May 8, 2025 • 56 mins
This week, Leslie tells the story of Kara Chamberlain Robinson and what happened to her, then she talks to Leslie about how her kidnapping has defined (or not) her life. They talk about their lives as kids, parents, and how to make your trauma productive in your life.
Hosted by Leslie Dobson. Produced and edited by Liam Billingham.
Executive producers are Paul Anderson and Scott McCarthy for Workhouse Media.
The views expressed in this podcast episode are solely those of the guest speaker and do not reflect the views of the host or the production company.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Okay, you're here. Welcome back to another episode of Intentionally Disturbing. Today,
I have the honor of talking with Kara Robinson Chamberlain.
Now our interview is fun and we talk a lot
about how to be healthy, get through PTSD, sexual assault,
(00:30):
how to protect our children. But what we don't talk
about is what happened to Kara when she was fifteen,
and so I want to give you a brief introduction
to that. So, when Kara was fifteen, she was watering
her friend's plants outside. She had just had a slumber
party at her best friend's house, and her friend went
inside briefly to take a shower. In that short moment
(00:52):
of time, a man came up to Kara and asked
if her parents wanted some magazines. So he was testing her,
and she said, you know, a young fifteen year old,
she's unaware. It's two thousand and two. She said, my
parents aren't here. I'm at my friend's house and her
parents aren't here either. He got a little closer to her.
He put a gun up to her neck and he said,
(01:14):
get in my car. He walked her into the car,
in which he had a plastic tupware bin. He said,
get into the bin, and he closed the bin. He
drove her for a while. She was aware it was
maybe streets and highways, different speeds. He brought her into
an apartment where he repeatedly raped her and held her
(01:36):
captive for eighteen hours. When he wanted to sleep, he
tied her ankles and her wrists to the bed. She
was amazing through this. She spent the time while being raped,
while being held captive, while being drugged on asialytics. She
(01:58):
spent the time memorizing the room, memorizing the serial number
on the plastic tub she had been in, memorizing any
products that he used. That there was a brush with
red hair on it, so maybe there was a wife.
She analyzed everything, and she stayed aware, and there was
a moment where she fell asleep. She woke up, he
(02:21):
was still asleep. She was able to slip her hands
out of one of the cuffs. She got a kraa
beaner off her ankle, and she ran, and she ran
like hell. She found two men that took her to
the police station, and in that she was able to
eventually find this rapist who turned out to be a
(02:41):
serial killer and a serial rapist. As the police honed
in on him. As the police were about to grab him,
he shot his head off and now we welcome Kara.
Ohay you're here.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Did you see the T shirt that I got that? No,
So people on the internet, as people on the internet
are known to do, have been making some painous comments lately,
and they're literally calling me fat very much not.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
But I am coming. Yeah, they're coming at you.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Why who knows, because they're trolls on the internet, and
so like they're see there is now I'm getting hike.
We're focused on it. So they are leaving comments on
my run like a girl trend saying you look like
you could probably use a little more running. So I
got a shirt that says too fat to kidnap.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I'm just gonna wear this like this is just this
is my personality and a T shirt And someone was like,
you probably put again on it, and I was like, yeah,
that would make it even better.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Did you are you selling it?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Did you know it's from Amazon? It's like drop shipping
from Amazon.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
But I was like, somebody already made a shirt like that.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Oh, there's multiple of them, like my friend and my chiropractor.
I was telling him about it, and he was like,
you should probably get this shirt, and I went and
looked it up and bought it that same day. I
was like, oh, this is exactly what I need because
oh my word, Yeah, you think you can hurt my feelings,
No you can. You cannot hurt my feelings. Like I
will just make a joke out of it.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
It's the internet can be so horrible, Like it's so
hard to weigh how wonderful it can be. But then
especially on TikTok, how people it's just a it's a nightmare.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
It's it's the wild wild West in some ways. And
I think people forget very often that there's an actual
person behind there, and some people just exist a troll,
I think, right, And yes, for me, my personality is
if you're gonna come at me and you're gonna make
those comments, you're doing that. This happens to me multiple times.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Look at this, Oh this is like a new thing.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Happens every single time, accidentally because I talk with my hands.
So but my thing is that you're going to comment
me with those comments and you're going to spew hate
at me. Then you're doing that to other people who
maybe can't handle. It doesn't affect me, but yeah, you're
doing that to other people. And so I challenge people
and I clap back at them, and I will forever
(05:17):
do that because I feel like it's my duty. Like
so yeah, it's just makes me laugh. At this point,
I'm like, if this person called me fat, Like what
is wrong with people?
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Like? It sounds like you have like this genuine innate
fight in you, like your personality. I would love to
do like a whole psychological assessment on your mind because
I bet it is just so high performing.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Now, well it's like is it trauma or is it
is it survival mechanism? Is it trauma or is it autism?
I you know, like who knows. I think it's probably
a little bit of all of the things.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Well, I was so of course, I like watched you know,
your story and everything because it's incredible. But how you
describe what you did? You just you describe it as
your trauma response. Yeah, when I was like, wait, the
trauma comes after for me right in the moment you
are like a Navy seal. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
I think that so many people hear it and they
think I could never But one of the things that
was very interesting to me is I was on Marcus
Latrell's podcast, and so if people don't know who he is,
he's the lone survivor. He has a crazy, amazing story
of just being a badass. Like let's just call it
what it is. And I told my story and he
(06:45):
was like, I'm just I just don't even understand, Like
I don't think I could do that. Like that's what
people think when they hear your story too, And I
think that's what we all experience is we don't think
that we're capable of those things. But human beings were
created to survive. We have a fight or flight. We
have a survival mechanism that is within us that is
going to pick and choose what it thinks is the
(07:08):
most likely scenario for survival. And it's going to use
those mechanisms that we have within us to get us
to survive. And so it's like I got really lucky
that I picked some good ones, I guess.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
But it's not luck. It's not luck, I mean, And
I'm okay, coming from a psychologist, you know, like a
lot of people suck. A lot of people are put
in situations and they really do freeze and they don't.
(07:47):
They don't have forward thought. They're frozen in the moment, right,
and they are victims and stay that way, right. And
your story it was like you were empowered during it,
after it, and you continued to do it for the world. Yeah,
it's a uniqueness.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, I will accept that. I think very often like
it wasn't It wasn't necessarily a conscious decision for me.
I guess it was kind of like, no, this is
the option, this is what we do. And I think
(08:27):
I would classify my childhood before I was kidnapped in
two thousand and two as a chaotic childhood. I think
I very realistically have. I've not been undiagnosed, but pretty sure,
very likely have CPTSD, And just due to I think
a lot of people that are, you know, my generation
(08:49):
probably have similar upbringings where like our parents just weren't
taught how to deal with their stuff. They weren't emotionally
or even physically available because they were dealing with a
lot of her own crap. And so I think that
the coping mechanisms that I learned early on in life
served me very very well when I was kidnapped. So
(09:11):
I learned deprecation far before June of two thousand and two.
That was a coping mechanism that I learned. I was
always thirteen going on thirty seven going on thirty and
as anyone who was working in these fields can attest to, generally,
those children that are tiny little adults have to be
(09:34):
tiny little adults. They are parentified. And so I think
that I had a lot. I'm an only child, and
so I think there was a lot of independence, dissociation, parentification,
and just other things that I had to do to
get through life that served me very well when I
(09:55):
was put in a life or death situation.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Wow. Yeah, Wow. You use so many words where people
are probably like, wait, wait.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Pack it up, let's go ahead.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
I mean so complex PTSD. I love that you're using that.
I hate that it's not in the diagnostic manual. I
think it needs to be. So you know, PTSD post
traumatic stress disorder. One event where you're going where you
fear the loss of your life, someone loses their life,
or there's an egregious violent sexual act on you. That's
(10:27):
criteria one for PTSD. It can happen once you get
the diagnosis. You have intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, you avoid situations,
avoid memories, nightmares, All the stuff we hear about in
the movies is pretty accurate, but complex. PTSD is when
you have ongoing traumas and you don't have the ability
to ever get to a healing point of one, so
(10:48):
they start to layer on each other, and it for
me looks like a befuddled you know, bowl of spaghetti
we have to sort through in psychology.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yeah, one of the things that was very helpful for
me is I don't feel like I necessarily had a
series of macro gigantic traumas in my childhood. I feel
like it was it was more it was definitely micro traumas,
like tiny little things, but it was more of a
(11:20):
lack of stability and emotional support around just life, like
the life stuff that we have to deal with. You know,
I look at my kids. I have an eleven year old,
an eight and a half year old, and a one
year old, and I look at them and see how
many things they're working through every single day where whether
it be societally with their friends, whether it be here
(11:44):
in our home, pets, passing different things that are just
normal life experiences, and how we support them and help
them gain emotional intelligence and help them work through their
feelings and name their feelings and process them. And those
are things that many people in my generation did not get.
And so you look at how that forms your attachment,
(12:05):
and you look at how you know that makes you
not a securely attached person, and you learn no one's
coming to save you, no one's coming to help you
work through your feelings, and then you and then you
layer on difficult things that happen in stressful situations. That
my house was a little more chaotic than I would
(12:25):
have liked it to have been, obviously, but you just
keep layering these things on and nothing ever gets dealt with,
and so it creates this this situation where I think
a lot of people view it as but my child
wasn't bad. It wasn't Why Why do I feel this way?
Why do I have no memories of my childhood? Why
(12:47):
is my childhood just this blank book? Like I don't know?
And it's because there just was not emotional memory encoding
during that time.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
It was.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
It's very bizarre, but I think it was, like it's
weird to say it was for the best, right, But
if that did not happen.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Right, what I am isn't that wild to say, like,
my chaotic traumatic childhood allowed me to persevere through repeated
reaping and kidnapping by a serial killer, right who blew
his head off, and then you helped bring closure to
other families.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Yeah, and even even to take it a step further
like that. You know, people are like, oh my god,
I'm so sorry that that happened to you, I'm so
sorry that you were kidnapped, And I'm like, but I'm not,
because in my mind, saying I'm sorry that happened means
that I would be not thankful and cognizant of how
(13:49):
that got me where I am today. I love my life.
I have a beautiful life, I have beautiful children, I
have an amazing husband. I'm in a wonderful community. I
do a job that I am very very passionate about
and I love And none of those things would have
happened if I had not been kidnapped.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
It's amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
So it's like, I think that's something that I always
try to keep in perspective, and I try to help
people understand whenever they're going through their traumas. It's like,
I'm not going to tell you everything happens for a reason.
But I'm going to tell you, if you're very intentional,
you're very lucky, you're supported that sometimes you can find
purpose in your pain. And that's that's what I'm doing here.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
I love that purpose in your pain. Yeah, yeah, I
love that. What do you do? Do you have PTSD
symptoms still from it? Or do you feel like you've
kind of reached a level of like this is so
hopeful for people to hear, but yeah, a level of recovery,
Like I don't know if we'd put it on a
percentage scale, like when shit was really bad, it was
(14:47):
at one hundred percent, and yeah, you're progressing away from it.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
I actually love that you asked this question because it's
something that I get asked a lot. Do you feel
like you have PTSD in the traditional and especially like
if we're looking back at two thousand and two, if
we're looking at the diagnostic standards for PTSD, I would say, no,
I don't have PTSD. I don't have flashbacks. I don't
(15:12):
feel like I ever did. Because it's what it's outside
a month, two months? What is the what is the
window there?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Well, it kind of starts within a month, but six
months says, we're we have a deleted on set. But
right I think it's all bullshit. We don't fit into you,
you don't fit into a book.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
I would say by those standards, like I had some
you know, like some anxiety attacks out in public. I
had some flashbacks and some nightmares, but they were all
fairly quickly after. So as far as like a prolonged,
like actually diagnosable PTSD kind of thing, I would say no.
But now as we're seeing kind of the knowledge around
(15:56):
PTSD change, and we're looking at some of the newer
diagnostic things that are working in like body flashbacks, that
was not something that anyone had any knowledge of in
two thousand and two, I have to acknowledge. Like two
thousand and two, the response to my trauma was, oh
(16:16):
my god, you have to get therapy, And I was like,
but talk the like EMDR wasn't really a thing, And
I was like, I can talk about it. I don't
need to go sit with a stranger and talk about it. Right,
So very different then than it is now. But when
we talk about like memory loss, I don't remember anything like,
uh so we look at that.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Tell me about the body part because I like the
sexual trauma.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah, So for me, the biggest thing is I very
heavily dissociated during my trauma. That was my previous coping mechanism.
That was what I primarily used to get through this.
So it looks like I don't actually have a lot
of physical memories. I have what I would call a
(17:03):
snapshot memory, and there's a handful of them. There's not
a ton of this time, and so what that means
is there's there actually wasn't an emotional encoding during that
time because I wasn't I was checked out, so there
emotions were not getting encoded. I worked with my therapist
(17:24):
and I was like, do I like, do I need
to try to uncover those emotions. She's like, you might
not even have the actual emotions from that time because
you were dissociated. But what I do experience is even
though I wasn't processing and feeling emotions, my body was
feeling things. And my biggest symptom that I still experience
(17:46):
to this day I haven't been able to fully get
rid of is I can't breathe very often. And that
was probably the most traumatic part. Was when my captor
put me back in the container. He put the ballgag
in my mouth and he put the lid on the container,
and I actually had an anxiety attack at that time,
(18:09):
and in my head was I can't breathe. I can't breathe,
And so my body still remembers that, and I can't
take a deep breath to this day, I will notice,
like when I get stressed, like I kind of lean in,
I protect it and I take very shallow breaths, and
so I have to work to kind of open this
up and take deep breath. And I did emdr around
(18:32):
that and it helped, but it's still just kind of lingers.
But a lot of people would be surprised to hear
after something so traumatic, oh you just you just can't
breathe it. Oh you just you just don't feel any
emotions and you can't breathe. So those things and there's
(18:53):
a cat outside. So those symptoms, I guess, and the
those symptoms and the lack of knowledge around what it
can look like to actually quote be impacted by your
trauma meant that for fifteen years, I was like, I'm fine,
(19:15):
I'm not impacted by my trauma, and I just kept
telling myself that until I realized after the birth of
my second child, I most probably had postpartum depression, and
I recognized that I was apathetic. I had no feelings,
(19:38):
and the only feeling that I felt with any sort
of regularity was rage.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
It's just oh wow, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
I was just really pissed off all the time and
felt like I was drowning, and I was like, this
doesn't feel normal. And so I realized that when I
was stress, which I was at the time, my husband's
working out of the country, he was gone two thirds
of the year working and I had two little little kids,
(20:06):
you know, two and a half in a newborn, and
I can't imagine. It was Yeah, it was. It was
a tough time. And I realized that I wasn't feeling
anything and yeah, and that it was actually a conscious
thing that I was doing because I had built this
narrative in my mind that I'm fine, I'm not impacted,
(20:29):
I'm strong, and so when feelings of overwhelm or even
you know, you're watching a commercial and it hits you
in the fields and you feel the tears start coming,
I'm like, nop, stop stop stop, stop, stop stop, Because
I'm strong, I don't cry. And so I recognized that
I was consciously doing that, and I began to just
kind of like dismantle that. I would be like, okay,
(20:52):
but you can feel things. It doesn't mean that you're
not strong. So in terms of like where are we
on the healing journey, it's never really over right, Like
we're constantly peeling back layers of our onion. But I
think I can why why does the cat have to
stay like trying to keep it where doesn't have to
(21:14):
edit as much out?
Speaker 1 (21:14):
But oh, it's so the mom life though. We're ready
for anything at any time.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
If I told my husband he doesn't understand like this world,
and I'm like, well, here's the thing. Like if the
baby like throws herself on the ground and start screaming
bloody murder, I can just be like and then pick
it back up. But if if we're talking about, you know,
where am I on this healing journey in terms of
like unhealed to healed, I would say we're doing pretty good.
(21:42):
I would say, you know, we're ninety five percent, but
who knows what we're gonna unpeel Tomorrow? We might find
a new moldy layer of the onion and wow, didn't
know that was there.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
We'll be right back after this break. That's one question
concern I have for you is, you know, as as
your kids get older and they start, you know, they
may be somewhat of a trigger for you in the
sense that you're seeing them get to the age of
(22:14):
when this happened to you. And like, what I love
is that you have this power and the support and
this groundedness and so like you're prepared, yeah, for the triggers,
which means that then you are resilient and you get
through them easier, faster, better, more, you know. Complete.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yeah, Yeah, that's I hadn't really thought about, you know,
moving forward. Especially, I feel like my daughter. I have
two sons and then I have a daughter. She's the baby,
and I'm like, oh, I feel like just by her
being born, literally just her existing has healed so many
(23:01):
things in me that I didn't even know were broken,
which is very often I imagine this is very common
with people who dissociate that very often there are things
inside me that I don't recognize or even hurt until
they heal. And her being born, her simply existing, she's
(23:24):
like she could she could turn into the worst child ever,
like she will, but like just simply existing has changed
who I am, changed how I approach myself, how I
approach even my boys, how I approach other people, and
has healed a lot in me that I really just
(23:45):
didn't even realize was broken. It's like in real time
reparenting myself by parenting a tiny version.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
It's incredible.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It is so that's happening with her as opposed to
the boys. I didn't experience that with them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Have you heard of shadow work?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
I have? Yeah, but I don't feel like again, it's like,
is it autism or is it dissociation? I don't know.
Every time I've tried to, like look at the shadow
work stuff, I'm like, I don't know, Like I don't
know what I'm feeling, Like name your emotion. I'm like,
I don't, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Like you see, I can't do it either, right. But
what I can do, I know. I'm like, I'm a
psychologist who can't, who struggles to have empathy anyways. But
what I can do is I can I can picture
myself at any age and as my adult self. I
(24:48):
can go back and just give her a hug, give
her what she needed, and that to me, those are
like these moments of strengthening. But what I love about
you is you have your daughter to do that with,
and you know, like you could, you could be emailing her.
You know you're not old enough right now to read this,
but this is the lesson I want you to know.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I'm gonna feel feels. I yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
What about that?
Speaker 2 (25:17):
I It's just I don't I think I'm realizing the
more I heal that I'm actually a highly feeling person.
I feel a lot of things, and I think it
was just not safe to feel, and so everything makes
me feel feels Now I'm like, oh, can we not?
But yeah, I saw something the other day and it
(25:39):
was talking about very often as women who have any
sort of trauma, a sign of like our healing can
be how we start to love pink again. And I
didn't even think of that because before she was born.
You're never gonna catch me like with a pink pen,
with pink anything. My phone case is pink currently, and
(26:02):
so I'm like gravitating towards pink a lot. And it
was like this reclaiming of our femininity that can happen
a lot of the time as we heal, and I
had never seen anything like that on the internet, and
I just thought, I like that. I like thinking about
it that way, this idea of like getting your pink back,
(26:25):
especially after you have kids. It's just like a slightly
different take on it. And I was like, Okay, I
can accept that. That's why I like pink now, because
I'm like a blue person.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
So you're going to repaint your kitchen.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
I don't think I'll do that. You know, I'm still
I'm still like a turquoise, a teal, a big girl.
But also, you know, I purposely picked out the pink
phone case and I pick out some like really cute
girly stuff for my daughter, and it's like, oh, is
this is this who I would have been?
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Are these parts of me that are being uncovered as
I'm healing more? And it's just I think it's kind
of fun. Maybe that's just me getting older too, Like
it's kind of fun to figure out who we are
as we get older.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
So I mean, I love that. I love this topic
of you know, our kids can teach us. Our kids
are without even trying their teeth. They're making us grow
the fucking up.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
But I think every parent can understand when you say,
like I didn't get the kids that I wanted. I
got the kids that I needed because every single one
of my children has leveled me up in some way
that I didn't want to be leveled up in. And yeah,
I mean from my first he is probably like me.
(27:46):
He feels so intensely, and I am so fiercely protective
over that for him, and especially because he's a boy, right,
Like how often do people tell boys like you can't cry?
And then we have all these, you know, men that
don't have feelings in our society, and so I'm fiercely
protective over that for him. And then like my second
(28:07):
is very like touchy feely, huggy, and I am not.
I'm like, please don't, please, don't touch me. And then
that he has kind of like changed that. And he
also was very much like the impetus of my healing
journey even beginning. And then you know, my daughter I've
already said, she's like just existing is healing like baby me,
(28:28):
And it's yeah, I think it's it's a fine line
to walk between raising our children and allowing them to
heal parts of us. But if we're intentional, we can
do it with grace. And I think It's so helpful
for them to see that too, Like for kids to
see us try to regulate our emotions, to work through healing,
(28:53):
for us to like go through conflict and then have
resolution on the other side. I think all of that
is so important and makes them understand like life is
not gonna be easy for you. You're going to go
through difficult things, and this is how we navigate them
and and know that I'm a safe place for those things.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Definitely, I love how you put that. Yet we are
modeling how to be human, right, these little people who
aren't quite there yet.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Right, there's so many times that I think, like I
hold my kids to these really high standards, and I
kind of have to check myself sometimes and be like,
there's still little Like why do I expect things out
of them that adults don't know how to do? Like
I expect them to regulate their emotions and not have meltdowns?
(29:45):
How many grown ass men do I know that have
a full on meltdown when they tell me I'm fat
on the internet and I'm like, you fat? Like there
are so many grown adults who can't manage their emotions,
and yet we expected of our children like come on, Like,
I like, I just need to check myself, like what
is it triggering in me? I see them having these
(30:07):
feelings and I'm like, no, no, you can't have those
feelings because I'm not allowed to have those feelings. I
wasn't allowed to do those things. And so it's like
triggering something in me. And like it's just it's constantly learning.
Like when I feel the rage of a thousand suns
because of one little thing that they've done, I'm like, ooh, ooh,
(30:27):
what did that? What did that touch in me?
Speaker 1 (30:30):
And so how do you how do you go about parenting?
What is your How vigilant are you? How paranoid are you?
Oh and you have the addition of your career right
right where you and I both are probably a little
over the top. But also it's not going to be
(30:51):
our kids, so right, I know, I think.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
I think that I probably would have been one of
those parents that was like, oh, that stuff happens, but
it doesn't happen to me. It doesn't happen to my
kids if this has not happened. So but I also
kind of raise like slightly free ranged kids, they're like
borderline feral because I like I encourage them to make
(31:21):
choices and exercise their freedom. Now obviously not for the baby,
she didn't have any reasoning capabilities, But for my boys,
I allow them as much freedom and flexibility as we can,
because if they are going to make a mistake, if
they are going to fall, if they are going to
get hurt, which they are in their life right, Like,
(31:44):
let's face it, our kids are gonna fail. If they're
going to get hurt, something bad's gonna happen to them.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Like I can't handle it, I will die.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Okay, That's what I think all the time. So but
the reality is, do you know anyone who has gotten
through their life without something difficult happening? No, you don't.
Everybody has difficult things. So I try to keep that
in mind and recognize that as I'm sure you know,
(32:10):
the space between something difficult or something traumatic happening and
having quote trauma, that space is closed by your ability
to cope with the difficult things that happen. So my
kids are going to have difficult things that happen, and
so my job as a mom is to give them
coping mechanisms, to give them support and allow them to
(32:33):
fall and mess up while they're here in my home
and I can give them those tools. And now does
that mean I'm careless and I have it's like a
free for all and they run the roost. He'll no, Like,
that is not what's happening here. We have protections and
you know, like my kids don't play roeblocks or they
have you know, parental controls they have. We do the
(32:54):
gab watches because they want to go play in the woods.
They want to ride their scooters around, you know, they
want to do all of these things. And I think
that kids need that stuff, especially at a certain age,
like we're eight and eleven, like go go right around
the neighborhoods and see you when the lakes come on,
I don't care.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Well, it sounds like you've also instilled in them this
dis empowerment to protect themselves.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
I hope so. And I have a actually have a
funny story to tell you that.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Well.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
I always kind of question, you know, I think we
all do, Like what would happen, you know, if someone
tried to take my kid right, Like, I don't think
that that is the I don't think that that's the
big threat. When we talk about like kids being hurt nowadays,
but it still could happen, right. And so the place
(33:46):
where we lived before we where we live now, it
was forty five acres, several families that lived in this
general area. All the kids. There's little pack of kids
that run around, a bunch of boys. They call themselves
the wolf Pack, and they played like. There was this
big sandpile that they played in. And it was right
beside where I worked out. And so I worked out
(34:08):
in like a shop had a gym in there, and
I was working out kind of had, you know, my
headphones one one ear off, and the kids were out
there playing and then that that intuition kind of picked
up something's going on. And I walked out and looked
over at them, and what my intuition had picked up
is I didn't hear them playing anymore. And walked out
(34:31):
and there was a like suv parked in between the
kids and me, and this is like, no one comes
back here, right like you're you don't belong here, what
are you doing here? And so you know, of course
I walked up. There's a man in it. I walked up,
I said, hey, can I help you? He's like, oh,
oh yeah, sorry, I'm trying to meet someone about something
(34:52):
on marketplace, and I was like, all right, well, like
he's not here right now, so I'll let him know
that you're you know that you're here whatever, and so
that all gets settled. Guy goes off. The boys all
came to me after this, So my boys and the
other boys and they said, they said, miss Kara is
(35:13):
one of the other little boys. Miss Kara, do you
know what we did? And I was like, no, what
did you do? And he was like, so my son,
he was like, I don't. I don't say his name,
so I don't know how to tell the story with that.
So they said that son, yeah, they said, my son
saw this person come up and he was like, that's
(35:33):
a stranger. And he was like, everyone gets your pointy sticks.
And so there was literally a pack of little boys
with pointy sticks like Lord of the Flies standing there
with their like there's like six of them with sharpened
sticks staring this guy down like stranger defend the pack
Like like, well, I guess they're gonna be okay, Like
(35:57):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
How did they learn that?
Speaker 2 (35:59):
I I don't know. I guess it's just My son
was kind of the oldest and so he was inherently
kind of the leader of the pack, and and he
is so intuitive. I mean, I can't do this job
in my house. Like my kids know my story to
an age appropriate level, and so they're they're aware of,
(36:20):
you know, the fact that I was taken by a
stranger from my friend's front yard, and so I think
that they're they kind of have a little bit of
knowledge of that kind of thing. But I just was like,
oh my god, they had sharp sticks and they were like,
nobody's taken us, like band together.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
It's fucking amazing.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
I was like, all right, y'all are good, y'all are good?
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Like well, I was walking yesterday with my daughter, she's eight,
and she held my hand and because she doesn't really
want to hold hands right now, because like she's at
that age where it's not cool anymore, but she held
my hand and she was like, Mom, there's this seventy
percent chance that this guy walking towards us is homeless,
and I'm not quite sure, so I'm just letting you know.
And I was like, seventy do you even know what
(37:01):
percentages are? Like I do your homework on chat GPT, right.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Right, Well, have you heard of the I'm sure you've
heard of the Gift of fear?
Speaker 1 (37:12):
Oh yes, yeah, And what's what's the kid one called?
I don't know. That's all I'm going to talk about,
but protect our protecting the gift. The original book is
about you trusting your intuition and protecting yourself right, especially
as a woman. And he really throws out some hard
stats that people don't like. And it's not his area
(37:34):
of expertise in that he went to school, but he
has been a PI and he's been in these incredible
situations and so I did his training actually like in
Lake Arrahead, California for the weekend. I loved it. But
then this book where he says how to be a
parent and it's okay, these are things that are okay
(37:55):
to teach your kids, which some of the book was
like a little outlandish, but some I loved. Like one
thing I loved was, uh, you know what happens in
an emergency when everyone's running through the front doors and
they're leaving, and he says, you know, teach your kids
to go through the back exit because that's where no
one else is going to go.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Yeah, Or like he talks about things like like kind
of allowing your kids to profile a little bit. And
it's kind of like, ugh, society doesn't really tell us
that that's okay, but but fuck it, right, But also
I don't hear like that's what I tell I tell
you know, people online all the time when they want
(38:36):
to know, like how do I keep myself safe? I'm like,
I don't give a shit if people think I'm nice. Like,
if it comes down to I don't like the way
that person looks, I can either hurt their feelings or
I can possibly make me and my children a victim,
I don't give a shit about that person's feelings. I'm
never going to see that person again. But if it, like,
(38:58):
if something within me is saying I don't like that
person then, and like kids are born with these same
intuitive powers that we often will be like that's not
politically correct to think that way or to act that way,
but if something is telling them, like your daughter like
something about that guy was like feeling furtive to her, right,
(39:21):
and you would have been like, oh, honey, but he
might just be down on his luck. Let's be nice
to him, right, Like, which, absolutely I think there's something
to be said about that, but don't.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
But say it later, right, exactly like what I tell
her like, And I've posted videos on this and I've
gotten so much hate on this, but I tell her to,
you know, describe a homeless man, describe a dangerous man,
like describe someone hallucinating. And a lot of the time
she'll say, I look at their shoes, and it's like,
(39:53):
it's really insightful for her to gage people by the
cleanliness of their shoes. And the hate I get is like, well,
if it's a construction worker, you've just taught her to
like hate against the working professionals or blue collar And
I'm like, I don't care. I'll talk to her later
about it. I'll be like, honey that it was kind
of your a judgment on the little bitch, but you're
you're safe.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
I like, yeah, I honestly don't care. And that's that's
the thing that I tell people. I think we as
women and this is the biggest lesson that I got from.
So I am Also I know James Hamilton, who he
was the VP of Gavin de Becker and Associates, and
so he worked very closely with Gavin and I had
(40:33):
him on my podcast, and so I've had multiple conversations
with him about this, and it's like the big thing
that I tell people is it doesn't matter. We as
women are taught like, oh, you have to be nice.
You can't hurt anybody's feelings. And he's like screw that.
He's like, hurt people's feelings, Like it doesn't matter. And
at the end of the day, especially if you're not
(40:55):
going to see that person again. Like I just tell
people all the time, like, listen to your intuition. If
something is saying making you feel uneasy, that means that
your survival mechanism that is within your head, within your
your not even just your head, it is within your
whole nervous system, your whole body is picking up on
something that you might not. And one of the things
(41:16):
that James said is he was like, you know, people
liked to say, oh, my dog didn't like someone, my dog,
and it's like, no, no, your dog is picking up
on your cues that you aren't even recognizing, Like your
dog is smelling your fear. He's picking up on how
your body behavior, like your body language is changing, how
your behavior is changing, and he is responding to that
(41:37):
and and.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
I was like, yeah, like that's that's incredible.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Yeah, it's it's so amazing. So that's the biggest thing.
When people are like, how do you keep yourself safe,
I'm like, listen to your freaking intuition. Don't walk down
the street with your headphones on looking at your phone,
Like stand up, hold yourself up straight, make eye contact
with people. Don't don't make yourself an easy victim, because
right generally, someone is going to pick someone as a
(42:04):
victim who looks easy. Like if you look scrappy, you
look like you're gonna fight somebody, they're probably not going
to pick you, unless they're just like full on sociopath.
But most people are not going to pick the person
that's going to remember their face, that's going to fight,
that's paying attention. They want a victim of.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Opportunity, right exactly, Like let's get it done and get
it over with. Hell yeah, I love that, and I
think you know, even my son's four now, I teach
him to scream, Like we just practice screaming. I love it,
And I ask him when you know, like like Gavin
Debacker would say, like we go for walks and I
(42:41):
ask him, like, you know, who would you go to
for help? And then we sit down and we talk
about why why'd you pick that person? You're doing, you know,
and then we practice it too, like go up to
this person and ask if you can borrow a pencil,
and then he picks the person and in his little
it's like, you know, practice from age, you know, from words, right,
(43:03):
but even before that, they're watching you. Yeah, I think
it's incredible, and it's time for a break.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
We do this little game sometimes when we're waiting. I
am very aware of trying to teach my kids also,
like one of the things that a lot of us
are not good about, which is like the ability to
just wait somewhere without being on your device being distracted.
And so one of the things that we do that
I more or less picked up from conversations with James
(43:37):
is we'll be in a room. So the most recent time,
as we were at the VET, we're you know, in
the little waiting room with the cat, and like, okay,
look around the room, all right, close your eyes and
I'm going to ask you a question about the room.
And so it just teaches them to notice things. So
it's like, okay, how many windows are in the room. Okay,
there's you know, a bookcase over here. How many shelves
(43:58):
are on it, just different little things. It teaches them
to just be more aware of their surroundings. And you know,
it's just it's constant work. But if we're not learning
these things ourselves, like if we're not paying attention to
our surroundings, then how are we teaching our kids to
do that. So I think that people need to recognize
that when it comes to keeping our kids safe, that's
(44:20):
something we can do. In terms of stranger dager. Now,
the more real fear, I think often is people that
are close to you. It's usually like a known acquaintance
that's going to harm children unfortunately, And so that comes
into like making me a safe space. So I can
do everything that I can to make my kids safe,
(44:41):
but I'm not going to be reckless. But still sometimes
stuff can happen. It could be another kid, right like
they could be at a plan playing with another kid
and then teaching, you know, proper anatomical terms, teaching that
they can say no about their body. You know, like
one of my kids, I can't make him wear underwear.
(45:02):
And it's like, you know, you need to understand that
if you're wearing shorts during the summer, if you sit
a certain way, somebody's gonna see your stuff, like and
you're gonna have to wash your shorts a lot more.
But listen, if that's what your body feels good with
practice saying no, like practice saying no about your body.
And then things things.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Like what you did though, with talking to them about
you know, looking into the memorizing the room, in the
areas of the room. I mean, that's what you did
to save your own life.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Right, how weird I mean, but I know I didn't
really think of that connection.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
But yeah, you, I mean that was somehow that became
you at fifteen, Right, that's incredible, I know. And then
where does that come from?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
I think that's why I'm saying, you have an amazing brain,
and I want to analyze it.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
But I want to know all the things.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
But no, you, I mean, talk to me a bit
about your profession and now, because I think you are
just such a perfect fit for what you've chosen for life.
Tell the world, like, where can they find you? Where
can they like love you?
Speaker 2 (46:18):
Social media? I am an unwilling I am a captive
of social media. I'm unwillingly being held captive by social media. No,
most days I'm okay. Some days I don't like being there.
So I'm everywhere on social media care Robinson Chamberlain. My
website's care Robinson Chamberlain dot com. I do Keynotes. I
(46:40):
do a lot of advocacy work via social media, just
kind of like spreading knowledge and awareness and talking about
the different dynamics of what it means to be a
victim of a crime, and then moving forward and share
my experiences working in law enforcement. That's a lot of
what I do in keynotes as well. All is how
(47:01):
do we support people? Because I had a variety of
experiences where people treated me like a victim as opposed
to a survivor. I had a lot of different perspectives
of what that looks like. And really it's kind of simple,
like how you do that? And so it's kind of
like my day to day I'm working on I'm always
working on things, projects and workbooks and books and TV
(47:24):
shows and there's always I'm always spinning some plates in
the background.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
I love that. Yeah, I love it. So it's your
story is incredible and where you've taken it is incredible,
I think. So I have a question for you, and
it's actually based on a video that I saw on
social media yesterday where a professor asks a huge class,
(47:53):
maybe like one hundred and fifty students, if you or
someone you know has been sexually assaulted? State end up,
and the whole class stood up, and they look like
undergrads maybe, And then the professor asked if that person,
if you were that person, reported it, stay standing. Everyone
(48:15):
sat down.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Isn't that heavy?
Speaker 1 (48:19):
It was very heavy, and I wasn't expecting it. But
of course, you know, my algorithm as fucked because of
all this content. I'm sure yours is too. But what
what is your message for someone who is either going
to go to a friend who is sexually assaulted or
someone who was sexually assaulted? You know, how can we
(48:41):
how can we be there for them?
Speaker 2 (48:44):
That's such a great question, and I think the first thing,
the very very first thing that we do, is we
believe them. That's it. You don't need to know why,
you don't need to know, you don't. I think one
of the things we often do by nature as humans
is we want to try to understand why someone would
(49:06):
victimize someone else, and so we might want to ask
questions to try to help us understand how someone could
be a perpetrator, but you don't need to ask the
victim that you don't need to ask those questions because
it feels like you are blaming them very often. So
(49:27):
you just need to show up, and you need to
start by believing. So you just need and you One
of my pet peeves is when people say I'm so
sorry that happened, because I feel like I am then
put in the place that I need to reassure that person, No,
I'm fine, it's fine.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Fine.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
So I almost prefer thank you for sharing that with me,
thank you for feeling safe enough to share that with me.
It really sucks. That sucks. And then I think offer
having ways that you can offer to help them, not
let me know how I can help you, let me
(50:06):
know when I can help you. It's can I can
I buy you some groceries? Can I bring you a meal?
Can I help you fill out your Victims Services forms?
Can I can I be with you through the court process?
Can I help you you know, with your statement? Just
very tangible things, And this is kind of applicable for
(50:28):
anyone who's going through anything difficult. Honestly, it's just showing up,
being there and really kind of listening to what they're
saying and sometimes what they're not saying they need because
so many people like Kara, you have to get therapy.
You have to get therapy. It's something my mother, Carrie's
guilt about that she didn't make me go to therapy.
(50:52):
And I said, no, you did the absolute right thing. Now,
in two thousand and two, there wasn't a handbook that
said when your child is a victim of sexual assault,
here's what you do. Now they're probably are a million
of them. But she listened to me. I said, I
don't I don't want to do therapy. Had she forced
me would have been a very different situation. It wouldn't
have been effective. But she listened to what I was saying.
(51:13):
I need it in that moment, and I was like,
I just need everyone to treat me normal again. I
just I don't want everybody walking on eggshells around me.
And so I think it's believe them, be there, Be
consistently there when you say you're going to be there,
be there. Don't make promises you can't keep, and just
(51:34):
do the tangible things. Just offer to do something and
then just do it. I think those are the biggest
things and then I guess if you're someone who actually
is walking through that, just recognize that healing is not
a straightforward journey and you're gonna you're going to get
through it. You can get through it. You've already done
the hardest part. You've gotten through the actual situation and
(51:59):
it wasn't your fault. The thing that happened, it wasn't
your fault. But the healing is your responsibility. No one's
coming to save you, No one's going to heal you,
even if you go to therapy. The therapist is the
counselor the psychiatrist, the psychologists, they're just going to give
you the tools to heal yourself. So understand it's not fair.
(52:20):
It absolutely is not fair. But you're responsible to heal
yourself and you're capable of it.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Show up for yourself because you can.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
Yeah, yeah, and it's not easy, but like life is
not easy, like I wish it was. But also like
if you're eating ice cream all the time, eventually you're
gonna be like I might need a stake either, right,
Like you kind of have to have like the good
and the bad because you can't appreciate the good if
you don't have difficult times then it's you just you
(52:52):
can't appreciate as much. And you know, the difficult things
are what caused us to grow and become stronger. And
so just recognize that that you might one day find
purpose in your pain.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
I love that. That needs to be the T shirt
you sell, right, I know, purpose in pain. I have
so much trademarket.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
I know right well, I historically have k taglined everything
not defined. And that's the working title of a book
if I have it, because it's like, you know, especially
social media wants to pigeonhole you, like are you that
girl that I kidnapped? I'm like that was like twenty two,
twenty three years ago, Like can we talk about something else?
Like I'm a lot more than that, Like I'm not
(53:36):
defined by someone else's actions. I would like to be
defined by what I've done after that.
Speaker 1 (53:42):
Yeah, And I think that this hour shows exactly that
in so many ways. Incredible mother, survivor, advocate, teacher, leader,
just doing my best, I mean and even like just
the cats are trying to get to you.
Speaker 3 (54:02):
Well, you're someone's always trying to get to me. Everyone
needs me all the time, Needy creatures, they don't want
to touch me exactly right?
Speaker 2 (54:13):
Did we say that? Do we say I don't like
being touched?
Speaker 1 (54:15):
No, we don't follow mel Robin's theory of let them.
We don't let them just touch us.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
God needs a body autonomy. Everyone's trying to like stick
their hands in my armpits in my mouth and like
ew yeah yeah, why do you all need to be inside?
I say they all want to like inhale my ex hials.
I'm like, can we do some space?
Speaker 1 (54:35):
Right? What does a mom want for Mother's Day?
Speaker 2 (54:38):
Like just to be left the heckalone for a little while, for.
Speaker 1 (54:42):
No one to touch her who has ever been inside her?
And that counts for the husband too.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
Although I was like last year for Brother's Day, Everyone's like,
what do you want to do? And I was like,
I want to go to brunch and then I want
to go to the trampoline park. I was like, I
feel like this. The one place that will not be
crowded on Mother's Day is probably the trampoline part because
everyone's like afraid they're gonna peel on themselves. I'm like,
I'm good in that department. I just want to jump.
I just want to have one, so you know, I
(55:11):
want to not be touched. I want yummy food and
coffee and to jump on a trampoline. My neds are minible.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
Good. I'm really grateful you took the time to do
this and to talk to me.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
Yeah, of course it's been fun.
Speaker 1 (55:28):
But thank you.
Speaker 2 (55:29):
Of course, of course it's been great.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
Thank you for watching another episode of Intentionally Disturbing. That
was Kara. I think she is absolutely incredible. I love
that today she bought a T shirt that said too
fat to kidnap. She has an incredibly dark sense of
humor too that we didn't get to fully see. But
her experience is incredible, and what she can teach you,
I think you need to listen. And I'm so happy
(55:57):
that she has social media platform and that she is
available for keynote speaking. She can empower you as a woman,
as a man, and help you as a parent. And
so I'm just really really happy that you got a
chance to watch that episode and hear us go back
and forth about living our lives in twenty twenty five.
(56:20):
See you next time on Intentionally Disturbing
Okay, you're here. Welcome back to another episode of Intentionally Disturbing. Today,
I have the honor of talking with Kara Robinson Chamberlain.
Now our interview is fun and we talk a lot
about how to be healthy, get through PTSD, sexual assault,
(00:30):
how to protect our children. But what we don't talk
about is what happened to Kara when she was fifteen,
and so I want to give you a brief introduction
to that. So, when Kara was fifteen, she was watering
her friend's plants outside. She had just had a slumber
party at her best friend's house, and her friend went
inside briefly to take a shower. In that short moment
(00:52):
of time, a man came up to Kara and asked
if her parents wanted some magazines. So he was testing her,
and she said, you know, a young fifteen year old,
she's unaware. It's two thousand and two. She said, my
parents aren't here. I'm at my friend's house and her
parents aren't here either. He got a little closer to her.
He put a gun up to her neck and he said,
(01:14):
get in my car. He walked her into the car,
in which he had a plastic tupware bin. He said,
get into the bin, and he closed the bin. He
drove her for a while. She was aware it was
maybe streets and highways, different speeds. He brought her into
an apartment where he repeatedly raped her and held her
(01:36):
captive for eighteen hours. When he wanted to sleep, he
tied her ankles and her wrists to the bed. She
was amazing through this. She spent the time while being raped,
while being held captive, while being drugged on asialytics. She
(01:58):
spent the time memorizing the room, memorizing the serial number
on the plastic tub she had been in, memorizing any
products that he used. That there was a brush with
red hair on it, so maybe there was a wife.
She analyzed everything, and she stayed aware, and there was
a moment where she fell asleep. She woke up, he
(02:21):
was still asleep. She was able to slip her hands
out of one of the cuffs. She got a kraa
beaner off her ankle, and she ran, and she ran
like hell. She found two men that took her to
the police station, and in that she was able to
eventually find this rapist who turned out to be a
(02:41):
serial killer and a serial rapist. As the police honed
in on him. As the police were about to grab him,
he shot his head off and now we welcome Kara.
Ohay you're here.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Did you see the T shirt that I got that? No,
So people on the internet, as people on the internet
are known to do, have been making some painous comments lately,
and they're literally calling me fat very much not.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
But I am coming. Yeah, they're coming at you.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Why who knows, because they're trolls on the internet, and
so like they're see there is now I'm getting hike.
We're focused on it. So they are leaving comments on
my run like a girl trend saying you look like
you could probably use a little more running. So I
got a shirt that says too fat to kidnap.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I'm just gonna wear this like this is just this
is my personality and a T shirt And someone was like,
you probably put again on it, and I was like, yeah,
that would make it even better.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Did you are you selling it?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Did you know it's from Amazon? It's like drop shipping
from Amazon.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
But I was like, somebody already made a shirt like that.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Oh, there's multiple of them, like my friend and my chiropractor.
I was telling him about it, and he was like,
you should probably get this shirt, and I went and
looked it up and bought it that same day. I
was like, oh, this is exactly what I need because
oh my word, Yeah, you think you can hurt my feelings,
No you can. You cannot hurt my feelings. Like I
will just make a joke out of it.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
It's the internet can be so horrible, Like it's so
hard to weigh how wonderful it can be. But then
especially on TikTok, how people it's just a it's a nightmare.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
It's it's the wild wild West in some ways. And
I think people forget very often that there's an actual
person behind there, and some people just exist a troll,
I think, right, And yes, for me, my personality is
if you're gonna come at me and you're gonna make
those comments, you're doing that. This happens to me multiple times.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Look at this, Oh this is like a new thing.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Happens every single time, accidentally because I talk with my hands.
So but my thing is that you're going to comment
me with those comments and you're going to spew hate
at me. Then you're doing that to other people who
maybe can't handle. It doesn't affect me, but yeah, you're
doing that to other people. And so I challenge people
and I clap back at them, and I will forever
(05:17):
do that because I feel like it's my duty. Like
so yeah, it's just makes me laugh. At this point,
I'm like, if this person called me fat, Like what
is wrong with people?
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Like? It sounds like you have like this genuine innate
fight in you, like your personality. I would love to
do like a whole psychological assessment on your mind because
I bet it is just so high performing.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Now, well it's like is it trauma or is it
is it survival mechanism? Is it trauma or is it autism?
I you know, like who knows. I think it's probably
a little bit of all of the things.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Well, I was so of course, I like watched you know,
your story and everything because it's incredible. But how you
describe what you did? You just you describe it as
your trauma response. Yeah, when I was like, wait, the
trauma comes after for me right in the moment you
are like a Navy seal. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
I think that so many people hear it and they
think I could never But one of the things that
was very interesting to me is I was on Marcus
Latrell's podcast, and so if people don't know who he is,
he's the lone survivor. He has a crazy, amazing story
of just being a badass. Like let's just call it
what it is. And I told my story and he
(06:45):
was like, I'm just I just don't even understand, Like
I don't think I could do that. Like that's what
people think when they hear your story too, And I
think that's what we all experience is we don't think
that we're capable of those things. But human beings were
created to survive. We have a fight or flight. We
have a survival mechanism that is within us that is
going to pick and choose what it thinks is the
(07:08):
most likely scenario for survival. And it's going to use
those mechanisms that we have within us to get us
to survive. And so it's like I got really lucky
that I picked some good ones, I guess.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
But it's not luck. It's not luck, I mean, And
I'm okay, coming from a psychologist, you know, like a
lot of people suck. A lot of people are put
in situations and they really do freeze and they don't.
(07:47):
They don't have forward thought. They're frozen in the moment, right,
and they are victims and stay that way, right. And
your story it was like you were empowered during it,
after it, and you continued to do it for the world. Yeah,
it's a uniqueness.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, I will accept that. I think very often like
it wasn't It wasn't necessarily a conscious decision for me.
I guess it was kind of like, no, this is
the option, this is what we do. And I think
(08:27):
I would classify my childhood before I was kidnapped in
two thousand and two as a chaotic childhood. I think
I very realistically have. I've not been undiagnosed, but pretty sure,
very likely have CPTSD, And just due to I think
a lot of people that are, you know, my generation
(08:49):
probably have similar upbringings where like our parents just weren't
taught how to deal with their stuff. They weren't emotionally
or even physically available because they were dealing with a
lot of her own crap. And so I think that
the coping mechanisms that I learned early on in life
served me very very well when I was kidnapped. So
(09:11):
I learned deprecation far before June of two thousand and two.
That was a coping mechanism that I learned. I was
always thirteen going on thirty seven going on thirty and
as anyone who was working in these fields can attest to, generally,
those children that are tiny little adults have to be
(09:34):
tiny little adults. They are parentified. And so I think
that I had a lot. I'm an only child, and
so I think there was a lot of independence, dissociation, parentification,
and just other things that I had to do to
get through life that served me very well when I
(09:55):
was put in a life or death situation.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Wow. Yeah, Wow. You use so many words where people
are probably like, wait, wait.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Pack it up, let's go ahead.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
I mean so complex PTSD. I love that you're using that.
I hate that it's not in the diagnostic manual. I
think it needs to be. So you know, PTSD post
traumatic stress disorder. One event where you're going where you
fear the loss of your life, someone loses their life,
or there's an egregious violent sexual act on you. That's
(10:27):
criteria one for PTSD. It can happen once you get
the diagnosis. You have intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, you avoid situations,
avoid memories, nightmares, All the stuff we hear about in
the movies is pretty accurate, but complex. PTSD is when
you have ongoing traumas and you don't have the ability
to ever get to a healing point of one, so
(10:48):
they start to layer on each other, and it for
me looks like a befuddled you know, bowl of spaghetti
we have to sort through in psychology.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yeah, one of the things that was very helpful for
me is I don't feel like I necessarily had a
series of macro gigantic traumas in my childhood. I feel
like it was it was more it was definitely micro traumas,
like tiny little things, but it was more of a
(11:20):
lack of stability and emotional support around just life, like
the life stuff that we have to deal with. You know,
I look at my kids. I have an eleven year old,
an eight and a half year old, and a one
year old, and I look at them and see how
many things they're working through every single day where whether
it be societally with their friends, whether it be here
(11:44):
in our home, pets, passing different things that are just
normal life experiences, and how we support them and help
them gain emotional intelligence and help them work through their
feelings and name their feelings and process them. And those
are things that many people in my generation did not get.
And so you look at how that forms your attachment,
(12:05):
and you look at how you know that makes you
not a securely attached person, and you learn no one's
coming to save you, no one's coming to help you
work through your feelings, and then you and then you
layer on difficult things that happen in stressful situations. That
my house was a little more chaotic than I would
(12:25):
have liked it to have been, obviously, but you just
keep layering these things on and nothing ever gets dealt with,
and so it creates this this situation where I think
a lot of people view it as but my child
wasn't bad. It wasn't Why Why do I feel this way?
Why do I have no memories of my childhood? Why
(12:47):
is my childhood just this blank book? Like I don't know?
And it's because there just was not emotional memory encoding
during that time.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
It was.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
It's very bizarre, but I think it was, like it's
weird to say it was for the best, right, But
if that did not happen.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Right, what I am isn't that wild to say, like,
my chaotic traumatic childhood allowed me to persevere through repeated
reaping and kidnapping by a serial killer, right who blew
his head off, and then you helped bring closure to
other families.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Yeah, and even even to take it a step further
like that. You know, people are like, oh my god,
I'm so sorry that that happened to you, I'm so
sorry that you were kidnapped, And I'm like, but I'm not,
because in my mind, saying I'm sorry that happened means
that I would be not thankful and cognizant of how
(13:49):
that got me where I am today. I love my life.
I have a beautiful life, I have beautiful children, I
have an amazing husband. I'm in a wonderful community. I
do a job that I am very very passionate about
and I love And none of those things would have
happened if I had not been kidnapped.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
It's amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
So it's like, I think that's something that I always
try to keep in perspective, and I try to help
people understand whenever they're going through their traumas. It's like,
I'm not going to tell you everything happens for a reason.
But I'm going to tell you, if you're very intentional,
you're very lucky, you're supported that sometimes you can find
purpose in your pain. And that's that's what I'm doing here.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
I love that purpose in your pain. Yeah, yeah, I
love that. What do you do? Do you have PTSD
symptoms still from it? Or do you feel like you've
kind of reached a level of like this is so
hopeful for people to hear, but yeah, a level of recovery,
Like I don't know if we'd put it on a
percentage scale, like when shit was really bad, it was
(14:47):
at one hundred percent, and yeah, you're progressing away from it.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
I actually love that you asked this question because it's
something that I get asked a lot. Do you feel
like you have PTSD in the traditional and especially like
if we're looking back at two thousand and two, if
we're looking at the diagnostic standards for PTSD, I would say, no,
I don't have PTSD. I don't have flashbacks. I don't
(15:12):
feel like I ever did. Because it's what it's outside
a month, two months? What is the what is the
window there?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Well, it kind of starts within a month, but six
months says, we're we have a deleted on set. But
right I think it's all bullshit. We don't fit into you,
you don't fit into a book.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
I would say by those standards, like I had some
you know, like some anxiety attacks out in public. I
had some flashbacks and some nightmares, but they were all
fairly quickly after. So as far as like a prolonged,
like actually diagnosable PTSD kind of thing, I would say no.
But now as we're seeing kind of the knowledge around
(15:56):
PTSD change, and we're looking at some of the newer
diagnostic things that are working in like body flashbacks, that
was not something that anyone had any knowledge of in
two thousand and two, I have to acknowledge. Like two
thousand and two, the response to my trauma was, oh
(16:16):
my god, you have to get therapy, And I was like,
but talk the like EMDR wasn't really a thing, And
I was like, I can talk about it. I don't
need to go sit with a stranger and talk about it. Right,
So very different then than it is now. But when
we talk about like memory loss, I don't remember anything like,
uh so we look at that.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Tell me about the body part because I like the
sexual trauma.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah, So for me, the biggest thing is I very
heavily dissociated during my trauma. That was my previous coping mechanism.
That was what I primarily used to get through this.
So it looks like I don't actually have a lot
of physical memories. I have what I would call a
(17:03):
snapshot memory, and there's a handful of them. There's not
a ton of this time, and so what that means
is there's there actually wasn't an emotional encoding during that
time because I wasn't I was checked out, so there
emotions were not getting encoded. I worked with my therapist
(17:24):
and I was like, do I like, do I need
to try to uncover those emotions. She's like, you might
not even have the actual emotions from that time because
you were dissociated. But what I do experience is even
though I wasn't processing and feeling emotions, my body was
feeling things. And my biggest symptom that I still experience
(17:46):
to this day I haven't been able to fully get
rid of is I can't breathe very often. And that
was probably the most traumatic part. Was when my captor
put me back in the container. He put the ballgag
in my mouth and he put the lid on the container,
and I actually had an anxiety attack at that time,
(18:09):
and in my head was I can't breathe. I can't breathe,
And so my body still remembers that, and I can't
take a deep breath to this day, I will notice,
like when I get stressed, like I kind of lean in,
I protect it and I take very shallow breaths, and
so I have to work to kind of open this
up and take deep breath. And I did emdr around
(18:32):
that and it helped, but it's still just kind of lingers.
But a lot of people would be surprised to hear
after something so traumatic, oh you just you just can't
breathe it. Oh you just you just don't feel any
emotions and you can't breathe. So those things and there's
(18:53):
a cat outside. So those symptoms, I guess, and the
those symptoms and the lack of knowledge around what it
can look like to actually quote be impacted by your
trauma meant that for fifteen years, I was like, I'm fine,
(19:15):
I'm not impacted by my trauma, and I just kept
telling myself that until I realized after the birth of
my second child, I most probably had postpartum depression, and
I recognized that I was apathetic. I had no feelings,
(19:38):
and the only feeling that I felt with any sort
of regularity was rage.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
It's just oh wow, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
I was just really pissed off all the time and
felt like I was drowning, and I was like, this
doesn't feel normal. And so I realized that when I
was stress, which I was at the time, my husband's
working out of the country, he was gone two thirds
of the year working and I had two little little kids,
(20:06):
you know, two and a half in a newborn, and
I can't imagine. It was Yeah, it was. It was
a tough time. And I realized that I wasn't feeling
anything and yeah, and that it was actually a conscious
thing that I was doing because I had built this
narrative in my mind that I'm fine, I'm not impacted,
(20:29):
I'm strong, and so when feelings of overwhelm or even
you know, you're watching a commercial and it hits you
in the fields and you feel the tears start coming,
I'm like, nop, stop stop stop, stop, stop stop, Because
I'm strong, I don't cry. And so I recognized that
I was consciously doing that, and I began to just
kind of like dismantle that. I would be like, okay,
(20:52):
but you can feel things. It doesn't mean that you're
not strong. So in terms of like where are we
on the healing journey, it's never really over right, Like
we're constantly peeling back layers of our onion. But I
think I can why why does the cat have to
stay like trying to keep it where doesn't have to
(21:14):
edit as much out?
Speaker 1 (21:14):
But oh, it's so the mom life though. We're ready
for anything at any time.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
If I told my husband he doesn't understand like this world,
and I'm like, well, here's the thing. Like if the
baby like throws herself on the ground and start screaming
bloody murder, I can just be like and then pick
it back up. But if if we're talking about, you know,
where am I on this healing journey in terms of
like unhealed to healed, I would say we're doing pretty good.
(21:42):
I would say, you know, we're ninety five percent, but
who knows what we're gonna unpeel Tomorrow? We might find
a new moldy layer of the onion and wow, didn't
know that was there.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
We'll be right back after this break. That's one question
concern I have for you is, you know, as as
your kids get older and they start, you know, they
may be somewhat of a trigger for you in the
sense that you're seeing them get to the age of
(22:14):
when this happened to you. And like, what I love
is that you have this power and the support and
this groundedness and so like you're prepared, yeah, for the triggers,
which means that then you are resilient and you get
through them easier, faster, better, more, you know. Complete.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yeah, Yeah, that's I hadn't really thought about, you know,
moving forward. Especially, I feel like my daughter. I have
two sons and then I have a daughter. She's the baby,
and I'm like, oh, I feel like just by her
being born, literally just her existing has healed so many
(23:01):
things in me that I didn't even know were broken,
which is very often I imagine this is very common
with people who dissociate that very often there are things
inside me that I don't recognize or even hurt until
they heal. And her being born, her simply existing, she's
(23:24):
like she could she could turn into the worst child ever,
like she will, but like just simply existing has changed
who I am, changed how I approach myself, how I
approach even my boys, how I approach other people, and
has healed a lot in me that I really just
(23:45):
didn't even realize was broken. It's like in real time
reparenting myself by parenting a tiny version.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
It's incredible.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It is so that's happening with her as opposed to
the boys. I didn't experience that with them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Have you heard of shadow work?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
I have? Yeah, but I don't feel like again, it's like,
is it autism or is it dissociation? I don't know.
Every time I've tried to, like look at the shadow
work stuff, I'm like, I don't know, Like I don't
know what I'm feeling, Like name your emotion. I'm like,
I don't, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Like you see, I can't do it either, right. But
what I can do, I know. I'm like, I'm a
psychologist who can't, who struggles to have empathy anyways. But
what I can do is I can I can picture
myself at any age and as my adult self. I
(24:48):
can go back and just give her a hug, give
her what she needed, and that to me, those are
like these moments of strengthening. But what I love about
you is you have your daughter to do that with,
and you know, like you could, you could be emailing her.
You know you're not old enough right now to read this,
but this is the lesson I want you to know.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I'm gonna feel feels. I yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
What about that?
Speaker 2 (25:17):
I It's just I don't I think I'm realizing the
more I heal that I'm actually a highly feeling person.
I feel a lot of things, and I think it
was just not safe to feel, and so everything makes
me feel feels Now I'm like, oh, can we not?
But yeah, I saw something the other day and it
(25:39):
was talking about very often as women who have any
sort of trauma, a sign of like our healing can
be how we start to love pink again. And I
didn't even think of that because before she was born.
You're never gonna catch me like with a pink pen,
with pink anything. My phone case is pink currently, and
(26:02):
so I'm like gravitating towards pink a lot. And it
was like this reclaiming of our femininity that can happen
a lot of the time as we heal, and I
had never seen anything like that on the internet, and
I just thought, I like that. I like thinking about
it that way, this idea of like getting your pink back,
(26:25):
especially after you have kids. It's just like a slightly
different take on it. And I was like, Okay, I
can accept that. That's why I like pink now, because
I'm like a blue person.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
So you're going to repaint your kitchen.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
I don't think I'll do that. You know, I'm still
I'm still like a turquoise, a teal, a big girl.
But also, you know, I purposely picked out the pink
phone case and I pick out some like really cute
girly stuff for my daughter, and it's like, oh, is
this is this who I would have been?
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Are these parts of me that are being uncovered as
I'm healing more? And it's just I think it's kind
of fun. Maybe that's just me getting older too, Like
it's kind of fun to figure out who we are
as we get older.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
So I mean, I love that. I love this topic
of you know, our kids can teach us. Our kids
are without even trying their teeth. They're making us grow
the fucking up.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
But I think every parent can understand when you say,
like I didn't get the kids that I wanted. I
got the kids that I needed because every single one
of my children has leveled me up in some way
that I didn't want to be leveled up in. And yeah,
I mean from my first he is probably like me.
(27:46):
He feels so intensely, and I am so fiercely protective
over that for him, and especially because he's a boy, right,
Like how often do people tell boys like you can't cry?
And then we have all these, you know, men that
don't have feelings in our society, and so I'm fiercely
protective over that for him. And then like my second
(28:07):
is very like touchy feely, huggy, and I am not.
I'm like, please don't, please, don't touch me. And then
that he has kind of like changed that. And he
also was very much like the impetus of my healing
journey even beginning. And then you know, my daughter I've
already said, she's like just existing is healing like baby me,
(28:28):
And it's yeah, I think it's it's a fine line
to walk between raising our children and allowing them to
heal parts of us. But if we're intentional, we can
do it with grace. And I think It's so helpful
for them to see that too, Like for kids to
see us try to regulate our emotions, to work through healing,
(28:53):
for us to like go through conflict and then have
resolution on the other side. I think all of that
is so important and makes them understand like life is
not gonna be easy for you. You're going to go
through difficult things, and this is how we navigate them
and and know that I'm a safe place for those things.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Definitely, I love how you put that. Yet we are
modeling how to be human, right, these little people who
aren't quite there yet.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Right, there's so many times that I think, like I
hold my kids to these really high standards, and I
kind of have to check myself sometimes and be like,
there's still little Like why do I expect things out
of them that adults don't know how to do? Like
I expect them to regulate their emotions and not have meltdowns?
(29:45):
How many grown ass men do I know that have
a full on meltdown when they tell me I'm fat
on the internet and I'm like, you fat? Like there
are so many grown adults who can't manage their emotions,
and yet we expected of our children like come on, Like,
I like, I just need to check myself, like what
is it triggering in me? I see them having these
(30:07):
feelings and I'm like, no, no, you can't have those
feelings because I'm not allowed to have those feelings. I
wasn't allowed to do those things. And so it's like
triggering something in me. And like it's just it's constantly learning.
Like when I feel the rage of a thousand suns
because of one little thing that they've done, I'm like, ooh, ooh,
(30:27):
what did that? What did that touch in me?
Speaker 1 (30:30):
And so how do you how do you go about parenting?
What is your How vigilant are you? How paranoid are you?
Oh and you have the addition of your career right
right where you and I both are probably a little
over the top. But also it's not going to be
(30:51):
our kids, so right, I know, I think.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
I think that I probably would have been one of
those parents that was like, oh, that stuff happens, but
it doesn't happen to me. It doesn't happen to my
kids if this has not happened. So but I also
kind of raise like slightly free ranged kids, they're like
borderline feral because I like I encourage them to make
(31:21):
choices and exercise their freedom. Now obviously not for the baby,
she didn't have any reasoning capabilities, But for my boys,
I allow them as much freedom and flexibility as we can,
because if they are going to make a mistake, if
they are going to fall, if they are going to
get hurt, which they are in their life right, Like,
(31:44):
let's face it, our kids are gonna fail. If they're
going to get hurt, something bad's gonna happen to them.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Like I can't handle it, I will die.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Okay, That's what I think all the time. So but
the reality is, do you know anyone who has gotten
through their life without something difficult happening? No, you don't.
Everybody has difficult things. So I try to keep that
in mind and recognize that as I'm sure you know,
(32:10):
the space between something difficult or something traumatic happening and
having quote trauma, that space is closed by your ability
to cope with the difficult things that happen. So my
kids are going to have difficult things that happen, and
so my job as a mom is to give them
coping mechanisms, to give them support and allow them to
(32:33):
fall and mess up while they're here in my home
and I can give them those tools. And now does
that mean I'm careless and I have it's like a
free for all and they run the roost. He'll no, Like,
that is not what's happening here. We have protections and
you know, like my kids don't play roeblocks or they
have you know, parental controls they have. We do the
(32:54):
gab watches because they want to go play in the woods.
They want to ride their scooters around, you know, they
want to do all of these things. And I think
that kids need that stuff, especially at a certain age,
like we're eight and eleven, like go go right around
the neighborhoods and see you when the lakes come on,
I don't care.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Well, it sounds like you've also instilled in them this
dis empowerment to protect themselves.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
I hope so. And I have a actually have a
funny story to tell you that.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Well.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
I always kind of question, you know, I think we
all do, Like what would happen, you know, if someone
tried to take my kid right, Like, I don't think
that that is the I don't think that that's the
big threat. When we talk about like kids being hurt nowadays,
but it still could happen, right. And so the place
(33:46):
where we lived before we where we live now, it
was forty five acres, several families that lived in this
general area. All the kids. There's little pack of kids
that run around, a bunch of boys. They call themselves
the wolf Pack, and they played like. There was this
big sandpile that they played in. And it was right
beside where I worked out. And so I worked out
(34:08):
in like a shop had a gym in there, and
I was working out kind of had, you know, my
headphones one one ear off, and the kids were out
there playing and then that that intuition kind of picked
up something's going on. And I walked out and looked
over at them, and what my intuition had picked up
is I didn't hear them playing anymore. And walked out
(34:31):
and there was a like suv parked in between the
kids and me, and this is like, no one comes
back here, right like you're you don't belong here, what
are you doing here? And so you know, of course
I walked up. There's a man in it. I walked up,
I said, hey, can I help you? He's like, oh,
oh yeah, sorry, I'm trying to meet someone about something
(34:52):
on marketplace, and I was like, all right, well, like
he's not here right now, so I'll let him know
that you're you know that you're here whatever, and so
that all gets settled. Guy goes off. The boys all
came to me after this, So my boys and the
other boys and they said, they said, miss Kara is
(35:13):
one of the other little boys. Miss Kara, do you
know what we did? And I was like, no, what
did you do? And he was like, so my son,
he was like, I don't. I don't say his name,
so I don't know how to tell the story with that.
So they said that son, yeah, they said, my son
saw this person come up and he was like, that's
(35:33):
a stranger. And he was like, everyone gets your pointy sticks.
And so there was literally a pack of little boys
with pointy sticks like Lord of the Flies standing there
with their like there's like six of them with sharpened
sticks staring this guy down like stranger defend the pack
Like like, well, I guess they're gonna be okay, Like
(35:57):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
How did they learn that?
Speaker 2 (35:59):
I I don't know. I guess it's just My son
was kind of the oldest and so he was inherently
kind of the leader of the pack, and and he
is so intuitive. I mean, I can't do this job
in my house. Like my kids know my story to
an age appropriate level, and so they're they're aware of,
(36:20):
you know, the fact that I was taken by a
stranger from my friend's front yard, and so I think
that they're they kind of have a little bit of
knowledge of that kind of thing. But I just was like,
oh my god, they had sharp sticks and they were like,
nobody's taken us, like band together.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
It's fucking amazing.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
I was like, all right, y'all are good, y'all are good?
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Like well, I was walking yesterday with my daughter, she's eight,
and she held my hand and because she doesn't really
want to hold hands right now, because like she's at
that age where it's not cool anymore, but she held
my hand and she was like, Mom, there's this seventy
percent chance that this guy walking towards us is homeless,
and I'm not quite sure, so I'm just letting you know.
And I was like, seventy do you even know what
(37:01):
percentages are? Like I do your homework on chat GPT, right.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Right, Well, have you heard of the I'm sure you've
heard of the Gift of fear?
Speaker 1 (37:12):
Oh yes, yeah, And what's what's the kid one called?
I don't know. That's all I'm going to talk about,
but protect our protecting the gift. The original book is
about you trusting your intuition and protecting yourself right, especially
as a woman. And he really throws out some hard
stats that people don't like. And it's not his area
(37:34):
of expertise in that he went to school, but he
has been a PI and he's been in these incredible
situations and so I did his training actually like in
Lake Arrahead, California for the weekend. I loved it. But
then this book where he says how to be a
parent and it's okay, these are things that are okay
(37:55):
to teach your kids, which some of the book was
like a little outlandish, but some I loved. Like one
thing I loved was, uh, you know what happens in
an emergency when everyone's running through the front doors and
they're leaving, and he says, you know, teach your kids
to go through the back exit because that's where no
one else is going to go.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Yeah, Or like he talks about things like like kind
of allowing your kids to profile a little bit. And
it's kind of like, ugh, society doesn't really tell us
that that's okay, but but fuck it, right, But also
I don't hear like that's what I tell I tell
you know, people online all the time when they want
(38:36):
to know, like how do I keep myself safe? I'm like,
I don't give a shit if people think I'm nice. Like,
if it comes down to I don't like the way
that person looks, I can either hurt their feelings or
I can possibly make me and my children a victim,
I don't give a shit about that person's feelings. I'm
never going to see that person again. But if it, like,
(38:58):
if something within me is saying I don't like that
person then, and like kids are born with these same
intuitive powers that we often will be like that's not
politically correct to think that way or to act that way,
but if something is telling them, like your daughter like
something about that guy was like feeling furtive to her, right,
(39:21):
and you would have been like, oh, honey, but he
might just be down on his luck. Let's be nice
to him, right, Like, which, absolutely I think there's something
to be said about that, but don't.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
But say it later, right, exactly like what I tell
her like, And I've posted videos on this and I've
gotten so much hate on this, but I tell her to,
you know, describe a homeless man, describe a dangerous man,
like describe someone hallucinating. And a lot of the time
she'll say, I look at their shoes, and it's like,
(39:53):
it's really insightful for her to gage people by the
cleanliness of their shoes. And the hate I get is like, well,
if it's a construction worker, you've just taught her to
like hate against the working professionals or blue collar And
I'm like, I don't care. I'll talk to her later
about it. I'll be like, honey that it was kind
of your a judgment on the little bitch, but you're
you're safe.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
I like, yeah, I honestly don't care. And that's that's
the thing that I tell people. I think we as
women and this is the biggest lesson that I got from.
So I am Also I know James Hamilton, who he
was the VP of Gavin de Becker and Associates, and
so he worked very closely with Gavin and I had
(40:33):
him on my podcast, and so I've had multiple conversations
with him about this, and it's like the big thing
that I tell people is it doesn't matter. We as
women are taught like, oh, you have to be nice.
You can't hurt anybody's feelings. And he's like screw that.
He's like, hurt people's feelings, Like it doesn't matter. And
at the end of the day, especially if you're not
(40:55):
going to see that person again. Like I just tell
people all the time, like, listen to your intuition. If
something is saying making you feel uneasy, that means that
your survival mechanism that is within your head, within your
your not even just your head, it is within your
whole nervous system, your whole body is picking up on
something that you might not. And one of the things
(41:16):
that James said is he was like, you know, people
liked to say, oh, my dog didn't like someone, my dog,
and it's like, no, no, your dog is picking up
on your cues that you aren't even recognizing, Like your
dog is smelling your fear. He's picking up on how
your body behavior, like your body language is changing, how
your behavior is changing, and he is responding to that
(41:37):
and and.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
I was like, yeah, like that's that's incredible.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Yeah, it's it's so amazing. So that's the biggest thing.
When people are like, how do you keep yourself safe,
I'm like, listen to your freaking intuition. Don't walk down
the street with your headphones on looking at your phone,
Like stand up, hold yourself up straight, make eye contact
with people. Don't don't make yourself an easy victim, because
right generally, someone is going to pick someone as a
(42:04):
victim who looks easy. Like if you look scrappy, you
look like you're gonna fight somebody, they're probably not going
to pick you, unless they're just like full on sociopath.
But most people are not going to pick the person
that's going to remember their face, that's going to fight,
that's paying attention. They want a victim of.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Opportunity, right exactly, Like let's get it done and get
it over with. Hell yeah, I love that, and I
think you know, even my son's four now, I teach
him to scream, Like we just practice screaming. I love it,
And I ask him when you know, like like Gavin
Debacker would say, like we go for walks and I
(42:41):
ask him, like, you know, who would you go to
for help? And then we sit down and we talk
about why why'd you pick that person? You're doing, you know,
and then we practice it too, like go up to
this person and ask if you can borrow a pencil,
and then he picks the person and in his little
it's like, you know, practice from age, you know, from words, right,
(43:03):
but even before that, they're watching you. Yeah, I think
it's incredible, and it's time for a break.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
We do this little game sometimes when we're waiting. I
am very aware of trying to teach my kids also,
like one of the things that a lot of us
are not good about, which is like the ability to
just wait somewhere without being on your device being distracted.
And so one of the things that we do that
I more or less picked up from conversations with James
(43:37):
is we'll be in a room. So the most recent time,
as we were at the VET, we're you know, in
the little waiting room with the cat, and like, okay,
look around the room, all right, close your eyes and
I'm going to ask you a question about the room.
And so it just teaches them to notice things. So
it's like, okay, how many windows are in the room. Okay,
there's you know, a bookcase over here. How many shelves
(43:58):
are on it, just different little things. It teaches them
to just be more aware of their surroundings. And you know,
it's just it's constant work. But if we're not learning
these things ourselves, like if we're not paying attention to
our surroundings, then how are we teaching our kids to
do that. So I think that people need to recognize
that when it comes to keeping our kids safe, that's
(44:20):
something we can do. In terms of stranger dager. Now,
the more real fear, I think often is people that
are close to you. It's usually like a known acquaintance
that's going to harm children unfortunately, And so that comes
into like making me a safe space. So I can
do everything that I can to make my kids safe,
(44:41):
but I'm not going to be reckless. But still sometimes
stuff can happen. It could be another kid, right like
they could be at a plan playing with another kid
and then teaching, you know, proper anatomical terms, teaching that
they can say no about their body. You know, like
one of my kids, I can't make him wear underwear.
(45:02):
And it's like, you know, you need to understand that
if you're wearing shorts during the summer, if you sit
a certain way, somebody's gonna see your stuff, like and
you're gonna have to wash your shorts a lot more.
But listen, if that's what your body feels good with
practice saying no, like practice saying no about your body.
And then things things.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Like what you did though, with talking to them about
you know, looking into the memorizing the room, in the
areas of the room. I mean, that's what you did
to save your own life.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
Right, how weird I mean, but I know I didn't
really think of that connection.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
But yeah, you, I mean that was somehow that became
you at fifteen, Right, that's incredible, I know. And then
where does that come from?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
I think that's why I'm saying, you have an amazing brain,
and I want to analyze it.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
But I want to know all the things.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
But no, you, I mean, talk to me a bit
about your profession and now, because I think you are
just such a perfect fit for what you've chosen for life.
Tell the world, like, where can they find you? Where
can they like love you?
Speaker 2 (46:18):
Social media? I am an unwilling I am a captive
of social media. I'm unwillingly being held captive by social media. No,
most days I'm okay. Some days I don't like being there.
So I'm everywhere on social media care Robinson Chamberlain. My
website's care Robinson Chamberlain dot com. I do Keynotes. I
(46:40):
do a lot of advocacy work via social media, just
kind of like spreading knowledge and awareness and talking about
the different dynamics of what it means to be a
victim of a crime, and then moving forward and share
my experiences working in law enforcement. That's a lot of
what I do in keynotes as well. All is how
(47:01):
do we support people? Because I had a variety of
experiences where people treated me like a victim as opposed
to a survivor. I had a lot of different perspectives
of what that looks like. And really it's kind of simple,
like how you do that? And so it's kind of
like my day to day I'm working on I'm always
working on things, projects and workbooks and books and TV
(47:24):
shows and there's always I'm always spinning some plates in
the background.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
I love that. Yeah, I love it. So it's your
story is incredible and where you've taken it is incredible,
I think. So I have a question for you, and
it's actually based on a video that I saw on
social media yesterday where a professor asks a huge class,
(47:53):
maybe like one hundred and fifty students, if you or
someone you know has been sexually assaulted? State end up,
and the whole class stood up, and they look like
undergrads maybe, And then the professor asked if that person,
if you were that person, reported it, stay standing. Everyone
(48:15):
sat down.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Isn't that heavy?
Speaker 1 (48:19):
It was very heavy, and I wasn't expecting it. But
of course, you know, my algorithm as fucked because of
all this content. I'm sure yours is too. But what
what is your message for someone who is either going
to go to a friend who is sexually assaulted or
someone who was sexually assaulted? You know, how can we
(48:41):
how can we be there for them?
Speaker 2 (48:44):
That's such a great question, and I think the first thing,
the very very first thing that we do, is we
believe them. That's it. You don't need to know why,
you don't need to know, you don't. I think one
of the things we often do by nature as humans
is we want to try to understand why someone would
(49:06):
victimize someone else, and so we might want to ask
questions to try to help us understand how someone could
be a perpetrator, but you don't need to ask the
victim that you don't need to ask those questions because
it feels like you are blaming them very often. So
(49:27):
you just need to show up, and you need to
start by believing. So you just need and you One
of my pet peeves is when people say I'm so
sorry that happened, because I feel like I am then
put in the place that I need to reassure that person, No,
I'm fine, it's fine.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Fine.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
So I almost prefer thank you for sharing that with me,
thank you for feeling safe enough to share that with me.
It really sucks. That sucks. And then I think offer
having ways that you can offer to help them, not
let me know how I can help you, let me
(50:06):
know when I can help you. It's can I can
I buy you some groceries? Can I bring you a meal?
Can I help you fill out your Victims Services forms?
Can I can I be with you through the court process?
Can I help you you know, with your statement? Just
very tangible things, And this is kind of applicable for
(50:28):
anyone who's going through anything difficult. Honestly, it's just showing up,
being there and really kind of listening to what they're
saying and sometimes what they're not saying they need because
so many people like Kara, you have to get therapy.
You have to get therapy. It's something my mother, Carrie's
guilt about that she didn't make me go to therapy.
(50:52):
And I said, no, you did the absolute right thing. Now,
in two thousand and two, there wasn't a handbook that
said when your child is a victim of sexual assault,
here's what you do. Now they're probably are a million
of them. But she listened to me. I said, I
don't I don't want to do therapy. Had she forced
me would have been a very different situation. It wouldn't
have been effective. But she listened to what I was saying.
(51:13):
I need it in that moment, and I was like,
I just need everyone to treat me normal again. I
just I don't want everybody walking on eggshells around me.
And so I think it's believe them, be there, Be
consistently there when you say you're going to be there,
be there. Don't make promises you can't keep, and just
(51:34):
do the tangible things. Just offer to do something and
then just do it. I think those are the biggest
things and then I guess if you're someone who actually
is walking through that, just recognize that healing is not
a straightforward journey and you're gonna you're going to get
through it. You can get through it. You've already done
the hardest part. You've gotten through the actual situation and
(51:59):
it wasn't your fault. The thing that happened, it wasn't
your fault. But the healing is your responsibility. No one's
coming to save you, No one's going to heal you,
even if you go to therapy. The therapist is the
counselor the psychiatrist, the psychologists, they're just going to give
you the tools to heal yourself. So understand it's not fair.
(52:20):
It absolutely is not fair. But you're responsible to heal
yourself and you're capable of it.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Show up for yourself because you can.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
Yeah, yeah, and it's not easy, but like life is
not easy, like I wish it was. But also like
if you're eating ice cream all the time, eventually you're
gonna be like I might need a stake either, right,
Like you kind of have to have like the good
and the bad because you can't appreciate the good if
you don't have difficult times then it's you just you
(52:52):
can't appreciate as much. And you know, the difficult things
are what caused us to grow and become stronger. And
so just recognize that that you might one day find
purpose in your pain.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
I love that. That needs to be the T shirt
you sell, right, I know, purpose in pain. I have
so much trademarket.
Speaker 2 (53:14):
I know right well, I historically have k taglined everything
not defined. And that's the working title of a book
if I have it, because it's like, you know, especially
social media wants to pigeonhole you, like are you that
girl that I kidnapped? I'm like that was like twenty two,
twenty three years ago, Like can we talk about something else?
Like I'm a lot more than that, Like I'm not
(53:36):
defined by someone else's actions. I would like to be
defined by what I've done after that.
Speaker 1 (53:42):
Yeah, And I think that this hour shows exactly that
in so many ways. Incredible mother, survivor, advocate, teacher, leader,
just doing my best, I mean and even like just
the cats are trying to get to you.
Speaker 3 (54:02):
Well, you're someone's always trying to get to me. Everyone
needs me all the time, Needy creatures, they don't want
to touch me exactly right?
Speaker 2 (54:13):
Did we say that? Do we say I don't like
being touched?
Speaker 1 (54:15):
No, we don't follow mel Robin's theory of let them.
We don't let them just touch us.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
God needs a body autonomy. Everyone's trying to like stick
their hands in my armpits in my mouth and like
ew yeah yeah, why do you all need to be inside?
I say they all want to like inhale my ex hials.
I'm like, can we do some space?
Speaker 1 (54:35):
Right? What does a mom want for Mother's Day?
Speaker 2 (54:38):
Like just to be left the heckalone for a little while, for.
Speaker 1 (54:42):
No one to touch her who has ever been inside her?
And that counts for the husband too.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
Although I was like last year for Brother's Day, Everyone's like,
what do you want to do? And I was like,
I want to go to brunch and then I want
to go to the trampoline park. I was like, I
feel like this. The one place that will not be
crowded on Mother's Day is probably the trampoline part because
everyone's like afraid they're gonna peel on themselves. I'm like,
I'm good in that department. I just want to jump.
I just want to have one, so you know, I
(55:11):
want to not be touched. I want yummy food and
coffee and to jump on a trampoline. My neds are minible.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
Good. I'm really grateful you took the time to do
this and to talk to me.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
Yeah, of course it's been fun.
Speaker 1 (55:28):
But thank you.
Speaker 2 (55:29):
Of course, of course it's been great.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
Thank you for watching another episode of Intentionally Disturbing. That
was Kara. I think she is absolutely incredible. I love
that today she bought a T shirt that said too
fat to kidnap. She has an incredibly dark sense of
humor too that we didn't get to fully see. But
her experience is incredible, and what she can teach you,
I think you need to listen. And I'm so happy
(55:57):
that she has social media platform and that she is
available for keynote speaking. She can empower you as a woman,
as a man, and help you as a parent. And
so I'm just really really happy that you got a
chance to watch that episode and hear us go back
and forth about living our lives in twenty twenty five.
(56:20):
See you next time on Intentionally Disturbing
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