Chapter 4: Honey Sticks and Donuts
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If you just found this show, you're going to want to start at episode one. This is the true story of my life. I changed some names and details to protect the innocent. It is marked explicit. Proceed with caution. That tornado to me isn't all bad stuff. There's good shit in that tornado. It was so much chaos and joy. You probably think this story is about you.

I'm Brittany Ard, and this story is mine. I wasn't just Braylee's main caretaker. I was also my mom's. And when we left, she was alone. So what we heard and the conversations that we had after that were her needing us. Two little girls, beautiful little girls, and their mom is using them like pawns on a chess game. It was a different chapter. That's a whole different chapter.

Some teenagers, especially teenagers that were raised in a situation like we were, you rebel, I did. Brittany ran away from home, and it's the day my world stopped. You push back, you're trying to find boundaries or who you are,

Or even if you have an amazing childhood, at some point you sort of push back against your parents because you're trying to create your own self, your own version of self, you know, outside of your parents' concept of who they think you are. And Braylee is sitting on the couch and watching some TV or whatever. And I said, where's Britt? Oh, she left.

I was like, where did she go? Because that wasn't like her. I mean, she's taking care of her little sister. But she left this, and there was a note that Brittany had written to me. And I couldn't tell you what's on the note other than I'm out of here, I guess.

When CPS took us and we came up and we were living with my dad, that threat of the chaos went away, but I was so used to it. And my dad did an amazing job adapting to going from not having us to having two kids other than his horrible hair doing skills that he had with my sister.

'cause I didn't know how to braid or any of that cute girl stuff. But I learned if I flipped her upside down, I could just hold her upside down and brush her hair and it would poof it all up. And then I just flip her like this and it was beautiful and big, you know? And I'm a kid of the '70s, '80s, so big hair was cool, I thought. And Braylee spent the rest of her life, her hair was...

plastered to her head, just so tight. And I'm sure that I did that to her. Brittany did her own hair. Thank you very much. I was having a great time. I mean, it's me and the girls and architecture. What else could a boy need? And I'm serious. It was the best ever. I had to get out. It was so uncomfortable to me. And it was the opposite of what you would think because...

You would want that safe place. And he provided it, and it was fun. And my sister was safe and happy. And we were doing cool things with our dad. It's always been good with him. But internally, my brain just, it just couldn't handle it. And I had to get out. I couldn't concentrate on work. I chased her around. I didn't know what to do. The streets of Seattle is not someplace that I...

thought was a good place for her to be. And she had good friends, and she would talk to Granny. But she wouldn't talk to me, and I think these were the days of... For that year and a half that I wasn't home, I was in Magnolia, living at a friend's house for most of it. I wasn't far, you know, and I still had a really close relationship with Granny. One night in Magnolia, I chased her around town

back roads and alleys. She was in a car, I don't know whose it was, it was a Blazer or something, and I'm in a F-250 big truck, and it's not a good town race car, and shifting transmission, the whole deal. And that night I remember of all of these experiences, because that was the night it's like, just this voice in my head, it's like, stop.

Just stop chasing her. Somebody's going to get hurt, if nothing else. But just stop. What are you going to do if you catch her? You know, I mean, come on. Because I hadn't got to there yet, right? So I hadn't needed to think about that. So luckily, the voice went off in my head. I just pulled off and the chase was over.

I thought as soon as we got to Seattle, everything was just going to be amazing. To have that delusion that just because I'm with my dad and we're in a safe place, that bad things aren't going to happen. Bad things happen in safe places too. There isn't a way that my dad could have protected me from it. In a weird way, I didn't want my uncomfortableness to affect Braylee. I didn't want it to be that Braylee

I couldn't handle it and she thought that it was a bad space because it's the opposite. I left because it was good and I didn't want to ruin it for them. And I realized that I did. When I ran away from home, Braylee ended up going to live with my mom again. I think it was for about a year. I wasn't there. So she was just with my mom by herself.

By then, Lisa had moved up to Rexburg, where I grew up, and Braylee was living with her. Lisa had her claws into Braylee. When you're dealing with your parents and addiction, you have to come to terms with how they are. You can't just have somebody say, don't do that. You know, you don't want to experience that because they're your parents. And in the most horrific way, it isn't until they truly break your heart

that you can sort of move on in your own life. I found a journal entry that Braylee had wrote about my mom during that time. Mom, are you awake? No answer. I walk down the hall in her oversized room until I can see her huge waterbed. Being only 4'8", I struggle to find her in the blankets. But I know she's there. I can smell her. There must have been good deals on the drinks at Hideaway Tavern.

I remember to go back and get the hangover bucket. Every so often I look over at the wasted beauty in my arms. I take the bucket and empty it into the toilet. I don't remember her throwing up, but that's okay because she won't remember either. "Mom, time for ballet. Wake up." She rolls away from the reminder, so I tap her on the shoulder. She jumps with a startle like a bat out of hell. "What? It's 12 in the morning."

Mom, it's noon. Ballet starts in half an hour. I suppose I have to drive you? No, I'll just walk in a tutu in the snow by myself. Okay. I was kidding, Mom. I don't think that my mom ever saw it.

I look at it and it's just so heartbreaking to me. And then over the years and through lots of therapy, it's like that all happened to me as well. But I never saw it that way. My whole job was to keep her safe, keep us safe and thrive and still do fun things like

taught her how to ride a bike and the things that kids are supposed to do, jumping on trampolines and swimming in the pool and Arizona would flood every time it rains. So we'd get our floaties and float down the road, which probably isn't very safe. There was joy in that experience. So the hard part about my mom is I loved her and I felt responsible for her as well. And I know Braylee did as she got older.

You get so used to being the caretaker that it's really hard to sort of cut that off. Well, and there's always hope that one day it's not going to be bad. You know, addicts love that I'm going to change or I'm going to get better. My mom's addiction was really bad when Braylee was there. And so she went through just the brunt of it. And it's one of those lessons that I wish she didn't have to learn.

It's just like addicts deciding that they have to decide for themselves to get better. You know, you have to, as a child of an addict, figure that out on your own. So I'm alone, Braylee's alone, and Brittany's alone. Braylee is devising this scheme to get on an airplane in the middle of the night. Called me up one day and she was like, eight years old. Dad, I got this figured out.

Aunt Sherilyn can drive me to the airport in Idaho Falls. I can get on an airplane right there and be in Seattle in two hours. And if you just call Aunt Sherilyn, she'll take me there. I know she will. You just need to give me an airplane ticket. And in a sense, the same thing that Brittany did, I need out of here. The neighbors were taking care of Braylee in Rexburg.

and her aunt, the one that would drive her to the airport. So when Braylee did that at eight years old, it was clear that these kids are speaking to us in the most extreme way they can. When I found out that my dad was going down to visit Braylee, it's the only place I wanted to be. I hadn't seen Braylee in a long time. I knew that...

she was going to be struggling. And I knew the experience that she was having in that house with my mom. I wasn't living with my dad at that time. I was still living in random places around Seattle. Brittany and I got in that Jeep. I had grown up enough and I learned one day that the first thing you have to do is quit chasing her. That's

I heard dad just in the truck on my own. My dad never felt judgmental. I could always just hop into a Jeep and go on a road trip with him. And we would pick up with life and deal with whatever we were dealing with or enjoy whatever moment we were having. It didn't have to be this dive into all of the things that

we had done wrong to each other. It was just about moving forward. And then I learned some one other day that you need to forgive her. And when I first heard that, my thought was, I'm not even mad at her, right? But then I started thinking about it. I was like, if you're a person in a car and somebody's chasing you, you're going to assume there's some anger there and there's some, I'm mad at you for something.

But like I said a minute ago, I'm not sure what would have happened if I'd have caught her because the goal was just stop running. But we didn't, probably either one of us, Brittany or I, we might not have been ready to figure that out yet. But somehow on this slow Jeep ride up through beautiful country, enough minutes had gone by that we were all okay.

And it was amazing to see her, but also really hard to leave her. And when my dad and I got back to Seattle, it was, we need to get her back permanently. After that trip, I moved back in with my dad. There wasn't like a moving day. I just sort of stayed. Like we showed up at his house and I just didn't leave. But after the Jeep ride and we all kind of decided we're okay,

That's when Granny started Sunday dinner, I think, right then. Granny called me up one day, my mom, and just said, "Okay, we're going to have a Sunday dinner. I've been thinking about it. We're going to have a Sunday dinner." And I'm like, "Okay. I don't know what that means, right?" We'd gone to Sunday dinner when I was a kid, and you know, Grandma Anderson used to do it. Grandma Art used to do it. We're just going to do it every Sunday, period.

It's what we're doing. Just plan on it. Over just for family dinner? How many people are you expecting? Free food. That's how I thought about it right then. She said something about how things are with Britt. We have to be able to get together or this isn't going to work. And so we started a Sunday dinner, in my opinion, because of

- I won't, all of a sudden I'm gonna be like standing up and saying things. - Why are all these men wearing robes? - I want my robe. - This kid is in Phoenix at the end of her rope on how to make this transition happen to get me out of this house and up to Seattle with dad and granny.

So that was three or four years earlier and it took that long and running around on her own or doing whatever. I mean, it took all of those experiences and all that time, all of the nonsense I don't want to know about to show her and all of us that Sunday dinner will fix it. And it has. But the focus my dad and I had was

From then on was getting Braylee back into our house and, you know, back to Seattle. And that's when he started the official custody battle. We had to go to Idaho for the custody hearing. My dad and his wife and I had drove down. I have a binder that is all of the things my mother did wrong.

trying to prove that she was an unfit mother so that we could get custody. The mental preparation for going into court to convince a judge that your mother is so unfit that your sister can't stay there was, it was a lot. And I was 15 at the time. We get there to court and my mom doesn't show up. She's skiing.

And so she phones in from the lodge. Her attorney is there and the judge is like, why were you unable to make it? And she said something about, you know, there's fresh powder. And the judge hung up on her and then looked at her attorney and was like, I rule with the parent that's here. The judge had seen the binder. So obviously there was evidence.

There is some stuff behind that. Even if you know you don't want it, you want somebody to fight for you. And so more than anything, her not showing up was just, it was such powerful evidence that we didn't even register on her radar because she knew she was going to lose and lose that control and lose the power. It was such a letdown. Like I was so prepared for a fight and I,

you know, gratefully didn't have one. And we took Braylee home. And I have a picture we stopped and saw my dad's parents on the way back. And there's a picture of my dad and Braylee and Rowena and I. I love that picture. My dad legally finally got full custody of us. There wasn't going to be an opportunity to go back without

Unless one of us got sucked back into my mom's stuff.

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When my dad got custody of us and we were all back at my dad's house, Braylee was middle school, just starting that transition from being a little girl to teenage stuff. She handled it very well. She was not a door slammer.

Braley didn't need to experience the rebellious stuff to learn the lesson. You could tell her that plate is hot, don't touch it, and she wouldn't. And it fascinated me because I was the other kid that I would touch it to see how hot it was. And Braley was just fine to say,

She wouldn't even say okay. I was like, done. Why would I touch it? It's hot. You just told me. She could sit for seven hours and draw the same picture, and it was beautiful and detailed, or play the violin for hours, and she just enjoyed creating.

creating beautiful things and never needed to test those boundaries. Rayleigh was already so wise and so calm in who she was. And it was like a soft confidence.

Like, you know, she struggled, of course, but if she walked into a room, everybody isn't going to turn and be like, oh my God, like intimidated by this woman. But she would walk into a room and before you knew it, everybody is smiling and laughing and comfortable with her. I describe her as the hummingbird. It may look like it's not moving, but there's a lot of commotion around it. It's...

It's a, I think a hummingbird is a really good description of her. I have them everywhere I go in my life. Braylee was always doing art. I have computers in the architecture office downstairs and she'd come down and when Windows came out, this is how old I am, before Windows, Braylee was there doing things on the computer and I had a plotter and she'd

make the plotter do things and then Windows came out and had this program called Paint, which we now think is pretty archaic, right? I mean, it's kind of silly, but she would do these art things and then send it to the printer and the old dot matrix printer wouldn't print it in color. And she was just pissed. How do we make it print in color? She learned how to take

a fish, a dead fish, whole dead fish, and then you paint it, and then you like press it onto some sort of special paper, and it creates this fish thing. And so she made all like tons of them, but different colors. There's like gold ones and silver ones. And then she had them framed, and then she charged us all for them. Because the minute we started doing Sunday dinner, she saw this, okay, these people have money. I have none. I have talent. I'm selling them some stuff.

And if you're a kid 10 years old with all this talent and all of this sellable merchandise and this captive family attractive audience because she needed money. And so she started auctioning off all of her artwork. And if somebody liked one thing a lot,

She would, like if it was doing well in the auction, she would be like, I'm going to save this for next week. And then she would reproduce it and then come back with five of them the next week so that she could sell five. And we would have these bidding wars for some of these auctions or some of these pieces because they're cool. And then she decided, well, if this is because she's now a well-known artist that has lots to say. So she starts this Hey You auction.

newsletter so the family can keep organized and coordinated. She's very that way.

She charged for Hey You. You had to pay a subscription to get the Hey You newsletter. So it was amazing, but you were paying postage and a fee on top of it and printing. I mean, it was an enterprise. She was trying to get this money because my dad had a deal where he would match whatever we saved for a car. I got a $2,500 Buick LeSabre.

with a luggage rack on the trunk out of an auction because I had barely managed to save like $1,200. And so I literally drove the ugliest car in the beginning.

My sister, who had been auctioning off artwork for years and any other way that she could earn money, when she turned 16, got a two-door convertible Mercedes because she had saved up like $11,000. And so my dad had to match her. And she ended up with this amazing little sports car at 16, $1,000.

I wasn't involved in day-to-day stuff when she was in high school because I was raising Brianna. I still spent a lot of time with Braylee, but it was always then Braylee and Brianna and I. So we would go and do things or if I had to work or something, you know, Braylee would come over and, you know, babysit Brianna and they'd hang out and

go to the market or wander around and do fun stuff. Here's Brianna. I spent a lot because you worked a lot. So that was like, when you had to work, it was like, I didn't even realize she was working because I'm like, oh, I'm just going to do fun auntie days. But I was like, oh yeah, I know you were working like an eight hour shift and we're like, you don't take my kid for the day. But that was, yeah, Pike Place and aquariums and Seattle Center was always our... Honey sticks. Yeah, honey sticks and donuts.

She had so much fun. She had friends. She like had a social life. Always with that, like push, there was a goal. And you might not know what it was, but she always had goals. Of course, you know, our childhood affected how she sort of moved through the world. And it's super evident in her poetry and her writings. This was a poem that I found that she has titled, "'Britney, a Powerful Sister.'"

I never seem to get any sleep. I spend hours counting the sheep. Then I think of you. I still don't know for me what's best. To think of my choices, I get stressed. Then you lend me your hand. For years you acted as my mother and took care of me like no other. Then I see your love's true. I come to you with all my problems and ask you to help me solve them. Then I realize you understand the guiding light.

See, you turn my day into night. When I'm blind, you're my sight. You lift me higher than bird in flight. See, you are my guiding light. You help me breathe when... I mean, there wasn't anything to not love about her. We didn't fight. We never pulled hair. Sometimes sisters get mad and, you know, roughhouser never did that. That later on, especially when she was like watching Brianna or stuff, I would probably get snippy. But it was always, you know, like...

Does she need another honey stick? You know, like Brianna only needs 12 honey sticks in one day and, you know, a thing of donuts. So stuff like that. But it wasn't it wasn't fighting except for the last time I saw her, which was probably one of the only times I remember us getting into an argument and like parting mad. The guilt and shame that I carried from that being our last interaction was something that

It still haunts me, actually. And I've tried to separate that one moment from 20 years of such an amazing relationship. It's haunted me in a way that I really try when I leave any situation to end it in, what if this is the last interaction you have with somebody?

You probably think the stories about you is a production of large media. That's L-A-R-J media. Our executive producer is Brittany Ard. Our showrunner is Sid Gladue. Creative direction by Tina Knoll. Our associate producer is Kareem Kiltow. Sound engineering by Chris Young and Sean Simmons. Graphic design by Nijela Shama.

opening theme by Youth Star and Miscellaneous. If you want to know more about Brit, follow her on social media. You can find her at britney.ard on all platforms. If you like what we're doing, don't forget to hit that follow button wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. And also give us a rate or review on Apple Podcast or Spotify.