Abandoned at Age 13 by His Mother: The Sam + Reed Harkness Story

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Sam Harkness was thirteen years old when his mother left
one day, leaving no note, no forwarding address, no information
on where she was going. Sam and his brothers were
then left with the question of not only why, but
also where and how. The telling of Sam's story is
all the more remarkable because Sam's half brother, Read Harkness,

(00:24):
made a series of films about Sam's antics while he
was a child and an adolescent. The film Sam Now
beautifully intercuts this footage of Sam the child with Sam
the adult on a journey to find his mother and
the far more complex journey of what to do when

(00:45):
he finally finds her. It's the story of complex and
difficult personalities in a family, how they affect everyone, the
challenges in balancing empathy, compassion, boundaries, and reality at how
healing is a process of evolution. This podcast should not

(01:06):
be used as a substitute for medical or mental health advice.
Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and
or therapy from a healthcare professional with respect to any
medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters
discussed on this podcast. The views and opinions expressed are

(01:29):
solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in
the podcast, and do not represent the opinions of Red
Table Talk Productions, iHeartMedia, or their employees. So Sam and Reid,
welcome to Navigating Narcissism. Your film is one of those
films I call sort of a film that sticks to

(01:51):
the hippocampus. You can't quite shake it. It's so visually beautiful.
It's a richly told story. It is such a unique
use of foot I can't wait till everyone in the
world can see this film because it is actually one
of the more beautiful, evocative films I've seen. Your dream
is a psychologist dream. So thank you for bringing your
art into the world. It's wonderful to our listeners. Sam

(02:14):
and Read our brothers. Sam is a subject of this film.
Read is a filmmaker, and what's stunning about the film
is it stitches together twenty five years of home videos.
Read shot of Sam and their film. Sam Now is
really a movie about love. It's about longing, it's about loss,
it's about family, and it's also about intergenerational issues within

(02:38):
a family and understanding how the trauma and loss of
one generation pays forward into another and how it impacts them.
So that's my take on it, my shrinky take. I
would love to hear from both of you. Tell us
please a little bit about the film.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Thank you so much for then intro. This is a
film I started when I was a teenager, and I
persisted for twenty five years. And the reason why is
because I was really interested in some characteristics about my
little brother. He's my half brother, and this sort of

(03:13):
resilient attitude he had. He would always take falls but
then bounce right back up, which is not something I
naturally do. So I kept filming him over the years
and started to learn more about him and see this
kid kind of grow up. At this point that we
bring up making a film about Sam's missing mother, my stepmother.

(03:36):
She disappeared one day from our family without telling anyone.
This is a shock to the family. Nobody expects it,
and eventually the police are contacted and weeks later, a
missing person's detective gets back to our family and says,
we found her. She's not being held against her will

(03:59):
and she doesn't want to any of you. So we're
left with that for the next three years, and it's
a really awkward thing in the family. The adults don't
seem to know what to do, and our brother Jared
is very depressed and is dropping out of school, and
there's not much support for Sam either, So it becomes

(04:20):
a strange thing where I find, as the older brother
that I should get involved.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Can I ask you, Sam? And I think listeners almost
need a moment to take this in.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
You.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Basically, one day your mother disappeared, and then not only
do you find out that it wasn't an accident or
something like that, but that she's very much alive and
doesn't want to talk to you. This is so many
layered losses that for many people it's incomprehensible. Interestingly, the
story of the father leaving is one that I don't
want to say quite normalized, but it's definitely sort of

(04:52):
steeped in the culture. The idea of a mother leaving
is a very rare and anomalous experience. And so so Sam,
how old were you at the time your mother left?

Speaker 3 (05:03):
It was right when I was entering high school, so
right before my freshman year May it was thirteen.

Speaker 4 (05:07):
Yeah, okay, so thirteen.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
The reason I want to know the age is that
that's actually a pretty significant juncture, right, This is sort
of now a boy, girl, anyone. It's in puberty and
coming out of puberty into adolescence, and so's there's a lot.
There's a lot happening even on a good day for
the average thirteen year old boy.

Speaker 4 (05:26):
Let alone. Now you're a thirteen year.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Old boy about to go to high school and your
mother has disappeared. Is Jared younger than you or older
than you?

Speaker 3 (05:34):
Older by two and a half years.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
So Jared's an adolescent. You're coming into adolescence, and now
your mom is gone. So before we get to that,
what was your relationship like with your mom when she
was still there and you were living with her.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
Yes, So, firstly, my parents were divorced, and so it
was a very i think typical split time. A custody
between the two parents was every other weekend in a
couple of week days at my mom's house, and I
think we had a close relationship. I think I was
closer with my dad solely because I was very into
athletics and sports and he really nourished that part of me.

(06:14):
And also a lot of my friends were in my
dad's neighborhood. So sometimes when we're at my mom's house,
it was kind of a little more isolation. But my
mom was really responsible for a lot of like academics
and keeping up with a lot of our social lives. Again,
even though it wasn't necessarily in her neighborhood, she kept
up on like birthday parties and making sure we made

(06:36):
those in planning play dates and all these things. I
think she understood my social life better and knew a
lot of my friends and my friend's parents as well.
She was more on top of, like meals every night,
more on top of routine.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
I would say, I'm so glad you shared that, Sam,
because you know, I think that one would say a
mom would abandon a child or move away or just disappear,
that maybe they weren't being a mom before they left.

Speaker 4 (07:01):
But what you're describing is very mom stuff.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Routines and meals and setting up playdates and social life
and homework.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
I mean, that's momming.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
And so you know you very much had that relationship
with her. Frankly, sand which magnifies the magnitude of the loss,
because it wasn't like this was a checked out mom.
What I'm hearing from you is that she actually, at
least on these measures, was very present and was doing
the things we would expect that a mother would do
for both you and your brother.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yeah, And I would even say that I had the
not to like rate the relationships for my mom and
my brothers. But I think I had the lowest kind
of attachment to her between my brothers, and so my
brother Jared had an even stronger attachment. I think the
way me and my dad kind of vibed in sports
and whatnot, my brother Jared and my mom vibed a

(07:52):
lot more with everything else. Like he was much more
of an academic and she was very much into that.
And it's not like I had a batterlyhip with her.
Is this more that I could see there was more
of a closeness with them.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
And read I know that she was your stepmother. How
did that affect you? You were quite a bit older.
How did it affect you when she left?

Speaker 2 (08:11):
She left right around a time when I was also
like moving out and I was actually living in Portland
at the time. I thought it was just like the
strangest thing, and thought that she was just going to
come back like any day.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
You know.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
It's like seemed like the kind of thing where it's like, Okay,
something's happened and she's she's going to be back any day,
and then time passes. I keep checking in with our
dad and there's no news, and it gets weirder and
weirder as time goes on.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
So, Sam, can you share what it was like in
those early days your mom's disappeared and it took a
minute to figure out what had happened. What was that
early period of time like for you, not just when
she had first left, but then when there's recognition that
she was okay, but that she did not want to
talk to you. How did all of that feel and
play out.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
For you initially? I think like one of the big
memories that sticks out to me was continuing to go
to my stepdad's house even when my mom was very
clearly gone and not well maybe we didn't know she
was coming back yet, but there was like a good
couple of months where we continued the routine of going
over to my stepdad's house and we would literally Jared

(09:21):
and I would show up asking my stepdad, Hey, is
mom home, and then he would say no, and then
he would ask questions back to us, have you heard
from her? And it was a very bizarre exchange. And
that's kind of what it's referencing with a little bit
of the role reversal, where sometimes I felt like we
also had to have some responsibility for where she was

(09:41):
or having tabs on what's going on and when we
had no idea. But that was kind of when I
think it was starting to hit that I was like,
this is not normal that we just keep going to
this house expecting her to be there and she's not.
And then when we found out that she wasn't coming
back we kind of heard about the investigator and that
she wasn't gonna be returning, that was hard. But I

(10:06):
think that's when I made a pretty quick switch, and
I probably didn't emotionally process it very easily. I think
I switched to like, oh, I'm independent, I'm a young man,
I can do this, I've been able to do this,
and really just put off processing it all together and
didn't really think about it too much.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
So in a way, Sam, I'm hearing, it's almost like
you managed it a little bit like one might a death,
Like she's gone, that's it, keep going.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yeah, I'd say.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
So.

Speaker 3 (10:32):
We'd get gifts sent to us like Christmas and our birthdays,
and she had made sure that you couldn't track where
they were coming from. And so gift giving is kind
of a triggering thing for me sometimes. So especially like packages,
that was a thing that like, I don't know, held
some sort of hope for me. Sometimes was like these
these packages that would show up and almost like a

(10:53):
replacement for her presence, but I you know, I don't know,
held on to it in some kind of way. That
was like, oh, she is coming back, and.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
Yeah, hope can be a miraculous thing and a treacherous thing.
The gifts that would come from a person who disappeared
who is your mother, and who didn't want to be
found but was still making her presence known clearly brought
up a mix of emotions. In an ambiguous situation like this,

(11:23):
Hope is really tricky. It begs the question of whether
it would have been easier if she didn't send the
gifts at all, so Sam and his brothers could just
move on. Hope can create connective tissue in a relationship
even when the person is physically gone. So it fostered
a hope and in a way then that gift actually

(11:45):
had quite a different impact. And I mean, at some
level one would say we would never know We'll never
know what her agenda was in sending those gifts, because
there was you know, to send a gift from a
mother that you'd have once had, who has no intention
of maintaining a relationship with you is an incredibly confusing experience.
The question I have for you, Sam, it's interesting you're

(12:06):
going back to your stepfather's. Your mother's clearly not there,
your stepfather's asking you have you heard from her? I
want to understand where the grown ups were in all
of this, Like were your feelings being processed? Were there
people so solicitous of you and holding you close and
protecting you and soothing you. I'm confused as to why

(12:28):
they'd send you there, Like why they wouldn't just keep
you in one place until that all got figured out?
So can you break that down a little, because I
don't actually even fully understand that.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
Yeah, I would say that the Harkness family is very
good at physically showing up and kind of like you
mentioned that protective. They'll form that protective bubble around you
and make sure your needs are met and be there.
But the hard conversations aren't had, and the asking for
you know how I'm feeling, or the emotional processing support

(13:00):
isn't there really either. But you know, my grandma was
there so much for me, just when my dad needed
help with childcare. I think I was over at her
house probably, and she lives two blocks away from my
dad's house, which was really convenient, and she's kind of
got this open door policy that you know, me and
my brother were probably there eating dinner five or six

(13:20):
nights of the week. And again she was there. She
was great, But I don't remember anybody really coming to
like ask us about what was happening.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
And for you read because obviously you were in the
family system though you were moving away. First of all,
what was your relationship like with her? And then how
did that you know, how did you manage those early
days of her being gone, and then when it got
confirmed she's not coming back.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
Before she left, I felt like our relationship had gotten
kind of closer and closer, even though you know, she's
got this whole separate house that's a little bit more
removed from the Harkness family. I would go over there.
My stepbrother's close in age to me, so like we
would do sleepovers over there, hang out with my brothers,
And I felt like, as I got older, I got

(14:09):
closer with Joyce because we really shared this sort of
like artistic drive, and she was really encouraging of like
me taking Sam out and doing the filmmaking them we
were doing. She was like, that's so great, you know,
Like she would just be so excited and she's like
I'd be like, okay, I'm here to pick up Sam,
and she's like great, you know. She just she was

(14:31):
so encouraging. So I think that my memory of her
before leaving was that same kind of energy, And so
I had a kind of blind optimism when it comes
to this sort of road trip idea, that it's like,
if we can find her, like she'll at least be
able to connect with us in some way, you know.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
And I want to come into that road trip because
this is the significant piece of the film before I
get to that for either of you. Because I think
a lot of viewers, myself included when I saw the film,
are going to wonder did anyone, even children in the family,
see any red flags that would have led you not

(15:09):
to say, well, of course she's going to leave, because
obviously you were all startled by it. But when you
told the story backwards, you felt like Okay, this doesn't
this isn't completely in a vacuum or out of nowhere.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:22):
I think a couple months before she left, she was
taking a few trips. I remember her going to Texas
a couple times and maybe California once, and that was
a little bit out of the ordinary for her. I
don't remember her traveling much at all besides maybe to
go visit her parents in Oregon. And we didn't go
on trips very often either. When I traveled, it was

(15:42):
usually with my dad. Yeah, not a lot with my
mom and her doing solo trips. That was like a
little bit of like, oh, that's interesting that she's traveling
by herself, not with my stepdad. But we were very
well informed about it. We knew when she was leaving,
when she was coming back, and all that. So again
wasn't a red flag at the time, but now that
I'm thinking about it, that was like, it's interesting to
think about.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
Okay, So there was things that while they were happening,
you never nobody, Sam whatever connected dots of she went
to Texas and California, She's going to leave.

Speaker 4 (16:10):
I mean, that's not how you connect that.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
But then you go backwards and you say, there was
that slight change in behavior.

Speaker 4 (16:17):
What about you read you were a little older.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
Was there anything you were observing that now in retrospect
you thought no.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
But when we started making a film about this, I
did a really deep investigation where I was talking to
all of our family members and all of her friends
at the time, and stuff came out through that. So, like,
I learned that she started kind of retreating from friendships,
long term friendships, and she was demoted at a job,

(16:45):
and a few things were happening that kind of might
have sent her to a place of feeling like she
just her old life had kind of come to a
place where she just wasn't happy.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
Okay, So again things that be told backwards, but in
real time, hey, you didn't know some of those things
until afterwards or be when they were happening. It would
have been a bit of a leap of conceptual leap
to say, oh, she's gone to Texas, so she's going
to leave.

Speaker 4 (17:10):
So I understand that.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
But what I want to do now is really get
into this idea of the road trip, because this is
why this is such a wonderful film, because not only
is there this beautiful footage of a boy growing up,
told through the lens of his brother. Then all of
a sudden, it becomes a road trip film, which, of
who doesn't love a road trip film and.

Speaker 4 (17:29):
A very very unique road trip.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
It wasn't even until after I talked to Read and
Sam that it jumped out to me that healing is
a road trip and it's fashion, even if it's not
literally in a car. Survivors of any kind of difficult,
confusing relationship, especially if it is something as formative as
a relationship with a parent, feel compelled to sort of

(17:56):
go on a bit of a journey to figure it out.
Read and Sam got into a are to literally look
for their mother and stepmother. Most survivors do this psychologically.
They explore and ask questions and go backwards and forwards
in their mind to figure it out.

Speaker 4 (18:12):
Where did this go? What just happened?

Speaker 1 (18:15):
So would lud love to do, is have you share
with us what the goal of the road trip was
going to be, what you hoped would happen from both
of your perspectives. So here you are setting off on
a road trip, honestly like no other. What was the
goal of this road trip?

Speaker 2 (18:32):
Sam was so gung how about this He's like, this
is happening during my midwinter break. This is the only
window I have my schedule. Is really important that this
is the timeframe that I have. So I was like, Okay, okay,
I guess, I guess. I guess we're going then. And
I was not prepared. First of all, I'm the only
one that's got a driver's license. And then and then

(18:55):
like we're borrowing our dad's minivan, and like we don't
have any money, and so we're like borrowing money from
family members. Our grandma sends us with like a batch
of cookies, and you know, we didn't really have a
solid lead, but we had one location, and we have

(19:15):
this location in Long Beach, California. There's supposed to be
like a history professor that might have been in contact
with her. So we're like, hey, we're gonna just like
go down there and meet this guy in his office hour.
So that's gonna be your best shot.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
So how did you come to the determination about the
professor in Long Beach? Did you look at old correspondence?
Was it a recollection you had?

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah, so it came up through these interviews. I was
doing this like in a research investigative process. That I
was doing. We're doing it through the film, and you
can see how that comes about our step brother Peter,
through Joyce's first marriage. He's about my age. We were
having a conversation and he mentioned a name, and through

(20:02):
research we figured out that he was down at this university.
And we thought that if we just cold called him
that he might just like hang up on us, you know,
too easy for him to just like, you know, go cold,
and so we thought our best shot was to, like,
you know, okay, here's the actual relatives. Showing up at

(20:24):
his office after driving a thousand miles, that's probably like,
you know, he's probably like entertained us, you know.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
Okay, So you get in the minivan, you point it south,
you drive one thousand miles, You show up at the
university in Long Beach, and smartly, so you show up
at office hours when all of us professors had to
have our doors open.

Speaker 4 (20:45):
What happened when you got to Long Beach and showed
up at the university, he wasn't there.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
As we often are professors often missed their office hour.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
We get there and not only is he like not
there at the time, but we're told he's on semi
permanent leave of absence. He's out, so is super discouraging.
Just a really upsetting thing for me, who you know,
figured this was our one shot.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
It did feel like almost this just you know, sign
on the wall saying like you failed, like you this
is it? That was it? Like you drove all this
way and you you failed. It's kind of just like
what I like running into a wall immediately.

Speaker 4 (21:30):
So was the road tripe or bust.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
No. Right after that, we went to the beach to
throw a frisbee and deliberate, and you know, Sam is
still maintaining is cool. He's like, eh, well we're at
the beach. Let's throw a frisbee. I was ready to
break down, and I thought I was going to be
the one that, like, you know, Sam might be crawling
on my shoulder. But at this point I think, like
I'm ready to lose it, and Sam's being the sort

(21:54):
of stable one. And I realized in my notes that
I have I have a few phone numbers listings I
had found for this professor, and so we decide on
this beach to start making some phone calls.

Speaker 3 (22:11):
Well, I think we practice. Reid has me practice like
if your mom picks up or if Professor Goslin picks up,
what do you say? I was like, oh, yeah, well
I'll just say that I'm Sam, I'm her kid, or
you know, my mom picks up, I say, hi Mom.
I remember feeling excited because I had like some giddy energy.
I think you can see it in the movie that
you know. I'm like kind of smiling through everything I'm saying.

(22:33):
And I make the call and my mom picks up.
I say, like Mom, and then I think she picks
up that it's me pretty quickly too. I think I
like talk for like five minutes straight, just updating her
without her even like getting much of a word in.
And I'm just updating her on my life, in Jared's
life and what I'm doing. And I was like, I'm

(22:54):
in California. I was looking for you, as if that's
a really normal thing to like like in an introduction, Hey,
I was looking for you, And well let me tell
you about Like I've traveled to Europe, I've done all
this stuff, and I've been to Japan.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
Yeah, I got a girlfriend girlfriend Jared.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah. And then it does end with an invite over
to see her, to come see her, but also with
a pretty like Stern. Don't tell anybody you found me
or where I am, or that you've spoken to me.
And I think that was kind of understood from the beginning, like, yeah,
you've gone through a lot of effort to not be found.
I'm not going to just tell everybody where you are.

(23:34):
But it both ends with this welcoming like you and
reed come come see me, come in person, and also
don't tell people about this.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
I have to say that that moment of the film
was incredibly, incredibly affecting for me, when you are sitting
on the beach talking on the phone, and what was
amazing to me, Sam, amazing was you literally did just
jump into a conversation, like just kind of giving her
an update, as though she was someone who had been
on a business trip and you hadn't talked to her

(24:04):
for a week or two.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
Right.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
I have to say, Sam, the vast majority of people
in your situation would have become rageful, angry, accusatory. How
could you There's something very special about you. I have
to say. Your brother captured it initially saying you're very resilient,
And it was there that I actually to pause the film.

Speaker 4 (24:29):
At that point.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
I was almost sort of crying and upset, like, how
is he able to do this? And he should be
angry at her, like as though Sam was responsible for
channeling my emotion in that scene, right, anyone who watches
this an incredibly powerful scene. And so how did you
just spring into just the update instead of not only

(24:50):
did you give her the update and not going to
all the accusations. Then she's asking you, hey, please do
not if you will blow my cover, not share this.
Like I said, the vast majority of people will say
to heck with you? Do you know how many people affected?
You affected Jared and what it said? I am telling
everyone where you are you had no right to know

(25:11):
you respected that boundary. You kind of were being sort
of blue lanterny there. That was sort of kind of
epic because I think a lot of people would say,
I'm not keeping your secret, I'm not doing this, and
would have likely reacted with a lot of negative emotion
at the time of the call. So how did that
play out for you and what was happening inside of
you that you were able to just make this about

(25:33):
update and you and Read were able to show up
and not violate something she asked you to do.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
From the very beginning as little foresight as I had
back then in that trip, I think the one thing
I knew I did want was to just pick up
where he left off with my mom's relationship and not
have to hold your accountable to anything. I don't think
holding it an accountable was ever a goal of mine,

(25:59):
and in fact was an area I wanted to stay
clear of to not scare her away. I think I
was worried about that as well. I even thought, like
sometimes when the camera was around when we first get
to see her, when Reid and I got to see her, like,
I had a little bit anxiety about that, and like,
maybe we should put the camera away read maybe we
shouldn't film this, as you know, a major possibility of

(26:19):
her being scared away and disappearing again and being inhearder
to find. So I hear and see people like kind
of see that more like as resilience in bravery, and
I see a lot more as I'm willing to ignore.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Sam made such an important point here, and it was
a revelation for me. I had to check myself because
I got so caught up in the zeal of resilient
Sam that I didn't step back and consider capitulating Sam
survival Sam, Sam who has mastered the ability to push
emotions down to keep relationships going. This is so important

(27:04):
because survivors are often congratulated, and right here I am
guilty as charged.

Speaker 4 (27:10):
I just did it with him.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Right here, they're congratulated for not sharing their emotions, for
not being angry. Maybe him holding back that anger wasn't
necessarily a superpower, but simply a manifestation of how he
was emotionally silenced by her loss.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
Yeah, to kind of push feelings down for the sake
of others. There.

Speaker 1 (27:33):
Good for you for picking it up that way, because
you're absolutely right. On a second watching of the film,
I was like, wait a minute, you know, why does
she still get to call the shots after her leaving?
And you were making accommodation for her, which my next
thought was this skill may not serve Sam well in
the future. Yep, And so I think that there is

(27:56):
that moment of wow, he's being so nice. Then it's again.
The next reaction was anger, Why does she still get
to call the shots? She called the ultimate shots? In
many ways, it's Sam who should be accommodated too, And
yet you were still doing the accommodating for a very
clear reason that you didn't want to.

Speaker 4 (28:11):
Scare her away.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
Read What was that day like for you that Sam
got her on the phone and then the two of
you rolled up to her house?

Speaker 2 (28:18):
Oh what a mix of emotions. I mean, definitely one
of the most like profound moments, day moments. You know,
so much is happening there, and it's reduced to just
me and Sam, you know, like we're the only ones
experiencing this and we're not allowed to talk about it

(28:38):
with anyone. So it's like there's this strange electricity, like
what does this mean? What's going to happen? What's she's
going to be like when we see her? See I
was just like, it'll be cool, Everything's gonna be fine.
We don't need to really even talk about it. I'm
just excited to see her. And for me, it's just
more questions are coming up. I just I'm just like, well,

(28:59):
why if she's so cool with us coming, Like, why
did she have to be hidden for so long? Like
why couldn't she have just reached out? So it was
so strange. And then when we get there, she's all
smiles and hugs and welcoming and even has like like
sushi and like the very saved soda that she used

(29:21):
to have in the fridge at their old house. She
was keyed in to bits of this old life and
she was able to step back into that performance of
who she was as a mother instantly. But like right away,
there's no like I'm sorry, or like gosh, oh my gosh,

(29:45):
you guys have been through so much. I can't believe it.
You know. It was just like here I am. And
then we go and we like have this like sit
down thing at a coffee shop and she basically gives
this this passionate speel about why she laughed, which is
another scene in the movie that is just very intense.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
So you went from the house to the coffee shop
and that's where she starts talking about her why.

Speaker 4 (30:10):
That's right, Sam, to start.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
With you, What did it feel like to hear her
why her reason for leaving, and how did that affect
your process of sort of figuring all of this out.

Speaker 3 (30:22):
I remember not holding a ton of value in it.
It's not gonna be that valuable to me to know why.
And I think also, like knowing my mom, she could
be somewhat manipulative in a very charismatic way, and I
kind of know sometimes when I'm stepping into that, and
that felt like one of those times. So it just
didn't feel like a full, like honest answer and reasoning.

(30:45):
And yeah, it felt more like I have to defend
myself first before I actually give you any kind of
like substantial reasoning behind what I did.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Okay, so you got her defense. When the substantial reasoning came,
did it ring true or like you said, you were
able to see it with a grain of salt, knowing
that it may potentially be sort of a distortion or
a manipulation.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
Well, the thing is, I don't know if I've ever
actually heard or discussed with her a full reasoning why,
and so I don't think I've gotten that deep with
her yet before.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
Wow, So you still, after all these years, you haven't
gotten that deep with her? This is I'm going to
ask you a strange question, but you may not be
able to answer. Do you think she knows?

Speaker 3 (31:26):
That is a great question. I'm not sure. I don't know.
I want to say she has been putting in some
work more recently on good just a lot of what's
going on, But I don't know. I don't know for.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Sure and read you were at that same coffee shop meeting,
so you heard sort of the defense followed by sounds
like I'm not very convincing, sort of why as it were,
how did that encounter leave you feeling?

Speaker 2 (31:52):
That coffee shop explanation was so intense. I mean she
says things like I had to leave to get out
of the control of everybody and then like rebuild her life.
So basically she's saying she had to leave and she
had to start a new life, and I couldn't make

(32:12):
sense of that. I mean, even to this day, I
play back that taper. I watched that scene and there's
a lot of things in there that I'm still trying
to like really understand. I think it's possible that, you know,
she was going into a place where she was she
was really losing her mind and would have been an

(32:33):
unpleasant person to be around. But I still can't get
over the simplicity of just like, Okay, well, once you're
able to send a gift, or once you're able to
like just send a letter, you know, like just let
these guys know. Because the more time that goes on,
I could see that it was like it was getting
worse I just felt like I had so many more

(32:54):
questions at that point, and so I kept going back
and interviewing her and talking to her and trying to
like crack this open because I wanted to understand and
I wanted to know was there things that were happening.
Was like, they're like any like abuse or anything that
like would have really made a person need to go

(33:15):
on like a witness protection plan level escape.

Speaker 4 (33:18):
And it doesn't seem like that's what you found out.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
No, I didn't find anything like that out. But we
did learn a lot about Joyce's upbringing. And I think
that that's really the thing is that you know, Sam
brought up like attachment with his dad and his mom,
and I felt a little more attached to his dad.
I mean, in Sam's case, he had attachment to two parents.

(33:44):
I think that in Joyce's case, she didn't have any
parental attachments. Like the way she describes it and the
way that we see her adoptive family on camera, there
wasn't to secure attachment potentially, And I don't know you
can tell me as a psychologist if this is where

(34:04):
this kind of behavior begins.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
You know, as you're asking read, is you weren't learning
about some sort of very clear reason why she left.
But what you did on Earth was more information about
her family of origin, which wasn't a safe place. It
wasn't characterized by attachment. We come to find out that
Joyce was adopted, and there's a complicated series of issues
related to that. Absolutely those things can matter. Attachment is

(34:31):
so important to how we go through the world as
adults that it can shape things. So in essence, a
seed may have been planted decades before, in the sense
that when people have disruptions in early attachment, they could
be the loss of a caregiver. It could be chaos
in the early family system. It could be neglect, coldness,

(34:53):
it could be abandonment at a very young age. And
attachment is laid down when we're young. Most of this
happens before the age of three and four, as the
child is looking to a safe, consistent place to come
to where they feel that their vocalizations will be recognized
and responded to.

Speaker 4 (35:09):
By a caregiver.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
And there were disruptions in all of that is what
you had heard from Joyce, and that absolutely can result
in this. People who don't have secure attachments will often
have anxious or avoidant or disorganized attachments in adult life,
which means intimacy becomes difficult, empathy becomes difficult, the capacity
for staying in uncomfortable circumstances because of that lack of

(35:34):
intimacy and depth, some people just want to do a
cut and run because it just doesn't feel safe. And
so all of those early attachment experiences, this is why,
this is why supporting new parents and creating safety for children,
it's not just putting time into an infant. It is
a payout that can last seventy eighty ninety years because
it will affect how that person goes through life in perpetuity.

(35:57):
Be attachment wounds that Joy experienced absolutely could be a
major explanatory factor into how she was able to leave
a custodial role being the mother to three sons because
she also had Peter. Yeah, so she the mother to
three sons, a stepmother to a son. That's a lot

(36:18):
to leave. And so it often isn't a simple explanation.
And once we open the lid on attachment, we recognize
that these are wounds that far predated the birth of
any of you and that you ended up kind of
getting and this is why we talk about intergenerational trauma
and intergenerational cycles. The tracks for this were planted long
before the next generation even exists, and that becomes important

(36:41):
as a way of lifting a sense of responsibility for
the survivors who had absolutely nothing to do with this.
They came long after those initial traumas were set, and
these can sometimes be cycles handed down two, three, four,
even more generations. So it's quite profound. Do you have
any thoughts about that?

Speaker 2 (36:57):
I mean, that's super enlightening for me. My fine, and
like you know, this, this story to you know, be
a really complex narrative and that like we're looking at
all these different members of family, we're looking at different generations,
and you know, we're starting to see all of these clues.
You start to see kind of a map, and I
think it is the kind of movie that you can

(37:17):
watch multiple times in order to get more out of it.
But you know, you know, me starting with a simple
question of like why is Sam resilient? These things start
to get answered through looking at this sort of like
generational mapping, and it's also strange, but I it all
begins to make sense at the same time, Like, yes,

(37:38):
that makes sense if you know in eighteen months. Joyce
was in a Japanese orphanage at the end of World
War Two and the circumstances were really crazy, and a
military family adopted her and brought her back, probably under
some pressure from the military that you know, there's just
too many orphaned babies now mixed raced orphan babies in Japan.

(38:01):
She comes to Oregon and finds that she doesn't feel
like she fits in or is accepted, or there's not
a good connection, and that persists, you know, all the
way through her teens. It seems we don't have enough
information to like really understand what goes on there. But
from her story, it was not a healthy experience, not

(38:21):
a positive experience.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
Sam, What was it like for you as more and
more light got shed on your mother's origin story of
being adopted from a Japanese orphanage at a time when
the mixed race orphans were really really viewed through the
most humanizing of lenses, coming to the States, not having healthy,
secure attachments with the adoptive family. As that picture filled

(38:45):
out for you, how did it impact your process of growth, healing,
moving beyond this sort of experience that happened when you're
twelve or thirteen years old.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
Yeah, I think there's multiple points of like I can
kind of remember when more light was being shed on
everything and my kind of perception of it all was growing.
But I do remember having a very little understanding when
I was younger. I remember once having a conversation with
my mom, maybe when I was like younger than ten,

(39:15):
I didn't really understand adoption very well, and I had
asked her, it sounds really weird, but why doesn't she
just look for her biological mom or like something like that,
and she snapped at me. I remember in a way
that was just kind of like, we don't, like I'm
not going to talk about this with you anymore. And
I remember like so early messaging of something we talk about.

(39:39):
And then there were other clues later on just about
kind of like I think the mistreatment she kind of
had from her adoptive family. And I would hear little
stories about how she was kind of just like a
second class family member to everybody, and the punishment she
would go through, like time out standing in corners. And
I think we had like a pet monkey at one

(39:59):
point that she would always talk about how the monkey
was a higher up family member than her. Yeah, so
I was getting all these clues that like this adoptive
life is not good for her, and that she won't
talk about the biological life. And so I think later on,
when I started to learning more and more, after we'd
found my mom again and she talked about a little

(40:20):
bit more, I think I started to understand a little
bit more of the like the trauma that was involved.
And you know, now it kind of feels like she's
experienced two different abandonments through her life, one from her
biological family and then one you know, although I think
she also distanced herself. But like you see in the
movie Her Mom teen, her adopted mom teen like says

(40:42):
that there is no choice to her anymore. So that's
like a second basically abandonment happening there as well. So
I think I started to understand and empathize a lot
more that, like, she had gone through a lot. Yeah,
I think just that understanding was really helpful for me.

Speaker 4 (40:57):
It's good tonight.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
It's very interesting you say that, you know, her own
adoptive mother saying there is no more joyce to me.
But actually the person who endured sort of the worst
of the abandonment was you and you did hold space
for her, which really is an interesting juxtaposition that in
this case it was the child who was behaving most compassionately.
And this is something we'll circle back to in a

(41:19):
little bit. But what gets so challenging is to hear
a story like Joyce's which you receive with compassion. Of course,
this is a very complicated early life to be a
child who've been brought to another country to be treated
like a second class citizen, and what that would do
to someone. And yet Sam read you endured something very real,

(41:41):
and it's the balancing of those two truths, the truth
of Joyce's early difficult life and the truth of the
losses that you endured, Jared Peter, all of you endured,
and those two things can coexist, but it creates something
very uncomfortable where you ping pong between going back and
forth between I feel yea for her, I don't feel good,

(42:01):
I feel bad for I don't feel good. And the
hard work is being able to hold those two things
simultaneously in your mind, to hold compassion for her, but
also hold grace for yourself and giving yourself permission to
be angry and not saying well she went through that,
So I have no right to be angry. You have
right to feel any way you want. It's the only
way for these emotions to be processed. It's one of

(42:21):
the things that was stunning about the film was that
we as the viewer had to sit with the discomfort
of the story. And when you created that discomfort in us,
we were able to have tremendous empathy with the discomfort
that all of you had to endure at a relatively
young age. So I really I appreciate that about your storytelling.
My session with Sam and Reid will continue after this break.

(42:46):
So after a long beach, after the coffee shop meeting,
after all of that, what happens all road trips come
to an end? Did you just turn the minivan around
and drive back to Portland? What happened after that?

Speaker 2 (42:58):
A lot of things happen in the movie. You can
see there's like a point where I like stand up
and address the family over what's going on, But I
think we should just fast forward to Sam is still
just like wanting to protect Joyce in the scenario feels like,
you know, like, hey, everything's fine and she's back in
my life. We're good. Everything's good now, and I. One

(43:20):
of the last things I say is like, well, don't
you want to know why she left? She's like no,
I'm good, Like everything's good now. So fast forward to
years later, Sam's point of view changes pretty dramatically.

Speaker 4 (43:33):
Can you talk about that, Sam?

Speaker 1 (43:35):
Many years later, you go from I don't need to
know why I'm going to you know, in essence protect her?
What shifted for you and why did that happen?

Speaker 3 (43:45):
Yeah? Sam, I touched my own relationships with behaviors. I
it was like recognizing as some of like my mom's
behaviors too, which I could pick up on being annoying,
and I could recognize like this is like not how
I want to behave, But I didn't quite pick up
on like, oh, that's stuff my mom would do, not
until I went to therapy afterwards. And I kind of

(44:06):
had a three year relationship that went really poorly and
it was totally my fault and felt a lot of
shame and guilt around it. And that was kind of
the catalyst for me going to therapy, and that's when
I started to work a lot more on like, you know,
this is kind of the impact. I think a lot
of this, a lot of the abandonment had on me,
and not even just the abandonment, but like some of
the more toxic behaviors I'd seen in my mom throughout

(44:27):
my life too.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
It's interesting what you're describing, Sam, because we see this
in many people who go through what you went through.
They go through it in childhood, they go through it,
they don't think about it, don't even have languaging for it,
and then come into adulthood and then notice that there
are things in their life that are not going well,
particularly intimate relationships, and then sort of begin to connect

(44:49):
those dots Joyce's behavior.

Speaker 4 (44:51):
You were hurt by it.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
You know, there's no way you could soften that that
this did directly affect you. It wasn't that Joyce did something.
And I can find a way to think differently it. Oh,
we don't have to take it on. We don't need
to talk about why she did it. This is when
people say just think differently. I'm like, yeah, nah, doesn't
work that way. You know that the poison comes up
through the groundwater, as it were, Like this stuff, if

(45:13):
it's not processed, it doesn't mean we're doomed.

Speaker 4 (45:15):
It means it needs to be processed.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
And so and that's the piece is that And you
did go to therapy, and this is what therapists do.
We're just really good at connect the dots because it's
not our story, it's not our life. So we're able
to get a little bit of a zoomed out view
to help a person connect those dots and start seeing that.

Speaker 4 (45:33):
I want to go back a little.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
Bit ahead of that, because Long Beach, you go back,
Mom drops you off, and there's still though that disconnect
for Joy, she did not feel the need to see Jared.
That also is very affecting that why wouldn't you You've
seen your once and why wouldn't you want to see
your other? So she remains still very very detached, and
then she turns around, she goes home. But it wasn't

(45:55):
like it was over there. Your mom, Joy started coming
back into your life. Is now going to be more contact?
How did that play out? I know, Red, you know,
talk to the family, said what was going on? But
it's not like then she went to Long Beach and disappeared.
She actually became a little bit more of a presence
in your life again.

Speaker 4 (46:16):
What did that feel like?

Speaker 3 (46:17):
It definitely felt like this very tightrope walk of a
balance of we have a small relationship and we see
each other once a year maybe and very much on
her terms. Like you know, she she didn't really come
to Seattle. Maybe she came once every three years or so,
and it was us having to visit her, which I

(46:39):
always thought was difficult because three of her sons were
in Seattle, and you know what parent wouldn't love to
have all of their adult kids in the same city
to like visit at the same time. That was kind
of like me starting to realize that, like, you know,
she's not going to leave her comfort zone. She's going
to keep everything on her terms and as flexible as
she makes herself seen with like yeah, I'll like buy

(47:01):
a train ticket for you to come out or do whatever.
But it's like very much we have to go out
to you, yeah, and yeah, you're not going to come
to us. So that was like kind of that middle
part of the relationship was a lot of space. Still
so much space, and yeah, it wasn't exactly what I'd
hoped for.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
A piece of their story that is actually very telling
and may not be completely clear, is that Joyce did
end up moving away from Long Beach to southern Oregon.
As Sam points out, her children are all in Seattle,
so she is closer, but still far enough that seeing

(47:39):
each other would be logistically challenging. This feels almost metaphorical
that in these kinds of challenging relationships there may be
some shift, but that that larger goal of connection and
closeness feels elusive. Were you part of this whole journey
of like joyce coming back into every one's life or

(48:00):
was this much more something that was for Salm and
his brother.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
It was mostly for Sam and Jared, Jared especially, so
Jared was invited to come live with her. You might
have been invited to Sam, I don't remember, but Jared
was invited. He goes in, he lives with her down
in southern Oregon, and she really is involved with like
getting him back on track. It's like they're just like, Okay,
let's deal with school. Let's get you, you know, enrolled

(48:25):
in a university. Let's get you a job, you know,
all of the driver's license, like all of these things
she was so good at with Jared, and Jared is
just like just springs back to life from somebody who's
so depressed and doesn't want to do a thing. To
you know, really right away after we found her. He

(48:46):
bounces back in school, he bounces back his energy. He's
like there's like a shot in the movie where he's
throwing her frisbee with us, And I don't think he
had like done anything like that in the last few years.
Like he just was just like a lump on the couch.
It's really sad to think about now. But the Jared

(49:09):
that we know now is like is not that way.
He actually like works with those kind of kids at
the same school where we see him in the movie,
and like helps them with like confidence and starting in
their assignments and all these things, which is pretty special.
So Joyce played an active mother role for Jared and
helped him kind of bounce back. But with Sam, she

(49:31):
wasn't really it was all still very compartmentalized and like
she wouldn't just come up and visit us all together.
That wasn't a thing. Sam and Jared were invited to
go down there, or Sam and Jared and Peter might
have been invited to go down there. I'm like these
very special invitations. And then I was still doing my thing,

(49:51):
which is like I started a project. I started a
film about this and so I would go and I
would visit with her, and film is like, you know,
she's doing stuff with Jared or interview Joyce to just
kind of learn more about the story and her upbringing,
that kind of thing. And so our relationship became very
tied to the movie.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Okay, and it's interesting read if we go all the
way back. One of the things that facilitated your early
relationship with Joyce was how enthusiastic she was about your
creative pursuits. So, I mean, the very thing she brought
she brought again, and so there was a consistency to that.
And to then witness Jared sort of coming back to life,

(50:32):
it speaks to how muddy the water of these complicated
relationships is the easy thing to do. If somebody gave
you the elevator pitch of this film, coming of life,
film mother, abandoned son, sons go on road trip and
find her, people would immediately paint Joyce to be the

(50:52):
two dimensional villain, what kind of woman leaves her children?
But what happens is is you punch the story out,
as we have to do in all of these stories.
What happens for the people in your role Sam Jared
read it's so complicated because something terrible did happen, and

(51:13):
she was a attentive mother at one point, and Jared
did pop back to life when she came back, and
she was still very cagey, and she still did want
things on her terms. This kind of ebb and flow
roller coaster good things, bad things is the characteristic of
these sorts of complex and at times antagonistic relationships. The

(51:36):
film brings that to light, but here we think of
the most This idea of a mother abandoning and a
child is really sort of like a top shelf of
like things you never do and it happened, and it's
still not that simple.

Speaker 3 (51:48):
Yeah, I just want to speak to uh. Read was
going over some of the poster ideas with me, and
there was one where he was talking about, there's like
a silhouette of my young and my young face, and
then they wanted to have my mom's silhouette like back
to back in this like kind of sunset looking poster,

(52:09):
and I was like, absolutely not, Like this is not
like a protagonist antagonist, Like I think I was in
a lighter light and hers was a darker light and
that's just too easy, Like that's way too simplified in
the story. It really reminded me of this like Anakin
Skywalker or like Darth Vader type. It's like, this is

(52:30):
not like hero villain. We got to be more complex
than that.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
And like, yeah, And I think that that's where this
film is so powerful, is that what every survivor says
is that I've gone through something terrible. This relationship, whatever
form it takes, has hurt me. And everyone's like, oh,
they're terrible, They're terrible, And the person experiencing the relationship says,
it's not that simple, because if it was, I would
have just walked away and cut this person out. And

(52:55):
this is the core of what we struggle with in
every story we tell, and it's really magnified in your story.
So what's happening though in the background, because now Joyce
has moved Just so listeners are more clear, Joyce is
no longer in California, She's moved closer. She's only about
five hours away, so she's a lot closer to everyone,
though not that close. Five hour drive is still quite

(53:16):
a distance. But in the midst of all this, you
still have your your father's family. How are they supporting
you to this part of it because I have to say,
as complicated as it was to deal with the initial
abandonment and finding her, what's even more complicated is this
very delicate dance of bringing her back into your life.

Speaker 4 (53:36):
And initially you were really, really really.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
Careful, Sam, because you were trying to, in essence, stave
off another abandonment. But you're still very embedded in your
father's life and your extended family. How are they helping
you through this process?

Speaker 3 (53:50):
Yeah, I think that my dad was very supportive and appreciated.
I think the relationship, like rebuilding the relationship with their
mom and again kind of like very results oriented wise.
He was very happy with how Jared was doing, you know,
Jared coming back and like graduating and having a job,
having a car, having all this success. And I do
want to mention that when my mom came up to

(54:12):
Seattle and visits my dad's house, in my grandma's house,
you know, those were two things that I had kind
of in my mind eliminated. Was never ever happening again.
You like kind of categorize it. It's like this person
will never be in this space again. And I understand that.
And when it happened, it was very like blew kind
of my mind and almost shut off a lot of

(54:33):
the processing of what was going on because environmentally I
was not prepared for it. The people who were talking
to each other, my dad, my mom talking to each other,
wasn't prepared for that either. It just kind of almost
triggered a fight flight or freeze for me. And I
was very frozen, very much. Couldn't understand to me that
time period that like day is a snow globe captured

(54:54):
piece that you know, it's just completely outside of the ordinary,
completely outside of the wayship I have my mom, Like,
I can't fit it anywhere in the entirety of this
story at all. Like I don't understand it still to this.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
Day, Red, do you have any insights on that day,
because it was actually quite It was a very interesting moment.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
Yeah, this is coming after Sam's confronted Joyce through letters
about her leaving him and the effect it's had on him,
and he's actually angry as a grown adult, and he's
said some pretty interesting things. But he's requested also that
Joyce makes more of an effort to come and like

(55:36):
be a part of our lives in Seattle, especially like
come see Sam and Jared come try to be a
little more normal about the relationship. And what is normal?
Who knows, but he's like made this request. He really
wants Joyce to be a little more active and proactive.
And so this on this Halloween Day in twenty fifteen,

(55:59):
she up and just applies all of this energy to
reinserting herself back into the whole Harkness family. She's like,
let's go surprise Randy and then let's go see Grandma,
and you know, on a total whim and so she's
like kind of getting a kick out of the surprise

(56:20):
factor And wouldn't it be funny if this happened? And
you know what's going to happen, what's gonna happen next?
And in my mind, I think that she was charged
by Sam's request, and I wonder if she was intentionally
self sabotaging it.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
At the same time, it is interesting because one of
the things that jumps out at me at this is
there is a certain it's a little bit of a
lack of empathy of what would it be like if
I showed up?

Speaker 4 (56:46):
What is it like if I show up at all
these people's houses.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
What I'm saying is that empathy is not just understanding
the feelings of others, but understanding our impact on other
people and catching ourselves before we do something that may not,
i don't know, feel good for the other person, right,
And so there was a little bit of an empathic
fail there in the sense of I'm going to come
in and like you said, read it was this shock value,

(57:10):
was this lack of awareness, was this this is what
I feel like doing, so I'm just going to do
it that obviously we don't know, but it definitely seemed
a bit tone deaf at best.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
Yeah, And I mean, I will say also that like
the family is used to drop ins on each other,
like we're all like kind of loose in this way.
It is like we were free range kids. But you know,
this is something really different that's happening, where like, you know,
people that haven't seen her in like fifteen years, and
you know, she comes to the door and my dad
doesn't even recognize her, like invit seran thinks he's just

(57:43):
like some friend of ours. And then she comes in.
It takes him like, you know, a couple of minutes
before he's like, oh my gosh, it's Joyce. And then
things like are like oh okay, and now he's like,
now he's going into this place where he's like what
do I do about this situation? And you know, he's
such a sweet and he really you can see in
the scene he's like, Okay, well, like let's kind of

(58:05):
roll with this and see how it plays out, you know,
and he's just he's a first grade teacher for like
thirty years, so he's like been through all kinds of
experiences with you with kids and has this temperament that's
just like kind of just like okay, we'll just kind
of go with things here. And then we all go
over to our grandma's house and the party kind of grows,

(58:25):
but it's a grandma's house where we really where Joyce
reaches a point where she really starts to like let
us in a little bit more to what's going on
with her and our grandma, who's very wise lady has
done lots of work with early child development and attachment

(58:45):
and all these things, like actually happens to approach Joyce
about narcissism and offers her a book on narcissism, and
Joyce says, that's me, and then she goes on to
sort of describe her coping mechanism a little more clearly

(59:08):
for the first time. And it's pretty enlightening, even after
we've gone through this roller coaster of a day of like,
you know, we're surprising our dad and then and this
is uncomfortable, and then like Grandma just like embraces her
and puts on tea and and like let's talk like,
you know, just just like old times. And her experience

(59:32):
of that day was that like how nice it was that,
you know, Joyce came back into the fold. And I
think my dad's experience was just like what a unnerving
what a he says the word it was. It was freaky.
It was freakish to me. So it was a mix
of many things. And I think it was you know,

(59:54):
it wasn't what Sam had wanted. I think he had
wanted something different. Do what did you want, Sam? What
did you want to have happened?

Speaker 3 (01:00:01):
Yeah, maybe just like a dinner with me, Jared and
Peter it would have been that would have been a
good start. Yeah, you know, I don't need her to
keep herself secret from everybody, but yeah, I think letting
more people in on what like could be happening, instead
of having having the jump on them a little bit
would have been better. Like I would have loved for

(01:00:22):
my grandma and my mom to like meet and see
each other and they know actually that relationship's going still
very well for them. But I just, yeah, I think
it was not approached very well.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
M M.

Speaker 4 (01:00:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
I love that moment when your grandmother's like, Okay, well
this is what I think you are, And it actually
puts a finer point on that. One thing we know
is many people with any kind of narcissistic presentation do
have some sort of traumatic origin. The entire narcissistic presentation
then is sort of a defense against that kind of
existential hole that the attachment disruptions can sometimes cause, and

(01:00:58):
so everything's a defensive maneuver with little regard for the
other people.

Speaker 4 (01:01:02):
So your grandmother was spot on.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
What was really compelling to me was how Joyce was
actually able to receive it and says, yes, that's me,
which actually isn't the normative reaction. Most people who've handed
a book about narcissism would either throw it against.

Speaker 4 (01:01:16):
The wall start to rage, how dare you?

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
What was fascinating to me was Joyce's willingness to be
in that moment with it. Again not unusual when people
who've had more of that traumatic origin. So narcissism is
also not a singular picture because the origins of it
can come down so many different pathways. In some ways
that can also affect the presentation. We will be right

(01:01:39):
back with this conversation with Sam and Reid. You know,
there's a point that came up in the film. I'm
going to be selfish here because I found it very affecting.
And I've told you that I found this really affecting,
which was when your mom who left your life comes
back in your life, lives five hours away, expects you
to come see her. That there was one year, one

(01:02:00):
year at Christmas, Sam, when you had a lot of
stuff going on in your life, and he was like,
you just didn't reach out. You didn't feel that you'
something you had to do. She became very angry as
the viewer. I mean, you did something almost hitchcocky in
here that you left so many things towards the end,
and yet we felt like we were seeing them all along.

Speaker 4 (01:02:20):
It was genius filmmaking.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
And so I remember I was there with Joyce, I
really was. I was there with her, I was there
with all of you. Then she pulled what I call
the Christmas maneuver, and that was the moment Joyce lost me.
I remember literally talking to the screen and saying, how
dare you? Sam owes you nothing, He does not owe
you a Mary Christmas. Don't ever watch a movie with me,
by the way, because it's a whole conversation thing. But

(01:02:44):
I was like, how could you do this to Sam? So, Sam,
now I get the privilege of hearing from you what
was happening for you? You said I can't be bothered
this Christmas? And then you had to withstand some of
her anger. What was that moment like for you?

Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
You know? At that point it too. I've been pretty
far along in my in my like social work career,
and so some of the professional skills I had been
developing and working on it, I think we'll also just
kind of fit my own like you know, personality and
the soft skills I already had growing up. I definitely
had an immediate response of like the kind of you know,

(01:03:20):
she had this how dare you? Tone? And the immediate
thought was I was like, how dare you? Like where
do you think I get it from? But so I
really tried to absorb it in this way that was like, Wow,
I'm really sorry, I hurt you. I am a little
bit overwhelmed. And I was going on this like kind
of like getaway with my girlfriend to like a little staycation.

(01:03:42):
It's gonna be a weekend long, and I was like,
can I really get back to you after this, Like
after the staycation, I've been like working super hard. And
I think I actually worked every holiday too. I was
working in homelessness youth services and I was working in
the shelter at the time, and yeah, I kind of
just like was trying to be accountable to it, and
probably a little bit of me was social working here
a little bit. Like it was like, I'm really sorry,

(01:04:03):
it's my mistake. I did this and and I hurt you.
Let me like get back to you on this when
I get back, and not only enraged her further, and
she sent like a couple more emails like right back,
and this is I'm I'm on like the ferry to
this like one hour away destination where we have this
airbnb set up and everything, and yeah, within that time,

(01:04:24):
she sends like two more pretty scathing emails where she's
kind of yelling at me for like being ungrateful and
that I was always mad at her, never let it
go that she had left or never forgave her, and
a lot of things that were just like pretty hurtful.
After like a couple of responses, I was like pretty

(01:04:45):
hurt and I didn't have it left into me for
like to hold together relationships. It was kind of ignoring
it again. And then she again sent a couple more emails,
so she got caught up in this big whirlwind of
like she needs to be like getting all this out
at me. But eventually there was like a very much
apologetic email where she mentions also that you know, there's
there's a lot of harm that happened to me when

(01:05:06):
I was younger, and also there's I was in therapy
for a long time and all this stuff, and you know,
I'm unhinged. Like basically she's like admitting to being like
to having these mental health issues. And it was bizarre,
it was weird. It was isolating for me. I don't
think any of my other brothers got that side of
her ever, And I started to feel this like I'm

(01:05:27):
the scapegoat of my brothers. I'm the ones she can
like do this too, and know it's gonna be okay,
and that I and especially now in my line of work,
where like I, you know, you can say those things
to me and it's okay. So I have to like
put up more boundaries now with her in that aspect
of like I can't. I'm not gonna let you isolate me.
I'm not gonna let you like do these things. Were like,

(01:05:48):
if this is gonna happen, you have to do it
to all my brothers and not just me. But yeah,
so that that was pretty hard and really difficult when
I confronted my brothers about it and showed them the emails.
Has this ever happened to you? And they're like no.

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
It is not unusual in a family system where the
person who may have some narcissistic ish patterns will focus
on one person in the family system that they are
more disregulated with or demanding of, and take out more
of their rage with, and might typically be seen just

(01:06:26):
as in this case with siblings, with one sibling being
a bit more of a scapegoat and getting the worse
of it and the others getting little or none of
it at all, and not only doesn't feel good, it
can feel worse when the people it's not happening to
may minimize it or play it down, which can sort
of feel gaslighty. This triangulated dynamic, which appears at various

(01:06:51):
times in this story, is a signature element of family
systems impacted by these personality styles.

Speaker 3 (01:06:59):
Not even just no, but excused her a little bit too, like,
I don't think this is going to be a thing.
I don't think you have to worry about it. And
I was like, I don't know, I am like worried
about it being more of a pattern, and yeah, it
was kind of ignored and not dealt with.

Speaker 4 (01:07:12):
Yeah, that doesn't feel good.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
I mean that, that doesn't feel good read as one
of I mean again, this is unique opportunity here you are,
You were part of this conversation. Did you really believe
you just thought this wasn't going to happen anymore?

Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
I will say, Covey, that read actually I think was
hearing me more. Oh, it was more. It was Jared
and Peter who oh okay, okay, they have more of
a relationship on the line.

Speaker 4 (01:07:33):
Yeah, okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
You know again, a lot of what you were having
to bear under Sam was sort of the projected shame
of Joyce right. That's the nature of these relationships is
that the shame builds up to such an intolerable level
in her she doesn't have healthy tools for coping with it.
And in these relationships, people with these personality styles they
project that shame on the person they believe evoked that shame.

(01:07:55):
You evoked that shame without having the Christmas s greeting,
you were going to get the worst of it. In
many ways, It's quite likely that Jared and Peter weren't
so much in that shame of voking role. And the
shame of voking role is often the person who puts
up with them a little bit more and then sometimes
sets a boundary. So that person and you did you
set a boundary. I'm gonna go and do what I

(01:08:15):
need to do this weekend, spend time with my partner.
So when we understand it that way doesn't mean it's
any less hurtful. Listen, someone does anything, someone pushes and
shoves you, that's going to her. Even if you understand
what's behind the shove, there's still a moment of hurt
and pain. So I really appreciate you sharing that. And
now may I ask this, what is your relationship with

(01:08:36):
your mother, Like now, right.

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
Before this movie released, it was pretty good in a
sense that like we're checking in almost every month to
every other month, and I think we do sometimes have to, like,
you know, there was a Thanksgiving where it felt like,
you know, there's a certain amount of time we can
be around each other before I start to have anxiety
about her or she maybe feels, yeah that like I'm

(01:08:59):
in some sort of shame out of her. So, you know,
it's I think we're starting to understand how much we
can actually like interact with each other. And I want more,
for sure. I always want more out of it, but
I'm being as realistic as possible as I'm moving forward.
I think every kind of minute this film is out,

(01:09:20):
I have a worry that she'll see it and that
she's going to have some response of you know, on
a spectrum from disappearing again to like maybe someone more
in the middle of just yelling at me and read
or or silence or I do I'm not entirely sure,
but yeah, or seeing it and then holding it in
and never speaking to anybody about it, how she feels

(01:09:42):
about it, and that I would also be terrible. Yeah,
So there's there's a lot of anxiety right now with
the film being out, that like something could change and
I relation should immediately and as far as we know,
she hasn't seen it. But yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
But there's a curiousness and a fragility that the relationship
has with always that this is now something that's hanging
out there as a possibility. So before we end, we'd
like to play this clip.

Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
So when we set out to find your mom, what
were you hoping to accomplish.

Speaker 3 (01:10:10):
I think I had a kind of a fantasy in
mind of what was going to happen. I don't think
I actually cared that much for a relationship with my
mom at that point. I was like fairly independent, and
I didn't really think it through, to be honest, like emotionally,
how I'd feel about it or what it would do
to me. Did you get what you wanted? If you

(01:10:34):
were to ask me, like right after the trip, did
I good I wanted? I would have said yes. But
now asking myself in like my late twenties, no even
finding her, like the connection is still a little severed.

(01:10:55):
Later on in my adult life, I kind of found
out that I was both concerned with myself being capable
of abandoning somebody and also concerned about being abandoned by
more people, and then realizing that I had that that capability,
I was like, oh no, like I can just like
shut somebody out.

Speaker 4 (01:11:13):
So do you agree with that?

Speaker 1 (01:11:15):
I think that's like you're really eloquent kind of laying
out of what has happened. Do you still given that
was part of the film and now some time has passed,
how do you feel about that?

Speaker 3 (01:11:25):
I would say some of those fears are still very
valid in my life and sort of a kind of
I'd mentioned before. I don't think I've ever really gotten
a full understanding or explanation from my mom about why
she left. But sometimes when I'm acting out the same
behaviors she has had that were like kind of negative
behaviors of sabotage, abandoning others, distancing myself emotionally and physically,

(01:11:52):
that's the closest I get to understanding what she did
and why she did it is whenever I'm playing that
through or like also playing out that same cycle. But
I definitely have recognized it more and so I can
step out of it easier. I can remove myself, I
can more prevention of it as well. I would say
then when that video is being taped, I was kind

(01:12:14):
of like in the middle of it and having a
hard time with it and barely getting out of it.
And now I'm in a much better spot. I can
see it coming. Yeah, and like replacing a lot of
those maladaptive coping mechanisms with better ones that serve me
a lot better.

Speaker 1 (01:12:29):
And I think that's great to hear, Sam, because it's
a real reminder that people do. We do get out
of these acute states of distress, and we do find
our footing. And I mean, I'll be frank with you, Sam,
very rarely in this kind of a relationship does anyone
get that question of why ever answered. And it's learning
how to move forward. It's its own form of ambiguous grief, right,

(01:12:51):
learning to move forward without ever knowing the why. If
someone in front of us we love dies from a disease,
we're sad, especially if they died prematurely, but we understand
that they got a disease. There's a why that we
can get our head around. This why is again, is
so many whys in these relationships never get answered. We
have to struggle to make our meaning of it. But

(01:13:12):
then we also have to learn to move forward not
only without that why, but also never blaming ourselves, because
that's a tendency many many survivors have, and then finding
that balancing act of how to have a relationship with
her where the fear of her abandoning you again holds
you back from making decisions in the relationship that.

Speaker 4 (01:13:31):
Are healthy for you. Do you have any further thoughts,
either of you, Sam read.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
I do have something I want to say, which is
Joyce is somebody who like she's done some things within
these stories that are hurtful, right, and we've pointed out
these sort of specific things where you know, this is
this is a hurtful thing that has happened. You know,
leaving your kids is a really big one. And then

(01:13:56):
certainly these sort of these later things where Sam Fields targeted.
But even still, you know, she's still an active family
member for all of us here, and none of us
are trying to push her away. Even in making the movie,
it's not about bringing shame to Joyce. It's about understanding

(01:14:17):
her and trying to understand her and all the characters
and what has happened and really look at sort of
like the fact is some of these things are like
outside of any of our control. These are things that
might have happened at eighteen months old, this sort of patterning.
And Sam you know, works in this professionally, he coaches

(01:14:39):
in breaking out of patterns. But like, I think that
we'll have to realize that it's like not really about us.
It's like these are things that like they exist in
a lot of families, and you know, when we do
feel isolated alone, the answer to that is to share.
And I know Joyce put a great distance between herself

(01:15:03):
and her kids and Harkness family, you know, partially, that's
like her her thing. She can do that. You can
do that in your life if you want. But it
did create some reactions, right, It created some things, And
I just hope that people, you know, society, our families

(01:15:26):
can start to evolve a little bit more to a
place of like, how do we understand this a little
bit better? How can we get to a place where
we like really can like embrace these qualities and the
like this is a condition, This is something that is
real in our family and a lot of other families.
How can we move forward as a family without severing,

(01:15:49):
without like alienating, without like pushing somebody out. I think,
I think it's really hard, and we might ed ever
get to that place. But I feel like the film
at least presents a long enough storyline where other people
can start to learn and maybe think about things a

(01:16:10):
little differently.

Speaker 1 (01:16:11):
Absolutely, and every family is so different, which is what's
so challenging, and I think that that's where people struggle,
is they'll see parts of their family and pieces of
the story, but not others, and every family makes different decisions.
I think the real burden and the real burden of
healing is how to hold compassion for yourself and compassion

(01:16:32):
for the other and not quitting yourself and holding space
for the other in a way that's as safe for
yourself as possible. That is a very very thin razor's
edge on which to balance, and I think we're always
course correcting as we try to do that. And I
think that it's really quite an amazing story. I think
Sam your journey in particular, since we get to see

(01:16:54):
you go from childhood into adulthood and have had sort
of a lot of the ups and downs with your mother,
But it shows us that these things will also continue
to evolve. And also I don't believe you have kids yet, Sam,
but you do read and we talk about how do
these cycles end. They end with how the next generation
of children get parented. That you have a generation of

(01:17:14):
kids who now have parents who are more self examined,
who really cultivate attachment and security, and then a new
generation of children from this family where it was difficult,
spring into the world feeling secure and safe in the world,
and new things happen. So I think that's where it's
all of us being self reflective so we can then

(01:17:35):
do right and doing the work frankly, and then we
can do right by the children we have. We ain't
going to get it perfect, but at least at a minimum,
we can help our children feel safe. And that's the
real legacy that gets paid forward. That if you learn
that from Joyce, of that I need to double down
on making sure that my own children feel safe, then
none of these lessons were in vain, and that you
really really took something quite valuable on how you'll move

(01:17:58):
forward and also so be able to hold space for
her in light of a very complex history. So what
I really love about your film, what I really love
about your story and how you've told it is that
this isn't about black and white cartoon villain images. This
is actually about really robust takes on these stories and
everyone is so different, and that if we can always

(01:18:20):
bring in empathic and compassionate lens but also have that
compassion for ourselves, I think rather amazing things can happen
in your film is one of those examples. Do you
have any last thoughts or feelings or questions you want
to share?

Speaker 3 (01:18:32):
I think approaching this movie also with like a gender
lens of if the parental figure gender was swapped, this
is a totally different movie, right, And just like appreciate
that the women, the moms, the meatriarchal figures in our
life are doing so much of the emotional labor and work,
and that the story is this big because when that

(01:18:54):
figure disappears, a lot of that's gone. And yeah, I
just like I don't want to recognize that and make
sure that you know that people are seeing it through
that as well.

Speaker 1 (01:19:03):
I'm so glad you brought that up, Sam, because I
think that that is why the story was so affecting.
You're right, if this had been a story about a
dad who got up and left, I'm going to be
frank with you, people have been kind of been like, okay,
and show me something new. We much much more rarely
see this, this story of a mother leaving, which is
actually much more of a cultural taboo, to be quite

(01:19:25):
frank with you, and I think we view it through
that lens. But also so the other side of the
patriarchy is the assumptions we make, again in a gendered lens,
from the matriarchy, and the sort of you know, the
unrecognized emotional work of nourishing children's psyches and developing them
into adults disproportionately has and continues to fall on women's shoulders.

(01:19:47):
But again the sixth story. It's even been explored in
stories like The Lost Daughter, I mean, other really compelling
films that are taking on this idea of what happens
when the mother goes, and it's a much more demonizing narrative.
And I had to catch myself so the second time
I watch it, I thought, I need to look at
it through that lens, because if Joyce had been a man,
I actually don't think the same level of demonization would happen.

(01:20:08):
And I think that's why it's an incredible story, and
there's so many layers to how we think about this
and for you Sam and Sam and read both of
you as survivors of this, to lose a mother in
this way, you had far fewer cultural templates and archetypes
to turn to than if you had had your father
get up and leave, which I think is actually a

(01:20:29):
more universalized story.

Speaker 4 (01:20:31):
Yeah, So to which end? How can people find you?

Speaker 1 (01:20:34):
Support you? How can people see this film? Because now
that we're talking about it, people are going to want
to see this and I cannot recommend this enough. So
how can people do this?

Speaker 2 (01:20:43):
Ah? The good news is it'll be broadcast nationally on PBS.
Oh great, this may on independent lens and PBS now
has a app that you know, anyone can watch it
for free on you know, whatever device they have, Just
get the PBS app. And right now we are doing
a film festival tour too, so we'll be in maybe

(01:21:05):
we'll be in your city. You can look for us
on samnowmovie dot com and see if we'll be showing up.

Speaker 4 (01:21:11):
That's awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:21:12):
We'll put that link in the show note so people
can see if it's coming close to them.

Speaker 2 (01:21:15):
So, thank you, thank you, doctor Reminie.

Speaker 1 (01:21:18):
Here are my takeaways from my conversation with Sam and Reed.
The road trip metaphor is particularly poignant because it captures
the process of growing through complex family relationships. Anyone who
has had to unpack this kind of family trauma and
loss knows that while we may not literally be getting

(01:21:40):
into a car, it's a mental journey through trying to
find answers, disappointments, frustrations.

Speaker 4 (01:21:48):
And discovery.

Speaker 1 (01:21:49):
Certainly, the road trip in the film yielded those kinds
of discoveries, but framing it as such for ourselves may
give us a tangible metaphor that can help us understand
that it's a process. In this next takeaway, keeping secrets
is always such a challenging family dynamic, and Sam was
put in that position when he got to Long Beach

(01:22:11):
and found his mother. Something so personally powerful and that
he knew would profoundly affect his brother and family was
something he was being instructed to keep a secret by
the person who abandoned him.

Speaker 4 (01:22:24):
While many of the.

Speaker 1 (01:22:25):
Secrets that people and families are often instructed to keep
as children are not as heavy, secret keeping is a
tall and inappropriate order to place on a child, and
yet it happens all the time.

Speaker 4 (01:22:39):
In this next takeaway.

Speaker 1 (01:22:40):
Accountability is so important in a relationship, and even if
someone in any kind of close relationship behaves poorly, hearing
them take responsibility for it can be quite restorative for
the person who is hurt. The dynamic that Sam found
himself in being afraid to ask for a accountability from

(01:23:01):
his mother because he was afraid he would scare her
away is a classical dynamic for children in what feel
like fragile relationships with parents. Over time, the child can
get indoctrinated to believe that accountability is too risky, and
in adulthood may find themselves in relationships where there is

(01:23:21):
anxiety about needing it or asking for it. In this
next takeaway, do we ever get the question of why answered?
In difficult, narcissistic, or any kind of relationship with someone
who does not have self reflective capacity. Probably not understanding
our motivations for why we do what we do requires

(01:23:45):
self awareness, vulnerability, and a dropping of defenses.

Speaker 4 (01:23:50):
Not getting a.

Speaker 1 (01:23:51):
Why can make moving forward feel difficult. But one element
of certain personality styles is a lack of insight into
their own motivations. When healing from these kinds of losses
and relationships, a challenging part of the radical acceptance is
giving up on ever getting the question of why answered.

(01:24:15):
In this next takeaway, trauma, loss and attachment disruption can
play a significant part in the development of narcissism. While
understanding this can result in compassion for someone with a
narcissistic or antagonistic personality, it can also raise guilt and
confusion in survivors. A person's trauma may absolutely explain their

(01:24:40):
challenges with empathy, attachment, and self awareness, and yet at
the same time you can still feel hurt by their behavior.
Sam's story is such a reminder of how complex these
personalities and relationships are, and in our last takeaway, this

(01:25:00):
episode really brings up the role of place in understanding
and healing. Sam shares that despite the numerous challenges that
his story had, the moment when his mother showed back
up at his father's home was unsettling and upside down.
For many people who have gone through any kind of

(01:25:21):
relationship characterized by abandonment, lack of empathy, and lack of clarity,
you may find that on many days you are moving forward,
then one day you find yourself back in a place,
for example, a childhood home or place you lived with
someone and a person can really feel thrown backwards. That

(01:25:43):
sequence with Sam was a reminder of how powerful place
and location can be, how it can impact our emotions,
and for survivors to be kind to themselves when they
have to face the place wo

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Abandoned at Age 13 by His Mother: The Sam + Reed Harkness Story

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}1. Stuff You Should Know

2. Dateline NBC

3. Crime Junkie

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Abandoned at Age 13 by His Mother: The Sam + Reed Harkness Story

1. Stuff You Should Know