310: What if your mother disappeared?
45:18 Share

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. When people experience really extreme trauma, it's too much for the human heart. It's too much for the human brain. It was just all so surreal and there was just nothing else to do with the pain.

From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 310. What if your mother disappeared?

Today's episode is brought to you by Audible. Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, or expert advice, you can be inspired to new ways of thinking. And there's more to imagine when you listen. As an Audible member, you can choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. Currently, I'm listening to Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, a wonderful audio title that challenges us to imagine a new way to lead a

love, work, parent, and educate through the power of vulnerability. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash happening or text happening to 500-500. That's audible.com slash happening or text happening to 500-500.

This Is Actually Happening is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Whether you love true crime or comedy, celebrity interviews or news, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue. And guess what? Now you can call them on your auto insurance too with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive.

It works just the way it sounds. You tell Progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. Get your quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. My mother and my father met because my grandmothers were attending church together.

They were married pretty much like right out of high school, like 18, 19 years old. My father's mother was raised in like Kentucky in the Pentecostal environment. So they were pretty evangelical. My mother's mother, she was raised really Catholic and at the age of 17 wound up having a baby out of wedlock and being forced to give that child up for adoption.

And then had my mother out of wedlock as well several years later. But by that point, she had moved away from her family and was working for the Navy. She was in Corpus Christi, Texas. That's where my mother was technically born. And then met my step-grandfather, who ended up raising my mother for the rest of her childhood when my mother was 8, 9 years old.

All of that history with my grandmother having a baby out of wedlock, I think really affected my mother in a lot of ways. There was definitely this tone of my mother being really important and special to my grandmother, but also just completely incapable of achieving whatever bar there was set for her. There was an overarching vein of religion that I think caused a lot of shame

Both of my grandmothers were really overbearing women. They expected my parents to stay in the church, and I think they expected my parents to make good money and do socially acceptable things. My dad tried to be a jeweler for a while, follow that path in life, but that was just completely unacceptable to my grandparents. My mother wanted to write, and that was just completely unacceptable to her family. They just weren't enough.

I don't think that they were enough for their parents. Both of my parents wanted out of their family units and probably didn't really know how to get out of their family units without getting married. My parents were together like almost 10 years before I was born. They had multiple miscarriages and fertility treatments in order to have me

And I think my mother was always pretty deeply depressive, non-functioning for huge swaths of time. And then my dad would kind of just like beep bop along through it and like try to make sure that everything went as well as it could. I remember going on walks with my father. He'd like put me on his shoulders and we'd walk to this koi pond. And I remember honestly very little about my mother.

I can see her, but I remember more like the absence of my mother. My father met my stepmother at this bar that he owned and started having a relationship with her. He and my mother were trying to work it out and she went away to visit her parents for like a weekend and he had put all of her stuff out on the lawn and like moved my stepmother in.

From my perspective, it was all so instantaneous. It was like one day my mom was gone and I didn't know where she was and I didn't really see her anymore. And then all of a sudden there was a new woman in the house. I have this super vivid memory of being told this is your babysitter, like she's going to babysit you and her putting peas in the macaroni and cheese. And I just completely lost it.

I would say that's like my first memory of her. And she never left.

I remember this really weird ballet recital when I was maybe like five or six, where my dad and my mom were already divorced. So it was like my mom, her brother that used to live with us, and my grandmother, and my dad and my stepmom all came to this ballet recital. And I can just remember being backstage and being terrified that all of these worlds were mixing. Just...

Just total dread and anxiety and not knowing what I was supposed to do, where my loyalty was supposed to lie. I definitely felt torn. For a while, my mother was living in the city that was like six hours away, and it wasn't really clear what she was doing. She didn't have like a job or a place to live. And so we just weren't seeing her.

And then when we would see her, she would like take us to like a hotel. So my father would be angry and be like, oh, your mother's like so terrible and like awful and can't get her life together. And like, I hate the way that she treats you. And this is so inappropriate, but I guess I have to let you go. So I would feel the pressure to be like, yeah, dad, like you're right. Like mom sucks. And then being around my stepmother, it was like complete silence agreement. Like you just don't talk about your mother anymore.

And then with my mother, the narrative for her was that it's like, well, your father's this terrible person. Your stepmother's this terrible person. So I think I pretty early was like actively lying or making sure that I didn't say anything that was going to make anything worse or anyone upset, depending on who I was with.

I don't think that the truth was ever very important to any of them. It didn't seem to have much value in my family. The theme of kind of our entire family unit was to kind of like cover up the things that are uncomfortable or maybe we don't want to present to the world and then like cover it so well that we're not even talking about it amongst ourselves.

I've carried a real deep well of sadness for a long time because I knew that everyone was so unhappy that my dad was sad and I knew my mom was sad. Everyone just seemed like so dissatisfied. And I can remember being six, seven, eight years old and praying in the middle of the night to die because it seemed like something had been irreparably broken.

Within a year, my stepmother was having her first son with my father, my stepbrother. And we moved out of that house that I had grown up in. In this time period, I know that there was abuse going on because I can remember hiding in the bottom of my closet with my sister and crying. I don't remember a lot of the abuse that was happening to me, but I remember my little sister...

being abused, like being thrown down the stairs by my stepmom. And then some like pretty heavy, like potty training abuse. We lived in that house for a year or so. During that time, my father and my stepmother got legally married. Then all of a sudden, we moved back to my father and my mother's home state. I'm in like second grade.

At one point in this time period, my mother had come to visit and she and her mother took photos of us because we were like covered in bruises. They felt like something was definitely going on and they were like trying to bring allegations of abuse against my father and my stepmother.

Even though I knew what was happening to me and to my sister in that time period, I also didn't want to be a turncoat. I couldn't figure out if I was supposed to snitch on my father and my stepmother. That's the other really confusing thing is that I just really wanted my stepmother to love me.

And I think I wanted my mother to be around and come back and be okay. And I wanted my father to be happy. I think I just didn't know what to do. It seemed like no matter what I did, someone was angry. My mother decides that she's going to come and get us and we're going to fly to the city that she's living in and spend two weeks there for Christmas.

So my mother comes to get us for this Christmas vacation and she's taking us out of state, which this is the first time this had ever happened. And we get on the plane and she just tells us to pick fake names. But the way it was presented was like, oh, this is a fun game. What do you want your name to be? So we fly to where she's living and she's got this apartment and she's with this guy named

There were definitely cockroaches in this apartment, which was kind of scary. She had gotten pretty into spirituality and Norse religion stuff. She was a talented painter, and so in this house or this apartment that she was in, she had been painting the Norse gods all over the walls in different scenes. This man that she was dating was definitely living in the apartment with us. He was nice to us.

I can remember sitting on her bed during this time period and him teaching me how to play chess. My mother was having us call our father and act like we were coming home. During this time, I guess it was probably a couple weeks that we were in this apartment, we had these fake names and I was calling my father and lying for my mother.

She was just like, well, I'm not taking you back. I had no idea what was about to happen or what the plan was or anything. But she told me that she's going to take us and run and not bring us back to my father. And she took us on the run.

I think I was like afraid, but I was also excited. My sister and I had been separated from my mother and I really missed her. So I was super excited. And I think I felt like my mother really cared about us. We got on a plane and went to Puerto Rico.

So my sister and I, my mother and this guy that she was dating all fly to the first place that we're going to stay in this running away situation. And we were on the run.

Today's episode is brought to you by Quince. It's been a busy season of events and travel, and my wardrobe has taken a beating. A total overhaul isn't in my budget, but I'm replacing some of those worn-out pieces with affordable, high-quality essentials from Quince. By partnering with Top Factories, Quince cuts out the cost to the middleman and passes the savings on to us.

I love the Italian board shorts. They're made from quick-drying material and offer UPF 50 protection for all-day wear, so I can go from hiking to lounging on the beach without a wardrobe change. And compared to other luxury brands, the prices are well within my reach.

Upgrade your wardrobe with pieces made to last with Quince. Go to quince.com slash happening for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash happening to get free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash happening

Hello Prime members. Have you heard you can listen to your favorite podcasts like this is actually happening ad-free? It's good news. With Amazon Music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad-free top podcasts included with your Prime membership.

To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free or go to amazon.com slash adfreepodcasts. That's amazon.com slash adfreepodcasts to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads. Check out our recently completed six-part series, The 82% Modern Stories of Love and Family, ad-free with your Prime membership.

The narrative, you know, that my mother gave was just like, well, I know that your stepmother is abusing you and I know what's been going on. And this is the right thing to do because your father doesn't want me to have full custody.

She just like didn't know what else to do. I think she felt like she was not going to be able to win in court against my father and that she wanted to get us away from my stepmother. And she chose to kidnap us. So now we're like living in Puerto Rico and this guy is there and everything's like fine.

At that time, I didn't understand what was happening. I was like too young. But what did happen during that time period that my mother had us illegally was mostly pretty nice and we were treated nicely.

We had food to eat and no one was screaming or yelling or throwing things. There wasn't punishment happening constantly. She was really into playing music and was always really excited to share music with me. She was a good cook. She homeschooled us the entire time that she had us. So I think for me at that time, I was just grateful and glad and thankful to be with my mother.

We were in Puerto Rico for a while. The wind continued on the run back to the mainland United States. And that portion of this year or so was a little dark. I can remember really taking a lot of responsibility for my sister. I can remember dragging the chair in from the dining room and climbing up on the counters, getting stuff down to eat.

The initial part of her taking us from my father, there was like a high to it. Like she's like interacting with us a lot, homeschooling us a lot, really happy memories. And then it was like the year went on, she became less interactive. And then one day, a little over a year into it, she's like, well, the FBI is caught up with me and I have to take you home to your father. I was terrified.

And just as starkly as their divorce, just as starkly as the move to another state, just as starkly as the abduction, we got on a Greyhound on one side of the country and rode straight for a couple days back to the state that my father and my stepmother were living in and met my mother's father in a hotel.

This is the first time that I've met this guy and she's like, "Oh, this is my father. This is your grandfather." I remember them talking in this hotel room and him saying, "You're gonna go to jail for this. You're not getting out of it. Like, you're gonna have to turn yourself in." So, like, say goodbye now. She just kind of, like, left the hotel room and then it was just kind of over.

It was just kind of like, "Well, it's been fun, but now I have to go and I'll see you around, probably." It's just so bizarre the speed with which these changes happened over the course of my childhood. It was so swift and so stark, it was just impossible to guess what was going to happen next.

After my mother surrendered to the police and brought us back from across the country, we were put in a foster home. And I think that that happened because of the allegations of abuse. And they didn't have a foster home where my sister and I could both go. So we were separated and that was just super scary.

Now everything that I know is gone and no idea what's gonna happen next and now I don't even have my sister with me. We were in foster care for like a few months while the Child Protective Services did like an investigation. I was just in complete limbo. Knew that I wasn't gonna live there forever but I didn't know if I would be returned to my father and my stepmother. No one told us anything.

They got custody of us again, and we were completely returned to my father and my stepmother. My mom did not legally deal with the ramifications of this. She just left.

We get returned to my father and my stepmother and, you know, my father's parents come over and the whole family shows up and like, oh God, like you're back. You've been saved from like your evil mother and now you're back and we can like celebrate that you're back. And that being pretty overwhelming and disassociative.

Because it's like, again, that feeling, like, I guess I have to act here yet again, right? They don't want to hear like, well, actually, I am terrified to be back in this home. And actually, my mother was pretty nice to me. You know, initially, I was just kind of, okay, this is what's happening. And like, this is fine. Having a feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So at this point I'm eight, and that was when the abuse really amped up and would become more and more extreme. There was either like the intent to or the very real possibility of her accidentally killing one of us. On the first day of third grade, my stepmother comes into the bathroom and says, "Did you wash your face?"

And I said, yes, I washed my face. She grabbed me by the chin, looked at me, and was like, well, you didn't do a very good job. Grabbed me by the back of the head and slammed my teeth into the sink. And I can remember my teeth breaking off, and there's just blood everywhere. During this time, she would do this thing where she would lock my sister in the basement and not give her food. And then it would switch, you know, like...

I would do something horrible to get me relegated to the basement and my sister could move upstairs and live a normal life knowing that that's what's happening to me. And there were definitely many times where like I was eating dog food, like survival style, because it was just constant scarcity. Yeah.

Scarcity of food and scarcity of safety and scarcity of love or compassion or empathy. And I don't know what my dad was doing, how he was justifying all of this. My teeth being broken out and my sister having to have stitches in her chin twice. He's just kind of not reacting to it.

And I would say that if I get any reaction from him, it's that like we are troubled because of my mother and the abduction and we're troubled. And so that's like the narrative. One Christmas, my stepmother would do this thing where she'd be like, well, you're grounded to your room unless you can really apologize. And she's like, I want you to look up apology in the dictionary. Okay.

Now I've got the dictionary out and I'm being made to like read the definition of apology and being told why the apology isn't good enough. She's like saying, what is wrong with you? Why do you behave this way? And in the course of this conversation, she ends up getting me to say, I just want to die. Oh, well, you're suicidal. And I'm going to tell the entire family and your doctor that you want to kill yourself. And I'm going to take you to a mental institution right now.

You know, I'm like 10. They like took me to the mental health hospital and I was put in like a padded room and told that I was like a risk for suicide.

At that point, I didn't have a plan or something. Definitely, I wanted to die. Horrible, terrible things had been happening to me for like a solid five years at this point. And nothing was true and nothing was sacred and you couldn't tell when anything or what was going to happen next.

Everyone in my family knew now that I was this troubled, depressed, out-of-control, ticking time bomb child who had to go be in a hospital because I'm so bad. And I just don't know what anyone else was doing. I don't know how my father could manage to justify all of these things that were happening.

That was a really large theme for me. I just couldn't figure out why nobody was doing anything. And the only person that had ever done anything about it was my mother. Even though it was entirely unreasonable the way that she went about it, she was the only one that was like, this is not acceptable and you've got to get out of there.

Throughout this whole time, my mother was absent. I wasn't allowed to talk to her or write to her. But because she was the only person that had ever been outspoken about the fact that my stepmother was abusive, I think I thought, she's got to show up.

I just kind of created this fantasy that my mom would come back and she would do whatever it was that she needed to do to get us out of there. When I'm maybe like 11, my father and my stepmother decide that they're going to buy this house in the country that's an hour or two away from the rest of my father's family and pretty much any safety net.

Once we moved out to this house in the country is when it just became totally incomprehensible. It culminated to the point that my sister and I are living outside in a tent, and we're not allowed to come in the house, and we're not allowed to use the bathroom in the house, and we're not allowed to eat the food in the house. And I can remember at one point having a jar of peanut butter and having a can of frozen orange juice concentrate.

You know, it's all really extreme. It's all escalating. And finally, they decide that my sister's this terrible, awful kid and has these problems. And they send her to this place for bad kids. They pretty much surrendered custody of her. She went into foster care at that point. And then they kept me for another six months to a year.

During that time, I'm 12 or 13 and things have gotten so bad. And it escalates to the point where one night my stepmother is just like, you need to call your grandmother and she's going to come and get you because I can't have you here anymore. And so I called my grandmother and she came and got me. And that was that. They ended up about a year later moving all the way across the country and

I move in with my grandmother and my grandmother's working to get custody of my sister. And all of a sudden we're like seeing the family again. And there's still no open admittal of the abuse. It's just like all of a sudden this switch flips and I'm just like now in a fairly normal state.

environment and there's just this pervasive feeling of being totally outside of everything. I couldn't tell any of my new friends what had happened to me and being in this really deeply entrenched Christian environment, trying really hard to just kind of blend in and be normal and act like none of it had ever happened.

It was expected of me at this point to kind of sweep it under the rug, but

It's just this disassociation of, okay, so like I have this crazy mom that's like off somewhere, but she was really nice to me, but everyone's mad at her. So we don't talk about her and we definitely don't talk about how she abducted you. And we definitely don't talk about your father. And we definitely don't talk about your really abusive stepmother. And we just don't talk about any of it.

I'm just living this completely normal life all of a sudden and everything's fine and I have clothes and I have food and everything's totally normal.

To my grandmother's credit, I did get to go to therapy, but the idea that you just don't talk about what's happening was so deep-seated that I wasn't really able to get much out of therapy at that point. And I just kind of start to hate everything and everyone.

By 14, 15, I'm like skipping class and smoking pot. I wasn't getting great grades and bucking against anything that my poor grandmother is trying to do for me. At this point, I'm 16 and I've got my own car, getting into like punk music and wearing dark makeup and like that whole phase.

One night after school, I'm out and I get this phone call from my grandmother and she's like, you need to come home right now. So I show up to the house and my two grandmothers are there and my sister is there. And my grandmother is just like, I got a call from a detective. They found your mother's body.

This man that traveled with you, that you knew, that taught you how to play chess, they continued a relationship and she was going to leave him. She had given two weeks notice at this place that she worked and told everyone there not to tell him that she had done that and told people in her life at that time that she was going to go find her daughters. Somehow he found out that she was going to leave him

So he strangled her to death with her curling cord iron while she was doing her hair. He hid her body in this crawlspace for a while and dismembered her body and put it in like a trunk and then carried it around with him for years.

The only reason that they found her body was because a hurricane happened and the guy had to leave the city. And so he just tossed the trunk into like a highway median. At the point that they found her body, they estimated she'd been dead for like five years.

I was told by my grandmothers that some identifying documents of my sister and I were in the trunk with her. And that was how they found out who she was and how to contact us. When I found out that my mother was dead, something broke. I just always thought that my mother was going to come back and she was going to love me and I would get some sense of family back.

Whatever it would be, it would at least be better than this. To know that she had been so brutally murdered, it just really was a tipping point. Any tethers that I had to trying to do well in school or trying to go to college or trying to fit into religion, doing all the right things, I just couldn't do it anymore. I just completely gave up.

At this point, I'm getting close to graduating high school. I move out of the house. I start staying with my friend who has an apartment already, and I kind of just like stop coming home. Somehow I managed to graduate high school, then had a really hard decade or so of dating pretty extreme domestic abusers one after another.

and trying to make them love me. I really feel like I was dating my stepmother for years because I just wanted to be loved. I could never figure out what was the right thing to do ever throughout any of it. If I could just get somebody to love me, then I would have value. I left my hometown. I had a friend who was hitchhiking and riding freight.

like 20 at this point. And then a year or so of that, and it didn't take me very long to find my next abusive partner. I had some pretty dark experiences in my 20s. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

I got to see and do a lot of really incredible things. I hitchhiked all around the country and I met people from all different walks of life. And I've gotten to see so many national forests and worked all these different weird transient jobs and had a lot of super cool experiences and also had some pretty bad relationships and struggling with substance use, kind of towing this line where I...

I would use drugs, but I wouldn't do it too much. And I was dating these really scary dudes, but if anybody can handle it, I can. Don't worry about me. Everyone's so ashamed of me, and I'm ashamed of myself. And I'm doing all of this with the knowledge that men really do kill women.

I can remember this one partner that I had, like a pretty terrible night of screaming and fighting and all that. And I can remember actively thinking, "This is what was happening for my mother." So at least I am like with her in it. I couldn't leave her behind. I couldn't be like, "She's dead. She's murdered. She's gone. Case closed. Story over."

I felt like I had to live her life for her or something. If I could understand how she felt, then I could understand what had happened to her and subsequently to me.

This Is Actually Happening is sponsored by ADT. ADT knows a lot can happen in a second. One second, you're happily single. And the next second, you catch a glimpse of someone and you don't want to be. Maybe one second, you have a business idea that seems like a pipe dream. And the next, you have an LLC and a dream come true. And when it comes to your home, one second, you feel safe,

And the next, something goes wrong. But with ADT's 24-7 professional monitoring, you still feel safe. Because when every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today.

This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites, like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies, like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow.

Let's face it, we were all that kid. So first call your parents to say I'm sorry, and then download the Instacart app to get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes all school year long. Get a $0 delivery fee for your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 per order. Additional terms apply. I think I just wanted to understand her. Try to understand how she could have abandoned us.

Because that's real, and it's something that I don't let come into the picture very often. Because what happened to her was so terrible, I've always felt really hesitant to be critical of her at all. But I think I just had to understand how she felt. I think I just couldn't understand how it had all gone so wrong.

how my mother could have left us with my father like that to what she knew was an abuse situation. And I couldn't understand how my father allowed all of it. And I couldn't understand how this person that I had known had ended up being like a cold-blooded murderer. For a long time, I felt the only way to have a connection with my mother was to just totally go off the deep end.

When people experience really extreme trauma, it's too much for the human heart. It's too much for the human brain. It was just all so surreal, and there was just nothing else to do with the pain.

I think, unfortunately, people feel most comfortable in what they know. And unfortunately, a lot of what I knew was really extreme abuse. I just felt comfortable in it. And that's embarrassing to say, right? But it felt more comfortable to be in that space because that's what I knew.

I just felt really weird and like a totally weird, odd duck. And I think I was just replicating the child abuse because I couldn't figure out how to exist in a different paradigm. For a long time, I felt like there was like some level of healing that I could just never get to.

It's really hard to stop the train when you are so sad, when you're in so much pain. Like, it's just really hard to get the train back on the rails and be like, okay, I'm just going to live in normal society and I'm just going to get a job and I'm just going to go to school and I'm going to, like, do all these things that normal people do. I just couldn't go on. Finally, one day I woke up in my late 20s and I didn't want to die anymore.

I can't keep having these types of relationships because like I don't want to die. Wanting to die is something that I have struggled with a majority of my life. I can remember being a really little kid and praying to die. I made the decision to get into therapy as an adult and really try to like figure out what to do with this cup of sadness.

not let that sadness and that pain rule my house anymore. It was really nice to get into therapy because I think I found a really wonderful provider and I intentionally sought out a childhood trauma specialist.

Probably the biggest thing that I have gained from it is that my behaviors that I dislike in myself, right? So like my anxiety, my relationship with alcohol, my relationship with domestic abuse, all of these things are pretty normal responses to the experiences that I had and that I am in charge. Like I can heal from this and like I can make better decisions now.

My mother's murder subsequently wound up becoming like a True Crime show, and that was really hard and bizarre, and then subsequently there are podcasts about her murder.

At the time that the true crime episode came out, I was in my early 20s. I was traveling. So I wasn't really like in contact with anyone very easily. And someone contacted my sister and then my sister got a hold of me and she was like, they're going to do this episode on mom. And I was like, oh, that's like totally weird. Like, no, I don't want anything to do with it.

And so I watched it when it premiered and it was just like totally weird and bizarre. There's like reenactment of my sister and I in the show. It affected me so deeply that if I go into like a restaurant and that classic true crime, like narrative sound happens where it's like, and then I can't take it. I can't absorb it. Also, the impression that I got is that like, it wasn't even really all that accurate because

For a very long time, I wanted nothing to do with the publicity of it at all. It had occurred to me to be like, oh, I'm going to contact these TV people and I'm going to get the episode remade. But I feel like as I've gotten older...

I really love the opportunity to be able to share these experiences with other people that I'm close with and other people who maybe have had similar experiences because there's so many of us. I think it's really powerful to talk about this stuff and find a place of compassion and empathy because if we don't talk about it, then it's just going to keep happening.

We can do something about what's happening in the world and in our lives and in our interpersonal settings. We can make positive changes. We have to. And it all starts with talking about it.

The most difficult thing that I've had to overcome is finding footing in my mental health as an adult. Coming to a place of having any sense of control or agency over my life instead of just letting this deep well of pain rule me. It's been really hard to overcome the deep feeling that I don't belong.

I don't belong in a good relationship or I don't belong in a safe place or I don't have a family. I don't belong in someone else's family. Like trying to overcome this idea that I can't be a person or something. I really do have this beautiful idyllic life, but I still occasionally just get this like deep sense of being out of place, like feeling like some sort of imposter.

I'm in therapy and I'm like still like kind of duking it out with my alcoholism, but I'm like fine. Then sometimes I just feel like weird. Like I think I have often felt like I'm imitating a normal person.

And then at some point in the last while, that's like shifted. And I actually, I think me getting it together and like living a good life and being happy, going back to school and all those things. Actually, that is the best way that I can honor her because she didn't get to do any of that. She never got it together. And that's really sad. That breaks my heart. I made it out.

I'm in a relationship with someone who's really kind to me and I got back into school this year. You know, there's like food in the house and my dog is happy and I took him on a hike this morning and I'm so lucky. I'm lucky that my mother abducted me for a year because if she hadn't, I wouldn't even know anything about her.

And I'm lucky that my grandmother could find it in her heart to take custody of us, even though she was like almost 70, and take care of us and like give us a second chance at life. And I'm lucky that I didn't wind up dead.

It sucked. It was really bad. But I am really grateful that I am a person who has had these experiences because now I can go out and be a light in the world for other people.

I've never been able to bring myself to some sort of anger or hatred for my father, for my stepmother, even for the guy who killed my mother. I really just think the whole thing is a terribly, terribly sad situation.

I just think about all of them and just how much pain and sadness and anguish there are in it for everybody. All of them.

You're never just going to wake up one day and be cured. There's no end point. I will always be a person formed of these experiences. And people who have experienced really, really terrible things will always be a person formed of those experiences. I guess it's just about getting up every day and trying to do the best that you can. Trying to be the kindest person that you can. Because being kind can change the world. Change it one day at a time. One person at a time.

Today's guest requested to remain anonymous, but if you'd like to reach out to her, you can email at cracklinghearth1 at gmail.com. That's crackling, H-E-A-R-T-H, the number one at gmail.com. 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, Andrew Waits, and Sarah Marinelli, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westbrook.

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. On the show's website, thisisactuallyhappening.com, you can find out more about the podcast, contact us with any questions, submit your own story, or visit the store, where you can find This Is Actually Happening designs on stickers, t-shirts, wall art, hoodies, and more. That's thisisactuallyhappening.com.

And finally, if you'd like to become an ongoing supporter of what we do, go to patreon.com slash happening. Even $2 to $5 a month goes a long way to support our vision. Thank you for listening. Wondering more.

If you like This Is Actually Happening, you can listen to every episode ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

Scammers are best known for living the high life until they're forced to trade it all in for handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit once they're finally caught. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the host of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of some of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once the facade falls away.

We've covered stories like a Shark Tank certified entrepreneur who left the show with an investment but soon faced mounting bills, an active lawsuit filed by Larry King, and no real product to push. He then began to prey on vulnerable women instead, selling the idea of a future together while stealing from them behind their backs.

To the infamous scams of Real Housewives stars like Teresa Giudice, what should have proven to be a major downfall only seemed to solidify her place in the Real Housewives Hall of Fame. Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Scamfluencers early and ad-free right now on Wondery+.