314: What if you harbored an unrelenting fury?
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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. I was just so, so, so, so... There's no word to explain the fury of this grief. And I was just letting everybody in the whole world know it. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening.

Episode 314: What if you harbored an unrelenting fury?

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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Comparison rates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. I grew up in a house on Whidbey Island, Washington. And the property that we lived on was so cool. It was this giant field. And my great-grandmother, her house was at the center. And she was like,

My parents and my sister and I lived at one side, and my mother's mother lived on the other side. My grandfather had built a little convenience store that's still there today. The house and the store were attached. So it was a really, really cool setup and a very fun way to grow up. My mom was the most amazing person ever.

She was so beautiful and so loving. She was so hardworking. She meant the world to me. So I grew up with this beautiful mom and my father. I know who he is, but I really don't remember him much. You know, he was gone by the time I was maybe three and I've never seen him again in my life.

What led up to that, I truly don't know to this day. So most of my childhood was my mom, my sister and I, and my grandma Shirley, my mother's mother. I spent a lot of time playing with my sister and running around the store and my grandma's house, like wired on candy and having the best time.

My mom, she just made it so lovely because she gave me the freedom to be a child and to explore and to be curious and express myself. And she loved that and she encouraged that for me in any type of way. And I don't think there was ever a dull moment

My grandma too. My grandma definitely made life fun. She was always teaching me something. She took me clam digging and gave me my first karaoke machine and tried to teach me to sew and she was a very cool person to be around.

By the time I was born, almost all of the men in my family were already passed away. So all the women that I knew were all about the loyalty. They all loved each other so much and enjoyed each other's company and enjoyed taking care of each other and being together. That's what made it so special.

Every day was just a cycle of being at the store where my mom worked or being at home with my mom or being at grandma's house and just always being safe and always being somewhere where I was loved. I loved my family so much. This was our little world and life was so innocent and magical.

When I was 10 years old, my mother's family began to pass away very suddenly. It started with her cousins. She had a couple cousins pass away.

She had one cousin in particular who was 26 and we had actually gone to her wedding in August. And I remember seeing her and giving her a hug and telling her she looked so beautiful. And she died four months later, two days after Christmas.

I remember going to her funeral and it was the same man conducting her funeral that had ministered her wedding. And, you know, I remember giving her sister the same hug that I had given on her wedding. And it was very jarring. Several months later, my mother's grandma passed and then my mom's mom passed.

Once my mom lost first her grandma and then her mom, it was just an overwhelming flood of grief. My mom could not handle the loss. My mom planned this trip to Disneyland.

We had gone to the Central Valley near Yosemite to visit her friend and while we were on this trip, my mom got sick. She had developed jaundice, the yellowing of the skin in the eyes.

I would ask her about it and she would just say she was tired. You know, like, oh, I just need to drink milk or just kind of pass it off. And, you know, of course, as a child, I dutifully listened and was like, okay, yes, mom, absolutely. So while we were on this trip, I started to notice that there was blood in her urine, that she's becoming progressively unable to be mobile.

A lot of that time is an unimaginable blur and it's so messy and just a lot of like exchanging crying faces and ambulances and things that just kind of pass through my memory.

She just kept getting more and more sick. And it got to the point where she was so sick, she couldn't get off the couch. She had to wear incontinence products and she had to be cared for 24/7. She went to the hospital the same week as her 46th birthday. And then five days after her birthday, while she was still in the hospital, she passed away.

My sister and I were not able to go to her funeral. We were told we had to hurry up, pack our bags, and move in with our new quote-unquote foster dad, who was my mom's friend that we had been visiting near Yosemite.

My mom had known this man for over 40 years, her entire life. And they met when they were kids on Whidbey Island. He had lived in California for over 20 years. He had come to visit a few times, so I knew him. My mom loved him, so I loved him, you know, and I trusted him.

My sister went very inward. She is an artist, so she locked herself in her room and wanted to pour her emotions into her art and into listening to music and just being alone and being away from me. She just kind of left me. She just decided to go inward into herself.

And I just decided to go outward. I let it be known that I was angry. I yearned for her so much that I would drive her away and I would fight with her and I'd fight with everyone around me. I was so moody and unpredictable and not well.

When I would go to her, a lot of times it just erupted in arguments because I don't know how to communicate. I'm so angry and I'm so sad. Like, I'm crazy. I'm going mad at this point. And, you know, I would go to her and a lot of times she just wouldn't say anything. It just made me more angry. And all we would do is fight.

You know, we would fight. I stole her stuff. And it just really grew worse. I think I just scared her because I was so angry. I remember when we moved in with our foster family, she got a lock on her door so she could just lock me out.

As a child, I had temper tantrums like any young toddler and child will do. But the anger, that specific fury developed almost overnight. The grief and the anger go hand in hand because I lived a life where I didn't have to know either one.

And suddenly, as a child, I'm rendered face to face with both of them, completely inexplicably. All of that happening at 10 years old, I almost feel like I dissociated from that whole period of time in my life. Like, that just wasn't even me anymore. I don't know who that was.

I was so used to safety and love and comfort and care. So, I mean, of course I'm going to be angry. I'm furious. I need my family. What the hell just happened? I didn't register anything that was happening, the severity of what was happening, the scale of emotions that my body and spirit were feeling, but my mind refuses to

to acknowledge and register, I was extremely confused and alone. I was so alone. I fought with everyone. I fought with my foster mom. I fought with my foster dad, especially. I fought with his two children. I fought with his sister. I

would throw things, trash rooms. One of the last memories I even have with my foster family, I ran away and they called the police. And when I came home, I absolutely trashed the kitchen, the dining room and the living room and every room I had to walk through on my way to my bedroom. I just didn't even feel bad at the time. I was just so, so, so, so, so,

There's no word to explain the fury of this grief. And I was just letting everybody in the whole world know it. I didn't have any fear of what was going to happen to me. And the older I got, the worse it got. I knew that if I'm in this world now, the only person that's left to fight for me is me.

It just lit this fire inside of me to fight for myself. Even when I didn't have words for it, I had that instinct to want control over my life. That was the first five or six years of life without my family. It just got progressively worse. And I had no relationship with my sister. My foster dad and I fought almost every day.

I went to school, I got decent grades, I did okay. When I went to school, I got to socialize with my friends, I got to be silly and fun, I got to engage with my teachers and learn new things. I carried this giant binder around with me all the time in my arms, just stacked with hundreds and hundreds of pieces of notebook paper.

And I would just spend the whole day in class, like writing and doodling and just completely taking myself out of what was going on at home. When I got to high school, I got into the library.

That was when my love for literature and writing became something else because I didn't have anything else on the planet except for books and writing. And so it was like, oh, no wonder I love these things so much. I loved my friends. I got along pretty much with everybody. I had fights at school, but mostly it was like nonviolent altercations.

I had such a good relationship with my teachers. I was always in honors English classes and I always had the best friends. But I would just come home and it was just a house of rage.

When I was 16, things had reached a steady rhythm for a little bit where we all sort of avoided each other to avoid altercations because at any point in time, if we were in the same room, it was just eruptions. I had already begun self-harming at this point. My foster family knew, but they kind of laughed at me about it.

I remember one of my foster mom's friends, she looked at my arm and she said, what's that? And I was like, oh, I crashed into a fence. No big deal. And they both looked at each other kind of funny. And my foster mom was like, if people ask you about that, like, let's just not, you know. It was one of those things that was very unspoken of.

I remember I said to my foster dad, you have no idea what it's like to be 10 years old and to wake up and want to go get hit by a bus. And he looked at me and he said, if you wanted to get hit by a bus, you'd go walk in front of one. So when I was 16, things had just come to this head where we all strayed away from each other. My sister has graduated. She's in college.

I'm working through my sophomore year of high school, and it's a March morning. I wake up. My foster parents walk into my room and turn on my light, and two men come in. They say, get up, get your clothes on, and come with us right now. And I'm thinking, what?

What the hell? I have school in an hour. I have to run the mile in PE. I have a geometry test. I have my first track meet after school. Like, what is this? I remember saying, like, I don't have any clothes. I don't have any pants on. They said, we don't care. We're not leaving. We're not taking our eyes off of you. Get up, get your clothes on and come with us. Was so confused.

But I went and I got in the car. My foster dad, he walks up to the window. I flip him the bird. I have nothing to say to him, especially if you're about to send me away with two strange men. Motherfucker. And they took me away. They would not tell me where we were going. They would not tell me why I was being taken.

I had enough sense of my situation to understand, okay, I'm probably being sent to some sort of family counseling style boot camp, you know, like a Beyond Scared Straight type of thing. And I was honestly almost a little bit excited because I was like, this is going to be a good thing in the end for us. And I remember saying, am I going to be home forever?

For my track meet, I have a track meet after school. It's my first track meet. I have to make it. They just looked at each other and wouldn't say anything. We arrived about 10 hours later at some ordinary looking house in Cedar City, Utah. I had no idea what was going to happen to me. All I remember is just shock.

I go up these steps. This guy opens the door. I walk into this house and I walked in March 31st. I did not come out until November 22nd.

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There were 30 girls in this house, two floors.

I remember when I first came into the house, it was the evening and after quote unquote school hours, we had to do certain classes and study groups where you'd learn about drugs or self-improvement or, you know, things that added up to the consequences of life and such.

And I go upstairs and they're in the middle of a class and these 30 girls look at me and ask me, you know, why are you here? And I was like, I don't know. And they all just roll their eyes. They're like, you got something going on at home. If you're here, your home life is fucked up. That's why you're here. So I'm like, I guess you're right. Yeah, I guess you're right. And I remember one of the girls asked me, do you fight with people?

I said, yeah. And she's like, have you ever hit someone? I was like, yeah. And she's all, okay, you should be here. My first week being in this house, I learned more than I ever thought I could about the human condition.

I once again am taken from one environment and put into a completely different environment overnight. And now it's like I'm in what is arguably prison. I am stripped of everything I have. I'm given the same set of clothes as all the girls.

Everything from that day forward is monitored, watched over, documented and recorded and read over and signed off. My life is now no longer my own.

It's a lot of information to take in of like, this is the way that life is here. And you're not allowed to do basically anything anymore. Like the food you eat will be given to you. It will be portioned. It will be documented how much you eat. It will be written down and someone's going to sign it off.

When you go to the bathroom, it's going to be at a certain time in a certain manner. You're going to be timed. It's going to be documented. Someone's going to fucking sign it off. You're no longer allowed to speak freely. You can't look out the window. You're not allowed to read unapproved material. This is the way life is now.

It was a lot to take in. And then on top of that, one of the girls who had been in there the longest, she was physically abused and beaten in front of all of us.

As soon as it started happening, we were all instructed to leave the room by another adult. And they just hollered at us like, get out of the room, get out of the room, go into this room, sit in a safety circle, lock the door. And I will never forget this. This is my first week here. I watched this girl get pushed and beaten by this adult who worked there. And he's grabbing her and he's hurting her.

We leave the room and we go upstairs and the quote-unquote teacher adult that is in the room with us fucking puts on Pocahontas on the TV in the room while this girl right beneath us, right beneath us, is screaming for help. I remember a lot of the girls covering their ears screaming.

I had no idea what was to come for me after that. I just, that right there showed me like we're dealing with an even bigger enemy now. Like, of course your foster dad sent you here. Of course he wants me to get beat up here. Of course he wants this to be my life. So I'm thinking to myself, like, I have to keep my head down and keep my mouth shut.

Because these people, they don't even know me. And they will hurt me. I just moved through the months. We spent 10 to 12 hours a day in a garage that had 30 school desks in it. Tried to do what I was told. I try not to argue with anybody. I tried to do what they consider therapy, but really you're just talking to someone in an upstairs closet.

But I tried to do my therapy and work through the situation I was in. My sister was still in college. She had nothing to say. Just kind of, "Love you, good luck, I'm having a ball." And I'm sending her code messages, like trying to capitalize letters, hoping she'll put it together that I'm trying to plead for her help in these messages.

You know, when you have phone calls, they listen in and write down every single thing that you say on the phone. And I'm trying to secretly tell her, like, I need to get out of here. Like, I need to get out of here. And trying to tell her in these secret code ways. And she's just not getting it.

Right before I was sent away, when there was sort of that steady rhythm and we had all sort of found our own way to navigate being in this household while staying away from each other, I was allowed to be on my own in private a lot more in my bedroom. And I think having that time to myself was

right before I was sent away to Utah did a lot for me because I was so influenced already by books and music and art. So I think having that happen to me right before I'm sent to Utah is what allowed me to have just enough to hang on to, to get through such an unknowable and indefinite time.

It just allowed me the space in myself to find sanctuary. There was no one coming to save me from this situation. There was no one who even cared I was in this situation. I'm on my own. And if I don't fight for myself, nobody else will.

It helps when you're in that situation having other women that were there and that know what that was like. It's unfortunate, but it's a very special bond that no one else could understand. Every night, all of us girls have to get together and we have to discuss positive and negative aspects of our day and things we want to work on and things like that, right?

And at the end of every day, we have to say some sort of encouraging chant. And I remember saying to them, every day that we have to live here and survive here is one less day that we have to survive here. Every day that you can endure, it's just one less day that you have to endure. You're just one more day closer to what you're praying for.

The hardest thing about being in there was wondering why I deserved to be in a place like that. Why my foster family thought of any possible worldly solution. This was it.

I did have behavioral problems and I didn't know a damn thing about regulating my emotions then, but I didn't deserve to be submitted to that experience and neither did anybody else that was in there, quite frankly. I prayed to my mom every day I was in there.

Get me out of here, please. Like, look inside my heart and know that I do not deserve this. Like, please help me. I basically had to take any grief and anger and now any added confusion and frustration and loss, the complete silence and absence of my sister, anything that's happening right now. I took all of this. I made this, like, jewel.

And I just keep this hard, shiny jewel in my gut. And this jewel sustains me. This jewel hardens me where I need to be hardened. And this jewel allows me the softness in myself that I need right now, that I'm not getting from anybody else, but that I can only give to myself.

I don't know what the word is to describe that time in my life, but it was just so bizarre and it was so devastating, but it ended up being the catalyst for what would be the rest of my life.

I get a letter from my foster family that they moved, they sold the house, and if and when I am allowed to get out, I would be starting at a brand new school in a brand new house, and I would just be living with them, and all three of the other children would no longer be present in the home. It would just be me and the two of them.

My foster family, I saw them two separate days throughout the whole eight months I was there. They had it set up where you could see your family twice a year. Other than that, you're not permitted to see your family at all.

When they came the first time, I could do nothing but cry and be so happy to see them. And then by October, when I saw them a second time, I remember standing outside, the sun was going down, and I looked at my foster mom and I said to her, if you guys want to keep me in here for Thanksgiving and for my 17th birthday, that's okay.

But if you leave me in here for Christmas, I will stay in here until I'm 18 and you can just fuck off and I'll just live my life and do my best and I'll never come home. November 22nd, I woke up. My things were packed by the door.

Everyone's staring at me all day. I'm trying not to freak out. I'm trying not to assume anything. And someone comes in the room in the morning and they say, Amy, your foster dad and his kids are coming to get you right now and you're going to be gone. And I was like, holy shit. This is the day.

I got out and I just felt nothing but pride in myself because I fucking survived that. It is worth noting that that place did have a lot of legal troubles. The owners were charged with assault and abuse on staff members as well as many of the young girls in there and that place has closed down. I left

That facility, towards the end of November of 2011, I was downright fucking terrified to be taken again and sent to a place like this. So my immediate thoughts upon getting out was, holy shit, I did it, and I have a year to survive still until I'm 18. I struggled a lot to readjust into the world again.

I only listened to what my foster parents told me. I was at a new school. I did not speak to anyone. I had headphones in all day long. I could not wear anything besides a pair of sweatpants. I basically was reverted back to being almost childlike. I needed permission to do every single thing.

I was in my junior year of high school at this point. I eventually softened up and began to socialize and make friends. I started to develop a double life again, except this time I would drink and go to parties. We had moved up to the mountains, so these parties were often in the middle of the woods.

Surprisingly, my foster parents, they allowed me to go out a lot more. The summer before my senior year, I was raped at one of these parties and I had my virginity taken from me.

So that had a very instant and very intense effect on me. And as soon as that happened, I just knew that I didn't want to live with my foster parents anymore. And I just wanted to leave. During the summer, right after that assault happened, I left my foster family for good.

I remember getting into what I would say is the final fight with my foster dad. I had been hiding out at a friend's house and he came and found me. And he said to me, you know, if you don't come with me right now, no one is ever going to care about you. No one's ever going to love you. Do you not understand that? I honestly was like, I don't care. I don't even fucking care. I just know that I don't want to get in the car with you.

I'm four months shy of being 18. So I just kind of couch surfed and stayed with friends. My friend and her parents, a couple towns away, allow me to move in. Her parents gave me my first job at a pizza factory. I had now fully severed myself from my foster family and from my sister.

I essentially made my decision to be my own family and be my own fighter from that point forward. I had just turned 18 and was living with this friend. Her and I worked together. We went to school together. I had known her for many years. She was a very wonderful friend to me.

We had been bickering a lot as teenage girls who spend every second of every day together do, but now I understand that I was not ready to be living with another family in the condition that I was in. I had so much to work through and so much trauma I still carried with me, and this family was nothing like the family or anybody I've ever known. They were

They were very well off, very put together. These people that have busy schedules every day and eat healthy snacks and always have money and have lavish vacations and wonderful, wonderful people. But their lifestyle was nothing like I had ever known or seen. I'm brought into their lifestyle because they want to help me.

But I, first of all, have no gratitude or understanding of what they're giving to me by allowing me to come into their home and family. But they also, I don't think, were aware of or equipped to help me cope with what I was still trying to deal with.

You know, I first come in and everything was great and it was like a fresh start and everything was cute and fun. And then I just couldn't keep up. And then I met kids at school who also drink alcohol and I also wanted to drink alcohol, got into smoking weed.

the time. And so now I had become like a full on stoner. These people are trying their best to help me, but I'm just so angry. And I had no self-awareness. Her parents went away for a weekend and I attempted to take my life. Her and I had got into a very horrible fight and I had become violent and I hit her.

And she went to her mother's house. I went to her father's house where we lived. And so I was in this big house. I'm all alone. I'm feeling like an absolute monster. I don't know what to do. I'm so guilty and afraid. I had self-harmed before, but I had never thought seriously about

going all the way until this point. And I took a bottle of Tylenol PM. I went upstairs. I swallowed as many as I could. And when I woke up, there was just throw up everywhere. And her parents had come home early because they had got a call about the fight. They called the EMTs. I wasn't taken to the hospital, but I was asked to leave their house.

Even in the aftermath of that attempt, I was still sort of treated as this was an act of disgust and not of grief.

Being unsuccessful in that attempt and waking up to once again what is essentially an abandonment and rejection and change of circumstances and unforgiveness is happening to me once again. And those people have never spoken to me ever again.

Like the most unforgivable person in the world. Just the most worthless, rotten monster of a human. I had every reason at this point to just end it. That is when I went to my school counselor. And because of all my credits and studies in Utah, I was able to graduate high school early.

It really sent me into a tailspin because now I really have nothing to live for, right? I don't even have to get up and go to school in the morning anymore. So now what is left? Between 18 and 24, I just had nothing but cycles of turmoil.

I just blew every opportunity I got, any help I was offered. You know, I just made countless decisions out of despair and despondence. I'm still dealing with feelings I haven't even registered, anger, grief. I was very edgy and always waiting for the next thing to happen.

I was very selfish and I was ungrateful for what I was given. I had no concern for taking care of myself. I never had a steady address. I never had money. I didn't even have an ID. Doing drugs. I'm drinking. Any possible thing under the sun to just move me from one calendar square to the next was

People are just passing me around because my presence is so uncomfortable because I'm carrying all of this with me into every household and into every encounter. A year after my first attempt of trying to take my life, I tried again. I did the exact same thing. I was alone and I tried to take sleeping pills and her parents showed up, an ambulance showed up. It was very calm.

Once again, I was asked, don't return to our home. And at this point, I didn't even have couches to go to. I had burned every bridge I blew, every generosity I had been given. So this time after my second attempt, I spent three days in the psych ward. I just had to kind of go back to that little jewel inside of me and was like, what the fuck are you doing?

Where do we go? And again, I'm thinking to myself, like, nobody cares that I'm in here. Nobody's crying for me. Nobody wants me when I get out. And I just have to see what's going to happen next because you obviously didn't kill yourself this time. So you got to keep going. When I got out of the psych ward, then began a period of homelessness, drugs,

I made absolutely no choices from the foundation of loving myself. I was raped two more times in those periods. So it's just like one thing after another in these years.

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Going back and forth of, I'm strong, I know I deserve to fight for my life, even if I don't yet fully understand that. And the weight and the uncertainty and that unawareness and that void of horror that had just permeated through every level of my life.

I had no regard for my life until the year I turned 24. I became pregnant back to back. One November I became pregnant. I made the decision to have an abortion and the next November I was also pregnant. Right after I had my second abortion, I had just turned 25 years old.

I have zero regrets about doing that, but it was just the moment that I really reassessed the kind of person that I was and the kind of daughter that I was. I didn't think that my mom would have been at all disappointed or ashamed of me for making that choice, but I did think to myself that my mom is telling me that I'm better than this.

And I know that if I've made it this far, there's got to be a way that I can do better than this. After I turned 25, I got into therapy at the beginning of 2019. And then in the fall of 2019, I'd been in therapy for about nine months.

and dialectical behavioral therapy as well, which I didn't realize at the time was just so perfect for me to learn about regulating emotions and the difference between responding and reacting. I took a psychedelic trip on psilocybin mushrooms with some of my friends and

So I take this mushroom trip and I think I was so free in that moment, in my experience as a spirit, that I was able to reflect on my entire human experience and

I just really understood that there was just so much knowledge to be had and there was so much thankfulness and so much hilarity to be found in all of this. And I deserved to feel so proud of the mother that I had and the daughter that I was because my mother loved me.

It just felt like I wasn't a victim. Like I was given power where everyone thought that they had taken it from me. Something about that moment and finally allowing myself the freedom of my own thoughts to let that come in because I no longer had like trauma and grief and like all the voices of my past blocking that and on holding me back. Understanding the power in survival.

And not just basic survival, but in living after the fact. And I think that that is where my mentality changed because I just thought about my mother's experience and I thought about what my mom would say to me if she was here. And I just thought about what my mom would want me to do. I gained the necessary insight to my personal evolution and self-mastery

I let the fire of my devotion to my mother's life serve as a baptism of my own. After that day, I just really started to do a lot of work. I started to study neuroscience and not just my behavioral patterns, but like the patterns in the brain and how to retrain your brain, how to learn and unlearn and the daily practice of healing.

Ever since that year, I just understand now how precious my life is. I've never tried to take my life again since that year. I haven't done drugs. I still go to therapy every week, sometimes twice. I went to college. I became an ordained reverend. I started writing books.

I will never be able to not be in therapy or some kind of touchstone to work through the human experience because that is what is needed. It's not an event. Healing and recovery is daily, lifelong, never-ending practice. And a lot of that practice comes from having faith in yourself.

John has been my friend since 2020.

We had mutual friends and he was my friend for a very long time. He was a great guy and he was very safe and I knew he was very respectful. And I realized that I had a crush on him and I kind of was looking at him a little differently. And once we both kind of realized that we were interested in the other, it really took off.

He has parents and siblings and I don't have those things. And it takes a very special person to be the partner of someone who really just has a different hand in life than other people. I love him more every day and I feel like I truly do have a family in him. I feel like I have unconditional understanding.

This might sound crazy, but I feel very lucky for my life. I feel very lucky to be here and to be someone that I know my mom is proud of. The hardest part of all of this has been being alone on this planet. It is extremely challenging and frustrating and painful to know that my sister is still alive.

but doesn't have any concern. It's so painful to just be alone. But it's because of moving forward and, you know, having John and finding this strength in my mom and in telling our story. I just feel like it's so important that people realize the power of that kind of love. I think a lot of people are afraid of grief.

and extremely afraid of anger. You really just don't feel the way that the scale tips until you lose somebody or you lose everybody. Grief ends up not just like touching you, but it's like it's sleeping in the bed with you. Grief is your mother now. As far as being unforgivable, that is something that has honestly followed me my entire life.

I've never once in my life to this day been forgiven. I've never been allowed an opportunity to even apologize to people. Any apologies that I have attempted to make have been met with such cruelty.

And I've had to work through in therapy how to forgive myself and how to not let the perceptions of other people, even if I understand why they perceive me that way, I cannot allow that to be who I see when I look in the mirror.

Once I learned that my being here and being present and aware, once I learned the power in that, that was when I just learned that I was never a victim again.

What people did was wrong. And what happened to me as a child was wrong. And any gratitude that I have is not to those people for submitting me to those experiences. It is to my mother for loving me enough to get me through those experiences. So I just realized that I'm really strong. I'm really tough because I'm my mother's daughter.

From here, I just want to be at peace. I want to put everything behind me in the best way and continue writing books. I very much believe that the standard of success is the amount of joy that I feel. And so I let that be my compass on how to live my life. As long as I continue to do that, my mom will always be proud of me now.

Today's episode featured Amy Ronhar. You can find out more about Amy on her website, amyronhar.com. That's Amy, R-O-N-H-A-A-R.com.

And you can read more details of her story in her memoir, Raising Amy, A Daughter's Memoir, on BookBaby. You can find the link in the show notes. If you'd like to contact her, you can reach out over email at amyaronhar at gmail.com. That's amyaronhar at gmail.com. Amy's story was also featured on Todd Rennebaum's podcast, Bunny Hugs and Mental Health.

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I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.

No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.