Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. This episode contains
Speaker 1: discussion of physical abuse, animal abuse, and suicidal ideation. Listener
Speaker 1: discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: To have children and not be prepared for the possibility
Speaker 2: of schizophrenia. Would be irresponsible, But that's not a reason
Speaker 2: not to have them if I want them. What if
Speaker 2: my grandmother had opted not to have my mother? What
Speaker 2: if my mother had opted not to have me. You
Speaker 2: become a mother, and that's who you are. My mother
Speaker 2: used to say to me. Would she have been better
Speaker 2: off she hadn't become a mother? If not, who would
Speaker 2: she have become?
Speaker 1: That's Sarah LaBrie, la based TV writer, producer, teacher, and
Speaker 1: author of the recent memoir No One Gets to Fall Apart.
Speaker 1: Sarah's is a story of inheritance, inherited trauma, genetic history, violence, brilliant,
Speaker 1: and ultimately, it's a story of triumph, the triumph of creativity, seeking, searching, persevering,
Speaker 1: and of love. I'm Danny Shapiro and this is family Secrets,
Speaker 1: the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we
Speaker 1: keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 2: I was born in Oakland, and I lived there with
Speaker 2: my mom and dad and about a million cousins until
Speaker 2: maybe I was one or two, and then my parents
Speaker 2: divorced and my mom brought me back to Houston, and
Speaker 2: then I was raised by her and my grandmother and
Speaker 2: my aunt in Texas. And this completely one hundred percent
Speaker 2: black Mottle class neighborhood. Everybody get true to black Ginnis
Speaker 2: with black. My doctor was black. That was just the
Speaker 2: world I knew. I was all matriarchal and women led.
Speaker 2: And then when I was about seven, I got to
Speaker 2: a private school which was just the opposite of everything
Speaker 2: i'd ever no, never understood. It was also in Houston,
Speaker 2: and a neighborhood called for Brookes, which was like Beberly
Speaker 2: Hells of Hosted and you know, all the children of
Speaker 2: Houston Royalty went there, and I had no idea that
Speaker 2: world even existed and that crossover was. It was interesting
Speaker 2: for me because I was I was just child. But
Speaker 2: I think it was really hard on my mom. I
Speaker 2: think it was frustrating for girl, as a single mom
Speaker 2: who had me, which was twenty, to suddenly see this
Speaker 2: world of privilege that she hadn't had access to. That
Speaker 2: she worried that I would never have real access to
Speaker 2: and I think that frustration exacerbated. It's an angerish she said,
Speaker 2: she already had. Obviously some frustrations she already had, and
Speaker 2: it means my childhood difficult.
Speaker 1: Sarah lives with her mom and grandmother in Third Ward,
Speaker 1: a deeply rooted African American community in Houston, but when
Speaker 1: it's time for her to go to school, she is
Speaker 1: sent to Saint John's in River Oaks, a private school
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes and a world away.
Speaker 2: My grandmother was actually a pretty successful business woman in
Speaker 2: Third Ward. It's interesting. She was a housing lawyer. She
Speaker 2: worked for the city in the seventies, and she started
Speaker 2: her own all female law firm with all black female
Speaker 2: lawyers from her law school. And she'd done really well
Speaker 2: for herself. And by the time I was born, she
Speaker 2: had left her practice. She'd actually watched her mother die
Speaker 2: of breast cancer and had gone back to school and
Speaker 2: started a natural health company. This was kinda back in
Speaker 2: the eighties when I was really doing that, And so
Speaker 2: she became kind of a de facto not doctor, but
Speaker 2: kind of paramedical professional for that neighborhood. And so because
Speaker 2: of that, she had access to certain things in certain worlds.
Speaker 2: So She knew about Saint John's and she understood the
Speaker 2: opportunities that would come from going to a school like that,
Speaker 2: and she made sure that I got on the wait list.
Speaker 2: She took me through the testing to get in in
Speaker 2: first grade, and I think she just thought it was
Speaker 2: safer and it was just a better bet for my future.
Speaker 2: And my mom did not agree at all and didn't
Speaker 2: want me to go there, and it consed a lot
Speaker 2: of difficulty between the two of them.
Speaker 1: Tell me about your mom from your childhood, like from
Speaker 1: that time, what was your experience of her and you know,
Speaker 1: this matriarchal society in your childhood, what did you pick
Speaker 1: up on before age seven? What was your sense of things?
Speaker 2: My mom, she was so beautiful and so beloved, and
Speaker 2: she had grown up in Houston, in this community. My
Speaker 2: whole family knew everybody, and I think that's something that
Speaker 2: can sometimes be easy to forget. I think, you know,
Speaker 2: we were, yes, we we we're a black family, but
Speaker 2: it wasn't like she was constantly worried about racism or
Speaker 2: being victimized. And same with my grandmother, like just everyone
Speaker 2: we knew was black. I cannot stress not enough. And
Speaker 2: that was the world that she wanted me to live
Speaker 2: in too. There's something about sort of how strong when
Speaker 2: those bonds are, and how comfortable she felt having gone
Speaker 2: to the high school she went to where you know
Speaker 2: a lot of black artists have come out of that
Speaker 2: well and hopeful shuvershot as from their maybe Alvin Aley,
Speaker 2: just like she felt really proud of that history. And ye,
Speaker 2: she was beautiful, she was smart, but she had a darkness.
Speaker 2: I found out more about a since got worse as
Speaker 2: I got older. She was reactive. She couldn't really handle
Speaker 2: all lot of emotional stress. I think having me so young,
Speaker 2: and then she dropped out of college and moved home
Speaker 2: so that my grandmother could help take care of me,
Speaker 2: and she wanted to be a writer, and suddenly just
Speaker 2: everything had changed for her. And I you know, I
Speaker 2: know that she loved me. I don't presented me, but
Speaker 2: I do you think my existence represented kind of a
Speaker 2: division and her future and the potential for what her
Speaker 2: life could have been. And I don't know how subconscious
Speaker 2: so that was for her, how aware of it was
Speaker 2: she was. But I think things got hard for her
Speaker 2: after she gave birth to me and moved home.
Speaker 1: And your father was he in the picture at all.
Speaker 2: So she had left Houston to go to college. She
Speaker 2: ended up going to community college in the Bay Area,
Speaker 2: and then she transferred to San Francisco State and that's
Speaker 2: where she met my dad. And he was from a
Speaker 2: big Catholic family in Oakland, and you know, he's a
Speaker 2: sweet guy, but he's not super interested in being a
Speaker 2: responsible father. And the couple different versions of the story,
Speaker 2: but from what I understand, he just was not pulling
Speaker 2: his weight and was making it very difficult for her
Speaker 2: and their kids. At this point, she was twenty one,
Speaker 2: that's how old he was when they got married, and
Speaker 2: I think she tried to make a go of it
Speaker 2: for maybe a year or so, and eventually my mom's
Speaker 2: mom actually came and got my mom at NY and
Speaker 2: he left my dad behind. You know, my dad now
Speaker 2: says he was so devastated, but he knows who knows
Speaker 2: that's true. And he came and he visited a little
Speaker 2: when I was a kid, but my mom was very
Speaker 2: angry with him. And I think when my mom was angry,
Speaker 2: it was really scary, and I got tired of big
Speaker 2: threat did stop making an effort. He wasn't really in
Speaker 2: the picture. I think maybe we would talk a couple
Speaker 2: of tens a year, and that's why I said the case.
Speaker 1: So, when you're seven, you go to this new school
Speaker 1: that's very different, just an entirely different world from the
Speaker 1: world that you had grown up in up until that point.
Speaker 1: Would you say that's around the time that your mother's
Speaker 1: rage started really emerging toward you, or was it something
Speaker 1: that you had experienced prior to making that shift that
Speaker 1: was so threatening for her?
Speaker 2: Honestly, I think towards me it came even later. It
Speaker 2: was only at this point that I started and now
Speaker 2: in retrospect so that I can see that there was
Speaker 2: a point in second grade where she thought that a
Speaker 2: teacher was being racist towards me, And it's entirely possible
Speaker 2: that she was. I don't know. I was one of
Speaker 2: two black students in my grade, one of maybe ten
Speaker 2: in the whole school of however many, you know, twelve
Speaker 2: hundred people, Keithrie tells hir at school. I remember her,
Speaker 2: you know, just ranting and calling for racist. But then
Speaker 2: she also kind of set me down and was like, well,
Speaker 2: this woman's going to be racist towards you. I'm going
Speaker 2: to make or she has nothing She complained about with you.
Speaker 2: And the problem I think is that I was getting
Speaker 2: vargas on a spelling test, even though my spelling was perfect,
Speaker 2: but I was getting handwriting docked, and so she made
Speaker 2: me sit down and learn how to have perfect handwriting,
Speaker 2: you know, out of kind of rage at this teacher.
Speaker 2: So it was almost like a constructive rage or like
Speaker 2: a spite, like you are going to win in spite
Speaker 2: of these people. Another time, I remember we were at
Speaker 2: a library and I was she was studying. A woman
Speaker 2: at a table over shushed me. I remember my mom
Speaker 2: lepped across the table. I screamed at this one. I
Speaker 2: called her names, insulted her and for shushing me. And
Speaker 2: that was sort of a story in my family about oh,
Speaker 2: you know, she's such a mama bear. But it was
Speaker 2: also like deeply antisocial behavior. I mean, even though it's sweet,
Speaker 2: I think it was a symptom of what was to come.
Speaker 1: Did you recognize that as a child, and I asked
Speaker 1: this as the daughter of a very angry mother myself,
Speaker 1: like this feeling, you know that it's not usual, that
Speaker 1: it's not you know that not everybody experiences this, or
Speaker 1: did you have that feeling as a child the most
Speaker 1: more common feeling that kids have that whatever's going on
Speaker 1: in their little universe is normal, that everybody must be
Speaker 1: experiencing this because it's the only world, you know.
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah, I had no idea that everyone's mom wasn't
Speaker 2: like this. I don't think it was until he was
Speaker 2: a teenager and I remember a friend saying, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: I got I went and got my nails done with
Speaker 2: my mom and we played tennis. So I was like,
Speaker 2: you got your nails down, you played tennis with your mom.
Speaker 2: What are you talking. I mean, it is possible to
Speaker 2: have sort of a civil relationship with one's mom, as
Speaker 2: I think is often the case with what I think
Speaker 2: was ongoing a sporderline personality disorder generally. When I started
Speaker 2: to pull away from her so fifth grade, sixth grade, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
Speaker 2: and I started to have my own friends, my own life,
Speaker 2: that was when she became much more, much more physically abusive,
Speaker 2: repeating me over the tiniest things like constantly ranting and
Speaker 2: yelling over nothing, always on the drive to school, which
Speaker 2: is why I think this school was such a trigger
Speaker 2: for her. And then I think the other thing was
Speaker 2: my grandmother bought us this house because for my grandmother
Speaker 2: was very important that I feel comfortable at Saint John's,
Speaker 2: that I feel like, you know, the other kids didn't
Speaker 2: have stuff that I couldn't have, even though they were
Speaker 2: exponentially wealthiard than we were. And so she bought us
Speaker 2: a house and the upscale part for board, you know,
Speaker 2: where all the black doctors and lawyers lived. And so
Speaker 2: suddenly my mom, who was making a nurse's salary, which
Speaker 2: was not very high at that time for her, was
Speaker 2: living in this large, you know, three bedroom house with
Speaker 2: the sunroom, herbid floors, air, separate garage, laund room, huge backyard.
Speaker 2: And she didn't want that. She'd never wanted these trappings
Speaker 2: as well. She thought they were artificial. And she looked
Speaker 2: at that house and I think she saw me. Maybe
Speaker 2: around the time I was eleven, we were silly, constantly
Speaker 2: at war, and it just take our stores.
Speaker 1: And then it got still worse. In these new surroundings,
Speaker 1: Sarah has first won than two, then three dogs. They
Speaker 1: are her companions, they're her friends. Then something happens that
Speaker 1: is so traumatic that it changes everything.
Speaker 2: So this was the worst thing that had ever happened
Speaker 2: to me. For a very long time, I had these dogs.
Speaker 2: You know, think about Texas in the nineties. I think
Speaker 2: the relationship to dogs that people had in general was
Speaker 2: very different than it is now. And I had a
Speaker 2: dog that a family friend had found abandoned, and because
Speaker 2: we had a backyard, my grandmother just said, here, you guys,
Speaker 2: take this dog at midnight. I loved him so much
Speaker 2: as white mutt. And then my grandmother, for some reason,
Speaker 2: bought me an akc registered Now you know, I loved
Speaker 2: his dog so much. And then my mom, maybe out
Speaker 2: of rivalry with my grandmother or something, I don't know,
Speaker 2: got me another Schnauzer puppy I don't I don't know why.
Speaker 2: So suddenly I had three dogs. I was maybe eleven
Speaker 2: years old. My mom had no one testing taking care
Speaker 2: of these dogs, and they barked a lot at night,
Speaker 2: and the neighbors would complain, and you know, I did
Speaker 2: what I could, but I got a certain point. My
Speaker 2: mom and I got to one of our mini fights,
Speaker 2: and I the dogs were out of food and I
Speaker 2: wanted her to pick them up. She just had it out.
Speaker 2: I want her to grab some on the way home.
Speaker 2: She got mad at me for asking, and she yelled
Speaker 2: at me in this really cruel way, like she often did.
Speaker 2: I really hurt my feelings. I threw I can of
Speaker 2: bugspray or something at my bedroom window, and I broke it.
Speaker 2: I was so scared because I knew that I was
Speaker 2: going to get so much trouble. And so I wrote
Speaker 2: a letter explaining what I had done and apologizing so
Speaker 2: she wouldn't find it be surprised. And I put it
Speaker 2: at the bottom of the stairs so she'd find it
Speaker 2: as her child. And she got home and she read it,
Speaker 2: she even saying, and she just like came up in
Speaker 2: the car. She got all three dogs. But then in
Speaker 2: the car she had this land Cruiser suv that my
Speaker 2: grandmother had bought for her, and drove to a parking
Speaker 2: lot like a pet coke off the side of the highway.
Speaker 2: The head store was closed and where she thought was
Speaker 2: gonna happen, and she pulled into the parking lot, opened
Speaker 2: the doors and just shoved the dogs out into the
Speaker 2: parking lot and drove off with me still in the
Speaker 2: car and the dog. She's behind us up on the highway,
Speaker 2: and then you know saw me, I screaming, I didn't
Speaker 2: I have no idea that she was going to do that.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know how to stop it. And then
Speaker 2: when I got home, she sent me over the side
Speaker 2: of the bathtob and beat me with a belt, which
Speaker 2: was something that she often did. But yeah, I didn't
Speaker 2: know why she was doing any of this at the time.
Speaker 2: I just thought that I was just so horrible that
Speaker 2: I deserved this. And I remember going to bed and
Speaker 2: the windows still being broken, and there were june bugs
Speaker 2: at this time of year in Houston, could hear, and
Speaker 2: I was so scared. They're as terrified of them, and
Speaker 2: they're going to fly in through the window. And I
Speaker 2: stayed up all night staring at that that whole glass,
Speaker 2: the window. And after that I pretty much stopped talking
Speaker 2: to my mom for a long time, and I just
Speaker 2: I think that was when I understood, oh, Okay, something
Speaker 2: is seriously broken here. That's maybe bigger than I knew before.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. When eighth grade rolls around, Sarah
Speaker 1: starts emailing colleges. Yes, these emails are way premature, but
Speaker 1: she's hatching an escape plan and the process needs to
Speaker 1: start early. The ground must be laid to get out.
Speaker 2: I think I understood that because of the opportunities provided
Speaker 2: for me by the school. I had a lot more
Speaker 2: access to the larger world than maybe somebody had gone
Speaker 2: to a different school would. And I was like, how
Speaker 2: do I just make sure that I get into the
Speaker 2: best college I possibly can and then never have to
Speaker 2: come back here. I can just leave and never come
Speaker 2: back because I knew older students who had done that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's strange to think about, but I just somehow knew, like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna email. I remember emailing USC and thing
Speaker 2: like here I am, I'd love to come here. Let
Speaker 2: me know what I need to do. And they were like,
Speaker 2: you're way too young to be in touch with us,
Speaker 2: And I just kept emailing, just stayed in touch, did
Speaker 2: the summer programs, did the AP classes, volunteered, kept my
Speaker 2: grades up as high as possible. Like my whole body
Speaker 2: was just like an arrows to leaving how and never
Speaker 2: coming back.
Speaker 1: Did you have anyone in your life that was like
Speaker 1: in any way mentoring you or helping you become that arrow?
Speaker 1: Or was this all you? And was there a teacher?
Speaker 1: Was there anybody? Or was this just driven by your
Speaker 1: own capacity and intense desire?
Speaker 2: I think indirectly, yes, I was always like the English
Speaker 2: teacher's favorite. I would win the writing awards, and that
Speaker 2: was that was something I knew I was good at,
Speaker 2: and I think teachers expected me to be good at
Speaker 2: and to each year they would kind of hould me
Speaker 2: up to a certain standard, and I think being held
Speaker 2: up to that standard was what gave me the confidence
Speaker 2: to think, Okay, well, I can lean on this and
Speaker 2: hopefully a get into like a good college with a
Speaker 2: full fellowship, and I just have to figure out how
Speaker 2: to do it. What I think is probably a story
Speaker 2: for a lot of kids who love to read and
Speaker 2: love to write. You just realize, ok, hey, this could
Speaker 2: be this could be my thing, and if you have
Speaker 2: the right teachers, it can become your thing. They didn't
Speaker 2: know what was going on at home. I think, you know,
Speaker 2: there were glimpses here and there, but for the most part,
Speaker 2: I just leaned into that sort of kindness that came
Speaker 2: from those classrooms.
Speaker 1: Sarah's grandmother is on the one hand, responsible for Sarah
Speaker 1: attending the school in River Oaks, but she's also focused
Speaker 1: on keeping Sarah connected to her own culture and history.
Speaker 2: I think what was very lucky was that I had
Speaker 2: my grandmother Earth and she, you know, she was the
Speaker 2: one who had gotten me into this school, but I
Speaker 2: think you a part of her felt like, all right,
Speaker 2: but you need to also stay connected to who you
Speaker 2: are and who your roots are, so we would travel
Speaker 2: to Africa together. You know. She did really try to
Speaker 2: keep me fully embedded in this third word community that
Speaker 2: had been her home and was my home. But at
Speaker 2: the same time I did pull away from that. I
Speaker 2: think there was a part of me that wanted to
Speaker 2: be loved at school, that wanted to assimilate, and that
Speaker 2: meant that I changed the way I talked, you know,
Speaker 2: I straightened my hair. I tried to just be, you know,
Speaker 2: as skinny as possible and as pretty and perfect as possible.
Speaker 2: And there was always kind of this division in terms
Speaker 2: of like culture and taste and even language between what
Speaker 2: the school offered, which to me seemed like the doorway
Speaker 2: to wealth and success and freedom and life, and then
Speaker 2: my home and sort of my roots in this place
Speaker 2: where my aunt was and my mom and my grandmother
Speaker 2: that had been our home you know for decades and
Speaker 2: for generations, and I kind of just had to live
Speaker 2: with that divide inside me for a long time. I
Speaker 2: probably still do.
Speaker 1: Sarah's plan that first begins in eighth grade, works and
Speaker 1: she's admitted to Brown University in two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: Brown is a great school, an ivy, and perhaps it
Speaker 1: goes without saying, a super privileged place, a bastion of
Speaker 1: wealth and whiteness that makes even Saint John's look like
Speaker 1: child's play.
Speaker 2: I was terrified to feel anything, and I was on
Speaker 2: the opposite side of the country, and I was experiencing
Speaker 2: extremely cold weather for the first time, and I was
Speaker 2: still dealing with all of the residual effects of my
Speaker 2: childhood and none of that had been resolved. And also,
Speaker 2: I don't come from the family where you use the
Speaker 2: word depression, or you talk about medication, or you talk
Speaker 2: about singether. I didn't even know I was allowed to
Speaker 2: see a therapist. So by the time I got there,
Speaker 2: I was, you know, beyond divided. I think I was
Speaker 2: already just practically on the verge of shattering. I was
Speaker 2: so fragile psychically, and I didn't quite know it. And
Speaker 2: the stress of being in that that sort of hothouse
Speaker 2: environment is that like deeply rarefied world where yes, everyone
Speaker 2: comes from amounts of money, you didn't even know where
Speaker 2: possible people are literal Royalty and you're hanging out with them,
Speaker 2: your friends are dating them, you're dating them, your exes
Speaker 2: are dating them, and you, you know, every second of
Speaker 2: every day, you're just like, what am I doing here?
Speaker 2: I don't belong here, but I have nowhere else to go,
Speaker 2: and so I have to make it work. I think
Speaker 2: that would maybe be enough to break anybody, but it
Speaker 2: was immensely difficult. Also at the same time, you're experiencing
Speaker 2: this incredible privilege. I mean, I was a brown I
Speaker 2: was at an ivy like school. I'd done it, you know,
Speaker 2: a black girl makes good like that's what the story
Speaker 2: is supposed to be. But all I wanted to do
Speaker 2: was go home. And then I knew if I went
Speaker 2: home it wouldn't work. It would be horrible too. So
Speaker 2: it was just terrible.
Speaker 1: Despite the sense of not belonging. Sarah does make a
Speaker 1: very good friend, and pretty much right away at orientation.
Speaker 1: Her name is Sadie and they have an instant kinship.
Speaker 1: But it's complicated.
Speaker 2: Sadie was much more of the world. Just even doing
Speaker 2: like that was just at pleast where she felt comfortable.
Speaker 2: She wasn't an outsider, it was she knew what these
Speaker 2: sort of all the academic counts were like and we
Speaker 2: were real black and we both wanted to write, and
Speaker 2: everything just seemed too much easier for her, and she
Speaker 2: sort of flowed through these various worlds and everyone had
Speaker 2: a crush on her, and she just impressed everyone. And
Speaker 2: she held out her hand to me and said, you know,
Speaker 2: come on, come with me. I'm going to show you
Speaker 2: how to do this. And that active kindness sort of
Speaker 2: changed my whole life and my whole factory at Brown.
Speaker 2: So this was the era of the hipster and there
Speaker 2: were all these rich hipster boys who lorded over Brown
Speaker 2: and knew it. You know, they underserved their status was
Speaker 2: and it was seen as a privilege to be among
Speaker 2: them by some people. I was one of those people, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: and they went along on a trip ill advised to
Speaker 2: the city when I probably should have been class and
Speaker 2: you know, did some substances I probably shouldn't have done,
Speaker 2: and got myself into a very bad situation where I
Speaker 2: was basically sexually assaulted by someone that I thought was
Speaker 2: a friend in the empty apartment in the city that
Speaker 2: his parents owned. And this was one of those people
Speaker 2: with that sort of crazy generational wealth that was kind
Speaker 2: of beyond my understanding, and the level of power that
Speaker 2: came with that was beyond my understanding. I didn't really
Speaker 2: know what had happened until afterwards, but it became something
Speaker 2: that I couldn't quite figure out how to articulate or
Speaker 2: wrap my head around, because on the one hand, I
Speaker 2: had chosen to put myself in a certain situation, but
Speaker 2: on the other hand, I was definitely taking advantage of.
Speaker 1: And was this something that you sort of tucked away?
Speaker 1: Did you tell people about it?
Speaker 2: I think I just didn't want it to be a
Speaker 2: big deal. I think I was probably pretty angry, but
Speaker 2: it wasn't cool to be angry. I didn't feel comfortable
Speaker 2: expressing that anger, even to myself.
Speaker 1: Anger something to us, especially when we're afraid to feel it,
Speaker 1: when we've internalized the idea that anger is very bad
Speaker 1: and very dangerous, that it's not a safe feeling for us.
Speaker 1: What Sarah does feel is despair. She goes back to
Speaker 1: Houston for spring break, and all that internalized, unexpressed anger
Speaker 1: morphs into suicidal ideation. She considers not going back to school,
Speaker 1: considers giving up altogether. She's afraid that if she goes
Speaker 1: back to school after break she'll hurt herself or worse.
Speaker 1: Sadie knows what Sarah's going through and suggests a therapist,
Speaker 1: but this too is complicated.
Speaker 2: It was one of those things where you can only
Speaker 2: see the on site therapist at the school through three sessions,
Speaker 2: and then if you seem worse, they try to send
Speaker 2: you into the city or into the field and you
Speaker 2: have to go figure out your own insurance and therapy.
Speaker 2: And I had no idea how to do that. If
Speaker 2: you seem too messed up, you know, to citle, then
Speaker 2: you have to go home and drop out of college.
Speaker 2: Like there just wasn't any help to be found. It
Speaker 2: was almost like you had to know how to find
Speaker 2: help to find help. And this is the early mid
Speaker 2: two thousands. The conversation around this was non existent. It
Speaker 2: was just you take what you get if that's enough,
Speaker 2: and deal with it.
Speaker 1: Sarah, was there a I mean, none of these things
Speaker 1: are neat and tidy, I know, but like, was there
Speaker 1: a breaking point? Was it after you know, the incident
Speaker 1: in New York or was it the culmination of you know,
Speaker 1: just this perfect storm of everything building that led to
Speaker 1: is this like suicidal thinking?
Speaker 2: Throughout this I had been dating the same person on
Speaker 2: and off. Then this deeply dysfunctional relationship, even though you know,
Speaker 2: we did love each other from freshman year until senior year.
Speaker 2: And I was horrible to this person. But he had
Speaker 2: a normal family and was a normal guy, and he
Speaker 2: was so kind, and I thought maybe he would be
Speaker 2: my ticket, like he was the thing where okay, this
Speaker 2: is my life raft I could hold on to this
Speaker 2: person and he'll save me. And it just kept not
Speaker 2: working out because it just wasn't supposed to work out.
Speaker 2: And at a certain point he was just like, I'm done,
Speaker 2: I can't do this with you anymore, and he needed
Speaker 2: someone of his social classes. I was just like, okay, well,
Speaker 2: I'm as that went up. I'm not going to get
Speaker 2: another chance to get out of this like black hole
Speaker 2: that I'm met and I don't know want to do anymore.
Speaker 2: And I think it was that it was that combined
Speaker 2: with everything else that was going on, and they were
Speaker 2: all kind of symptoms of each other. You know, me
Speaker 2: reaching out grassing onto this relationship and thinking that was
Speaker 2: the thing I needed was obviously like a symptom of
Speaker 2: this deeper dark or hurt that came from my relationship
Speaker 2: with my mom that I wasn't ready to.
Speaker 1: Look at Sarah's grandmother does something uncharacteristic. She gives Sarah
Speaker 1: straight up advice, perhaps even a command, to get herself
Speaker 1: back to Brown, not to throw all her hard work,
Speaker 1: her life away.
Speaker 2: It was the only time she's ever done anything like that.
Speaker 2: She doesn't like to put her hand on the scale
Speaker 2: in that way. After her grandmother died of breast cancer,
Speaker 2: she got really into Ruddism and Christian Marty and holistic health.
Speaker 2: She would never give direct advice. It was always kind
Speaker 2: of just figured it out on your own. But this
Speaker 2: was the one time where she said, if you don't
Speaker 2: go back to school, basically you're going to be ruining
Speaker 2: your life. You have to finish because she knew somehow,
Speaker 2: she just knew. I think she was right. It was
Speaker 2: the hardest thing I've ever done. I do not know
Speaker 2: how I survived. I still don't know how I survived
Speaker 2: that last Seinmeister, but I'm very grateful to her for
Speaker 2: not so.
Speaker 1: Then during that period of time, the end of college
Speaker 1: and then post college you moved to LA Do you
Speaker 1: have any relationship with your mother during that period of
Speaker 1: time or have you really kept your distance from her?
Speaker 2: So I was in so much pain and I had
Speaker 2: it felt like I had no one, and I would
Speaker 2: call her to reach out and she would just scream
Speaker 2: and scream and scream because my pain was hurting her
Speaker 2: and she didn't know how to say that. She was
Speaker 2: not equipped to provide, you know, consolation or advice. I
Speaker 2: would just call and cry and she would yell at me.
Speaker 2: But that was our relationship.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 1: After college, Sarah goes back home. She's living on her
Speaker 1: grandmother's couch, and again she needs to get out, needs
Speaker 1: encouragement to get out.
Speaker 2: It was my hairdresser, who was another one of these
Speaker 2: black women that i'd always kind of grown up in
Speaker 2: her orbit, my aunt's friend, and she said, don't stay here,
Speaker 2: like go, just go, And I did because I think
Speaker 2: I needed somebody to see that explicitly to me.
Speaker 1: Back in La Sarah gets a job as an assistant
Speaker 1: at an entertainment agency. It's here that she first meets Ethan,
Speaker 1: who's a client. A while later, the two run into
Speaker 1: one another again at another assistant's birthday party, where they're
Speaker 1: seated next to one another. This is the start of
Speaker 1: a long committed relationship. Ethan's a great guy, even tempered,
Speaker 1: kind loving. They're in the kind of partnership that supports
Speaker 1: Sarah as she pursues her dreams. She applies to MFA
Speaker 1: programs in writing and is accepted into NYU's Creative writing program,
Speaker 1: one of the best in the country. She and Ethan
Speaker 1: do the long distance thing during those years, and Sarah's
Speaker 1: friendship with Sadie also continues, as does the complexity of
Speaker 1: that friendship.
Speaker 2: There was always this question pull between us because I'd
Speaker 2: come from a school where I felt like I'd been
Speaker 2: the best writer, and I knew that this is something
Speaker 2: I could do. And then I'm at Sadie, who maybe
Speaker 2: just write virtue of where she came from, was just
Speaker 2: leagues ahead of me and got out of college thinking
Speaker 2: maybe should be a doctor, and then suddenly decided to
Speaker 2: be a writer, and then bam, was just a writer.
Speaker 2: And I felt like, okay, I'm probably behind. It's we're
Speaker 2: constantly I always felt competitive, but she was so generous,
Speaker 2: you know, like, oh, you know, applying for this job
Speaker 2: or do this, you know. She had her ear to
Speaker 2: the ground. She was like really well connected, and so
Speaker 2: she would say, well, let's do this application together, or
Speaker 2: send your work here and it'll get published. And because
Speaker 2: I know this personer, you know, I'll send you my
Speaker 2: spreadsheet for applying to fellowships and grants. And I was like,
Speaker 2: what's what's a fellowship? What's a grant? Like she just
Speaker 2: she just knew so much more than me. And and
Speaker 2: so it's hard because I loved this person so much
Speaker 2: and she was so helpful, but part of me it
Speaker 2: was also just like, why is it so easy for you?
Speaker 2: And why is it phil It's never going to happen
Speaker 2: for me. And it was just like that for years
Speaker 2: and years.
Speaker 1: There are times in the life of a writer where
Speaker 1: a project becomes utterly consuming, to the point of blindness.
Speaker 1: Sarah had long been fascinated by the work of the
Speaker 1: philosopher Walter Benjamine and his ideas about the interconnectedness of
Speaker 1: the Paris Arcades. She began what was she believed to
Speaker 1: be her magnum opus, a novel inspired by Benjamin's series
Speaker 1: of pattern and connection.
Speaker 2: So Walter Benjamine had written this, he never even finished it,
Speaker 2: but he was trying to write a book called The
Speaker 2: Arcades Project about the Paris Arcades, which are these who
Speaker 2: are justus last covered gas lit walkways in Paris, that
Speaker 2: he did this forensic analysis of the people who passed
Speaker 2: through them and the class dynamics and what they represented
Speaker 2: in terms of fashion and style and French culture. And
Speaker 2: my professor at Brown was the first reason to translate
Speaker 2: it from German into English. So I took his class
Speaker 2: and I kind of fell in love with Benjamine and
Speaker 2: like a lot of people do, I think he's one
Speaker 2: of the more accessible theorists or philosophers out there. And
Speaker 2: I ended up dropping out of that class during that
Speaker 2: terrible senior year when I basically dropped every class an
Speaker 2: almost DISI and graduate and I had just been carrying
Speaker 2: this work around with me, this sort of half finished
Speaker 2: essay I'd written and had been thinking about in terms
Speaker 2: of Benjamine and the Arcade project, and carry that with
Speaker 2: me all the way to grad school and was like, well,
Speaker 2: maybe I can turn this into a novel. I can
Speaker 2: write a book about the arcades and about this history
Speaker 2: of Paris. And then, of course the same thing happened
Speaker 2: to me that had happened to Benyamine, where Benjamin could
Speaker 2: never actually quite finish this book, and then he'd actually
Speaker 2: died during a holocaust, and I couldn't finish my book
Speaker 2: about Benjamin trying to write this book and just felt
Speaker 2: myself getting buried and buried in the layers and the
Speaker 2: history and the research, and you know, just losing any
Speaker 2: confidence I had that I could be a writer because
Speaker 2: I had taken on this huge project.
Speaker 1: After grad school, Sarah moves back to la and she
Speaker 1: and Ethan are living together. They've both been working on
Speaker 1: really interesting projects. Ethan's been making films and Sarah wrote
Speaker 1: a libretto. Her escape plan is now fully functional. She's
Speaker 1: feeling good happy. One day in twenty seventeen, they're at
Speaker 1: a wedding celebration in Paso Roblis, beautiful wine country in California. There,
Speaker 1: she gets a call. It's her grandmother calling to tell
Speaker 1: her that her mother has been picked up on the
Speaker 1: side of a highway.
Speaker 2: There was just a total curtain of like dread that
Speaker 2: just fell over me. We hadn't spoken when she had
Speaker 2: her first psychotic break. We hadn't spoken in years. We'd
Speaker 2: had a falling out over a project that I'd done
Speaker 2: that she'd been offended by, and I had actually just
Speaker 2: sort of right before my grandmother called, gotten a strange
Speaker 2: phone call from her in what she was like very
Speaker 2: kind to me, and it was really weird. And then
Speaker 2: a few days later my grandmother called and said that
Speaker 2: she'd been picked up and taken to the mental hospital
Speaker 2: and they couldn't see her, you know, because she didn't
Speaker 2: want to see anyone, and she believed that FBI agents
Speaker 2: or cops were following her down the highway, you know,
Speaker 2: by the hundreds and had been chasing her all across
Speaker 2: the city, so she wouldn't go inside. She wasn't eating,
Speaker 2: she wasn't showering, she lost her job, and was just
Speaker 2: living in this sort of complete state of delusion.
Speaker 1: There's a quote in your book where you right, I
Speaker 1: want my mother to have the life I have to
Speaker 1: drink champagne at a wedding on a farm. The contrast
Speaker 1: at that point between the life that you're living and
Speaker 1: the life that is really catching up with her and
Speaker 1: that she's spinning into so stark. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I felt like I'd kind of fully ascended to kind
Speaker 2: of the creative class. I did sort of have the
Speaker 2: beginnings of a life I'd aspired to, and then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden I felt such guilt you know, I
Speaker 2: just felt like, what am I even doing? Why am
Speaker 2: I at this wedding? Why am I writing opera libretti?
Speaker 2: What am I even? You know that none of that
Speaker 2: is real. What's real is what's happening to my mother,
Speaker 2: and there's nothing I can do about that. So the
Speaker 2: reason we had stopped speaking in the years before she
Speaker 2: got sick was because of an opera that i'd written
Speaker 2: the libretto for where one of the actresses in it
Speaker 2: sang a kind of a romantic song, and my mom
Speaker 2: had come to see it, and she decided that the
Speaker 2: actress was in love with me, and I was in
Speaker 2: the with her, and I was cheating on my partner
Speaker 2: and lying to everyone, and that I was gay, and
Speaker 2: suddenly she was virulently homophobic, where she hadn't been before.
Speaker 2: So now, obviously I can see that was probably a
Speaker 2: first step towards her total decompensation later, but at the time,
Speaker 2: it just felt like she was ascribing to me all
Speaker 2: these lives and this life that I was not living,
Speaker 2: and I didn't understand how to push back against that,
Speaker 2: because when somebody fully believes something about you that isn't true,
Speaker 2: it can be really scary. Especially when that person is
Speaker 2: your mom and they believe it on no evidence. I
Speaker 2: didn't know this actress. I hadn't cast the Peace, We
Speaker 2: had no previous relationship. I hadn't really even met her
Speaker 2: before experiencing that scene with my mother, and so that
Speaker 2: I knew that her mental illness was like something that
Speaker 2: could really get its hooks into me and kind of
Speaker 2: pull me under. And that had been happening for my
Speaker 2: whole life, and so I was really scared that was
Speaker 2: going to happen and to complete s like if she
Speaker 2: we were so kind of imasged, and even though weren't speaking,
Speaker 2: she was such a huge part of my life that
Speaker 2: I felt like, well, this is happening to her, then
Speaker 2: it's definitely it happened to me too. And on the
Speaker 2: one hand, I need to see as far away from
Speaker 2: as possible, But on the other hand, I have her
Speaker 2: daughter and I have to go home. I didn't know
Speaker 2: what the answer was. I wanted so badly to fix
Speaker 2: her because I had so much guilt, but I was
Speaker 2: still afraid fixing her would me and breaking myself.
Speaker 1: So you do go back to Houston, and what's that like?
Speaker 2: It's very strange, I think one thing, you know, experiencing
Speaker 2: someone else's psychosis. There's nothing like that, and once do
Speaker 2: you experience it face to face, you're just forever changed.
Speaker 2: She looked like my mom, but she was living in
Speaker 2: a completely different world. She was living in this empty room.
Speaker 2: She'd taken over a part of a building that my
Speaker 2: grandmother owned and and died it out, and was afraid
Speaker 2: that someone was going to come and steal in the
Speaker 2: two chairs that she had in there. And she still
Speaker 2: believed that she had been persecuted. She felt my grandmother
Speaker 2: and my aunt were feeding her poison and she was
Speaker 2: starving herself, and she wouldn't use a toothbrush, and she
Speaker 2: only wanted to eat black foods like avocados and sesame seeds.
Speaker 2: It was just sort of like like unreal. It felt
Speaker 2: almost dream like. I wanted her to just snap out
Speaker 2: of it, and she couldn't. I had been building my
Speaker 2: life so carefully there wouldn't be spaced for chaos. I mean, like,
Speaker 2: you know, I had spreadsheets of my budget, and I
Speaker 2: carefully kind of calculated out my time, and I would
Speaker 2: wake up early and write every single day, and I
Speaker 2: just sort of made sure that nothing could go wrong.
Speaker 2: And then Suddenly everything was going wrong, and my mom
Speaker 2: had always been such a chaos agent that it felt like, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: this wall life put up against chaos has totally been
Speaker 2: broken down. There's nothing I can do. This book that
Speaker 2: I've been working on for so long won't come together.
Speaker 2: I had put all my eggs in this basket with
Speaker 2: my hope for becoming, and I thought I was going
Speaker 2: to become like this big novelist. That's all I wanted.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to matter as a writer. And not
Speaker 2: only was that not going to happen, my mom was
Speaker 2: freaking into pieces. I was having issues with my best friend,
Speaker 2: and I just I wanted to go crazy. I wanted
Speaker 2: none of it to be my responsibility. And I thought,
Speaker 2: if my mom can do that, and I'll do it too,
Speaker 2: it's fine. I won't be afraid of it anymore. I'll
Speaker 2: just I'll just lose it too.
Speaker 1: It all comes to a head, of course, Sarah begins
Speaker 1: a destructive rampage. She destroys her manuscript, all her research.
Speaker 1: Her intention is to get free of her existence and
Speaker 1: slip into the abyss, but she doesn't. Ethan rescues her papers,
Speaker 1: piecing back together as much as he can, and Sarah
Speaker 1: emerges from the deep despair that her mother has caused
Speaker 1: her yet again. In twenty nineteen, she and Ethan get married.
Speaker 1: Her mother does not attend the wedding. Why because her
Speaker 1: mother herself has fallen into the abyss. She is extremely unwell,
Speaker 1: unable to travel, unable to be in Sarah's life. The
Speaker 1: absence is both a wound and a relief. Sarah tries
Speaker 1: therapy again, and this time it works. It clicks. The
Speaker 1: right therapist can make all the difference, and this one
Speaker 1: provides ketemine assisted therapy, a form of therapy in which
Speaker 1: the anesthetic ketymine is taken in a clinical setting and
Speaker 1: under the influence of ketemine, Sarah returns to the world
Speaker 1: of Walter Benyamine and the images and concepts that have
Speaker 1: long fascinated her. But now she's able to draw powerful connections.
Speaker 1: Why was she drawn to Benyamine's work. She realized that
Speaker 1: her interest was not only literary, but also something psychologically profound.
Speaker 1: Bena means invisible patterns have contained a kind of secret.
Speaker 1: In researching schizophrenia, Sarah had discovered a term a psychological
Speaker 1: condition apofinia, a hallmark of which is the certainty of
Speaker 1: invisible patterns. Apofinia is often a precursor to schizophrenia. Sarah
Speaker 1: comes to understand that she has been terrified all along
Speaker 1: that she might inherit her mother's condition. This gives her
Speaker 1: whole new stores of empathy, both for her mother and
Speaker 1: for herself.
Speaker 2: This therapist, she focused a lot on kind of her
Speaker 2: child's work as well. And I had been living with
Speaker 2: this fear that this is actually true, that there is
Speaker 2: this sort of tree like pattern that governs the growth
Speaker 2: of everything, every natural thing, but also construction and things
Speaker 2: you wouldn't necessarily expect. And I had started to pick
Speaker 2: up on this treelike pattern that is the same across
Speaker 2: things like cracks in the sidewalk and the shape of
Speaker 2: lightning and the sap of rivers and the way trees grow.
Speaker 2: When I was living in Paris and grad school for
Speaker 2: a summer and I just started to see it everywhere.
Speaker 2: I just was like, it's really weird that you know,
Speaker 2: the shape of my veins breaking open in my wrist
Speaker 2: is the exact same shape of my fingers breaking off
Speaker 2: from my palm. But I didn't know what to do
Speaker 2: with that information, and I didn't know of seeing that everywhere,
Speaker 2: those correspondences everywhere, not just in physical things, but and
Speaker 2: just sort of patterns of thought and story structure meant
Speaker 2: that I was going crazy and I didn't I didn't
Speaker 2: know who to talk to you about it, because you know,
Speaker 2: most of the time you try to explain that to
Speaker 2: someone and they just tune out. You sound like you're
Speaker 2: in drugs or something. But I eventually came across this
Speaker 2: book about something called the constructal law, and it turns
Speaker 2: out that this sheep is just a natural physical form
Speaker 2: that that does actually, you know, is a law that
Speaker 2: is a pattern of growth. The term was coined by
Speaker 2: Adrian Vijon, who is an engineering professor at Duke, and
Speaker 2: he applies this pattern to all kinds of sort of
Speaker 2: thermal energy scientific things. But he actually says in the
Speaker 2: book that sometimes civilians will discover in this pattern and
Speaker 2: think they're going crazy because we're so used to normal people,
Speaker 2: and I'll be able to understand universal scientific laws or
Speaker 2: discover them. And I felt so indicated by that. I
Speaker 2: just remember sort of carrying that into my understanding of
Speaker 2: my mother and this idea of family trees, and you know,
Speaker 2: what happens to her necessarily does happen to me, because
Speaker 2: I'm an extension of her, I'm a branch of her.
Speaker 2: And what happened with this therapist was something about like
Speaker 2: the ketamine therapy, which she you take a loose in
Speaker 2: the gin and then you lose it for an hour,
Speaker 2: and then you have therapy about what you fly stated
Speaker 2: about that sort of in the context of a larger
Speaker 2: therapeutic relationship, and I was able to see my mother
Speaker 2: not as the aggressor or the one with all the power,
Speaker 2: but as a child, as a little girl of reaching
Speaker 2: out her hands maybe for help immediate to me, and
Speaker 2: understand that as afraid as I was of her and
Speaker 2: for her, like that version of her that existed before
Speaker 2: I ever, just before she was ever sick, still existed somewhere,
Speaker 2: and I could find some solace and one and I
Speaker 2: could find some kinship and some companionship with that virsion
Speaker 2: of her, and that vision of her was safe and
Speaker 2: innocent then deserved to be loved and to be held
Speaker 2: and to be healed. And I was able to channel
Speaker 2: a lot of love towards that version of her, which
Speaker 2: I think was healing for me, because then I was
Speaker 2: able to love the version of myself that existed in
Speaker 2: that scenario too, you know, the younger version of me,
Speaker 2: and realized that that version me deserved help too. You
Speaker 2: know that now we're imperfect, but we both deserve safety,
Speaker 2: you know, and to have a kind of relationship that
Speaker 2: maybe we hadn't been able to access before, because that
Speaker 2: we needed.
Speaker 1: Here's Sarah reading one last passage from her remarkable memoir
Speaker 1: No One gets to fall apart.
Speaker 2: If the patterns I saw in Paris met what I
Speaker 2: thought they did. If everything that grows is shaped like
Speaker 2: a branching tree, and if the core of that shape
Speaker 2: is the trunk that runs through it, then life itself
Speaker 2: is that trunk, and all of us are branches, elements
Speaker 2: of a process of death and rebirth that progresses along
Speaker 2: a continuum. We will never be able to see both
Speaker 2: of us. My mother and I are a step towards
Speaker 2: something new, and our lives are part of something bigger,
Speaker 2: something but Changing.
Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly's Acre is
Speaker 1: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 1: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 1: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
Speaker 1: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
Speaker 1: find me on Instagram at Danny Rider and if you'd
Speaker 1: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 1: check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.