talk about because I love
Speaker 3: her dearly and she was young. You know, she was
Speaker 3: a good Christian when she met my dad.
Speaker 4: In fact, she was.
Speaker 3: Called Parson Larsen at university and their first kiss Haddock
Speaker 3: Bible between the two of them. So for them to
Speaker 3: abandon Christianity, study Buddhism, make a meditation room.
Speaker 4: You know, in the progression.
Speaker 3: Of her evolution as a spiritual, loving human being, was
Speaker 3: quite dramatic. What I remember from her reminds me a
Speaker 3: little bit of Betty Draper from mad Men. There was
Speaker 3: so much pain beneath the surface, but she had to
Speaker 3: keep it all together. My dad was very chaotic with
Speaker 3: his emotions, with his schedule, his commitments, and so for her,
Speaker 3: she did her very very best to raise a good family,
Speaker 3: help Eric and I feel safe, but at the cost
Speaker 3: of feeling like there was a truthfulness in her own
Speaker 3: being and therefore, by default me feeling like it was
Speaker 3: safe for me to feel truthful with my feeling like
Speaker 3: it needed to be a certain way in order to
Speaker 3: keep up the appearances of this, because if one thread
Speaker 3: was pulled, the whole thing would unravel. And she, to
Speaker 3: her credit, dug deeply into this place of forgiving over
Speaker 3: and over again with my father because of the affairs
Speaker 3: and trying to grow herself with this. This is my partner,
Speaker 3: this is what he's going to be doing, so okay,
Speaker 3: then I might as well do it as well. And
Speaker 3: let's open this marriage up, let's go to therapy, let's
Speaker 3: figure this out. And if you're going to have affairs,
Speaker 3: then I'm going to have.
Speaker 4: A relationship too.
Speaker 3: And she needed to grow herself. And I know she
Speaker 3: said that, but I think my brother calls it we
Speaker 3: were a little fearal, if that makes it, because there
Speaker 3: was so much drama in their relationship. My mom did
Speaker 3: a great job at making sure the meals were there,
Speaker 3: the ballet classes were paid for, the family trips were planned,
Speaker 3: the house was beautiful, But emotionally, I think my brother
Speaker 3: and I were pretty fearal, left to figure it out.
Speaker 4: On our own, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Kimberly doesn't just freeze and leave herself as a teenager.
Speaker 2: She starts to exhibit some pretty severe anxiety symptoms and behaviors,
Speaker 2: only she doesn't know what she's anxious about. After all,
Speaker 2: despite her parents' arguments, they are seen as a model
Speaker 2: couple and the Warners are a model family looked up
Speaker 2: to by their community. All is perfect on the surface,
Speaker 2: but definitely not perfect on the inside, so Kimberly is
Speaker 2: left to come up with her own solutions.
Speaker 3: My solution was to control everything within myself, because if
Speaker 3: something was even though it didn't appear on the surface,
Speaker 3: then I decided it must be me. The thing that's
Speaker 3: wrong must be me, And I know I'm not alone
Speaker 3: in that. When you can't identify the trauma out in
Speaker 3: the world when.
Speaker 4: The secret is buried.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's the only way, but I internalized
Speaker 3: it and said, something's wrong with me. So I did
Speaker 3: a pretty good job for a while until I couldn't
Speaker 3: fixing the thing that was, whatever that flavor of the
Speaker 3: month was that was wrong. I had a few earlier
Speaker 3: traumas with my body with a developmental need disorder, but
Speaker 3: that eventually passed. But I remember the first thing that
Speaker 3: really got me was when I started getting pimples, and.
Speaker 4: It was so.
Speaker 3: I felt so helpless, and I would lock myself in
Speaker 3: the bathroom for hours and hours and hours and pick
Speaker 3: at my skin, tried masks and scrub and I even
Speaker 3: started taking my brother's tetracycling, even though it wasn't my prescription.
Speaker 3: I just popped them like pills because I heard that
Speaker 3: was supposed to help.
Speaker 4: I would plead at night.
Speaker 3: I would leave the bathroom after just an inflamed face
Speaker 3: of skin picking and scrubbing, and I.
Speaker 4: Wanted nothing more.
Speaker 3: Deep down, I couldn't tell this to myself, but deep
Speaker 3: down I wanted to be held and loved for who
Speaker 3: I was, for the big mess that I had just created.
Speaker 4: I was like bringing the mess.
Speaker 3: Inside out to the surface, and I wanted to be
Speaker 3: witnessed in it, and I wanted to be loved in it.
Speaker 4: But of course that's not what I did.
Speaker 3: I would belining it straight to the bedroom and make
Speaker 3: please with the universe that my skin would get better.
Speaker 3: And this tormented me for years. And I'm not even
Speaker 3: I didn't even have acne. I mean, this is to
Speaker 3: the level where I would probably we talked to junior
Speaker 3: high friends and high school friends and then goa, what
Speaker 3: you didn't have skin or whatever.
Speaker 4: So I was really really.
Speaker 3: Anxious and agitated and becoming more and more hyper vigilant
Speaker 3: around any sort of tiny little change that I would
Speaker 3: sense in my body because that was the only thing
Speaker 3: I felt like I could control.
Speaker 2: Did you know it was anxiety? Did you have that
Speaker 2: language or that knowledge or it was just you know,
Speaker 2: these kinds of obsessions and compulsions and behaviors that were
Speaker 2: like I have no idea why I'm doing this, but
Speaker 2: I have to keep doing it.
Speaker 4: That's exactly what it was.
Speaker 3: And it was really just goal oriented. It was I
Speaker 3: have to fix my skin. I mean I didn't even
Speaker 3: allow room.
Speaker 4: For why am I doing this.
Speaker 3: I would feel the pain afterwards of why did I
Speaker 3: do that, But in the compulsion, it was just this,
Speaker 3: I have to fix it. There's no option here to
Speaker 3: be broken.
Speaker 4: There's no option here to feel the.
Speaker 3: Chaos that I feel inside. And I think that was
Speaker 3: a direct mirroring that my mom was feeling. There is
Speaker 3: no option for me to feel this absolute chaos in
Speaker 3: this marriage because I have to hold it all together.
Speaker 2: And what were some of the other ways in which
Speaker 2: the anxiety expressed itself during those years you've talked about,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of the freezing up, the inability to
Speaker 2: make decisions, that making yourself as small and invisible as
Speaker 2: you possibly.
Speaker 3: Could yeap and really getting a sixth sense for what
Speaker 3: other people wanted to hear and feel and see. And
Speaker 3: so I aversion of the shrink wrapping. Nobody probably would
Speaker 3: say I was introverted, because I also developed a really
Speaker 3: good social extroverted self in order to please the people
Speaker 3: that needed me to be that way. So I definitely
Speaker 3: had a chameleon quality that was ultimately the goal was
Speaker 3: to protect that fragile, vulnerable truth that was me, and
Speaker 3: that was the part that was never allowed to surface.
Speaker 4: The chameleon could surface. So it varied.
Speaker 3: The techniques varied based on the environments that I was.
Speaker 2: In during this fragile and vulnerable time. In Kimberly's teenage life,
Speaker 2: she and her mom are on a walk one day
Speaker 2: when her mom tells her in a very blunt and
Speaker 2: academic kind of way, that it's possible her father isn't
Speaker 2: in fact her biological father.
Speaker 3: So I was seventeen, and the way my mom tells
Speaker 3: it is that my dad had had one night experimental
Speaker 3: situation with person after they had already closed their open marriage,
Speaker 3: and so he was feeling ashamed, and on the heels
Speaker 3: of that, he said, well, I think you need to
Speaker 3: tell Kim about the possibility that I'm not her father.
Speaker 2: So this is something that your parents kind of sort
Speaker 2: of had a inkling about, but then shoved that inkling
Speaker 2: away and didn't really discuss it with each other. Certainly
Speaker 2: didn't discuss it with you.
Speaker 4: No, and they but I also get the sense that
Speaker 4: they put it.
Speaker 3: Away the night that the conception happened in Canada. My
Speaker 3: mother came home the next day. I told my dad
Speaker 3: I was born eight months later, and it was buried.
Speaker 4: At that point.
Speaker 3: My dad remembers once looking at me as an infant
Speaker 3: and feeling like wishy mine, and he felt like, psychically
Speaker 3: or something that he was worried. I could hear his
Speaker 3: thoughts or feel his insecurity, and so he put it away.
Speaker 3: You know, of course nothing gets put away that easily.
Speaker 3: But the way that I've been told, and up until
Speaker 3: the age seventeen, it was not discussed. There was there
Speaker 3: was not even a question in my mind you know
Speaker 3: who my dad was. I have a pretty good delete
Speaker 3: button on some memories in my life, so I guess
Speaker 3: you couldn't call the memories if I'm deleting them. But
Speaker 3: I remember that it was around the lake, and I
Speaker 3: remember that it was an overcast day, and I I
Speaker 3: was a little confused by why my mom wanted to
Speaker 3: take me for a walk, because usually it was more
Speaker 3: of a jogging type of thing where she took the
Speaker 3: jogging movement happened in the eighties and she took that
Speaker 3: on and so that's usually how we would.
Speaker 4: Spend our time together. And this was a walk.
Speaker 3: And I remember as we sort of turned the corner
Speaker 3: around closer as we emerged towards High Cliff, which is
Speaker 3: got like a golf course and a country club. She said,
Speaker 3: I your father wants me to know that there's a
Speaker 3: chance that he's not your father. And in that same breath,
Speaker 3: she said, but isn't it wonderful knowing that you belong
Speaker 3: to the mystery? And I sensed a very strong need
Speaker 3: for this to be a happy story, for this to
Speaker 3: be a positively beautiful thing. And of course she's trying
Speaker 3: to protect me. Ugh, I mean, okay, I've got to
Speaker 3: tell my daughter this. So I don't think there was
Speaker 3: a fraction of a second where I allowed myself to
Speaker 3: really fall into what she had just said. I quickly
Speaker 3: went to how am I supposed to respond to this?
Speaker 3: And she gave it to me. She fed it right
Speaker 3: to me. She said, well, it's cool you belong to
Speaker 3: the mystery. And I'm like, yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: It was as if the executive functioning of my brain
Speaker 3: turned off, and you know, just tell me what to say.
Speaker 3: So later in life, you know, my mother says that
Speaker 3: that's actually not what happened. That it was me that
Speaker 3: said isn't it cool that I belonged to the mystery.
Speaker 3: I just don't remember saying that. But I also don't
Speaker 3: leave that as out as a possibility, because again, I
Speaker 3: was trying to read what I needed to be in
Speaker 3: this situation, and I very clearly knew that I needed
Speaker 3: to be optimistic and positive and that this is a
Speaker 3: beautiful story.
Speaker 4: So that's where it was left.
Speaker 3: And I truly I don't remember talking about it with
Speaker 3: my dad, none of my friends. I don't even remember
Speaker 3: thinking about it after that walk, Right.
Speaker 2: You put that beautiful story away.
Speaker 4: I put it away. Yeah, that lovely story away.
Speaker 2: So was that lovely story tucked away? Life in the
Speaker 2: Warner family continues in its usual fashion, school dinners, the
Speaker 2: planning of trips, but then tragedy strikes.
Speaker 3: In my senior year, spring break, we have a family
Speaker 3: vacation to go to Mexico. My brother's meeting us from
Speaker 3: Colorado University of col Colorado. He's there and he's going
Speaker 3: to fly to Cancun and meet us all there.
Speaker 4: My dad.
Speaker 3: The night before we are to drive to the Milwaukee airport,
Speaker 3: which is about a two hour drive, he was at
Speaker 3: a retirement party for one of the nurses at the
Speaker 3: hospital and he had.
Speaker 4: To or was dressed up as Willie Nelson.
Speaker 3: His two partners were also dressed up, and I think
Speaker 3: they sang some tunes, and of course there was drinking.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 3: Somebody from the party actually asked if he would like
Speaker 3: a drive home because they noticed he'd been drinking more
Speaker 3: than usual. And they said to us that he grabbed
Speaker 3: the keys and said, I'm my own man.
Speaker 4: And I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 3: That was a choice that he made to take it
Speaker 3: on and be responsible for his commitment to just being
Speaker 3: the man that he thought he was supposed to be.
Speaker 4: He got in the car and he drove home, which.
Speaker 3: Is probably a twenty minute drive, and we had already
Speaker 3: left because he was late, and my mom in a frenzy.
Speaker 3: I remember gathering our bags in the house and it's
Speaker 3: almost it's two am. You know, we're supposed to be
Speaker 3: at the Milwaukee airport at four am. And he's not here.
Speaker 3: He's not here, he's not here. She scribbled off a
Speaker 3: note that said meet us at the airport. I'm pissed
Speaker 3: and underline, underline, underline, and left it on the counter
Speaker 3: or on the bed or something. He got home about
Speaker 3: thirty minutes later and found that and threw a bag together.
Speaker 3: So he got on the highway and I think he
Speaker 3: was nearly to the Milwaukee airport. It was probably forty
Speaker 3: five minutes from there, and he got tired, and as
Speaker 3: my mother said he would do when he was tired,
Speaker 3: he would put his hand through the sun roof and
Speaker 3: sort of get some fresh air on his hand. Happened
Speaker 3: to be that the sun was rising at that moment,
Speaker 3: because the car behind him had seen this. He waved
Speaker 3: at the rising sun and then swerved over and hit
Speaker 3: a mac truck head on and was killed.
Speaker 4: We did not know.
Speaker 3: We got on the plane and received a little napkin
Speaker 3: on the plane that said call this number.
Speaker 4: It was this is the flight attendant had given it
Speaker 4: to us, and.
Speaker 3: You know, we just thought it was some one of
Speaker 3: the cardiologists saying Dave will be late.
Speaker 4: He'll be on the next light.
Speaker 3: So when we finally got to the Cancoon Airport and
Speaker 3: got through customs and my mom was able to call
Speaker 3: the number, this I do remember, maybe clearer than any
Speaker 3: memory I have from childhood. She turned to me and
Speaker 3: her beautiful mouth, with her lipstick stained lips, said, Dad's dead.
Speaker 3: If this was the coroner's office from Fredonia, Wisconsin. And
Speaker 3: you know, that was the end of chapter one in
Speaker 3: Kim's life. That moment, that something ended there, and.
Speaker 4: Of course.
Speaker 3: I didn't know how to feel. That my coping was denial,
Speaker 3: and I denied it all the way home. We waited
Speaker 3: for my brother to arrive, watched him fall to his
Speaker 3: knees and scream and felt all of their very open emotion,
Speaker 3: which made me feel smaller and smaller and smaller, because
Speaker 3: I didn't have space for my way, nor did I know.
Speaker 4: What my way was, but it wasn't their way.
Speaker 3: So I went into denial and then also justification, and
Speaker 3: just decided, well, he's closer to me now because he's dead.
Speaker 4: I really didn't leave room for.
Speaker 3: Any pain or sadness, real pain or sadness.
Speaker 5: I went through the motions, I went to therapy, I cried,
Speaker 5: I wrote letters to my dad, I shared something during
Speaker 5: his memorial service, but I didn't really feel the deep,
Speaker 5: deep ache and chaos.
Speaker 4: It was too much. It was too much for me.
Speaker 2: Did you in the next period of time did you
Speaker 2: return to the question of whether he was your biological father?
Speaker 2: Or did that lovely story stay buried for that period
Speaker 2: of time.
Speaker 4: Gone.
Speaker 3: Totally gone, not even if there was any bit of
Speaker 3: it that was still lingering in my psyche even before
Speaker 3: his death.
Speaker 4: His death obliterated it.
Speaker 3: I can remember walking through all the different stages of
Speaker 3: losing him and then grieving him when I went to college,
Speaker 3: and it was my alliance was one hundred percent to him,
Speaker 3: and in fact my confirmation of our similarities and how
Speaker 3: I was going to live out his destiny and you
Speaker 3: take his DNA where his abbreviated life couldn't take it.
Speaker 3: I was all on my shoulders and that was a
Speaker 3: way for me to stay close to him.
Speaker 2: So those years in college, how would you characterize the schism?
Speaker 3: Well, fortunately I did early on connect with my first love,
Speaker 3: my first lover, i should say, and we were together
Speaker 3: for three years.
Speaker 4: And he also lost to father. So a lot of
Speaker 4: our bond was around, and.
Speaker 3: You know, writing letters to our fathers and making them
Speaker 3: larger than life and speaking with them and burying the letters,
Speaker 3: and the Colorado Rockies, and so there was a way.
Speaker 4: That this gives them got bigger.
Speaker 3: The sense of my truth and my ability to feel
Speaker 3: what was going on inside, I think would come forward
Speaker 3: every once in a while through the tumultuous love that
Speaker 3: I'm talking about. With this man named Ali. He was violent,
Speaker 3: he was aggressive, he was passionate, he was everything that
Speaker 3: I wasn't and so I would feel bubbles of my
Speaker 3: own truth coming forward, just because it had.
Speaker 4: To in that kind of relationship.
Speaker 3: But ultimately it was like little firecrackers, you know, just
Speaker 3: the little ones that you put out on the pavement,
Speaker 3: not the big ones.
Speaker 4: Just the little ones been around it circles.
Speaker 3: It was like I would have these little berths of oh,
Speaker 3: this is how I feel, and then water would get
Speaker 3: poured on top of it and it would go far
Speaker 3: far away. The schism and the sense of who I was.
Speaker 4: It got buried.
Speaker 3: Also because I declared my major the first month I
Speaker 3: was there, and I was going to be a doctor.
Speaker 3: My job was to live my dad's life. I was
Speaker 3: at a wonderful liberal arts school that had all these
Speaker 3: incredible creative classes and professors. I didn't touch those outside
Speaker 3: of the requisites. You know, I had this deeply creative
Speaker 3: life inside, but I didn't allow that to come to
Speaker 3: the surface because I was supposed to make my dad
Speaker 3: happy in the afterlife.
Speaker 4: He did not want that for me.
Speaker 3: This was not something I ever felt the pressure from
Speaker 3: the outside. This was something I created myself.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back when Kimberly is twenty one she's
Speaker 2: just graduated from college when she's diagnosed with something called
Speaker 2: autoimmune Graves disease, an affliction which in many ways results
Speaker 2: from being in a near constant, hypervigilant stress state.
Speaker 3: It is one hundred percent like being on twelve cups
Speaker 3: of coffee. I didn't drink coffee to this day, I
Speaker 3: can't even drink green tea. But my nervous system was
Speaker 3: so wired into the sympathetic state that my brain at
Speaker 3: that point was feeling like something.
Speaker 4: Is always wrong.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't cognizantly say something is wrong, but my nervous
Speaker 3: system was on a red al alert all the time.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure you know I read books. When I
Speaker 3: first was diagnosed with Graves disease, of course.
Speaker 4: I wanted to fix it.
Speaker 3: That was my solution, and their solution in the nineties
Speaker 3: is to cut the thyroid gland out and medicate for
Speaker 3: the rest of your life. I was losing weight rapidly
Speaker 3: and eating just gobs of calories every day, and it
Speaker 3: just was not handshaking, armpit sweating, just not sleeping, insomnia.
Speaker 3: It's almost as if I was lifting off senator. So
Speaker 3: the solution was to cut it out, but I did
Speaker 3: not want that, and I attacked my mom and dad's
Speaker 3: library of natural health cookbooks and gosh, herbal books and
Speaker 3: psychotherapy everything on their self help shelves, and I took
Speaker 3: some dietary measures, but I also read some where I'm
Speaker 3: not sure if it's medically valid, but I also read
Speaker 3: somewhere it's probably Louise Hay actually, I want to say,
Speaker 3: because she would take diseases and then connect to them
Speaker 3: with the psychological attribute or that what potentially was.
Speaker 4: The cause cause of that? And she said it was grief.
Speaker 4: And at the time, all.
Speaker 3: Of this was the bible to me because it was
Speaker 3: a form of control.
Speaker 4: Oh it's grief, Okay, well, then I better go do
Speaker 4: more grief work.
Speaker 3: What wasn't being talked about was trauma, PTSD, nervous system
Speaker 3: that's stuck in sympathetic.
Speaker 4: Mode, and none of that was being talked about.
Speaker 3: It was more about how do we control this and
Speaker 3: how do we eliminate the cause. So, yes, Graves disease
Speaker 3: is something that I managed, but erratically managed, and then
Speaker 3: it definitely hit its worst state when I was twenty
Speaker 3: six and my cortisol levels dropped to zero and I
Speaker 3: was unable to stand up.
Speaker 4: It was a nightmare.
Speaker 3: Fortunately, I was in Portland at the time and I
Speaker 3: had a really good physician who was also trained in
Speaker 3: naturopathic medicine. He gave me steroids because he said, you
Speaker 3: have no cortisol in your body, which was a result
Speaker 3: of the thyroid just running, running, running, running, running, And
Speaker 3: within two days of being on steroids, I felt like
Speaker 3: a normal person again. My nervous system had burned me out.
Speaker 3: And some would say, oh, yeah, the grief that caused that,
Speaker 3: but I think this pattern was set way away earlier,
Speaker 3: the hypervigilance and the anxiety. When I moved to Portland,
Speaker 3: Oregon in two thousand and one to start the naturopathic
Speaker 3: medical program, I just took a Craigslist job. It was
Speaker 3: at a documentary film company, and I knew nothing about film.
Speaker 3: But they handed me a box of phs and CDs
Speaker 3: and said, watch all of these and log them. And
Speaker 3: what they were creating was a twentieth anniversary video for
Speaker 3: the Dougie Center. The Dougie Center is a wonderful international
Speaker 3: organization that's based in Portland for breathing families, and I
Speaker 3: would spend eight hours a day watching children talk about
Speaker 3: their father's dying of suicide and murder and cancer and
Speaker 3: watching mothers deal with it, and the woman who founded
Speaker 3: the Dougie Center would discuss sort of the background of grief,
Speaker 3: not necessarily the stages, but the importance of being able
Speaker 3: to vocalize and find community through grieving. I was watching
Speaker 3: one of her talks and she was discussing with a
Speaker 3: group of teachers what to watch for, and she said,
Speaker 3: I'm not too worried about the kids that are acting
Speaker 3: out after a parent or a close loved one dies.
Speaker 3: And I'm not too worried about the ones that sort
Speaker 3: of withdraw because we can identify that they're suffering.
Speaker 4: There's something happening. She said. The ones I worry.
Speaker 3: About the most are the perfectionists, the ones that actually
Speaker 3: become overachievers and they do everything right and nobody notices
Speaker 3: them because they are continuing to excel in everything that
Speaker 3: they do.
Speaker 4: Of course, if this were played.
Speaker 3: In a movie, this is when everything would slow down.
Speaker 3: As I'm watching this and hearing over and over again
Speaker 3: her talk about me, and she said, these are the
Speaker 3: people that usually five ten years later end up their
Speaker 3: body's breakdown.
Speaker 4: And that was the.
Speaker 3: Summer when my thyroid went bsserk, and that was the
Speaker 3: summer that I found that doctor that saved my life, because,
Speaker 3: like I said, at that point, I was I so lightheaded.
Speaker 3: Every time I would stand up, my heart would shoot
Speaker 3: up to one hundred and fifty beats per minute, and
Speaker 3: it was a scary time. But I knew that I
Speaker 3: was going to natropathic school in the fall and everything
Speaker 3: was going to work itself out. Because that's what I
Speaker 3: still was doing. I would just go through the motions.
Speaker 3: I did sign up to train with the Dougie Center.
Speaker 3: I wanted to be a facilitator. I was still skirting
Speaker 3: around the truth of me. I was doing everything on
Speaker 3: the outside that looked like, oh, kid's really dealing well
Speaker 3: with life and grief and everything, but I was still
Speaker 3: doing a really good job at burying it. So I
Speaker 3: started naturopathic school and a month later, nine to eleven happened,
Speaker 3: and I used that as an excuse to drop out
Speaker 3: because I didn't want to be there. And I still
Speaker 3: this day don't really that doesn't sound like me, you know,
Speaker 3: like I'm still a little puzzled as to how I
Speaker 3: felt so convinced after all these years of training and applications.
Speaker 4: I just wow, Okay, I dropped out, and.
Speaker 3: I'm proud of myself when I think about that thing.
Speaker 3: Good for you, because that probably was one of the
Speaker 3: first things I ever did that might have been a
Speaker 3: little bit of my own gut telling me what I wanted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes a strange kind of sense. And also
Speaker 2: I think that when there's a tragedy on a mass
Speaker 2: scale like nine to eleven was, there's a way in
Speaker 2: which if there's been, you know, a tragedy in an
Speaker 2: individual life or suddenly and there's this collective grief, this
Speaker 2: national global grief, there's a way that it can ship
Speaker 2: away at and create kind of a ripple effect with
Speaker 2: individual grief. After Kimberly drops out of her program, she
Speaker 2: ends up dabbling in the film industry again. She isn't
Speaker 2: certain that this is the right path for her, but
Speaker 2: an editing job comes along and she takes it. During
Speaker 2: this time, she begins to develop another dangerous compulsion born
Speaker 2: from her perfectionism. She develops an eating disorder and disappears
Speaker 2: into boleimic behavior, purging toward an impossible goal, as she
Speaker 2: had done in the past with her skin picking.
Speaker 4: I wanted to be empty.
Speaker 3: There is a stillness that happened after I would purge,
Speaker 3: where I would look in the mirror and I would
Speaker 3: feel myself again. I would feel the pain and I
Speaker 3: would feel.
Speaker 4: Like, oh, what did you do? But I would feel.
Speaker 3: Like I was looking at myself and in a weird way,
Speaker 3: it connected me with that person. It quieted things down.
Speaker 3: So the behavior would come and go. It was usually
Speaker 3: around my period, and then sometimes it would be gone
Speaker 3: for months and then it would rear its head again.
Speaker 3: But it definitely had a sense of like, wow, I
Speaker 3: thought this was over, and then here it is again.
Speaker 3: So that was a period of two and a half
Speaker 3: three years where I was flirting with the bulimia, working
Speaker 3: in the industry a little bit, and also reapplying.
Speaker 4: To go back to a naturopathic school because I didn't
Speaker 4: know what the hell am I doing. That's also when
Speaker 4: I started modeling, just locally for fashion.
Speaker 3: Shows and catalogs and things like that. But it ended
Speaker 3: up being a good source of income and I actually
Speaker 3: enjoyed it. I enjoyed finding that part of myself that
Speaker 3: wasn't ashamed and it felt playful and joyful. It was
Speaker 3: more of like the athletic Portland's full of athletic catalogs
Speaker 3: and stuff. So it was playful, joyful, goofy. Not nobody
Speaker 3: was talking about herbs or pills or supplements or medicines.
Speaker 3: It was just frivolous, and I found some freedom in
Speaker 3: that s as I took my life so seriously, so
Speaker 3: there was actually some joy. Strangely enough, that came the
Speaker 3: authentic joy that came from just doing something that I
Speaker 3: never would have allowed.
Speaker 4: Myself to do six years earlier.
Speaker 3: So between thirty and forty, I drop out again. I
Speaker 3: go to this naturopathic school, transfer to the Chinese medicine
Speaker 3: school and do two and.
Speaker 4: A half years.
Speaker 3: There, and then drop out again, and then fall in
Speaker 3: love with my current husband.
Speaker 4: We developed a deep bond together.
Speaker 3: I navigate his intellectually disabled daughter, who was eleven at
Speaker 3: the time when.
Speaker 4: We meet, and we sort.
Speaker 3: Of navigate that chaos and also so grow into a
Speaker 3: pretty thriving modeling career and mostly as we joke, kind
Speaker 3: of like midwestern old lady catalogs.
Speaker 4: But boy, we had fun and just travel.
Speaker 3: The world and met some wonderful human beings and enjoyed
Speaker 3: that part of being a woman and celebrating my body
Speaker 3: in a way i'd never had before and having friendships.
Speaker 4: That felt deep and rich. So that was all happening
Speaker 4: for those ten years.
Speaker 2: Do you think that you're you know, thriving modeling career?
Speaker 2: I mean during that period of time, were you dialed
Speaker 2: way back in terms of you know, self harming behaviors
Speaker 2: or those kinds of behaviors. Did that Did that change
Speaker 2: during that time? And if it did, what would you
Speaker 2: attribute that to?
Speaker 3: Yes, all of it went away. It literally went away.
Speaker 3: I still carried a lot of anxiety, but I attribute
Speaker 3: it partially to finally exiting the pressure I was putting
Speaker 3: on myself to become a physician, and even more so
Speaker 3: to the partner who is now my husband, because he
Speaker 3: really rejected the fix it world. In fact, I did
Speaker 3: it with his daughter when I first met her. Oh
Speaker 3: she's got an election disabilities. Let's put it on a
Speaker 3: gluten free diet. What's her you know, Let's take her
Speaker 3: to get reikie, Let's do all these things.
Speaker 4: Let's fix her, fix her, fix her.
Speaker 3: And he was like, I want to love my daughter
Speaker 3: the way she is. And I was really attracted to
Speaker 3: that part of him. I always described him as like
Speaker 3: this warrior in the forest, but his sword was down
Speaker 3: and he was dented, you know, his gear was dented
Speaker 3: and bruised and dirty, and he was not running, but
Speaker 3: he was looking at the trees and noticing the light
Speaker 3: pouring through the trees, and there was something that was
Speaker 3: I was really drawn to this man who was very
Speaker 3: surrendered to a pretty hard story and not happy a
Speaker 3: lot of the time about it, either really in pain
Speaker 3: about it, but not trying to make it anything else either.
Speaker 4: So I wasn't doing it myself yet, but I was.
Speaker 3: In his presence and it was teaching me, little bit
Speaker 3: by little bit.
Speaker 4: How to be that way.
Speaker 3: I also picked up photography, absolutely fell in love with
Speaker 3: being on the other side of the camera and finding
Speaker 3: my creative life, finding that part that was the ballerina
Speaker 3: who wanted an outlet and needed to express myself. I
Speaker 3: began in those ten years to express myself. The modeling
Speaker 3: was like one way, but that wasn't the real joy
Speaker 3: that was coming from filmmaking and photography and discovering a
Speaker 3: language that made sense to me and often was a
Speaker 3: preverbal language that was more about composition and light and story,
Speaker 3: the story that came with the image. So I think
Speaker 3: I was finding something inside of me, finally that knew
Speaker 3: how to express herself.
Speaker 2: Kimberly's dented Warrior is named Dave. In twenty twelve, she
Speaker 2: and Dave take up cycling together. They spend their weekends
Speaker 2: biking a twenty six mile loop around Portland, stopping to
Speaker 2: lie in the grass and enjoy each other's company. When
Speaker 2: winter comes, it's too cold to ride, so they take
Speaker 2: a break from their weekend ritual. In fact, Kimberly has
Speaker 2: another winter time ritual ever since her dad passed. She
Speaker 2: and her mom spend a week together in Mexico.
Speaker 3: So February of twenty fourteen, we were in Mexico taking
Speaker 3: our morning long walk and she starts RETI telling the
Speaker 3: story which we've heard before, of this wonderful one night
Speaker 3: stand she had in Toronto at the Maripos and Music
Speaker 3: Festival with a man named Charlie. And of course this
Speaker 3: is post her telling the story around the lake. When
Speaker 3: there's a chance that your dad isn't your dad, this
Speaker 3: was tied, you know, this story that she would tell
Speaker 3: about Charlie and Toronto was tied to that. So if
Speaker 3: there ever was a father that wasn't your father, this
Speaker 3: would be the man. And I ended up just listening
Speaker 3: to her tell the story, but she brought out so
Speaker 3: many more details.
Speaker 4: On this walk. She remembered his last name.
Speaker 3: She remembered that he had a television show in Wisconsin
Speaker 3: and it was called Long Ago Is All Around?
Speaker 4: And I was like, what an interesting guy I remember.
Speaker 4: On the flight.
Speaker 3: Home, I had a layover in Denver and I googled
Speaker 3: his name finally the full name. Was never able to
Speaker 3: google the full name before, and up pops.
Speaker 4: One of his albums.
Speaker 3: He was also a musician and a poet, and the
Speaker 3: album picture took my breath away because it was the
Speaker 3: male version of.
Speaker 4: Me, and I didn't say anything.
Speaker 3: I flew home the last leg, pulled up the photo
Speaker 3: as soon as Dave picked me up at the airport,
Speaker 3: and I didn't without any context. I showed it to
Speaker 3: him and I said, who does this look like? And
Speaker 3: he said, I don't know, but it could be your dad.
Speaker 4: And something opened up in me of like, hm, I
Speaker 4: need to investigate this more. I have more information.
Speaker 3: And so fast forward to Mother's Day of that year.
Speaker 6: I visit my mom for Mother's Day and on the
Speaker 6: way home again, I guess I do a lot of
Speaker 6: things in the airport finding out the producers of that album,
Speaker 6: and it was the University of Wisconsin, and so I
Speaker 6: called the University of Wisconsin.
Speaker 3: Mibray from the airport, and I said, can you find
Speaker 3: I had any more information about this man named Charles Brower?
Speaker 3: And she said, oh, it's you know, eight o'clock at night.
Speaker 3: I have nothing else to do. Let me get on it.
Speaker 3: I received an email that Monday morning that had his
Speaker 3: obituary in it. Charles Brower's obituary. He died in a
Speaker 3: sailing accident in nineteen eighty five when he was thirty
Speaker 3: six years old, so I was ten years old, and
Speaker 3: he was never found.
Speaker 4: His body was never found. He started to go through
Speaker 4: the roof that week.
Speaker 3: Breathlessly, almost impulsively, trying to get as much information when
Speaker 3: I could about this person.
Speaker 2: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 2: Remember Dave and Kim's bike rides. Well, the weather is
Speaker 2: nice again, it's springtime in Portland and they're on their
Speaker 2: first ride of the season. It's been a whirlwind of
Speaker 2: a week for Kim making all these discoveries about her
Speaker 2: biological father, so she's happy to detach for a bit
Speaker 2: and get outside. But things don't go exactly as planned.
Speaker 3: We were going down the main straightaway before we pulled
Speaker 3: over to get onto the waterfront path, and a young
Speaker 3: woman opened her car door in the bike lane and
Speaker 3: I flew over the door and landed in the street
Speaker 3: and cracked my pelvis and hit my head and had
Speaker 3: a concussion. And that ends chapter two. If the other
Speaker 3: one was my dad said this one ended chapter two
Speaker 3: because everything changed after that point. I was on deadress,
Speaker 3: so I had a lot of time to digest this
Speaker 3: and think about it. I corresponded with the librarian a
Speaker 3: little bit more.
Speaker 4: She sent me a few of his TV shows that
Speaker 4: I watched.
Speaker 3: This suspicion grew inside of me, and as the suspicion grew,
Speaker 3: I started to feel like what it was the hyperthyroid
Speaker 3: symptoms before, like I started to feel this deep vibration
Speaker 3: that wouldn't settle, even as I was on twenty four
Speaker 3: hour by address. It wasn't until August of that year
Speaker 3: and I'm still at home in Portland and Davis making
Speaker 3: me smoothies and scrambled eggs every day that I took
Speaker 3: the DNA test.
Speaker 4: My brother got it for.
Speaker 3: Me, but I also remember him handing it to me, going, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, like really, what are the chances? And so
Speaker 3: that's weird to say, because on the one hand, my
Speaker 3: body's vibrating and on the other hand, my brain is
Speaker 3: going no way, not chance. And the DNA test came back.
Speaker 3: It was like three weeks and it came back as
Speaker 3: my brother was my half brother.
Speaker 6: And that was a shock for everyone.
Speaker 4: People have asked me, was I a shock for your mom?
Speaker 3: Yes, it was a shock for everyone. I went upstairs
Speaker 3: actually when I first got the email, and I just
Speaker 3: brought my phone up with me, and I straddled Dave
Speaker 3: because he was still sleeping, and I just.
Speaker 4: Shoved at the phone in his face and it.
Speaker 3: Said half brother, Eric Warner, half brother. And I think
Speaker 3: what I do when I feel so unmoored and so ungrounded,
Speaker 3: as I again try to find other people's responses and
Speaker 3: find how am I supposed to respond here, you know,
Speaker 3: And also fortunately he's porous and bigger boned, and I
Speaker 3: just like my body needed something to ground me. So
Speaker 3: I just wrapped myself around him and the weight of
Speaker 3: his response because his response wasn't gonna be like whoa,
Speaker 3: holy shit, wow, you know, his response was huh, okay,
Speaker 3: you know, like, let's digest this. So I needed him
Speaker 3: desperately to ground this experience for me. That's when the
Speaker 3: dizziness started. The dizziness did not come directly after the
Speaker 3: bicycle accident, unfortunately, because a lot of the doctors. When
Speaker 3: it did come, which started in March of the next year,
Speaker 3: a lot of doctors were like, well, concussion syndrome, you know,
Speaker 3: delayed concussion syndrome, something with your neck that happened. Everyone
Speaker 3: was pointing to the accident because there was nothing else
Speaker 3: for them to point at.
Speaker 4: I would bring up.
Speaker 3: This, you know, well I also got the DNA test,
Speaker 3: and you know, just would just scratch his head and
Speaker 3: dismiss it. So unfortunately that delayed the diagnosis for me
Speaker 3: big time. But the dizzyness started intermittently. I remember walking
Speaker 3: on the sidewalk and it was like dropping out underneath me,
Speaker 3: and then that grew from the floor of bouncing under
Speaker 3: my feet occasionally to half a day, and then about
Speaker 3: a month later it was all day, every day, NonStop.
Speaker 4: Lack of sleep.
Speaker 3: I was starting to feel out of body. This was
Speaker 3: a scary, terrifying out of body experience, where it was
Speaker 3: as if my body was literally running its own course,
Speaker 3: completely dysregulated. I was terrified to go to bed at
Speaker 3: night because I would just lay there and feel the
Speaker 3: feelings of the bed bouncing up and down, and my
Speaker 3: sympathetic nervous system was contracting so much that I got
Speaker 3: up to go to the bathroom twelve times.
Speaker 4: Over and over and over again.
Speaker 3: It was just hell. It was just absolute hell, and
Speaker 3: I was only getting worse. I was trying to find
Speaker 3: doctors that would help me. They kept pointing towards concussion
Speaker 3: syndrome or something in my neck. No one was talking
Speaker 3: about panic. No one was talking about anxiety. No one
Speaker 3: was talking about, you know, any sort of vestibular migraine
Speaker 3: disorder that can come from a severe panic disorder.
Speaker 4: So I did.
Speaker 3: The best I could with it, but then I ended
Speaker 3: up having to get on a plane and live with
Speaker 3: my mom for seven months because I was a mess.
Speaker 3: I couldn't even walk across the street without someone holding
Speaker 3: my hand, and halfway across the street, I'd say, let's
Speaker 3: turn around.
Speaker 4: I got to go back inside.
Speaker 3: You know, someone would knock on the door and I
Speaker 3: would It was as if getting shot.
Speaker 4: In the chest.
Speaker 3: It was frightened all the time, and in hindsight. And
Speaker 3: I've said this many times. I should have been sedated
Speaker 3: because my nervous system couldn't reset itself.
Speaker 2: There's one silver lining to Kimberly living with her mother
Speaker 2: for all those months. In all that togetherness, a moment
Speaker 2: finally arrives in which her mother is not managing Kimberly's
Speaker 2: reactions and telling her that it's lovely and wonderful to
Speaker 2: be part of a mystery. Instead, her mother actually apologizes
Speaker 2: to her.
Speaker 3: My mom doesn't cry a lot, but when she does,
Speaker 3: it gets my attention, and her jaw starts to tremble,
Speaker 3: and her beautiful, glassy eyes get even glassier. And she
Speaker 3: was about six inches from my face, and she grabbed
Speaker 3: my arms and she looked in my eyes and she said,
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry.
Speaker 4: I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3: I didn't protect you, protect me, meaning tell you the truth.
Speaker 3: Not that she even knew, because I truly believed that
Speaker 3: she didn't know. But what they didn't do was take
Speaker 3: that next step to find out the truth. So she
Speaker 3: was more concerned about keeping things together than finding out
Speaker 3: the truth and potentially having everything fall apart. So wow,
Speaker 3: I took that in. I really took that in. Danny
Speaker 3: it was healing and at such an overused word these days,
Speaker 3: but it felt like a calm bath to me to
Speaker 3: hear her and feel her and see her eyes looking
Speaker 3: in my eyes and feel I felt her fragility. I felt,
Speaker 3: Oh my god, you were doing the best you could.
Speaker 3: You were truly doing and you wanted all you ever
Speaker 3: wanted was to protect me. All you ever wanted was
Speaker 3: to protect me under a really, really, really challenging situation.
Speaker 3: And of course, in the magical thinking world, I would
Speaker 3: hope that that moment would be the moment where the
Speaker 3: dizziness would go away.
Speaker 4: Oh I's on my feet again.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't it be nice if everything was that neat and.
Speaker 4: Tidy, wouldn't it?
Speaker 3: I had a lot of those though I'm like, Oh,
Speaker 3: this is it, here's the moment, this is it.
Speaker 4: I'm better. But no, that didn't happen.
Speaker 3: But it did deeply connect me to her story as
Speaker 3: a young woman trying to figure things out, the chaos,
Speaker 3: the insecurity, and it helped me feel compassion for her
Speaker 3: and also for myself through all of that.
Speaker 4: It just softened everything.
Speaker 2: When did you actually receive the actual diagnosis, the actual syndrome,
Speaker 2: reason that this was happening.
Speaker 3: Years later, years and years and years.
Speaker 4: Well, it happened in the pandemic.
Speaker 3: It was twenty twenty because I was able to find
Speaker 3: a neurologist who specialize on this in Texas and he
Speaker 3: was doing telemed so I didn't have to fly to
Speaker 3: Texas to see him. And he heard, you know, listen
Speaker 3: to me for thirty minutes and said, you have mallet
Speaker 3: deparkment syndrome. And it was a spontaneous onset, and spontaneous
Speaker 3: onset happens typically when someone goes into a deep state
Speaker 3: of panic and the neurotransmitters just get really jumbled up.
Speaker 4: So this was years. I found lots of different.
Speaker 3: Ways to cope with this, but it was tormenting me
Speaker 3: for six years total. I'm on eight years now and
Speaker 3: now I'm I have medication that's helping tremendously. But I've
Speaker 3: also found psychologically a way deeper relationship with the chaos
Speaker 3: within myself and allowing it and being compassion with it
Speaker 3: and loving it that it basically tells my brain I'm
Speaker 3: not in danger anymore. You know, when I stopped trying
Speaker 3: to fix myself, my brain said, oh, you're not in danger.
Speaker 2: So you know that Charlie has died, but you do
Speaker 2: at a certain point contact his brother, your uncle, and
Speaker 2: begin to learn something about his family, and in fact seem,
Speaker 2: you know, to be embraced by his brother and his
Speaker 2: whole family.
Speaker 3: That happened very shortly after I took the DNA test.
Speaker 3: Like I said before, I am impulsive, and I think
Speaker 3: that's how I learned how to deal with all that anxiety.
Speaker 3: I would just jump in and then figure out how
Speaker 3: to swim once I.
Speaker 4: Was in there. So I wrote him a long letter.
Speaker 3: I found him because he's a filmmaker of all things,
Speaker 3: with two sisters who are artists. And I wrote the
Speaker 3: letter to his studio and gave a lot of qualify
Speaker 3: fires in there that said, please throw this away if
Speaker 3: this is bringing up too much trauma. You know you
Speaker 3: think I'm a lunatic. I'm sorry. Just hear me out.
Speaker 3: I don't want anything from you. I just thought you
Speaker 3: should know I won't feel have any hard feelings if
Speaker 3: you don't reach out anyway.
Speaker 4: Qualifier qualifier qualifier.
Speaker 3: He read the letter, and then his sisters were visiting
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks later. He printed it out, shared
Speaker 3: with them and wanted to observe them reading it, and
Speaker 3: all of their responses were. First of all, we kind
Speaker 3: of thought this was going to happen, because apparently my
Speaker 3: biological father was quite a ladies man, and they wanted
Speaker 3: it to be true. They loved their brother deeply. A
Speaker 3: couple of years ago, Dave asked, my uncle, how did
Speaker 3: you respond when you first read that letter?
Speaker 4: Was the very first thing you thought?
Speaker 3: And he reached his hand out to me and looked
Speaker 3: right in my eyes and said, I wanted.
Speaker 4: It to be true.
Speaker 3: You know, for this big hands and sixty year old
Speaker 3: man to say that to me, it just shook me
Speaker 3: to the core, Like, oh, and Matt is true for
Speaker 3: the whole family.
Speaker 4: It's a giant.
Speaker 3: Family, you know, first cousins, second cousins.
Speaker 4: I've met them all.
Speaker 3: They all gather once twice a year.
Speaker 4: They are deeply loving and at.
Speaker 3: The same time really casual, you know, like there's no
Speaker 3: big deal my family, the Warrners, let's sit down and
Speaker 3: like light candles and psychologize it.
Speaker 4: They're like, let's open a beer and go swimming. So
Speaker 4: I felt at.
Speaker 3: Home and I still feel at home with them. We
Speaker 3: visit every year. That said, the very first time I
Speaker 3: met them was right after the dizzyness had started, and
Speaker 3: I had already bought the tickets for Dave and I
Speaker 3: to go, thinking this dizziness is going to go away.
Speaker 3: I don't know what this is, but it's not going
Speaker 3: to last. Kept getting worse and worse and worse. The
Speaker 3: night before our trip to visit them all, I had
Speaker 3: to email them and say, I just got to let
Speaker 3: you guys know, I'm not myself.
Speaker 4: I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 3: I haven't had a doctor's appointment yet about this, but
Speaker 3: I feel crazy and I'm scared. And they all emailed
Speaker 3: me back and said, we love you as you are.
Speaker 3: Just come even if we see you for five minutes
Speaker 3: and give you a hug and then you go sleep
Speaker 3: the whole time, that's fine with us.
Speaker 4: We love you know. It was just like, don't worry,
Speaker 4: no big deal.
Speaker 3: So we went and I was scared the whole time
Speaker 3: and also deeply loved in that, which is kind of
Speaker 3: cool to feel like.
Speaker 4: When I first met them, I was a.
Speaker 3: Mess, absolute mess. I mean I even went to urging
Speaker 3: clinic once.
Speaker 4: It was bad, and they just.
Speaker 3: Were like, cool, let's go for a road trip.
Speaker 4: Let's go drive, you know, and drop you off when
Speaker 4: you need.
Speaker 3: To, and here's a snack, and you know it was.
Speaker 3: It was very sweet and healing, and that continue used
Speaker 3: to this day to be my experience with my new family.
Speaker 3: Meaning in purpose is really important when we are navigating chaos.
Speaker 3: But I do feel that this I am in a
Speaker 3: best place I've been in my entire life. And I
Speaker 3: can honestly say that's because of all of the hardship
Speaker 3: and the dysregulation and the pain and the suffering. It's
Speaker 3: brought me to a place of peace now. And I'm
Speaker 3: still dizzy, not as dizzy as I used to be,
Speaker 3: but I am peaceful in the dizziness. And it's because
Speaker 3: I finally stopped caring, not stopped caring about life. I
Speaker 3: loved my life, but I stopped needing to fix myself.
Speaker 3: I stopped needing to be a certain way in this world.
Speaker 3: The dizzyness forced me to be exactly as I was
Speaker 3: because I could not fix it. Twenty nineteen, I started
Speaker 3: a documentary project called Unfixed, and this was before I
Speaker 3: was medicated, but I was realizing that I was done
Speaker 3: trying to find doctors to fix me because I spent
Speaker 3: too much money and I was not getting any better.
Speaker 3: So I thought, well, I'm just going to find some
Speaker 3: people that are living with chronic illnesses that are doing
Speaker 3: the same thing, because I don't know how to do this.
Speaker 3: I don't have all I have on my shelf or
Speaker 3: self help books, and I don't know how to un
Speaker 3: self help myself. So my first subject was an als
Speaker 3: patient and my second subject had tried geminal neurologya, which
Speaker 3: is so.
Speaker 4: Known as the suicide.
Speaker 7: To these people that were living with excruciating and actually
Speaker 7: terminal disorders, I was asking them, how are you embracing
Speaker 7: this and what does it look like when you hit
Speaker 7: rock bottom?
Speaker 3: What do you tell yourself? And how does your heart
Speaker 3: feel when the disappointment continues? And I'm just really trying
Speaker 3: to understand this process again, maybe in a way because
Speaker 3: I couldn't find my own feelings still, I'm trying to
Speaker 3: find what I'm feeling by hearing other people.
Speaker 4: Tell me and oh, yeah, that sounds right.
Speaker 3: And then the pandemic happened and I had twenty subjects
Speaker 3: for this film and I was unable to continue doing
Speaker 3: sort of the large film crew situation, and I was
Speaker 3: desperately looking for their answers. So I decided to start
Speaker 3: having them record their answers into their smartphones, and we
Speaker 3: turned it into a docu series for two years. Every
Speaker 3: month they would reply to questions as profound as would
Speaker 3: you let go of everything you've learned since you're diagnosis
Speaker 3: in order to be healed?
Speaker 4: Or as simple as what's food like for you?
Speaker 3: And we just finished one a couple months ago on
Speaker 3: sex and what's intimacy like?
Speaker 4: And it's just was a.
Speaker 3: Deep hand and shake with humanity. I got the experience
Speaker 3: of feeling my own brokenness in community, and while they
Speaker 3: were submitting their videos and answers, I would submit them
Speaker 3: my answers so that they didn't feel like they're just
Speaker 3: sending them into this black box. And so we learned
Speaker 3: about each other, and Unfixed became so much more than
Speaker 3: a documentary.
Speaker 4: It became a community.
Speaker 3: It became a way for me to unwind my nervous
Speaker 3: system into allowing instead of fighting. And what really became
Speaker 3: clear was that once I finally just allowed the brokenness
Speaker 3: and the dizzyness and the anxiety to just be there,
Speaker 3: my brain didn't feel it was in danger anymore, because
Speaker 3: it can only feel in danger if I'm trying to
Speaker 3: get rid of it, and so my nervous system was.
Speaker 4: Like, oh cool, it's okay.
Speaker 3: And that's why I can say now that, yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: actually quite dizzy today because I definitely get dizzier when
Speaker 3: i'm nervous, and I was excited about this call, and yes,
Speaker 3: the room of moving around, is it bothering me? No,
Speaker 3: because my brain knows I'm fine and I'm not going
Speaker 3: to do anything to try to fix it.
Speaker 4: I'm just going to enjoy this conversation with you.
Speaker 3: So this, the dizziness specifically, has been a profound teacher
Speaker 3: for me in allowing experiences to be as they are
Speaker 3: and to hold them and to love them and have compassion.
Speaker 4: For them, and.
Speaker 3: Conversely or simultaneously see and hold and loves that in
Speaker 3: others as well. So I feel it's such a solidarity
Speaker 3: with humanity now that I never.
Speaker 4: Ever experienced before.
Speaker 3: I'm calm and I'm happy and I'm peaceful. Never thought
Speaker 3: this was possible given the way that I used to
Speaker 3: feel in.
Speaker 4: This body mine.
Speaker 2: What an extraordinary way to think of it, that our
Speaker 2: traumas can be our profound teachers to experience them, hold them,
Speaker 2: love them, have compassion for them, and see and hold
Speaker 2: that in others as well, such beautiful and wise words
Speaker 2: from Kimberly Warner. To check out Kimberly's work, go to
Speaker 2: unfixedmedia dot com. Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Molly Zacour is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is
Speaker 2: the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd
Speaker 2: like to share, please leave us a voicemail and your
Speaker 2: story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is
Speaker 2: one eight eight eight Secret zero. That's the number zero.
Speaker 2: You can also find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder.
Speaker 2: And if you'd like to know more about the story
Speaker 2: that inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.