297: What if you were a human jumper cable?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services.

A quick announcement before today's episode. Our friends Ellie and T over at the Trauma Bonded Podcast have released a follow-up interview with the storyteller from This Is Actually Happening, episode 128, titled, What If Your Son Stabbed Your Daughter? It's been five years since she shared her family's tragic story with us. And now you can listen to an update from her about herself and her family on the Trauma Bonded Podcast. Fear of the unknown controls everything. Fear controls everything.

And I just went home and prayed and said, well, God, I want to give you my fear. Here, take my fear away. Here, you hold on to my fear. I can't do this anymore. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 297. What if you were a human jumper cable?

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My father in a family of six children and my mother in a family of two children. And she would describe it as desperately poor is how she grew up and shame about that as well. When my parents met, my father was 19 and she was my mother was 15.

My father had just come out of two years in the Marine Corps, and from there he went on to get a college degree, and my mother finished high school, and she was offered a college scholarship, but she turned it down because she wanted to get out of the house that she was brought up in.

and leave town, and my father was able to do that. I found a job opportunity in Baltimore, and my mother married him at 19, and my father was 23. I was the third-born child

There were six siblings after that were born, but between the fourth and the fifth child, my older brother was diagnosed with leukemia as a four-year-old, and before he was even five years old, he had died from leukemia, and that was like a huge disruption in the family. Although I was only three years old, my older sister says she remembers at the funeral, my father became angry. He was grieving.

In those days, they didn't have systems that you could go to and process your grief and work out your grief. And so he just stuffed it. That's what you do. And he continued on. The very long emphasized value was you do not show your emotion. You stuff it.

The only memory of my brother was a white child-sized suitcase that was in the back of my father's closet. And it was never opened, but it was told to me that this is all that's left of Kenny and we don't talk about it. That's how you handle it.

Anything that wasn't just pure agreement, you would be slapped in the face. You would be told, no, or why are you crying? You're such a baby. Don't be a baby. You know, shameful about expression. One time I remember my father slapped me with a yardstick on my leg and it broke on my leg and I have a scar still. It was like one of the early scars. And I guess at that point I learned that

Okay, I'm not going to speak. I'm going to just keep it to myself. But inside it was like simmering, burning rage inside. And this is what I imagine my father had the same thing happening with him as he couldn't process his grief. It felt like chaos. It felt like emotional chaos, I guess you could say, yeah.

From the outside, it looked like, yeah, must be a happy family. But, you know, as a child living in that environment, you feel or you're very attuned to what are they feeling? What is the mood? Okay, where are they at? And you could read people very quickly. And as a result, I was a good student because you could read the teacher. What does the teacher want? I could do that. Yep, no problem.

I can survive. And so to survive, I would be a mother's helper. I would do all I could to help my mother. And my mother told me as I was being the mother's helper, I would hear things from my mother. And she said, it's funny, you know, all six of your siblings, the younger siblings, they all wet the bed. And she would say something to the pediatrician about that. And the pediatrician said, oh, don't worry about it. It's okay.

And I really think about it now, and I realize that was a symptom of the fear that was inherent in the house. Everyone was wetting the bed. It was an understanding that my father had a gun, had a pistol under his mattress on the side that he slept on the king-size bed.

And one day he came out, I don't know, I must have been 11, 12 or something. He came out into the kitchen and was pointing it around, pointing it at my mother mostly, and it was pretty horrifying.

I think the turning point came at 13 when my body really started to look like a woman's body and I noticed like I would walk down the street and I would get catcalls out of cars. Men would respond to me and I resented the fact that I was growing into a woman not because I didn't want to be a woman but because I didn't like the pressure that society was putting on me because I was growing into a woman.

And it was this, why do I have to be judged by the outside now? You're supposed to act like a girl. You're supposed to want boys to be attracted to you. You're supposed to be submissive. You're supposed to not express your opinion. You know, and suddenly my father was saying, well, you're looking a little fat. And my mother was most concerned with how I looked on the outside. And I was enraged by that. And it felt like bullying me.

My mother was having the last child, which was a stillborn child. That would have been her tenth pregnancy. She was in the hospital and my grandmother came from New Orleans to stay at our house and she stayed in my bed. I was 14 and I was told by my father, "You need to listen to what she says. If you don't listen, I'm going to spank you." He would call it a spanking, but it was really a whipping with the wooden yardstick.

I don't care. You can whip me all you want. I am not going to comply with this. At that point, I was so angry with him because I could see he was beating my brother behind closed doors, but I could hear it. I felt it. I was sensitive. You're alert to what's going on around you when you have a chaotic environment. I felt like I would rather him abuse me than have to watch or hear, be aware of my brother being abused.

So having an oppressive home life, I felt very frustrated. I would overeat to spite my mother because she said, you can't be fat. That's not acceptable to be overweight. And I don't even know that I was especially overweight, but I was overweight in her mind, and that's all that mattered. And she would look to other young girls that were in the church and say, oh, look, you could be like that. I felt like I was too much or I was not enough. I couldn't please her or I couldn't please my father.

And I learned to shut down, like I said, with the expression. Expression was not allowed at home. We were very Catholic. My confirmation name I picked as a seven-year-old was Bernadette for the long-suffering saint because suffering and pain redeems the sinner.

And we all went to Catholic school, too. So the Catholic school was its own little world. It was you only knew the families that were in the church and in the school. That was always the same group of people. And then I didn't really burst out of that until I was 14 when my father had an argument with the priest.

My father told me, "You're not going to that Catholic school, you're going to public high school." And it was, wow, it was amazing. It gave me hope for escaping. I retreated into the school environment of public high school and it was very exciting. It was opportunities and I joined groups and all these new teachers who accepted me for me.

I became a different person. In fact, later on, people would say, I didn't even imagine you had that kind of upbringing at home because you were so different at school.

I was a cheerleader and I was very proud of myself. And, you know, I could express through the physical expression of cheerleading, which is very satisfying that way. And I had friends that I enjoyed being with. And I wasn't a typical cheerleader. I was I wasn't some cute little thing. I was a big girl and I was always the bottom of the pyramid when we built pyramids for the cheerleading squad. And

Because I was big. I'm 5'8", and I was 150 pounds. I was sturdy, but I was happy as could be.

You know, I felt very loved and accepted in high school. I didn't have a lot of boyfriends. I wasn't really attractive, but I did feel accepted. I did feel loved by my friends. I was getting straight A's in school. I felt, you know, the teachers were happy with me. They thought I was wonderful and so got a lot of positive feedback. That's what was lacking at home was positive feedback.

So in your junior year, you have to again try out for senior year. And I had made cheerleading and I'm very excited about that.

So my friend who was the very social friend, she said, let's go to this party. And so I said, yeah, I'll get the car from my mom who had the station wagon, one of those big long things that could fit a lot of people. And I said to my mom, I'll wax the floor. I remember waxing the floor in trade for using the car that night.

So I arranged that I would be the driver and four girlfriends came along and went to the party. It was fun. We just went down to the basement and, you know, it was 16 and 17 year olds. We were kind of clumsy. I was clumsy with boys. And after I think I had like a quarter of a beer, a can of beer, and I didn't really like beer anymore.

We decided, okay, we have a curfew. And so we all left. But one of the boys said, I'll come with you. The plan was for me to drop him off after I dropped off all the other ones. It took a few hours even. That was so much fun just to drive around. It was the best as a 17 year old.

After I dropped everybody off, I had this boy that came from the party originally, and after I pulled into the driveway, he got out of the passenger side and climbed over the hood of the car, and we both laughed about that. And as I was putting it into reverse, I hit a utility pole with the right rear bumper of my station wagon. This utility pole was due for repair,

The wire connection was very loose and a high power line disconnected from across the street utility pole and came down like a pendulum, just swung and contacted my car. It produced a bonfire kind of light, but it also broke the circuit for the neighborhood. And so the house that I was pulling out of the driveway from, the lights were flashing on and off. And I went to the passenger side of the car to get out.

And I stepped out of the car. Electricity went from the metal of the car into my hand and found its path of least resistance out my foot. And the next thing I remember was waking up in an ambulance.

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I was laying down and there was a woman I could tell because of her voice who was stroking my forehead and saying, you're so brave. And I was like,

And it took great effort to even speak, whisper a few words to her saying, where am I? She said, you're in an ambulance on your way to the hospital.

And she continued to stroke my forehead. And it was very nice to have her just do that, to tell me I was so brave. It was comforting. And she did exactly what I would have wanted her to do, was just to stroke the forehead and be very gentle and encouraging. And I noticed I was really, really tired. And I felt swollen, like somebody had beat me up or, you know, somebody had

overinflated my body really is what it felt like it was like there was no pain

And I remember them arriving at the hospital, at the emergency room, and popping me up on the gurney, you know, upright to where they could push me into the entrance. And suddenly it was very bright and very annoying. And I realized, oh, I don't have my glasses. I usually have glasses. So I'm looking around as I'm being wheeled. And I look to this woman that's sitting on the side of the hallway. And I look at her and she just gasps.

Like, oh my God, she was horrified at the sight of me. And I thought, that's weird. Why would she? What's going on? Okay. And then I would go in and out of consciousness. I had different memories. Like one was my parents were both over me and my father was angry with me. I could feel my eyes pop open in fear of what he was going to do. And then he said, we're going to buy you a brand new car. You're going to be okay.

My mother did only look and cry. She didn't say anything.

And then they sat me up, and this man, it felt like a big empty room, but this man was yelling, what's your birthday? You know, he was yelling so loud, but I didn't have the energy at all to say, would you just shut up? Like in response to his question, I nodded instead of speaking, and then I finally had to tell him my birthday, but very briefly. And it was like I was so tired, just so tired. Took all the energy I had to just...

whisper a few words. There was lots of activity going on around me and I could hear one man's voice, what happened to her? And then the other man said, electrical burn. And I thought, I don't understand. And then my friend Jim, he was right there saying, how are you? And I said to him, thanks for coming. And I was wheeled away.

The last memory I would say was I was put up against a wall and I thought, okay, I'm going to look at my hand or I picked up my hand to my eyes, which were very nearsighted so I could see once I got it close. And it was horrifying because my hand was swollen, plus it was stiff, plus it was a very unusual color. I don't know. It didn't look like my hand at all.

I didn't want to think about it. I wanted to imagine that it was not real. It was just shock, literal shock, like physical, mental, emotional shock. Then I panicked and said, put me to sleep, put me to sleep. And I thought, this is really, are you kidding me? This is a nightmare, right? Maybe this is a nightmare. They offered me for the next two weeks, every two hours you can have morphine and we'll just put you to sleep. And that's pretty much what happened.

Next thing I remember after that was being awake in the burn ICU unit. I had an oxygen mask on my face and somebody had found my glasses and I was wearing my glasses. And it was about 36 hours after my incident. There was two surgeons at the end of the bed and they said, we're going to have to amputate part of your leg. Say something to him like, why do you have to do that? And he said, well, because you can't move your foot.

I tried to do the point and flex with my left foot, and he was right. I couldn't move it. He said, you have gangrene in your leg. And I said, well, do you have to do it now? What if I don't want to do it now? And he said, well, you can wait, but you're going to have more gangrene climbing up your leg. The longer you wait, the more you're going to lose. Right now we estimate about 10 inches. We take it off right at the mid-tibia. Yeah, okay, okay, I don't want to lose more.

To take in that information that somebody is telling you they have to amputate part of your leg, I don't know, I was in shock. The first time I woke up after on a gurney, as my father's walking with me, as they're pushing me to the OR, where we both know I'm going to have my leg amputated. And the idea is they're going to cut it open and see how far, but they think about 10 inches, they're going to take off.

seeing my father looking very scared and feeling, oh, such compassion for my father. And then I get to the OR and, you know, there's people preparing me, you know, and they're tying my arm to an IV board and no one's saying anything. And it feels like, I just imagine,

that Jesus Christ is right there holding my hand and lying next to me. That's how I did it. And thinking, as they're putting me under with anesthetic, that, okay, maybe it won't be as much of an amputation. Maybe they'll just cut it off at the foot. And that's how I soothed myself as I went under. Waking up after that in my bed with no one around,

Looking down and seeing this massive remainder of a leg, I mean, it looked like a basketball was attached to the end of my leg that was still there. My father said to me, it's going to be okay, it's going to be okay. And I barked back at him, no, it's not going to be okay. They just cut off part of my leg. And he collapsed in his hands, his face collapsed into his hands, and he started to sob.

I just observed and was in shock to see this part of my father who was so different from the father before and that he allowed himself to cry. And it was, wow, it was both satisfying because now the bully was no more, but I felt compassion for him as well that it was very hard for all of us to see this happening to me, you know.

My father was very gentle, kind. It wasn't an angry father I saw. It was a very compassionate, caring father who stood over me in the bed. And he didn't have much to say, I remember, but I just could close my eyes and not have to say anything. And that was okay. And I didn't have to do anything. And he was suddenly this nice guy. And it was soothing. It was comforting. It wasn't stressful at all.

I wasn't worried, I wasn't panicked. My mother would very faithfully visit even though she was working the night shift at a job she had at the time. So she basically would go from work to helping her children in the morning to coming to visit me and not have any sleep the night before. And that was, wow, I was really appreciative. I felt very special. My parents were giving me this attention that I never got and it was one-on-one attention.

One day my mother and sister came in to visit, my older sister, and I said, why can't I see? I can only see out of one eye. What's wrong? Why can't I see out of this eye? And she said, okay, I'll go get a hand mirror. And she brought in a hand mirror and I looked at my face and it was, oh my God, my right eye was swollen shut and it was bandaged. And the only part of my face I could recognize was my left eye. And it was swollen.

Wow. I was shocked. She started to cry when I asked her what happened to me. And she said, why don't we let Jim tell you what happened to you? Because Jim was the boy that was right there. So that evening, my father came with Jim. Jim sat with me at the bedside and said, this is what happened.

He said, as I was climbing out of the passenger door, he was yelling to me, don't get out of the car, don't get out of the car. He said I looked very scared, and I stepped out of the car. The key thing was that I grabbed the handle of the car, the metal part, because that's what conducted the electricity into my body, up my left arm, and out my left foot, which is the foot that I stepped out with.

In contacting the metal of the car and the ground, that is when electricity finds its path of least resistance through your body, is what I've been told. Once you ground the electricity with your body, once I contacted both the metal of the car, which was electrified, and the ground, I became a human jumper cable.

The force of the electricity threw me into the car and then back out of the car, and I face-planted onto the grass. My foot was still up. The right foot, not the foot I stepped out with, but the right foot was still up onto the threshold of the car. The friend that I had dropped off came out and said, there was steam coming off of your back.

And everyone was yelling. The four boys that were there were telling each other, don't get near her. Don't touch her. No, don't touch her. Let's go find a wooden ladder. And so that's what he said they all did. But he couldn't walk away. He said, I couldn't just walk away. So he grabbed me by the armpits and it threw him 10 feet backwards. His explanation to me was I sobered up really fast at that point and got back up.

He's a 16-year-old kid that was an Eagle Scout. They were all Eagle Scouts, and so they all had training in CPR. Miraculously, he got back up and tried again, and he said it didn't throw him, and he was able to pull me off by my armpits, and they rolled me over and checked for my pulse or my breathing, and none of those were happening. I was foaming at the mouth. I was having convulsions.

Him and the other 16-year-old, the witness to me stepping out, he joined him in the CPR. He said they did it for a few minutes, but he had to walk away because he felt part of my lip skin on his lip and he was nauseated and he had to throw up. So he went off to the side of the house that was right next door and just threw up and then came back again. He remembers he told me, don't die, don't die, don't die.

When I was burned, it burned away the nerve endings, which is part of the reason it didn't hurt right away. The nerve endings on my skin surface, which was 40% of my skin surface, was third-degree burned, like full-thickness burns, they called it. The morphine was really providing me emotional numbness and mental numbness, but the physical pain didn't start until the bandages were peeled off.

Every breakfast time, after breakfast and after dinner, bandages would be changed. Arms and my legs, any place that had third-degree burns. All these bandages that would come off would bleed as they're peeling them, and I felt like my father's physical abuse before injury was preparation for my experience in the burn unit, getting my skin peeled off, basically, is what it was.

I just like dug in my heels the way I did when my father was telling me, I'm going to whip you again if you don't listen to your grandmother. Okay. And I would have that digging my heels in kind of response every time I knew the bandage changing was coming.

I have memory of the first bandage changing after coming out of morphine, pulling off this gauze, rolls of gauze from this skin that had no skin, the surface of my body that looked like raw hamburger meat when I saw it. And it would bleed. And it was both fascinating and shocking.

just your feelings, your insides were talking to you. I would wake up every morning in the burn unit and say, okay, please God, help me understand why is this happening? There was a part of me, I was a candy striper before being injured, and I always loved the environment of hospitals. So this was very exciting to me to be right in the middle of

an intensive care unit, and to be able to discuss, isn't it magnificent, the human body? It just felt very like a privilege.

One experience I remember that was they had to debride, they call it, where when they change your bandages, not all of the dead tissue gets taken away. It's still there in little bits that they have to pince with tweezers and then they clip it. And they did that in one session, I remember, where I just, I decided I'm not going to take the pain. I'm just going to, ah!

And I just started howling and howled for maybe a solid five minutes, which felt like much longer. There was a dietician who was a nun, and she was coming into the changing room, hearing me scream like that. And she said, it's going to be okay. And I just howled louder in her face. And the nurses who were doing the debridement laughed at that.

It felt like you're telling me not to express. Well, watch out because here it comes. I'm going to express. It was wonderful. It was interesting. Everybody had a different way to express. But that was one moment of where I just let it go and it felt wonderful. And it was part of the healing. I think the expression, learning to express. I could cry about it too. And there was a sadness, but there was also more sadness before.

Was I mad then? Yeah, I think when I came out of morphine, I was mad, but I was more angry before. And in the hospital, I had an outlet for my outrage where I didn't have an outlet for my outrage at home, you know, before injury. So in that sense, it was more of a relief.

Stepping out of a car and exploding from inside out, that's where my emotions were too. They needed to like, wah, you know, and it was an expression in my body that gave me relief and release of where I was stuffing it before, literally stuffing, eating to spite my mother. And I felt outrage at that, but the outrage had a release valve.

It started to be a very protective feeling I had for myself where it was like, okay, I get my strength from, you know, imagining Jesus there next to me and being my own mother, really. I mean, I have to be strong because everyone else is in shock around me. They don't know what to say or to advise me on. I had to really find the strength within me and pull it out.

I suddenly realized all these parents, just because they're older, they don't have more wisdom. They don't have more anything. They don't have more answers to anything. They're just as confused as I am. But it released this frustration that I had that, you know, everybody would tell you what they think you should do or be. And suddenly I was given permission to do whatever I wanted to do. Everything that was important kind of changed.

In the ICU particularly, they were all there to care for me. That was the priority, caring for you. It's amazing. It was like the opposite of being ignored. The recognition that, wow, you're an amazing person. The attention given by adults in the ICU, the burn unit. My father, he said to me, you're so brave. And my feeling was, wow, wow.

I didn't express it, but I felt like that's worth all the pain. That's worth all the pain to hear him say that. It was about being appreciated as a human being from the inside out, not as a female who was supposed to be all these things that society expects females to be. I'm like, I'm not just a female. I'm this person on the inside that you're not even recognizing. And my father did recognize it in that moment. And it was, oh, my God.

It was very rewarding. It was soul satisfying, I can say. It made all the pain insignificant because I felt like this is what I wanted. My soul, my deepest core wanted to be recognized as this strong, powerful person, which wasn't happening before.

I see my father now, he's just afraid is what he is. He wasn't an angry asshole. He was just as scared. And I realized, wow, that's what he's felt all along was fear. You know, the anger was a reaction to the fear that he was feeling that he didn't like feeling that I guess his conditioning was you're not supposed to be afraid and

He came and visited me and said, what can I do to help you feel better? And I would say, well, how about just scrub my back? It was itchy. That was the only part of my body that was not burned. So my father would gently, and I never saw my father be gentle. You know, he resisted being vulnerable. But when I had him with me, just the two of us, it wasn't about saying anything but saying

We care about you. We care about your physical body, and we also care about your soul. You're somebody who's important. That was not a feeling I had before. Being injured, I felt as though everyone around me was grateful. My family was grateful that I was alive. Yeah, it was a reverence for life. It was a reverence for me being in this life with them.

I had one friend at a time would come with him at the visiting hours. And my friend once said to me, you know, your father told me it was okay to cry because I would feel better if I cried. And I just about fell out of my bed thinking, wow, my dad said that?

It was revealing a part of my father I never, never knew. And it probably helped him because he was able to express things like that. He said he was going to church while I was in the hospital and somebody came up to him and said, how is your daughter? And he just started crying and he was okay with that. He was, instead of resisting like a Marine, you know, being vulnerable, he was suddenly allowing himself to feel. I mean, he couldn't be the bully that he was before too.

I felt like it brought him to his knees and that was a good thing for him. The whole time in the hospital I was very weak and even after I got out of the hospital I was so weak my mother had to help me in the bathtub. And the first time she saw me completely naked she just ran out of the bathroom crying saying you used to be so beautiful. And I thought, oh.

First thing I thought was, well, why didn't you tell me I was beautiful before? You never told me I was beautiful. So what are you talking about? I used to be so beautiful. You're full of shit, lady. But then I realized, wow, that's her fear. That's her shit. She gets to deal with that. I don't have to deal with that anymore. Because I was fortified by the authorities in the hospital telling me, you're doing so good. Recognized as this strong, powerful presence.

I would really want to get on that bandwagon before I would want to worry about being beautiful in my mother's standards. So I became individuated in that moment from my mother permanently. She's valuing attachment to what it looks like on the outside.

I only felt motherly towards myself saying, "I just have to take care of you because you really are important enough to take care of." And so it just reinforced my feeling of my own mother inside of me. So everything, while I was in the hospital, everything was moved upstairs to this beautiful front bedroom where I had my own space and she fixed it up. She did all these things.

It was this environment of, we really are so grateful that you lived, you survived. I felt excitement around my siblings where we were fighting before that. We were all fighting and my mother was angry, but now she was just grateful. My father was grateful. Everybody was just grateful. I felt like a princess, really. It fed my soul. So it was kind of exactly what my soul wanted.

It was a sadness because I was very physical before, you know, I was a cheerleader, I was a gymnast. After losing 10 inches of my left leg, I felt like an old woman, actually. I had to be patient with my body. As a teenager, you are in an identity crisis to begin with. So to have this new awareness, it's the perfect time to have this second identity crisis of, okay, what's going to happen with my life now?

It's not like I'm locked into this. This is the way my life should be. And then suddenly, boom, I'm disrupted. No, there was never a certainty about my life to begin with. So to have it disrupted this way was like, it kind of opens up possibilities because you can basically do whatever you want. And it's kind of freeing. Sounds like I'm trying to sugarcoat it, but it's not really. Yeah, it was just a mixture of freedom, but also...

but also struggle like life is, right? My soul needed this experience. This is why I came into this life. And my awareness of the world around me was only strengthened, I guess, because every time I see somebody respond to the way I look on the outside, it tells me something about them. Like, oh, that's interesting. Look at that. And I've had all kinds of various reactions to people's response to my body.

I just really felt a sense of love for myself. And I think that translated into me attracting the first boyfriend I ever had. He was always around, and it was very comforting. With this boyfriend, I felt, I don't know that I could have handled going back to school when everybody knew who I was. She was the girl who got electrocuted, the cheerleader who got electrocuted.

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But I had this infection in my leg, you know, so after you get an amputation, there's, because of the friction when you're walking, it creates blisters on your flesh, which can become infected if you're not careful with it. At one point, it was out of control for me. I would jump from urgent care to urgent care using all these different antibiotics and not telling each of the urgent carers that I was doing that.

And it never took the infection away. But then the last doc I went to said, well, we might have to cut off more of your leg because of the infection is getting too deep into your bone. Fear of the unknown, it controls everything. Fear controls everything.

And I just went home and prayed and said, "Well, God, I want to give you my fear. Here, take my fear away. Here, you hold on to my fear. I can't do this anymore. If you want to cut off my leg, please take it, but I just can't live with this fear anymore." Well, my infection went away after that. I didn't have to go back at all for antibiotics. And ever since then, I have a different attitude about my fear. I keep my fear in check.

I have a reverence for prayer, I think, from my Catholic upbringing, but also it's just, if I surrender my fear to higher power, it's incredible what happens.

A lawsuit was filed in my case of, you know, there was negligence on the part of the electric company. And my father and I went to a court hearing where they, it was called Union Electric, the electric utility in St. Louis, just gave me a half a million dollars and said, basically, they give you a cash settlement so that you won't sue them.

So at the age of 18, and I remember this clearly, that the day Elvis Presley died, which was August 16th, 1977, that was the day I settled with the utility company.

My first thing my father suggested, and I went with it, buying a house down the street, buying a car, paying for my college, which I was already on my way to going to anyway. And so I graduated with a biology degree. And before I graduated, even my boyfriend and I, we broke up because he was becoming very possessive, jealous to the point of where I said, I can't, I can't do this. I love you so much, but I can't do this.

It was hard, you know, leaving that relationship because I felt like, well, maybe there's not another one out there, another man out there that will love me the way he did. I mean, because he really, I felt like I was totally loved for the inside of me as well as the outside. I got a job in a hospital working in a lab, in a blood lab.

By the time I was 24, I was pregnant and got married. I didn't want to get married, but I did want to have a baby. And by the time my first baby was nine months old, I realized I wanted a sibling for my child. And so I got pregnant again. We got a divorce and came to Colorado and got a job in a school. And then eventually I ended up, I was invited to talk to eighth graders who were studying electricity.

And it was a very interesting experience because these kids would have questions after I told them what happened, my story. And the kids would ask things like, well, why didn't you just pull the car forward? Why did you step out of the car? And that was like critical. It really got me thinking like, why did I? I kept thinking about that for years. Why did I? Right after coming out of the hospital, it was a lot of burn victim, burn victim, burn

Now I just say burn survivor. I'm a burn survivor. In society, they want to think you're sad. There's a presumption of sadness about disabled people because people look at us who are disabled and they think, well, you can't be happy because look at you. Look at the outside of you. That's totally the opposite of my experience. It's nothing like that at all. And so it's interesting to learn the truth about life.

Reading Viktor Frankl's story about how he survived the Holocaust, he said, if you have a purpose to your suffering, you can survive anything. And all of that made me think, okay, what would be the purpose of stepping out of the car? I slowly came into this awareness of there are no accidents. Everything we do is meant to happen for a reason.

Every day for 56 days in a row, my father would visit at dinner time and my mother would visit at lunch time. So by the time my parents passed away, by the time my father passed away, my other siblings, they were still not resolved with their experience with their father where I was very much resolved. It was like, yeah, it's okay. It took care of all that unresolved anger.

I could be so bold as to say, yeah, I came into this life to resolve this thing with my father, to bring him to his knees emotionally. I think our children come into this world and they teach us things. And that's what me, his daughter, taught him that lesson of just feel.

Everybody would say to me, "You're so brave," when I wasn't expressive, when I wasn't crying, when I wasn't emoting. And I would think, "I always thought the hardest thing to do was cry." You know, that's bravery, is to cry.

My father, I think, came to that experience. And to me, that's just fulfilling to know. And I can look back and realize that is the purpose for all that suffering. There was a purpose and something changed as a result of the suffering in a good way, you know. Wow, what a life. Now in my life, I feel very blessed and very at peace with God.

all of the struggles that I've been through because I see that they've brought me to this place that I am now. So I could say I wanted to come into this life to experience being loved completely for what was on the inside of me despite what I look like on the outside. And that feels very true, yeah. I think every soul has a different purpose. And if you have a purpose for your suffering, you can survive anything.

There's nothing more powerful.

Today's episode featured Anne Cronlage. You can find out more about Anne on Instagram at Anne Claire Cronlage. That's A-N-N-C-L-A-I-R-E-K-R-O-N-L-A-G-E. Or you can contact her over email at anneclairecronlage at gmail.com. Anne also wrote a memoir about her experiences and shares more about her life in her book More Than Skin Deep, which you can find on Amazon.

From Wondery, you're listening to This Is Actually Happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on the Wondery app to listen ad-free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the episode notes, you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host, Witt Misseldein.

Today's episode was co-produced by me and Andrew Waits, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westberg. The intro music features the song Illabi by Tipper. You can join the community on the This Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook, or follow us on Instagram at ActuallyHappening.

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The missiles are coming.

What am I supposed to do? Featuring incredible performances from Tracy Letts, Mary Lou Henner, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Paul Edelstein, and many, many more, Incoming is a hilariously thrilling podcast that will leave you wondering, how would you spend your last few minutes on Earth? You can binge Incoming exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+, and the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.