Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: This episode contains discussion of sexual abuse. Listener discretion is advised.
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 is
Speaker 2: Sasha Mardeux. Sasha is a cartoonist and graphic novelist and
Speaker 2: memoirist whose new book Past Tense is just out. Sasha's
Speaker 2: is a life affirming story about carrying secrets, burying them,
Speaker 2: being haunted by them, and then releasing them in the
Speaker 2: fullness of time. Is an extraordinary story of a beautiful
Speaker 2: human determined to find the help she needs to survive
Speaker 2: and thrive. So, Sasha, I'm going to begin where I
Speaker 2: always begin these conversations, which is, tell me about the
Speaker 2: landscape of your childhood. Give me a sense of as
Speaker 2: early as you can remember, who was in that landscape,
Speaker 2: what did it look like, what did it feel like?
Speaker 3: Sure, So, my parents had married very young. They had
Speaker 3: me in nineteen seventy five and they were just barely
Speaker 3: out of their twenties. I was born into the north
Speaker 3: of England and there was a lot of unemployment at
Speaker 3: that time, you know, the Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister,
Speaker 3: and just the landscape for men had just been decimated,
Speaker 3: you know, there were no prospects. Men spent most of
Speaker 3: their time in the pubs.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: My mother was very much raising me alone, even though
Speaker 3: she was partnered. I would say my father was like
Speaker 3: a very immature man who never really stopped being a playboy.
Speaker 3: Some of my first memories of him coming home from
Speaker 3: the pub and just hitting my mom, beating my mum
Speaker 3: who would challenge him about him smelling of perfume or
Speaker 3: you know, being with women. So yeah, there's my earliest
Speaker 3: memories just him being kind of brutal to my mother
Speaker 3: and being absent even though he lived in the same
Speaker 3: house as us. My mother is a very caring and
Speaker 3: warm and sweet person.
Speaker 1: Actually, most of the women in my family were.
Speaker 3: Nurses of one form or another, nurses or carers, so
Speaker 3: very much a people pleaser kind of person. You know,
Speaker 3: she keeps the peace by being nice and effusive. He
Speaker 3: very intelligent woman. You know, she was well read and
Speaker 3: was into teaching me how to read and write from
Speaker 3: an early age, so she very much encouraged me intellectually.
Speaker 3: I remember my parents' divorce very clearly because I remember
Speaker 3: Charles and Diana were getting married on the TV set
Speaker 3: at Westminster Abbey as we.
Speaker 1: Were packing up the house to go our separate ways.
Speaker 3: After the divorce, I lived with my dad for a
Speaker 3: little while and then with my mom, and there was
Speaker 3: a lot of poverty. She ended up taking a job
Speaker 3: as a warden in a it was like a residential
Speaker 3: home for the elderly, and the job came with a
Speaker 3: living apartment, and so, you know, that was a lifeline
Speaker 3: for us.
Speaker 1: Both because we had a place to live.
Speaker 3: Before that, we were living with, you know, with my aunts,
Speaker 3: or you know, staying with friends, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: My mom became the deputy warden, and another woman called
Speaker 3: Lorraine became the main warden.
Speaker 1: And she had a family.
Speaker 3: She had a husband and two children, a boy and
Speaker 3: a girl, and my father would come to visit and
Speaker 3: he and Lorraine began to have an affair and their
Speaker 3: marriage fell apart. So my dad moved in with Lorraine
Speaker 3: and became a stepfather to her two children. And the
Speaker 3: weird thing about this was that Doug, who was the
Speaker 3: ex husband of Lorraine, actually got together with my mom,
Speaker 3: and so it was these two couples and you can
Speaker 3: imagine just like the father's swapping, right, So.
Speaker 1: I ended up with Doug as my stepdad.
Speaker 3: And I ended up with these two half siblings, Gail
Speaker 3: and Amon, and they started calling my dad dad, which
Speaker 3: was very uncomfortable for me. It was my ninth birthday
Speaker 3: when they got married, so I remember that clearly as well.
Speaker 2: And then your dad and Lorraine have two more children.
Speaker 3: They will go on to have two more children, but
Speaker 3: a lot happens in the interim, so you know, it's
Speaker 3: kind of comical in a way to think of these
Speaker 3: two couples who've kind of like swapped husbands, but the
Speaker 3: reality was very very difficult to be a child like
Speaker 3: witnessing these partnerships, you know. So my stepfather, Doug was
Speaker 3: very upset that his two biological children were calling my
Speaker 3: father dad, and I had to start calling Doug dad,
Speaker 3: which wasn't very comfortable for me. And the situation eventually
Speaker 3: resolved when my dad and Lorraine moved like thirty miles
Speaker 3: north of Manchester and it just ended the access. So
Speaker 3: all the custod rangements fell apart and we didn't see
Speaker 3: them for.
Speaker 1: A couple of years.
Speaker 3: Little Sasha was quite a bewildered and timid kid. I
Speaker 3: was very bookish. I would spend a lot of my
Speaker 3: time like reading books and blowing the world out. There's
Speaker 3: a line from Alice Miller in the drama of The
Speaker 3: Gifted Child where she talks about how you can perfect
Speaker 3: the art of not feeling your feelings in childhood, and
Speaker 3: that's very much what I did. I just blanked out
Speaker 3: from the weirdness of my family. You know, I didn't
Speaker 3: acknowledge it. I didn't talk about it.
Speaker 1: So very early on I became a secret keeper.
Speaker 3: And obviously in my interactions with my stepsister Gail, I
Speaker 3: had secrets there to keep as well, because she was
Speaker 3: a very confusing and bewildering child to be around. At
Speaker 3: first met when I was about seven or eight, and
Speaker 3: she was a very different person to me. She was
Speaker 3: Catholic and so very churchy. I remember she was very
Speaker 3: excited about going for her first confirmation and dressing up
Speaker 3: like a little bride.
Speaker 1: It was all very bewildering to me.
Speaker 3: I'd never been so a and I think the first
Speaker 3: time I went to a church was actually seeing her confirmation.
Speaker 1: Her mother was my mum's.
Speaker 3: Boss, and I feel like Gail adopted this attitude like
Speaker 3: I'm your boss too, because we were thrown together for
Speaker 3: a summer, and when we would play together, her games
Speaker 3: would get very intense. And there was actually something that
Speaker 3: happened in that summer we played together where she actually
Speaker 3: played sexual bullying games on me, inspired by pornographic magazines
Speaker 3: that her father had hidden under the mattress that she
Speaker 3: would bloat and show me.
Speaker 2: You know, Gail isn't just showing Sasha pornographic magazines. During
Speaker 2: this time when Gail is nine and Sasha is eight,
Speaker 2: Gil molests her.
Speaker 3: It was the kind of thing that I had no
Speaker 3: language for whatsoever. You know, I knew it had to
Speaker 3: be a secret. But even if I were to tell
Speaker 3: a grown up what Gail had done, I wouldn't have
Speaker 3: known the words to say.
Speaker 1: And so it was a secret that I just pushed
Speaker 1: down really, really far.
Speaker 3: And I wouldn't tell anyone this until I was in
Speaker 3: my forties. Actually, when I was in therapy. That was
Speaker 3: the first half of my connection with Gail as this
Speaker 3: bully somebody who intimidated me. And then she moved away,
Speaker 3: you know, my dad became her dad. I felt very resentful.
Speaker 1: To her for that.
Speaker 3: She would call my dad dad in front of my face,
Speaker 3: and I would just feel so jealous, you know, like
Speaker 3: he's not your.
Speaker 1: Dad, Like I'm living with your dad. It was such
Speaker 1: a weird situation for a.
Speaker 3: Child, and you know, obviously something that I never talked to.
Speaker 3: You know, I had friends in school, but I would
Speaker 3: never tell them about my family's situation or how my
Speaker 3: family came to be. It was just weird, and I
Speaker 3: knew it back then, and it was also embarrassing, kind
Speaker 3: of like a soap opera, you know, like a crazy
Speaker 3: situation from a soap opera that no one would believe
Speaker 3: really happened.
Speaker 2: Did you understand that then, because you know, one of
Speaker 2: the things that I've learned, it was in my own
Speaker 2: life and hosting this podcast, is that our childhoods are
Speaker 2: all we know, and there's a kind of strange but
Speaker 2: very human normalizing in our minds. I think of whatever
Speaker 2: happens in our childhood, it feels like, well, that must
Speaker 2: be happening in everyone's childhood. It's the only world we know.
Speaker 2: Was that the case for you or did you know
Speaker 2: at a young age you know everything that you're describing
Speaker 2: that it wasn't happening in other homes or in most
Speaker 2: other homes. And in the case of Gail and these
Speaker 2: awful sexual I mean molestation. You know, these quote unquote
Speaker 2: games that she was playing with you, is that something
Speaker 2: that you understood was deeply not okay? Or where do
Speaker 2: you put that at the age.
Speaker 3: Of eight, Well, these games had begun with her showing
Speaker 3: me like secret pornography that was hidden under my then
Speaker 3: stepfather's mattress. So is back when her, her father Doug,
Speaker 3: and Lorraine were still together, you know that she would
Speaker 3: show me these things, and so yeah, I had a
Speaker 3: sense then that the secret you know, and you would
Speaker 3: see pornography as a child, and it's really shocking. And
Speaker 3: you know, this was how I learned about sex from
Speaker 3: these from seeing these magazines that I didn't even particularly
Speaker 3: want to look at. They just made me feel hot
Speaker 3: and embarrassed and ashamed and very trapped because like Gail
Speaker 3: was kind of my Jaila that summer, you know, she
Speaker 3: was kind of in charge of me while my mom
Speaker 3: and Lorraine were working in the old People's unit taking
Speaker 3: care of the old people.
Speaker 1: So I had a sense back then that the situation
Speaker 1: was weird.
Speaker 3: And when the partners what happened, and my dad became
Speaker 3: her dad and her dad became my dad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I knew it was weird.
Speaker 3: I feel like in my life and my youth as well,
Speaker 3: I've always been like drawn to people who have more traditional,
Speaker 3: stable family situations, you know, And so I would always
Speaker 3: compare my family life with the family life of my friends,
Speaker 3: who would have like a mom and a dad, And yeah,
Speaker 3: I always knew that I was kind of weird and different.
Speaker 2: The incidents with Gail happened, and your moms were working together,
Speaker 2: and your Lorraine was quote unquote your mom's boss, and
Speaker 2: Gail kind of made herself the boss of you. The
Speaker 2: swapping of partners had not happened yet or was in
Speaker 2: the process of happening. Kind of during that period of time,
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: On the brink of happening.
Speaker 3: So Lorraine and my father were beginning their kind of
Speaker 3: secret affair which would kind of blow up and become
Speaker 3: a public affair. So yeah, it was like right before
Speaker 3: that happened. So already, I mean a lot of things
Speaker 3: were kind of happening in my life, so there was
Speaker 3: no real time to pipe up and go hey, by
Speaker 3: the way, Gail's playing these word games.
Speaker 2: On me, if that makes sense, and then she becomes
Speaker 2: your stepsister after this has.
Speaker 3: Happened, that's right, and she would actually end up living
Speaker 3: with us because obviously Doug was her real father. So
Speaker 3: after an extended period of no contact, like around nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty six, we get a visit from Gail's mom, Lorraine,
Speaker 3: Like early in the winter of nineteen eighty seven, Lorraine
Speaker 3: comes to visit my mom while I'm at school, and
Speaker 3: Lorraine tells my mom that my father is in prison
Speaker 3: for sexually abusing Gail. And to add to that, she
Speaker 3: says that Gail is in a children's home because she
Speaker 3: can no longer cope with her.
Speaker 2: How do you find this out?
Speaker 1: I find out the same day.
Speaker 3: I come home from school and I see my mom's
Speaker 3: face in the window and she's waiting for me, and
Speaker 3: I know that something's off as soon as I walk
Speaker 3: through the door, and so she sits me down in
Speaker 3: the living room, and I remember her chain smoking like
Speaker 3: it was a winter's day. It was a very gray
Speaker 3: skuy outside. You know, she hadn't put the light on
Speaker 3: in the room, and so the room got dark as
Speaker 3: we were talking, and she would light her cigarettes from
Speaker 3: the gas fire. While she was telling me the story
Speaker 3: of what had happened, and she told me what Gail
Speaker 3: had told her, which was that like in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 3: Gale was about twelve, and she had apparently sexually matured
Speaker 3: and she had breasts now, and she would walk around
Speaker 3: the house and like shore t shirts. And my dad
Speaker 3: was unemployed and he was kind of looking after the
Speaker 3: kids during the summer.
Speaker 1: Apparently Gail would get.
Speaker 3: In bed with my dad for cuddles after Lorraine, her
Speaker 3: mom had gone to work, and so this had been
Speaker 3: going on all summer, and at the end of the summer,
Speaker 3: when Gail went back to school in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 3: she told the nuns at the Catholic school that she
Speaker 3: went to that her stepfather had been abusing her. And
Speaker 3: so the police came and arrested my father and he
Speaker 3: went to trial and he got sentenced to prison.
Speaker 1: Lorraine had Aimen.
Speaker 3: I think he would have been about six at the time,
Speaker 3: and Gail, who was turning thirteen and had had a
Speaker 3: really difficult time apparently, and social Services in England had
Speaker 3: stepped in and taken Gail into a children's home. And
Speaker 3: so my mom told me all this information on that
Speaker 3: day in February in nineteen eighty seven, and my mom
Speaker 3: put it to me that Gail doesn't need to be
Speaker 3: in a children's home.
Speaker 1: She has another parent she could live with. Doug was
Speaker 1: her biological father.
Speaker 3: And there was a part of me that day that
Speaker 3: felt like, my father's a monster, and if I can
Speaker 3: help make this right and get Gail out of a
Speaker 3: children's home, like, of course we'll do that. Of course
Speaker 3: girls should come in love with us. And so that's
Speaker 3: what happened.
Speaker 2: Were you completely shocked by this information about your father
Speaker 2: or did it feel in some way like it was
Speaker 2: part of a trajectory, like when you talk about your
Speaker 2: very first memories of like violence between your parents and
Speaker 2: you talk about your father and who he was. Was
Speaker 2: there any part of you that wasn't completely surprised or
Speaker 2: was it just utterly shocking.
Speaker 3: It was definitely shocking in terms of like a feeling
Speaker 3: of you know, sick disgust.
Speaker 1: In my stomach.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But the thing is I'd been living with Doug my
Speaker 3: mom for years and they'd constantly told me that my
Speaker 3: dad's no good, you know, and so this basically confirmed
Speaker 3: this bias that they both held for Doug. My dad
Speaker 3: was the bad guy who'd stolen his kids, right, and
Speaker 3: now my dad was the man who'd molested his daughter,
Speaker 3: Like of course he was a monster. I felt an
Speaker 3: internal shame that in some way this reflected on me,
Speaker 3: like I didn't want to be like my dad, and
Speaker 3: I very much wanted my mom to see, look, Mom,
Speaker 3: I'm like you.
Speaker 1: I'm a good person.
Speaker 3: And so I think leaping to the aid of Gail,
Speaker 3: even though I had my own dark history with her,
Speaker 3: it was something I've felt compelled to do, you know,
Speaker 3: just to kind of reclaim like I am your daughter,
Speaker 3: I'm not his daughter.
Speaker 1: That felt very important to me.
Speaker 2: So what was that next period of time, Like when
Speaker 2: Gail came to live with you.
Speaker 1: Things moved so fast.
Speaker 3: I feel like my mom and I had that conversation,
Speaker 3: and I think the next weekend we met Gail and
Speaker 3: her social worker in a cafe, and Gail was just
Speaker 3: not the kid I remembered. I remember this long blonde hair,
Speaker 3: like blue eyed, like perfect Catholic girl.
Speaker 1: And here was this young woman.
Speaker 3: You know, she had short cropped hair, like a full
Speaker 3: eighties outfit, makeup, eyeliner. She just seems so grown up
Speaker 3: within a few weeks she moved in, and I think
Speaker 3: Social Services paid for like new bedding and a new
Speaker 3: bed and we began to share a room, and in
Speaker 3: my mind it was like, we will be teenagers together.
Speaker 3: I think I was still eleven turning twelve. But I
Speaker 3: felt very much like I have to hide away all
Speaker 3: my dolls and my childish books because you know, I've
Speaker 3: got this mature teenager moving in with us, and so
Speaker 3: I swapped my dolls for klor of posters of the
Speaker 3: Bangles and things like that. You know, I feel like
Speaker 3: I tried so hard to make it fun and to
Speaker 3: make things okay for her. I felt like, this is
Speaker 3: the worst thing in the world that has happened to you,
Speaker 3: and I want it to be okay. I want this
Speaker 3: to work out. I was very invested in having it
Speaker 3: work out. But it didn't take long for things to
Speaker 3: just get like a little bit unhinged and weird.
Speaker 1: You know. I remember she started in my school.
Speaker 3: She was the year ahead of me, and she quickly
Speaker 3: made like a clique of friends, like the popular girls.
Speaker 3: And I had this assumption that everything that had happened
Speaker 3: with my dad would be a secret. We're not going
Speaker 3: to tell people that, But one of the first things
Speaker 3: she did was she told like all the girls she'd
Speaker 3: made friends with at school that, you know, she was
Speaker 3: a victim of sexual abuse.
Speaker 1: And it was a little bit horrifying to.
Speaker 3: Me, Like I didn't want the shame of people knowing
Speaker 3: that was my dad who'd done that.
Speaker 1: I didn't want people see me that way.
Speaker 3: But also I could see that she was doing it
Speaker 3: to be manipulative. I know that sounds harsh, but that
Speaker 3: really was what it was. Like she was telling her
Speaker 3: friends and kind of enjoying the attention, and she was saying, Oh,
Speaker 3: everyone's been so nice to me, it's so great.
Speaker 1: And then she told me.
Speaker 3: A story that just felt really weird, and it was
Speaker 3: kind of like a red flag for me. She told
Speaker 3: me that a friend in school had heard her story
Speaker 3: of abuse and had kind of comforted with their own
Speaker 3: story of abuse, and this girl's mother had freaked out
Speaker 3: and taken her to acologist to get a check up
Speaker 3: and the ofcologist to confirm that this girl was still
Speaker 3: a virgin. And Gail told me this story with the
Speaker 3: kind of air of gloating, like, see, she wasn't for real,
Speaker 3: like she.
Speaker 1: Hadn't really done it.
Speaker 3: With a man, and that story just like disturbed me
Speaker 3: so much, and those moments of of antagonism and mistrust
Speaker 3: just began to kind of grow and grow. Gail was
Speaker 3: the kind of person who used to pull the energy
Speaker 3: in the room, you know, no amount of attention ever
Speaker 3: seemed enough, and she completely hogged my mother, so my
Speaker 3: mother no longer felt available to me. I would come home,
Speaker 3: you know, from school, and like maybe Gail had gotten
Speaker 3: there before me, and Gail would be like pouring a
Speaker 3: heart out to my mom about boys or friends or
Speaker 3: haircuts or makeup or whatever was.
Speaker 1: On her mind that day.
Speaker 3: And I really felt resentful, like, oh, this is my mom,
Speaker 3: but she hasn't got time for me or room for
Speaker 3: me anymore. And so even though I had the best
Speaker 3: intentions when Gail first moved in, it quickly soured and
Speaker 3: became the antagonistic relationship we'd always kind of had, you know.
Speaker 2: And how long was that period of time where she
Speaker 2: lived with you and you were in school together and
Speaker 2: living together.
Speaker 3: She moved in with us in the early spring of
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty seven, and I think by early nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: eight she had kind of moved back into a children's
Speaker 3: home so she wasn't with us for that long.
Speaker 2: What precipitated her moving back into the children's home.
Speaker 3: There was an incident that I really should tell you about.
Speaker 3: There was a library book that I'd always wanted to
Speaker 3: check out. I'd read all the Judy.
Speaker 1: Bloom books, and there was one Judy Bloom book that
Speaker 1: I was not allowed to read, called Forever, and.
Speaker 3: The local librarian, who'd you know, she'd not permitted me
Speaker 3: to check it out on a number of occasions. And
Speaker 3: then one day I came home from school in that book,
Speaker 3: Judy Blooms Forever had materialized on our kitchen counter, and
Speaker 3: I was so excited, like, this is the one Judy
Speaker 3: Bloom book I've not read, and so I, you know,
Speaker 3: I started to read it, and I had so many questions.
Speaker 3: You know, it was about this sexual relationship and there
Speaker 3: was language in it that I didn't understand.
Speaker 1: So I had conversation with.
Speaker 3: Gail one night after lights were out, and I said
Speaker 3: to her, you know, what does it mean, Like what
Speaker 3: does this sexual reference mean? And she told me, well,
Speaker 3: first of all, she said, I'm not allowed to tell you.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, what do you mean? And she said, well,
Speaker 1: my Mum's made me promise not to talk to you
Speaker 1: about sex.
Speaker 3: She said, you're still innocent, and I was sex so offended,
Speaker 3: like I know all about it, even though obviously I didn't,
Speaker 3: because I'm asking her questions. And so she goes on
Speaker 3: to tell me what this sexual reference means, and she
Speaker 3: tells me in such a way that she's kind of
Speaker 3: bragging about it, and so I keep my voice neutral
Speaker 3: as I ask the more questions, and she goes on
Speaker 3: to say that what a great lover she is, and
Speaker 3: that when she and my dad.
Speaker 1: Were together, like what a great sexual partner she was.
Speaker 3: And I am like so shocked by this because she's
Speaker 3: been telling kids at school that she was raped and abused,
Speaker 3: and now my dad, who's in prison, is apparently her
Speaker 3: ex lover. And so I just I turn away and
Speaker 3: pretend I'm sleepy, but I am so shocked to my call.
Speaker 3: That is a moment when I'm truly shocked. I'm just
Speaker 3: so confused by this information. I can feel my heart
Speaker 3: beating as I tell you this. You know, it's it's
Speaker 3: a difficult memory after that incident when she made this
Speaker 3: weird confession to me about my dad being her lover,
Speaker 3: and just not knowing what to make of it, Like
Speaker 3: I still think my dad is a monster, but now
Speaker 3: I kind of think she's a monster too. And so
Speaker 3: after that, I really I stop trying, you know, I'd
Speaker 3: tried so hard to make this a fun teenage like
Speaker 3: hangout for her, and now I just stop trying completely,
Speaker 3: and we get more antagonistic. And there's actually an incident
Speaker 3: where we we have an argument about me being in
Speaker 3: the bedroom first and trying to read my book and
Speaker 3: she comes in and blasphem Adonna tape and so as
Speaker 3: I walk out of the room, I say to her,
Speaker 3: you're such a bitch, and I turn her tape off,
Speaker 3: and she follows me out of the room and at
Speaker 3: the top of the stairs, I don't realize she's behind me,
Speaker 3: but she'd pushes me down, and you know, I'm okay,
Speaker 3: Like I have some bruises and carpet burns, but I
Speaker 3: did manage to save myself. But when my mom comes
Speaker 3: home from work that day, I don't hold back and
Speaker 3: I just tell my mom like what Gail had done,
Speaker 3: and my mom.
Speaker 1: Just loses it.
Speaker 3: She loses her cool and says, Gail, you could have
Speaker 3: killed her, You could have broken her neck, you know
Speaker 3: what possessed you.
Speaker 1: And Gail shows no remorse.
Speaker 3: She just says, you know, Sasha's been a baby, like
Speaker 3: she's fine, Like what's the problem here. And it's this
Speaker 3: moment when my mom sees Gail's moral indifference and I've
Speaker 3: already seen it, so I'm not surprised anymore. I'm just disgusted.
Speaker 3: But my mom that is the final straw. And so
Speaker 3: my mom.
Speaker 1: Calls social services.
Speaker 3: And you know, the arrangements are made and Gail actually
Speaker 3: goes back to a children's home.
Speaker 2: That's such a powerful phrase, moral indifference.
Speaker 3: Yeah, girl is fourteen at this point, almost fourteen, but
Speaker 3: she did seem very morally indifferent to me.
Speaker 1: You know, she would change her story and not care, like.
Speaker 3: She really didn't care about me, and I stopped caring
Speaker 3: about her. It feels so ugly to say all this.
Speaker 3: I'm very conscious that she's a mixed up kid who
Speaker 3: has been abused, and I'm sitting here judging her. But
Speaker 3: it's actually like a lot of therapy that I went
Speaker 3: through and I don't feel that judgment anymore.
Speaker 1: Is something I felt for a long time, kind of secretly,
Speaker 1: that i'd kind of pushed down. I just pushed down
Speaker 1: all of this, to be honest.
Speaker 2: And when you say judgment, you mean judgment of yourself.
Speaker 2: Is that what you mean?
Speaker 1: I feel like there's me judging myself for judging her.
Speaker 3: When Gail left us, dug didn't really have any He
Speaker 3: didn't show any emotions about it at all. It was weird,
Speaker 3: you know, but he kind of washed her hands of her.
Speaker 3: Gail's mom, Lorraine had washed her hands of her.
Speaker 1: And after Gail.
Speaker 3: Goes into a children's home for a second time for
Speaker 3: a final time, we find out that my dad is
Speaker 3: out of prison. He's only been in prison for eighteen
Speaker 3: months of a three year sentence, and to people in
Speaker 3: the twenty first century, that sounds so shocking, but it
Speaker 3: really goes to show how this crime was not taken
Speaker 3: that seriously in the nineteen eighties. So my dad gets
Speaker 3: out for good behavior and we found out it's a
Speaker 3: real scandal. But Lorraine has taken my dad back. They
Speaker 3: have gotten back together. And what's more, Lorraine's pregnant. She
Speaker 3: immediately gets pregnant in nineteen eighty eight, and she has
Speaker 3: my half sister, Charlie in late nineteen eighty eight, and
Speaker 3: it's followed a year later by another child in quick succession.
Speaker 3: It's very uncomfortable to go visit them, but Lorain is
Speaker 3: acting like it's all okay, and so I kind of
Speaker 3: accept that. Well, maybe it is okay, and I can't
Speaker 3: make sense of that. But there's something about this. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: he is my dad and Lorraine's forgiven him, so maybe
Speaker 3: I can go and see my new sister. And so
Speaker 3: I see them twice. I think over the next couple
Speaker 3: of years. I visit when Charlie is about one, and
Speaker 3: then I visit again when Charlie is.
Speaker 2: About We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 2: Sasha heads to university and brings her secrets with her.
Speaker 2: As we do, she stuffs them down and carries them,
Speaker 2: but they don't go away. They're alive in her body,
Speaker 2: alive in her psyche. They don't disappear. And yet Sasha
Speaker 2: isn't pulled under because she discovers reading, and she discovers
Speaker 2: herself in literature and in exploring the minds, hearts and
Speaker 2: souls of others on the page.
Speaker 3: I would use books to make sense of so many things.
Speaker 3: The time my dad and Lorraine got back together and
Speaker 3: started having babies. My mum had become a Jehovah's witness,
Speaker 3: and that was something that was very present for me.
Speaker 1: For a couple of years.
Speaker 3: I had to study with the Jehovah's witnesses too, and
Speaker 3: I would eventually pull away. And what empowered me to
Speaker 3: do so was being a reader, just reading George Orwell
Speaker 3: and jam Paul Sartre, and these are the books that
Speaker 3: made me think, maybe my personal freedom is kind of important.
Speaker 3: So I definitely decided not to be a Jehovah's witness
Speaker 3: because of reading. And one thing I will say is
Speaker 3: that I remember in my teen years. I hit sixteen
Speaker 3: and I found a copy of Loalita by Vladimir Nabakov
Speaker 3: in a thrift store, in a charity shop in England,
Speaker 3: and I remember reading this book and it's a story
Speaker 3: of a young woman, Dolores Hayes, who kind of seduces
Speaker 3: her stepfather and it's such.
Speaker 1: A weird scene, you know, like Loalita makes the first
Speaker 1: move on Humbert.
Speaker 3: And I'd never read a story that actually maybe described
Speaker 3: something that had actually happened in my family too.
Speaker 1: So literature was definitely the lifeline.
Speaker 3: It's how I tried to make sense of this really
Speaker 3: weird family story that I never thought I.
Speaker 1: Could talk about.
Speaker 3: And of course it's so complicated because Dolores Hayes is
Speaker 3: also this victim who dies tragically. There are no happy endings,
Speaker 3: so you know, that's how it kind of felt. But
Speaker 3: literature gave me a means to kind of like make
Speaker 3: sense of what I couldn't speak about in my own family.
Speaker 3: So I was always reading and always finding escape, definitely,
Speaker 3: but also understanding that life is so complex and so weird,
Speaker 3: and it's like, I may not know anyone else who's
Speaker 3: had this happen in her life, but I've read about
Speaker 3: it in a book, and so it can't just be us.
Speaker 2: When Sasha's twenty three, she visits her dad, Lorraine, and Charlie,
Speaker 2: who's now around twelve. She also has a half brother Nick.
Speaker 2: It's been a long time, perhaps long enough for things
Speaker 2: to have changed. We can always hope, and sometimes that
Speaker 2: hope is heartbreaking.
Speaker 3: I think I'm prompted by a boyfriend who his that
Speaker 3: I've been estranged from my father for a really long time,
Speaker 3: and I really don't remember how the reconnection happened, but
Speaker 3: I was like, well, sure, like I can be curious and.
Speaker 1: Go see them. You know, what's past is passed.
Speaker 3: And I think a part of me was pleased that
Speaker 3: my dad and Lorraine had made it work, you know,
Speaker 3: like maybe it's okay, Maybe my dad's a reformed character.
Speaker 3: I had all these thoughts going on in my head,
Speaker 3: and so I went to see them in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: I was a graduate. I was twenty three, and my dad.
Speaker 3: Picked me up from the train station, and as we
Speaker 3: drove to the family, he gave me this lecture about
Speaker 3: what a great guy he was and how his wife
Speaker 3: was wonderful and if Lorraine ever turned her back on him,
Speaker 3: he would be a lost man.
Speaker 1: That you know, she'd forgiven him so much.
Speaker 3: You know, he gave me this pep talk, But it
Speaker 3: also felt like a warning in a way, like you know,
Speaker 3: you're not meant to talk about this in front of
Speaker 3: the kids, right, And I just kind of sensed that, like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I don't know what these kids know. I don't know
Speaker 3: if Aimon remembers his older sister, and the fact that
Speaker 3: I'd not been part of their lives felt very deliberate,
Speaker 3: because you know, I was this witness to all that
Speaker 3: had happened, Like maybe Aimon was too young to remember,
Speaker 3: but I remembered Gail, and I knew what had happened,
Speaker 3: and so I always felt like an unwanted guest with them,
Speaker 3: even though I'd seen them a few times. It was like, well,
Speaker 3: you can see is, but you can't get too close,
Speaker 3: if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And also there's Charlie, who you don't know whether
Speaker 2: she even knows about Girl's existence, right, I mean, Girl's
Speaker 2: been in a way kind of written out of the story.
Speaker 1: She has been written out of the story.
Speaker 3: And I'm pretty sure that at least two of the kids,
Speaker 3: Nick and Charlie do not know they'd have a half sister.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does not go well. Sasha's father displays his
Speaker 2: true colors pretty quickly and flies into a rage. This
Speaker 2: reminds Sasha that perhaps estrangement is for the best after all.
Speaker 2: But some good does come from the visit. She connects
Speaker 2: with her half sister, Charlie.
Speaker 3: She's kind of like a version of me, you know,
Speaker 3: like there's something between the two of us.
Speaker 1: We just connect and clerk.
Speaker 3: Even though I'm twelve years hes senior, and so I'm
Speaker 3: a school librarian at this point in my life back
Speaker 3: in Manchester and I sent her books and I've become
Speaker 3: her pempal, and we writes.
Speaker 1: To each other for the next three years.
Speaker 3: And she's so charming and lovely, and I am so
Speaker 3: sure that she has no idea what's going on. You know,
Speaker 3: what's happened before she was born. And there comes a
Speaker 3: point I go on a vacation swiftly with my boyfriend
Speaker 3: at the time, and I send her a postcard, and
Speaker 3: this postcard really touches a nerve and she writes back
Speaker 3: and she says, you know, Sasha, you can go on vacation,
Speaker 3: but you never come see us. And you know Amon
Speaker 3: had gotten married and you never came to his wedding.
Speaker 3: And I don't know how to reply to this letter,
Speaker 3: like she's so annoyed at me. She's a teenager now,
Speaker 3: and I don't know what to say to her. I
Speaker 3: can't say to her, you know, your parents have this
Speaker 3: secret that they're hiding from you guys, that happened before
Speaker 3: you were born. Like I don't know what she knows.
Speaker 3: I don't know what they told her. And so I
Speaker 3: just I realized I have to kind of be estranged
Speaker 3: from my half sister as well, even though it pains
Speaker 3: me so much, and so I basically write to her
Speaker 3: and very vaguely say, look, I wasn't invited to that wedding.
Speaker 1: That's why I wasn't there.
Speaker 3: And I don't really got on with Dad, but I
Speaker 3: will always be there for you in some way if
Speaker 3: I can be. And it's kind of like a goodbye letter,
Speaker 3: and I know it is because shortly afterwards, my dad
Speaker 3: actually writes me a letter saying, you know, I can't
Speaker 3: believe you wrote this venomous letter to your sister, like.
Speaker 1: How dare you?
Speaker 3: And the fact that that's what my dad thinks of me.
Speaker 3: It just discussed me and I hate him so much
Speaker 3: and I'm just done. At that point, I decided to
Speaker 3: kind of like divorce my dad in a way, even
Speaker 3: changed my name shortly afterwards, so I don't have his
Speaker 3: surname anymore. And unfortunately that's the end of me and
Speaker 3: Charlie for a number of years.
Speaker 2: During those next years, another relationship begins. Sasha meets Ted,
Speaker 2: a fellow cartoonist, and it becomes clear to her very
Speaker 2: soon that Ted is her person. He's someone she can trust.
Speaker 3: I meet Ted in late two thousand and four, and
Speaker 3: by two thousand and five it's kind.
Speaker 1: Of obvious that we are meant to be together.
Speaker 3: So I visit him in the United States and we
Speaker 3: go on this road trip from Saint Louis to Chicago,
Speaker 3: and I know that he is my person and not
Speaker 3: going to get married, and I feel like I really
Speaker 3: need to tell him and get this off my chest.
Speaker 3: I've told him everything else about my life, but I've
Speaker 3: not told him about my real father. So I tell
Speaker 3: him this family history about Lorraine and my dad and
Speaker 3: Gail and what happened and how Lorrain and my dad
Speaker 3: got together again and had children, and how I just
Speaker 3: have this history.
Speaker 1: And I told him about Gail.
Speaker 3: I didn't tell him about the sexual abuse with Gail,
Speaker 3: but I told him about Gail coming to live with
Speaker 3: us and being abusive. And my husband's response is just
Speaker 3: pure love, Like he's just so sorry that I had
Speaker 3: to carry all lot as a kid and as a
Speaker 3: young person, and I'm like, it doesn't matter, like it's
Speaker 3: in the past, is behind me, Like America feels like
Speaker 3: this whole new start, and actually my story just telling
Speaker 3: you this just feels so much lighter in my chest, Like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's so good to be past all that old stuff
Speaker 3: that baggage that I don't have to carry to my
Speaker 3: new life in America.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I really feel like I get past my
Speaker 1: past and I'm happy, you know, like I have a
Speaker 1: good life.
Speaker 3: I work hard, I kind of enjoy, kind of let
Speaker 3: the people around me. I work on making comics and
Speaker 3: being a graphic novelist, and everything's going right, at least
Speaker 3: for a couple of years, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, First of all, I love that you instinctively chose
Speaker 2: a road trip and a car to unburden yourself, to
Speaker 2: tell him the whole story, or most of the story.
Speaker 2: There's something about cars that are just like confessionals. You know,
Speaker 2: you're driving along the other person can't get out. The
Speaker 2: world is kind of you know, you're speeding by in
Speaker 2: a blur, but you're in this like really intimate little
Speaker 2: confessional bubble.
Speaker 3: Right, And imagine also, all the events of my childhood
Speaker 3: took place under these grace guys of Manchester where it
Speaker 3: always rains. And suddenly I'm like driving through cornfields and
Speaker 3: the sky is blue, and I just feel so far
Speaker 3: from where I started, you know, like geographically, just everything
Speaker 3: feels different, like life isn't technical, and.
Speaker 1: Now that's how it felt.
Speaker 2: It's now years into what Sasha describes as her shiny
Speaker 2: American life. She's married Ted and the couple has a daughter.
Speaker 2: Via Sasha's first graphic novel is published, It's a Good, Rich,
Speaker 2: Shiny Time. And then in twenty twelve, Sasha gets a
Speaker 2: letter from Charlie out of the blue.
Speaker 1: She actually finds me through my Etsy store.
Speaker 3: And I've not been easy to find right because I've
Speaker 3: changed my name legally and I've switched on. But she
Speaker 3: remembered that I made comics, and she remembered the name
Speaker 3: of which I made comics, and she found them on Etsy.
Speaker 3: So I got a message from her saying, is this you?
Speaker 3: This is me Charlie, And we struck up an instant friendship,
Speaker 3: picking up where we left off, and we skype and
Speaker 3: we write emails and it's wonderful, like she's grown up
Speaker 3: into a really beautiful young woman, Like I'm.
Speaker 1: So proud to know her and proud that she's my
Speaker 1: half sister.
Speaker 3: And what I noticed straight off the bat is that
Speaker 3: she's not talking about my dad, like where is he?
Speaker 3: And for a moment, I think, well, maybe he's dead
Speaker 3: and that's why she's contacting me, But she goes on
Speaker 3: to tell me that she knows some things about my
Speaker 3: dad now that she didn't know back then. And furthermore,
Speaker 3: he has left Lorraine. It turns out that around the
Speaker 3: same time Lorraine was pregnant with Nick, another woman was
Speaker 3: also pregnant with my father's child, a Spanish lady, and
Speaker 3: my dad has like left Lorraine to go be with
Speaker 3: his son and his former girlfriend, his former mistress in Spain.
Speaker 3: So it's a real chuck, and it's also like confirmation,
Speaker 3: like I knew this man was a piece of crap,
Speaker 3: and this has just confirmed it. And I'm so delighted
Speaker 3: to have my half sister back in my life. I'm
Speaker 3: really happy to have this validation that I did the
Speaker 3: right thing in getting estranged from my father. But it's
Speaker 3: also a time when Lorraine kind of enters my life
Speaker 3: as well. Lorrain is a spurned woman and she spends
Speaker 3: her time now stalking my dad like on Facebook and
Speaker 3: looking up pictures of him in Spain, like happy with
Speaker 3: this new woman, And she kind of calls me on
Speaker 3: the phone and she tells me this stuff, and it
Speaker 3: really feels like this past that I've really tried hard
Speaker 3: to move away from, like physically, you know, and geographically
Speaker 3: it's kind of back, like the baggage just back. So
Speaker 3: even though I'm happy to have Charlie back, it feels
Speaker 3: like this family story has kind of come back to
Speaker 3: haunt me a little bit, and it really coincides with
Speaker 3: the beginning of this growing anxiety that I just find
Speaker 3: I'm not able to shake.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. William Faulkner once wrote, the past
Speaker 2: is never dead, it's not even past. In many ways,
Speaker 2: this applies to Sasha's experience when she's around forty and
Speaker 2: the past returns. The secret does not behave or remains silent.
Speaker 2: It's like a slumbering giant waking up, and when it
Speaker 2: wakes up, it does so in the form of terrible anxiety.
Speaker 2: Sasha develops acne, a symptom of what's going on inside emotionally.
Speaker 2: To ease the stress, she tries yoga, acupuncture, meditation, but
Speaker 2: nothing is working. There's an unconscious symmetry at work. Sasha's
Speaker 2: daughter is about seven, very close in age to when
Speaker 2: Sasha's own life had been turned upside down.
Speaker 3: It took me a while to make the connection between
Speaker 3: my acne and my anxiety. It was my acupuncturist who
Speaker 3: pointed it out to me, and he was so honest
Speaker 3: with me. He said, look, I think we've gone as
Speaker 3: far as we can go, and the next step will
Speaker 3: be therapy because it's obviously like an emotional healing that
Speaker 3: is what you need, it's not a physical thing. His
Speaker 3: honesty was such a gift to me because I really
Speaker 3: did need that emotional healing and it was actually through
Speaker 3: his influence that I was trying meditation, and I would
Speaker 3: you know, I found meditation so hard. I mean it
Speaker 3: makes you ache, Your back hurts, you know, your bum hurts,
Speaker 3: and it's so boring. And then when you finally get
Speaker 3: quiet enough, I would just start crying. You know this
Speaker 3: this pain was coming up. It's because my daughter is
Speaker 3: the same age as me. When my life just like
Speaker 3: began to fall apart, you know, my childhood really took
Speaker 3: a tone for the dark. So I was grateful that
Speaker 3: I had support to make that connection. And then the
Speaker 3: accupunturist actually pointed me to a therapist here in Saint
Speaker 3: Louis where I would begin excavating and doing this self
Speaker 3: reckoning in therapy that would actually bring light to all
Speaker 3: this darkness as well.
Speaker 1: As the you know, the acne and the anxiety.
Speaker 3: I was also having nightmares, like every night, you know,
Speaker 3: I would go to bed and have dreams where I'd
Speaker 3: either wake up in panic and able to breathe, or
Speaker 3: I'd find like mangled girls and car crashes, or I'd
Speaker 3: be lost in dark cities or just in complete darkness.
Speaker 3: My dreams were so frightening that I knew there was
Speaker 3: something wrong, and I knew that I had to start
Speaker 3: talking to someone, start asking for help. And I come
Speaker 3: from a culture, come from England, where we don't go
Speaker 3: to therapy, you know, we go to the football. We
Speaker 3: go to see the football. It's not a culture where
Speaker 3: you ask for help.
Speaker 1: We have a stuff up alp, you know.
Speaker 3: So I had a lot of biases to overcome before
Speaker 3: I could go to therapy, but I'm so glad I did.
Speaker 2: So you'll go see Chris, your therapist, and in your
Speaker 2: first session, I was struck by this. I think it's
Speaker 2: something that happens a lot in therapy, which is that
Speaker 2: you tell him a lot, You spill out a lot
Speaker 2: of your story, but you don't tell him the quote
Speaker 2: unquote worst thing, right, You don't tell him the thing
Speaker 2: that you also didn't tell ted. You don't tell him
Speaker 2: about the molestation that Gail perpetrated on you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I remember being in that first session and I
Speaker 3: was telling him this crazy family history with these two
Speaker 3: weird couples who swapped fathers, and then everything that happened
Speaker 3: with Gail. Just everything sounded like a bad soap opera.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just too much.
Speaker 3: And there was a small voice inside me saying, tell
Speaker 3: him about the other thing too, But I just couldn't
Speaker 3: do it, you know, I was too embarrassed, like I
Speaker 3: don't know this guy, Like I've only just met him
Speaker 3: and he's a man, and I'm going to tell him
Speaker 3: the darkest secret that I've never told anybody, literally, never
Speaker 3: told anybody. And there was another voice in my head
Speaker 3: that said, and besides, it doesn't matter. It was just
Speaker 3: a stupid kid game, like just forget it, forget it,
Speaker 3: forget it. And that had been the dueling voice throughout
Speaker 3: the years. You know that I'd pushed this dock his
Speaker 3: secret down.
Speaker 2: Early on in their work together, Chris tells Sasha about
Speaker 2: a therapeutic system called internal family systems or ifs for short.
Speaker 2: It doesn't really resonate with Sasha At first, she's suspicious
Speaker 2: about therapy and whether it can help her. There's something
Speaker 2: called parts work, which seems silly, the idea that were
Speaker 2: made up of different parts and that accessing them can
Speaker 2: be useful, even healing. So she's resistant, but there's also
Speaker 2: trust building between Chris and Sasha. At the same time,
Speaker 2: the Me Too movement has just exploded into being, and
Speaker 2: this is triggering to Sasha. The abuse that had happened
Speaker 2: when she was eight years old doesn't fall into any
Speaker 2: of the typical me too narratives, and she doesn't know
Speaker 2: what to do with it. The past roars back into
Speaker 2: the present. Sasha comes into a session after having had
Speaker 2: a very disturbing dream.
Speaker 3: I have a nightmare that I go into my daughter's
Speaker 3: room to check on her, and she's okay, And when
Speaker 3: I go back to my bed, there's a little girl
Speaker 3: in the bed and I'm mo lest I dream this
Speaker 3: and I'm so disturbed by it.
Speaker 1: And suddenly I just fall apart.
Speaker 3: Like I hold my life together enough to take my
Speaker 3: kid to school, and then on the way home, I
Speaker 3: just like cry all the way and I can't wait
Speaker 3: for therapists to roll around because I know that I
Speaker 3: finally have to tell my therapist Chris this component of
Speaker 3: my story that I've not told anyone. And when I
Speaker 3: do tell him, he's never seen me falling apart like
Speaker 3: that before. He's never seen me weeping and shaking, you know.
Speaker 3: But I'm just so disturbed by the past that all
Speaker 3: of a sudden wants to come out, you know. And
Speaker 3: when I tell him this secret about Gail's molestation of
Speaker 3: me as children, the first thing he says is like,
Speaker 3: you're not the first. There are many kids this happens too.
Speaker 3: And he even suggests it's possible that Gail was abused
Speaker 3: before my father came along, that maybe she was acting
Speaker 3: out things on me like a younger kid, to regain
Speaker 3: some kind of power that is obviously unknowable. But for
Speaker 3: the first time it gave me like a feeling of
Speaker 3: like empathy, like oh wow, Like that's not even something
Speaker 3: I could have considered that could have happened to Gail,
Speaker 3: you know. And so this very difficult story comes up,
Speaker 3: and it's like in that session, Chris offers me the
Speaker 3: keys to healing it. He says to me, you know
Speaker 3: that that eight year old part of you that's feeling
Speaker 3: this pain, now, you know, how to parent it because
Speaker 3: you're a wonderful parents. You are on daughter Verra, so
Speaker 3: you can take that same love, that same ferocious love,
Speaker 3: and you can give it to that kid.
Speaker 1: Part of you.
Speaker 3: And in that moment, like this IFS therapy, which had
Speaker 3: rejected previously, it started to make sense, like, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: am a good mother and I am a good person,
Speaker 3: and I can give myself that care and compassion. This
Speaker 3: was like an youth way forward. And it began with
Speaker 3: the hardest thing that I ever had to tell him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like something clicked. And you then begin this
Speaker 2: three month project of writing everything that comes to mind,
Speaker 2: everything that you think, everything you remember, and filling up notebooks,
Speaker 2: sort of addressing, as you put it, this little ghost child,
Speaker 2: and just being in communication with her with this, you know,
Speaker 2: eight year old Sasha.
Speaker 1: You know, Danny, It's funny because I'm a writer.
Speaker 3: You know, I've written graphic novels and I've written personal
Speaker 3: stories before, and yet I feel that there's a way
Speaker 3: that you can recount things without actually feeling the emotions
Speaker 3: attached to them. And I feel that as a writer.
Speaker 3: That's previously what I've done in my earlier books. But
Speaker 3: when I wrote in these composition books, the story of
Speaker 3: my childhood and everything I remembered, and I would piece
Speaker 3: together like the timeline from what pop songs I could
Speaker 3: remember on the radio.
Speaker 1: It just went so deep. It was this huge excavation,
Speaker 1: and for the first.
Speaker 3: Time, I was feeling every single feeling that that kid
Speaker 3: never felt safe enough to feel or didn't know how
Speaker 3: to express. And it was so painful. I would get
Speaker 3: up at like five thirty in the morning and like
Speaker 3: write for like forty minutes and then spend twenty minutes weeping.
Speaker 3: And it took me three months to write my childhood
Speaker 3: from beginning to end, and it broke something open in me.
Speaker 3: I was a different person in therapy after that. My
Speaker 3: vulnerability was right there on the surface, but it was
Speaker 3: no longer something that felt like weakness. It was something
Speaker 3: that felt like I can connect now because I'm in
Speaker 3: touch with the deepest pain.
Speaker 2: During this time, Sasha is unpacking boxes of books at
Speaker 2: the library and a book literally falls into her hands.
Speaker 2: It's a book about internal family systems.
Speaker 1: It's not only a book about intil family systems.
Speaker 3: It's a book on how to draw your parts and
Speaker 3: use creativity to work with your parts. It's like, oh wow,
Speaker 3: this book is not only about IFS, it's talking my
Speaker 3: love language. And so I set about drawing my parts
Speaker 3: and a representation of self. And I took this to
Speaker 3: my therapist and Chris just nerded out, like finally I
Speaker 3: was coming around in his way of seeing the world,
Speaker 3: you know, And yeah, it began my IFS journey.
Speaker 1: When you have a childhood that's like difficult, or you're neglected.
Speaker 3: Or abused or just not seen, children will invariably take
Speaker 3: on this idea that this is my responsibility, somehow, this
Speaker 3: is my fault, and you will take on coping strategies
Speaker 3: to deal with that stressful family life. And IFS calls
Speaker 3: those coping strategies parts, and they can manifest.
Speaker 1: As protective parts.
Speaker 3: So it may be a part that manages how you
Speaker 3: appear to the world like a perfectionist, like I can't
Speaker 3: mess up because you know, I need to sort of
Speaker 3: protect the vulnerabilities in me. I can't have people getting
Speaker 3: mad at me because then the vulnerability inside me.
Speaker 1: Will get triggered. So IFS has.
Speaker 3: Components, like different kinds of parts, and what you do
Speaker 3: is you bring those parts into awareness with your therapist
Speaker 3: and you discover their backstory, and once you have this
Speaker 3: awareness of the part and how it came into being,
Speaker 3: you can kind of connect with your core self. It's
Speaker 3: when you feel those qualities maybe of compassion or calm
Speaker 3: or courage. Those are aspects of our core self that
Speaker 3: is not damaged by trauma. And when we bring in
Speaker 3: our imaginations together self that we feel in our bodies
Speaker 3: and the story of our parts, we can begin to
Speaker 3: unburden them. It sounds a little bit woo woo, but
Speaker 3: the experience of it is that you get to know
Speaker 3: yourself so well, and you get to know your own
Speaker 3: story really well, and you get to pull on this
Speaker 3: inner resource of your own human heart. When you practice
Speaker 3: it with a good therapist, it can be incredibly, incredibly powerful.
Speaker 3: And that was my experience of ifs.
Speaker 2: Social works effectively with Chris. While she really likes him
Speaker 2: and trusts him, at the same time, she has a
Speaker 2: feeling that maybe she needs to see a female therapist
Speaker 2: to work through some of her mother's stuff. She worries
Speaker 2: that this is a betrayal, but her desire to grow
Speaker 2: and heal outweighs those worries. She starts seeing a new
Speaker 2: therapist named Sally, and Asasha writes, the silent parts began
Speaker 2: to speak. Sally works with Sasha in a way that
Speaker 2: begins to unlock what is known in IFS as legacy burdens.
Speaker 2: She begins to explore the links between what happened to
Speaker 2: her mother, her grandmother, her great grandmother, and the entire
Speaker 2: chain of female ancestors who came before her, and the
Speaker 2: generational trauma she had inherited. The woman who had been
Speaker 2: highly suspicious of therapy now has nerded out. She wants
Speaker 2: more and more and more.
Speaker 3: So I start seeing Sally and we do nine months
Speaker 3: survive as together, which wasn't my intention when I set out,
Speaker 3: but the symbolic number of nine months, it really did
Speaker 3: feel like a birth. And with her therapy immediately is
Speaker 3: kind of different. She relates to me as a woman,
Speaker 3: and she relates to me as a mother, and that's
Speaker 3: the territory we end up exploring together.
Speaker 1: So there was another family secret that I.
Speaker 3: Knew about and I didn't really know what to do with,
Speaker 3: is that my mother, when she was thirteen was raped
Speaker 3: by a family member, and she had kept that head
Speaker 3: in her whole life, and I think it had kind
Speaker 3: of shaped her decisions like of joining a church and
Speaker 3: becoming religious. I had lots of ideas about what happened
Speaker 3: to her. I'd never really connected with empathy for her.
Speaker 3: There was numbness there rather than feeling, you know, like
Speaker 3: the true depth of feeling that my mum as a
Speaker 3: child had been so deeply wounded, you know. And so
Speaker 3: in therapy with Sally we kind of explore this. And
Speaker 3: the thing is, I'm feeling so much stronger than the
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen me who had entered therapy. You know, there
Speaker 3: was this room for curiosity.
Speaker 1: Now, why was my childhood like it was?
Speaker 3: Why did my mom make the decisions that she made?
Speaker 3: And this is what we explore together. And the fact
Speaker 3: that my mother's rape comes up very strongly around the
Speaker 3: time of Breck Cavanaugh's confirmation hearings. So Christine Blazyford is
Speaker 3: testifying against Breck Havanah and what happened to her as
Speaker 3: a fifteen year old. And I watched that and I
Speaker 3: really kind of connect with Christine blazeyfod talking about she's
Speaker 3: actually speaking for the fifteen year old part of herself, right,
Speaker 3: And I can see that thirteen year old part of
Speaker 3: my mom going on to sort of cope and not
Speaker 3: tell anyone about what had happened to her in order
Speaker 3: to protect.
Speaker 1: Her own mother who was struggling.
Speaker 3: And so suddenly it's kind of cast a generation back, like, well,
Speaker 3: why didn't my grandmother notice that my mother was struggling,
Speaker 3: that she was.
Speaker 1: A thirteen year old who'd been raped.
Speaker 3: And it made me examine my grandmother's life and I
Speaker 3: realized that my grandmother is carrying so much trauma.
Speaker 1: From World War Two.
Speaker 3: You know, she lived in an area of Manchester that
Speaker 3: had suffered bombardment, like high explosive bombs were kind of
Speaker 3: like dropped ten minutes from her house. She'd lost people,
Speaker 3: you know, she'd lost her brother and her husband. After
Speaker 3: the war, my grandmother would go on to have more tragedies,
Speaker 3: including a stillborn child. So this feeling that my grandmother
Speaker 3: was asleep at the wheel when it.
Speaker 1: Came to parenting my mom.
Speaker 3: But understanding why that trauma was this core element of
Speaker 3: why my grandmother was numb, you know, of why my
Speaker 3: mother made the decision she made. It was like trauma
Speaker 3: was this repeating pattern in our family, and you know,
Speaker 3: Bessel vander Kulk talks about how when people experience trauma,
Speaker 3: It cuts them, It kind of splinters them, you know, so.
Speaker 1: You will act out of protective impulses. So fight or
Speaker 1: flight are two. Fawn is one.
Speaker 3: I mentioned before that my mom's a people pleaser, and
Speaker 3: it's like I could really see that maybe that people
Speaker 3: pleasing was a trauma response because of what she was
Speaker 3: hiding from her own childhood. So just examining my own
Speaker 3: family gave me this wider view of society and how
Speaker 3: trauma just like flows through our stories, and how the
Speaker 3: fact that we often respond to trauma by concealing it,
Speaker 3: you know, And this is what felt so corrosive for
Speaker 3: my own life. But therapy was actually this place of
Speaker 3: healing and liberation. It felt like freedom to be able
Speaker 3: to cast light on everything that happened, not just in
Speaker 3: my life, but generationally in my family.
Speaker 2: After Sasha's work with Sally, she returns to Chris, continuing
Speaker 2: to follow her instincts about who can provide the best
Speaker 2: care at what time and for what reason. When she
Speaker 2: starts seeing Chris again, it dawns on her that she
Speaker 2: does want to tell her story. She wants to write
Speaker 2: about it, to draw it. But before she can do this,
Speaker 2: she feels she needs permission from the people she'll be
Speaker 2: writing and drawing into being. But it isn't permission from
Speaker 2: her father or Gaale she seeks. After all, they were
Speaker 2: her story, she survived them, and now she felt free
Speaker 2: and emboldened to chronicle them. But there are other people
Speaker 2: in her life that she wants to take care of.
Speaker 2: Charlie is at the top of that list. If Charlie
Speaker 2: isn't okay with Sasha writing about her, then she won't.
Speaker 2: She also considers Chris and asks him if it's okay
Speaker 2: to write about their work together, which now extends all
Speaker 2: the way back to twenty seventeen. He understands her as
Speaker 2: an artist and as a writer, and wants her to
Speaker 2: be able to express creatively the stories inside of her.
Speaker 3: When I went back to Chris, I think communication was
Speaker 3: very much the theme. That was what I was looking for.
Speaker 3: I went back because he was such a good counselor,
Speaker 3: and he would coach me on how to have conversations
Speaker 3: with difficult people, and I really needed that. Like who
Speaker 3: in life gives you advice on how to have these
Speaker 3: tough conversations like he would do it. He would go
Speaker 3: there with me and I would do things in therapy
Speaker 3: that I never thought I would do like role play
Speaker 3: for example, It's like, you know, we would act out conversations,
Speaker 3: and that was so helpful.
Speaker 1: But it was.
Speaker 3: Also this notion that Chris very much responded to me
Speaker 3: from the get go as an artist, as a writer,
Speaker 3: and he encouraged me. And in the very first session,
Speaker 3: when I told him this very convoluted family story, he
Speaker 3: said to me, this is your story too.
Speaker 1: It should be a book.
Speaker 3: And I thought in my head, like, you're crazy, there's
Speaker 3: no way I can ever tell that. But I did
Speaker 3: come around to his way of thinking, and I did
Speaker 3: want to make this book. I also had the fact that,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm a cartoonist, and so I carry a
Speaker 3: sketch book with me and I would get the metrolink
Speaker 3: to therapy and back, and so I would have time
Speaker 3: to like sit and like draw sketches and doodles and
Speaker 3: talking heads and speech bubbles.
Speaker 1: Of everything that had happened in therapy.
Speaker 3: Part of that was an economic device, like I wanted
Speaker 3: to get my money's worth that of therapy, so I
Speaker 3: wanted to graphically record it. But it was also the
Speaker 3: fact that, you know, this is so interesting to me.
Speaker 3: I became so fascinated with the gifts that therapy had
Speaker 3: to offer me, and the skills that was learning in therapy,
Speaker 3: and the fact that it was making a palpable difference,
Speaker 3: not just in how I related to myself, but in
Speaker 3: how it related to the world around me. The idea
Speaker 3: of getting Chris's permission to be a character in my book.
Speaker 3: It's not an easy thing to ask someone, but he
Speaker 3: was so generous regarding that, and I did. I had
Speaker 3: to find my way, and I had this idea that
Speaker 3: maybe my book could be a bridge and telling Charlie
Speaker 3: the story that I was not allowed to tell her
Speaker 3: when she was younger, because it was kept.
Speaker 1: A secret from her.
Speaker 3: But now the secrets, you know, the family secrets, become
Speaker 3: like a bridge, you know, to her and I, and
Speaker 3: we are.
Speaker 1: So close now.
Speaker 3: She's shared so much about her family story with me
Speaker 3: that I did not know, and you know, being able
Speaker 3: to see how it was from her perspective. She said
Speaker 3: that she always knew that something was wrong in her family.
Speaker 3: She carried it like a sick feeling in her stomach.
Speaker 3: And I could have told her back then, but obviously
Speaker 3: I couldn't. You know, I had the secrets, but the
Speaker 3: fact that there were so many secrets in my family.
Speaker 1: It made me be a secret keeper.
Speaker 3: Too, you know, that impulse, the fact that I had
Speaker 3: to keep secrets for my dad. That was not a
Speaker 3: healthy thing for me, but had no choice.
Speaker 2: Sasha's beautiful and powerful book Past Tense has been warmly
Speaker 2: received by its readers. She's finished her work with Chris
Speaker 2: at least for the time being. That whispering voice that
Speaker 2: told her to tell it, tell the whole truth is
Speaker 2: now between the hardcovers of her graphic memoir for all
Speaker 2: the world to see.
Speaker 3: I started telling this story online on social media, and
Speaker 3: it's a very interesting way to tell a story because
Speaker 3: you get real time feedback from people. And I found
Speaker 3: a community of people therapists and people doing there and
Speaker 3: healing would give me feedback on the short stories from
Speaker 3: therapy that I would tell online. And so the fact
Speaker 3: that I kind of grew this readership of people who've
Speaker 3: been with me as this book went from like very
Speaker 3: short stories online to be an a book that they've
Speaker 3: purchased and have, you know, shared photographs of themselves holding it.
Speaker 3: It's like, Wow, this really isn't the wider world, and
Speaker 3: it's proof that I'm like far from alone, you know,
Speaker 3: Like I thought my story was so complicated and so
Speaker 3: weird that I could never tell it and people wouldn't
Speaker 3: believe me or accept it. And I've discovered instead that,
Speaker 3: you know, so many of reels are carrying like dark paths
Speaker 3: that they have to heal from, and there's a real
Speaker 3: sense of connection. It's been a real privilege. It's been
Speaker 3: truly wonderful. It's a rich experience. That's the best way
Speaker 3: I can describe it, you know, And I feel liberated,
Speaker 3: like the sky hasn't fallen, you know. I told this
Speaker 3: story and the sky didn't fall.
Speaker 2: Family Secret is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly z Acur
Speaker 2: is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 2: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 2: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
Speaker 2: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 2: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
Speaker 2: find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd
Speaker 2: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 2: 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.