Surviving Generational Abuse with Kimberly Shannon Murphy

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you've watched an action movie featuring a tall actress
in the last twenty years, then you have seen Kimberly
Shannon Murphy. One of Hollywood's top stunt women, Kimberly is
the go to stunt double for Cameron Diaz, Uma Thurman,
Sandra Bullock, Angelina, Jolee Blake, Lively, Sharon Stone, and Moore.

(00:24):
Her day job sounds terrifying, jumping off buildings, crashing cars,
but it pales in comparison to Kimberly's real life childhood.
Starting when she was just two years old, Kimberly experienced
severe childhood sexual abuse by a family member. Kimberly's extraordinary

(00:46):
and heartbreaking new memoir Glimmer, a story of survival, hope,
and healing, reveals that the abuse went back generations. Her mother, aunt,
and numerous other women in her family were also preyed upon.
In this emotional and eye opening episode of Navigating Narcissism,

(01:10):
Kimberly bravely shares the devastation of suffering silently and the
bold moves she's making to break the cycle for her daughter.
From Red Table Talk Podcasts and iHeartMedia, I'm Doctor Romney
and this is Navigating Narcissism. This podcast should not be

(01:31):
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. This episode discusses abuse, which may

(01:53):
be triggering to some people. The views and opinions expressed
are 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. Kimberly, I
had the opportunity to read your book, and it's so powerful.

(02:16):
Your experience of intergenerational child sexual abuse and trauma is
it happens so much more than people know, and it's
not talked about enough. One of those conversations that still
remains in the shadows, which is another reason your book
is so powerful. These conversations are so important on navigating narcissism.
We're really focused on the survivor and to that end,

(02:40):
because it's your experience, I want you to begin sharing
it with us wherever you want to begin it.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Okay, Well, The abuse started probably around two or three
with my grandfather, my mother's father, and ended when he
died when I was eleven. The entire time, four times
a week, so it was a constant thing. My grandmother
was complicit and was very aware of what was going

(03:10):
on and didn't do anything about it. My mother was
also a victim, and some of her siblings, and I'm
sure all of her siblings. That's what I came into
the world knowing. I didn't know any different. I just
thought that that's how things were done.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, So, as you experienced a nine continuous years of
sexual abuse perpetrated by your grandfather, did anyone in your
family speak out about what he was doing.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
My aunt tried in the fifties, my mother's sister, which
is who I dedicate the book to, because she was
probably the reason I'm sitting here right now. She gave
me so much strength to do this. She was a
phenomenal writer and wanted to write a book herself so badly.
She died of Alzheimer's, but she told on him when

(03:59):
she was nine yearyears old. Oh, and it was brought
to the family's attention and he denied it, and that
was it. And everything went on.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
What happened to her within the family.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
The abuse stopped once she told on him with her,
but continued on with others.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Continued on with others. It was denied. How is your
grandfather regarded by your family?

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Amazing? He was amazing, Yes, the best person on the planet.
Everybody loved him. He was successful in the eyes of
he made money, he supported his family. During that time
of that generation, it was very much respect your elders.
What they say goes. You don't ask questions. This is

(04:42):
how things are done. And so I didn't.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
Of course, I mean you couldn't. Yes, it's not even
that you didn't. I think it's you couldn't.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
This person was that you was so valued. Your grandmother
was complicit. She knew it. Others knew it, Yes, because
they were abused and for a variety of reasons, had
to remain completely unseeing or unacknowledging of it, and having
to know that another generation of children were being perpetrated against.

(05:12):
So by cultivating that persona it's part of the larger
concept of grooming right because then it gives him sort
of free access to everybody because he's implicitly trusted by
everybody completely, and it completely silences all of the people
who are perpetrated against and since he was choosing miners,
they are already going to be silenced by virtue of

(05:33):
being miners exactly. So, from the age of two to eleven,
the entire period you were abused until he died, did
you ever tell anyone about what was happening.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
I didn't feel like there was any safe adults around me,
and even your aunt because I didn't know at the
time about her. I didn't find out until later that
she was abused and she had come forward. I didn't
know any of this information, so I was terrified for
my life. Yeah, he made it very clear that if

(06:05):
I ever said anything that he would kill me.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
So that's it. You were effectively imprisoned in silence. When
you were taken in for pediatric examinations, was it ever
noticed there, because there are sometimes telltale signs of sexual
abuse in children.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
He gave me her bees when I was eight, and
that was sort of swept under the rug as well.
I was taken to the doctor, but it was not
accepted that that's what it was, and so I was
never given medicine for it.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
So the doctor knew it. Doctor says something, and the
unwillingness to acknowledge it meant that you also went untreated
for an illness. Yeah, Kimberly, how was school going for you?

Speaker 2 (06:42):
I didn't do well in school. It didn't feel important
to me. I felt like I had this thing that
was happening in my life, and going to school and
learning math was to me. I was like, Okay, but
I have this thing that I knew in my heart
wasn't right because it didn't feel right even though everyone

(07:05):
around me wasn't doing anything about it. I've come to
become good friends with doctor Matte through all of this,
and he said something to me which really resonated with me.
He said, your primary trauma was not the abuse. Your
primary trauma was you never had adult support, because if
you did, the trauma would have never happened in the
first place.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yes, or if it did happen even once, it would
have been validated. I couldn't agree with that more because
for a child to not have the sense that any
attachment needs could be met and there's no safety, that's
the trauma. So we see, as he put it, the
lack of protection. Doctor gabor Mate is a physician with
expertise in trauma, childhood development, addiction, and stress. So then

(07:48):
your grandfather dies, how did you feel at that point?

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Very good?

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Okay, Okay, thank you for saying that. Can you say more?
I think it's really important for people to hear that. Yeah,
I got to tell you, I felt very good to
you when I had that happening.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
An Yeah, I felt like I could finally figure out
who I was. He was My identity didn't have one
without him, at least that's how it felt for me.
So when he died, I felt this just overwhelming sense
of who am I now? I can finally figure out

(08:23):
why I'm here. I knew it couldn't have been that.
I know a lot of survivors and a lot of
people that go through this kind of trauma when they're young.
It stifles them in a lot of ways, and it
did do that for me. But I also it gave
me this odd strength which I've carried with me through

(08:43):
my life. And so when he died, it was such
a relief to me. And I remember, you know, being
at a funeral and not crying and not feeling sad
and feeling just relief.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
So important for people to hear that, because that kind
of real at the time of someone's passing, were told,
that's terrible if you feel that way. But I'm a
reader of the book, and I felt relieved.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
I felt like I left my body during his funeral,
and I felt like I didn't want to be around
people who were praising him, which is what they were
all doing. They were all getting up there and telling
amazing stories about how incredible he was. And I never
knew that. Man. My mom tells these stories about these

(09:29):
amazing things that he did as a father, I didn't
know that man. I hated him. I never had love
for him. There was never that confusion for me, and
I think some of his children have that confusion. Yeah,
but I always despised him.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
It's so complicated because many other people have gone through
this kind of interfamilial abuse don't know what emotion to have.
Am I supposed to hate this person, I'm supposed to
love this person. His other victims within the family system,
like your mother, like your aunt, and I'm sure many
others had to tell themselves a different story in order
to stay in the family system. If somebody spoke out,

(10:01):
they were going to be firmly silenced and ostracized. Most
people can't.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
Tolerate that, yes, which has happened to me.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
Yes, okay, So how much of that was ostracism and
how much of that also was free will and choice?
Because ostracism is something that happens to us. But there's
also a point for survivors where you say, you know
you don't need to kick me out. I'm out. Don't
think this is some grand punishment for me. I have
made the choice to step away, and I do want
to unpack that with you, because I think that's a
really important piece to tell.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
We speak of a fictitious character in the book as
my sister. I actually have three sisters.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
Oh okay.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
My one sister, as soon as she found out I
got a book deal, completely ghosted me. Haven't talked to
her in three and a half years, and my youngest
sister did the same thing. My middle sister was supportive,
but I think she felt like she sort of had
to choose a side. And there were things happening within
our family system that as I got older and as

(10:56):
I started healing, I realized we're extremely toxic and that
we were all moving in this toxic way. We always
called it. But we're just ameshed is what we would say.
But there were never words then like there are now.
We're just an a meshed family. We're just a meshed Well, no,
we just didn't have boundaries. I don't think I learned
what a boundary was I was thirty.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
A family system that is enmeshed is a family system
with very poor boundaries and unhealthy emotional sharing and expectations
cut through the family. There may also be lots of triangulation, gossip,
and breaking of confidences. Parents may share inappropriate information with children,

(11:38):
and when the children become adults, the parents may over
rely on their children. There is a real pressure to
keep everything in house, meaning people are discouraged from seeking
help outside of the family. And mesh min doesn't mean
that the family is deeply connected or committed. It really
does mean that the boundaries are so blurred that the

(12:01):
individual identities, safety, and needs of the people in the
family get lost.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
So once I started really doing the work, I realized
that having certain people in my life was not healthy
for me, no matter how much I love them, and
that how they chose to deal with their trauma was
not how I was choosing to deal with my trauma,
and I could not have a relationship with them, one

(12:29):
of them being my father and one of them being
my sister.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
That's a big moment. Yes, it's almost like you're talking
about a family mass so in mesh that it was
just like this toxic clump and that intergenerational cycle of
protecting the system but not the individuals within it seemed
to persist. There's no safety, but it's almost like strength
in numbers. Okay, where a family we're all together. And
I guess that was the real test. You get the

(12:52):
book deal, you're going to speak your truth. And that's
when they said, no, this family system has no room
for truth.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Correct.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
You said You're sisters chose to deal with their trauma differently,
How did they deal with their trauma?

Speaker 2 (13:04):
They didn't?

Speaker 1 (13:04):
They didn't. Okay, so your sisters were abused to they
chose not to deal with them.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
Correct.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
You said you knew what was happening wasn't right. But
when did you recognize or realize that this was abuse?

Speaker 2 (13:18):
When he died, I think I felt safer. My parents
were in a very safe space for me. Ever, my mom,
because of her abuse, just was there but not there.
And my dad, he was in Vietnam very young and
didn't come from the most functional family, and so his

(13:41):
idea of fatherhood is very different than my idea of fatherhood.
But I started having flashbacks that were debilitating for me.
I would see him, or I would uncontrollably shake and
not understand why, and then things would flash in my head,
and then I'd hide in my closet. And when that
started happening, I knew that something was really wrong. My

(14:02):
mom had this encyclopedia of diseases which I looked through
every day and diagnosed myself with every sort of everything,
which now I can see was I just needed to
find something concrete that was wrong with me because there
was so much wrong that nobody was acknowledging. I cried
every day. I remember thinking, Okay, this can't be normal.

(14:23):
I'm a child, I'm crying every day. Why am I
crying every day? There's nothing that I can really hang
on to. Even though there was abuse going on in
my own home, as far as narcissistic abuse, as I've
come to know now, but then I did not because
for me, there was such this massive abuse that I
had endured that what was going on in my house

(14:45):
was nothing.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah, of course, of course, yes, it was like, oh,
this is just dad, Dad. Well, I mean and listen,
Even when there's not that other simultaneous sexual abuse happening
in a family, people still do think that this is
just dad. But their body holds that this doesn't feel good,
this doesn't feel comfortable. It's risky for me to be myself,

(15:09):
it's dangerous to express needs that all gets internalized. But
that's the only reality, you know. So I think thinking
that it's just dad, I think that's part and parcel
of what childhood narcissistic abuse survivors would all say, Well,
was there a point at which you did share with
someone in the family you had been abused or learned
more about these cycles of sexual abuse within your family.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
I told my mother and she immediately left the room
in a panic and came back and said, we're going
to go see my therapist tomorrow. You're not going to school.
And I was like, you have a therapist. She said, yes,
someone hurt me too, and then she just went to bed.
Then the next day I was in the office with
her with her therapist, and I didn't feel safe there either,

(15:54):
because I, of course it's a total stranger and she
was really pushy, and I didn't even know what I
was experiencing.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
Four years since your grandfather's died. You tell your mother,
she has you go talk to a therapist. But that
was a little bit abrupt. You really needed your mom
to not split away. It sounds like you understand enough
about trauma to understand why your mom just split away
and what her trauma response was. But her motherhood didn't
supersede that response. It never had. She had never kept

(16:22):
you safe. She knew this was coming, and she didn't
do anything about it. So that's your mom. Let's talk
about your narcissistic father. I want to understand that a
little bit. So do I Okay, well you know what yeh?
Come to the right place, yes, yes, So tell me
a little bit about dad.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
So he didn't believe me when my memory surfaced.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
So that's just the ultimated validation. I don't know that
you move forward from that.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
I think from my father, him having to admit that
this happened on his watch was way too overwhelming for him,
and so it was easier for him to just say
absolutely not, this couldn't happened, and the abuse happened when
the adults were all present, like this was Christmas, this

(17:09):
was parties, this was you know. That's why I always say, like,
know where your children are all the time, because it
was happening under their feet literally, and I'm not belittling
anybody's abuse, but it was very severe abuse. So for
a long time, it was really confusing to me. How
you know my mom never saw, or my dad or

(17:30):
no one ever saw. That was something that I really
struggled with because I just know now as a mom,
my daughter doesn't leave my sight for thirty seconds without
me knowing where she is. And then once I started
writing and really excavating and really pretty much having to
go no contact with my family, I remember that my

(17:52):
mom actually did walk in on a few occasions, and
I think.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
That he had.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
Grimmed her so much and she was so afraid of
him that the minute he told her to get out,
she did. And I didn't matter.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yes, and you weren't protected. I'm so sorry, Thank you
for sharing that. Sorry, don't you ever say sorry for crying? Please?

Speaker 2 (18:21):
You know your your condition to apologize.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
When I know your conditions. Yes, I almost wish we
had kind of like a little bit of a buzzer.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Hi.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
Sorry, we don't say I'm sorry. Navigating narcissism or navigating
narcissism means never having to say you're sorry. But just
like you said, you can't rank trauma higher or lower,
yours was very severe. I read the book It's very severe.
That's an objective clinical opinion that it was very severe.
Trauma affects everyone differently, and the way your mother and

(18:48):
father responded to it. Your mother witnessed it, and then
you have someone like your father who it's interesting how
you framed that to me, Kimberly is that he didn't
want it to have been happened on his watch. How
did he feel about your grandfather while your grandfather was alive?

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Did he loved him?

Speaker 1 (19:08):
He loved him.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
My dad came from a very poor family, and my
mother's family had money, and I think that was very
attractive to him, and he felt like they could do
no wrong. And even stories I heard later on in
life that would make me question as an adult. You know,

(19:32):
my dad told me a story once, Oh, I had
to pick your grandfather up and talk about having inappropriate
conversations with your child at a strip club in the
middle of the day, and I'm you know, now in
the space I'm at now, Okay, well, no one found
that odd on the middle of a work day that
he's at a strip club and he's in his sixties.

(19:53):
I did a lot of digging because I needed to
understand how this survived and how he was able to
get away with it for so long. It was really
important to me for a long time to try to
just wrap my head around how I could have been
so hurt around so many adults that were supposed to
protect me.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
What did your process of exploring this.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
Reveal that everybody sucked?

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Okay? You know what, though we could use all kinds
of fancy words like they were all enablers and you know,
intergenerational this and this is how they managed betrayal and
they couldn't process it, but it really does come down
to everybody sucks. All right. I want to go back
again to your mom, because your mom went through this,
your mom had witnessed it. You find out at the

(20:42):
age of eight, at a doctor's office you have a
sexually transmitted infection. There's only one place that could have
come from from another adult, And at fifteen, she runs
out of the room when you tell her, and then
she gives you a therapist, you don't know anything about,
no other place to process it. At the age of fifteen,
How did you start working through that? How did your
relationship with your mother evolve?

Speaker 2 (21:03):
It didn't.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
It didn't. I could see that.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
It's hard because she was abused up until the day
before her wedding, So is her entire life.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
Your mother was abused the day before, and then after
a wedding it stopped.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
Yeah, I think. I mean, who knows.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
You have a father who was in complete denial that
his daughter was harmed.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Here if he was sitting here, he'll say, I don't
know what you're talking about. I believed you.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
He harmed you. Twice. He harms you on the front
end when he says that didn't happen, and then he
harms you again when he says, I did say that happened.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
I never not believed you, is what he'll say to
me until and I know the day when my other
sister came forward with her memories when we were older,
in our twenties, is when I was actually validated by
my father.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
Why do you think he what was what did he
turn on?

Speaker 2 (21:52):
I was the drama queen in the family.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
That's how they characterized.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
Yes, so I think for him having someone else acknowledge it.
My sister he has a different relationship with, and so
that's when I was actually believed by him.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
So you're labeled the drama queen of the family, you're
not believed. Your sister comes around, it still doesn't feel
like you were believed. It feels like your sister was
believed and you kind of just got sort of swept in.
What was that feeling like that he would believe her
and not you.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
My dad and I had a very tumultuous relationship because
I called him out on his shit. I haven't spoken
to in eight months, and that was my decision.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
I couldn't keep having the same conversations with him on
the phone, which were all about him and all about
the only thing that he would ever say about my
grandfather was, you know, if he was alive, I'd kill him,
which is not comforting for me. It was just felt
like a merry go round all the time. I couldn't

(23:02):
be in the toxicity anymore, and he was very toxic
in my life.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Narcissistic relationships, especially long standing family relationships, can feel like
merry go rounds. As Kimberly just described, you share how
you feel, they come back with their same response around
you go, and nothing ever changes. If you find yourself

(23:28):
in this merry go round pattern, I often advise folks
to either get a timer for when they are going
to talk with the narcissistic person, or to make a
promise to themselves that the first time the narcissistic person
says the same invalidating thing, For example his comment about
her grandfather that you find a way to end the conversation. Sadly,

(23:55):
we often need to ride this carousel for a long
time before we can finally decide to hop off. We
will be right back with this conversation.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
So I sat down and I wrote him a seven
page letter about my feelings and how I never felt
supported by him in so many ways, and just my
choice of career and so many things that he never
supported me on until he saw me on television, and
then everything changed because he could show his friends that
his daughter was on television. And I also said, there's options,

(24:35):
we can heal, we can change, we can grow, we
can work on this. And I never heard from him again. Wow,
everything with my father, every mean horrible thing, he would
say to me, which was many always ended with I'm
just kidding.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
Ah, the ultimate guess, like, yeah, I'm just kidding. You
know it's a big guest lighty thing to do. Right,
So you've had a real reaction to something, because it's cruel,
your reactions witnessed. Narcissistic person knows what's right and what's wrong.
They're just always trying to keep people off balance. You
register hurt, then it's I'm just kidding, which makes you
look crazy for having a reaction to something when they

(25:14):
were just joking. And now it's back to Kimberly's dramatic yes,
that whole I'm just kidding. It's just blood sport, and
that seems to be how he had his interactions. So
from age fifteen, your mother and you hid an impasse.
At that point, your father's your father. So what happens then?
How does your life move forward? I left you? Oh,
you moved away? Okay, yeh?

Speaker 2 (25:34):
At what?

Speaker 1 (25:35):
Age eighteen eighteen?

Speaker 2 (25:36):
I'm from New York. I moved to California to mourn.
But I wasn't handling things in a healthy way. I
was bleamic, I was cutting, I was doing all the
things really just as I say, like I was just
trying to survive, Like every day was just a survival
day for me. I never looked forward to things. I
was never excited about things. I was just living.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
And that's complex. It is just living as survival. Yeah,
there's a word we have called anna hoidonia, which means
you no longer get pleasure or joy from any of
the activities that maybe have ever given you joy or
would ordinarily give people joy. A beautiful day, dinner out
with friends, a funny movie, whatever. It mean nothing, It's
just sort of this flat, kind of gray sort of

(26:21):
feeling around life. Anne Hedonia is something we do see
people going through post traumatic stress complex post traumatic stress.
It's a big part of that picture for sure.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
I mean and even still now I feel like that
I have that because my husband's come out and look
at the stars, am I I don't, So it's still there,
it's yeah, definitely, definitely.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
And at this point, Kimberly, so now you're eighteen, are
you talking with anyone about what's happening? How are you
getting through the days.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
At twenty five, I actually started writing a book with
all the women in my family, my mom, my aunt,
my sisters at the time, and everybody was really I
wouldn't say it was a book of It was more
of just us journaling and sort of getting everything out.
At that time, we felt that it was healthy, but

(27:10):
looking back, I think it was actually really an unhealthy
way to process what had happened, because I think we
needed to process it apart from each other and not together.
And I say this because I do speak to my mom.
It's different, but my mom does try, she's in therapy,
she does her best. And you know, that's a very

(27:31):
difficult thing for me because there is a split side
of knowing that she was a victim as well of him. Yes,
and so I do have that in my heart. That's
very hard. But we soon became grouped together, and that
was uncomfortable for me because I didn't feel like being
grouped with my mom was fair, or being grouped with

(27:54):
any other adult that was in my life when I
was a child was fair, because even and if the
same thing happened to us, they still never protected me.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Correct. I agree completely with that.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yes, looking back, I know that it wasn't a healthy
way to process my abuse. There's an interesting story that's
not in the book. I was abused on my first
Holy Communion, and my mother knew this always from the
time I was fifteen. It was one of my first memories.
And about two years ago she came to my house
because we all wore the same communion dress, all of

(28:28):
the siblings. So, oh, your sister asked for the communion
dress for her if she ever has a daughter, which
she now has. So I got them pressed, and I'm
just sitting there in my head, going, are we actually
having this conversation? And I sent them to her, and
now you know she has them and she's so happy,
and so she ever has a daughter, she'll have her

(28:51):
communion in this dress. And I tell that story because
I just think it speaks volumes of where everybody head is. Yes,
I wasn't talking to my younger sister at the time.
I still am not, and I sent her an email
and I just said, I just want to let you
know if you didn't know that something really horrific happened

(29:12):
to me in that dress, and I don't think you
want it, Can you please mail it back to me
because I'd like to burn it. And I never heard
back from her, and about four months later, my mom
came to my house after visiting her, and she had
my communion dress wrapped up in a Starbucks bag like garbage.

(29:34):
Not that it's not garbage, but to me, it was
a very significant, painful part of my life. And she
just goes, oh, here's.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
Your thing, here's your thing.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
And thankfully I have an amazing husband and he burned
it with me. But if I never said anything, my
niece would be wearing that dress on her communion. And
that same sister, when she found out I was writing
the book, told me I was going to ruin all
of the children's lives by doing this. And what was

(30:08):
so ironic about that to me was over the summer,
we all just happened to me in New York, and
I reached out to one of my sisters, who I
had talked to more than anyone, and I just said, look,
my daughter really wants to see her cousins because she
had grown up with them, and I said, can you

(30:29):
please include her? This isn't fair to her. We can
all go to the beach. I'm protecting her, which I
would never do right now in the space I'm in now.
But at that time, I just felt like she's asked
me to see her cousins, and she first said absolutely,
and then they all got together and they never included
my daughter, And so my daughter said to me, what

(30:50):
did I do? Mom? And that to me was such
a moment for me to step back and say, I'm
saving you from them.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
Yes, yes, absolutely, And that is such a painful realization
because you were doing the right things right. She loves
her cousins. You wanted her to have that contact, but
now she's being brought into a toxic system where the
child immediately goes to is this my fault? What have
I done wrong? And that you immediately detected as no,
I'm not putting into a system where she's questioning herself.

(31:21):
Your family, in some ways is so not unique in
the sense of you're going to harm all these children
in the family by telling the truth right, which you
know could actually keep those children protected or understand.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
For me, it was never an option for my daughter
not to know my story, because it's going to explain
to her so much about me and so much about
why I parented the way that I did, and why
I'm not perfect, and why I get triggered and why
I'm impatient or why I overreact about certain things. And

(31:56):
that to me is the biggest gift I can give
her because I can't take away.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
Yeah, yeah, no you can't. And I think that it
is a gift for a child to know where they
come from and it not all be a secret, because
it can actually be even if no further sexual abuse
happens to your various nieces nephews as they come up,
but this story is kept from them. There is also
a trauma and grief that comes from recognizing way down

(32:23):
the line when you learn these things about your family
that I believe and this is rather metaphysical for a
scientific a GALSI, we do carry these in traumatic inheritances
within our bodies, even if we've never become acquainted with
the players. It's in there, yes, and we feel it
and in some ways knowing it it makes it all fit.

(32:46):
We don't feel crazy. It's so fascinating because the willingness
of your sister to remain faithful to a fictional characterization
of a family was greater than wanting to have a
relationship with her lips breathing sister. Yes, Unfortunately, what we're
learning from you and this is sort of the painful truth.
Nobody wants to talk to breaking into generational cycles does

(33:09):
often mean breaking ties. Yeah, because as long as people
are still sort of buying into that false narrative, being
near them is dangerous, especially after what you've been through,
having had a history of complex trauma. Complex trauma treatment
is also protecting yourself from dangerous situations. That's what you
do forever, That's what you're doing. And all the pushback

(33:30):
people say, well, I don't know family estrangement. Nah, it's
going to keep someone safe, like you want to say stranger,
and it's a dirty word for me, it actually happens
not to be.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, and it's been interesting for me. I have connected
with so many amazing doctors through for all of this
you included to get validation. It's sad that it's taken
this long. You know, people that study this and this

(34:00):
is what you do for a living, and to get
validation that I'm doing the right thing. It's sad that
it couldn't come from my family. But I'm really happy
about the way that it's all happening.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
I'm so glad you're getting that. But you know, I'm
sad it didn't come from my family. It almost couldn't
come from your family. It goes back to that they
couldn't keep you safe, and they still can't keep people safe.
That doesn't just change overnight. The decks almost have to
be cleared. With the family you've created with your husband,
you have a daughter, the inheritance kind of gets a

(34:36):
little cleaned up with her and she gets to go
and fall in love one day and have her own family,
and that will feel different. Yeah, that's how these cycles end.
And I do tire of people saying we'll be sad
if we end these cycles. I don't know. I think
if the family earns the right to remain in that,
I think very divine seat of being family. That's an

(34:56):
earned right. It's not just a birthright being family. To
be safe. We had a guest named doctor Jennifer Frida
who calls it the duties of a relationship, And the
foremost duty of a relationship is safety.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
It is to create safety. It's to protect the vulnerabilities
of another, it's to keep children safe. If people can't
do those duties, I don't give it. If they're your family, Yeah,
I have to tell you, Kimberly, in the years I've
been doing all of this, is that for some people
it was literally the only path forward.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
I've learned a lot of just dialogue around you know,
no contact and things that I didn't know existed but
I was living.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Yes, it has a name, no contract. I mean, it's
so obvious no contact, but people like that you can
actually do. Yeah, it's a thing. Yeah, absolutely, and no
contact could literally describe to people just don't have contact.
It's very intentional. Kimb believe no contact in a family
system is rare. People will say there's at least one
person and that's this I want to be in touch

(36:00):
with me, which means I have to get the whole
family blob coming along. It's not that common, and so
when people do finally pull it off, it works. I'll
tell you what's very interesting sort of a sideline here.
I was looking at a group of people's data a
few years ago. The data was collecting people all over
the world, and they were asking them, what are the
things that have worked best for you to help you

(36:23):
with your narcissistic abuse. At the time I had looked
at that data, the number one thing was actually no contact.
It's not a strategy accessible to everyone, especially for example,
if you're co parenting with someone and you have custody
of a minor child, you have to stay in touch
with that parent. But for people who have it as
an option, you're getting away from a toxin. There's no
but it has a name and it's a thing, and

(36:44):
it's powerful, and you did it, and you're saying you
notice the difference.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
Oh yeah, one hundred percent. And my husband had a
very normal life. Don't ask me how we wound up together.
I'm not really sure, but I'll say, if you feel
like you want to call your dad, I said, I don't.
I don't. I feel grief around it. Brief yes, which
was surprising to me that I felt as much grief
as I did, because when I finished the book and

(37:08):
all these amazing things happening with it, and how proud
I am of just the outcome of it and how
it's written, and how many people I know it's going
to help. You want to call your family, that's who
you want to call and tell them look at this
thing I did. But I couldn't do that because they
wouldn't have been proud of me, and it would have
been the same conversation we've been having my entire life.

(37:32):
The one thing that I will say that is, I think,
really difficult when you do have a narcissistic parent, especially
one that's not supportive of you. Because my father was
never anything that I did. Everything was the wrong thing.
I would dance with Alvin Alli for years. And it's
really interesting because I was sending my book out to

(37:53):
somebody yesterday, and as I was mailing it and putting
it together, I heard my dad's voice in my head
back when I was in my twenties and I had
to live with him for a very short period of time.
And I was mailing my headshot and resume out to everybody,
and I remember my dad walking in and looking at
me and going to waste of time. As I was

(38:13):
mailing at my book, I just, you know, had this
moment where I just broke down and I just thought, well,
not only were you wrong, so wrong about my career
besides this, but now I wrote about it. You know.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
It's what's so interesting is that narcissistic parents are dream killers, right,
and you have to have Is that really a thing?
One hundred thing?

Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Because what it means, then, Kimberly, is you are exerting
an identity and a process outside of that narcissistic parent.
Because of them, they sort of subjugate the identity of
everyone around them. Children are an extension of them, and
so you sort of exist in their service, right, So
if you have a need outside of them, they resent that.
But it's the ultimate and arrogance if you think you're
going to go do your own thing. But it also

(38:55):
brings up their insecurity. At the core of the narcissistic
person is deep, deep insecurity. So my guess is he
probably had much more grandiose visions for himself, none of
which happened, correct, But even the sense of it's the
I'm going to make you feel as small as I feel.
So it's a waste of time when they see the

(39:15):
pictures going out, that dream killing element unless the dream
is fully aligned with what the parent wants. Because sometimes
you'll hear like the stage parents, who was like, you
have to go to all the auditions, But then they'll
criticize the child mercilessly as they go through the process.
No one wins at this. So what you're describing there
is on point, but so too is the grief, and
I think people are struggling. I want to go no contact.

(39:37):
I'm going to be relieved. I am relieved, but the
wave of grief can be quite astonishing, because not only
is it a painful reminder that they didn't protect you,
every child craves that attachment and connection to a loving
parental figure or figures and recognizing that's never going to
have them. And it's not about the father, the man

(39:58):
you've long since given up on. But it's the symbol,
it's the thing, it's the safety, it's the primal need.
It's the grief that that can't happen.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
It's a big grief completely. And it's interesting because I
went no contact with my dad a few years back
for a short period of time. When I did it
the first time, my sister called me and said, I
didn't even say hello, I don't think And she said, I, well,
I know you're not talking to Dad, and I hope
you're okay with the fact that he's second he's probably
gonna die, and are you happy with like the last

(40:28):
conversation you had with him? And I just thought, God,
this family's so fucked up.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
It is the manipulativeness to keep a person on the
hook the person's dying. Is this what you want your
last conversation to be and you're thinking yourself, I had
that lost conversation a long time ago.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
Twenty years ago. Yeah, and you know, we'll be out
to dinner years ago and he has all of my
stunts in his phone, so he'll show the waiter, he'll
show everybody, look, my daughter doubles ABC and then he'll say,
you know, she used to be a gymast. She was
never very good. It's so interesting because from the outside world,
my father is this incredible human. Everybody loves my father.

(41:09):
He does all of this stuff for the poor. He
does everything that he doesn't do for his family, he
does for the outside world. So if you're my father's friend,
they'll tell you he is the best guy on the planet.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
It's actually something we call communal narcissism, which is a
form of narcissism where the narcissistic person gets their sense
of validation by actually doing these things for other people. So,
whereas narcissitt to be people in general just want people
to show up and tell them they're great, or they
walk around proclaiming their greatness, these are folks who do
things that look nice, so nobody picks it up that
way until you realize, actually, this is a terrible person

(41:44):
who is unempathic and entitled and arrogant and all these things.
They keep doing these things, but the payout on it
it is transactional. You need to praise the heck out
of them. But a person who's getting what they want
may praise them. Okay, whatever you've done for me, thank you,
thank you, thank you. He's so great. But it's also
that dynamic of your grandfather. He's such a great guy.
He's such a great guy. So you're in these environments where,

(42:06):
in a way, these are all very transactional relationships. It's
like people are buying like a really cheap and dirty
version of someone saying, oh, they're great because they helped
me out. They're great because they were nice to me once.
And you're seeing that parallel process which doesn't feel good.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
No. Yeah, and with men, especially.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
With men, yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
So you then you go into adulthood. How did you
get into the stunt world. There's no like stunt school
or stunt application.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
And a lot of people that I was performing with
were doing it, and so funny enough, they said, well
send your resume to this guy. He's you know, the
biggest guy in New York and like an agent called
me a coordinator. Yeah, And he called me a week
later and I was on a movie doubling for Uma Thurman.

(42:54):
And that was my first film and I never stopped
working since. Wow.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
Yeah, what was your process of healing successfully working twenty
years in this industry? How was your healing process unfolding
in parallel to doing this work and stunts.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
I think part of it was sadly, I was finally
happy that my family was proud of me and that
I was doing something that mattered to them, because I
never mattered to them.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
So it sounds like there was a complex mix of emotions.
There was a gratification in a way that I'm finally
being seen, Yeah, and not because I'm dramatic, but because
I'm succeeding. But there's a sadness at being seen, because
all that any of us ever want is just to
be seen for us, not because we're doing something that's
sort of spectacular, but simply because we are.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
Yeah. And also that I was really good at it, yeah,
And so that felt really good to just be good
at something and for people to recognize that and tell
me that I'm really good and big actors to put
me in their contracts and want me there because I
was good and getting this external validation from everybody but

(44:16):
my family was something I think that I really needed.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
It helps a lot, and there's also a sense of
agency of I can go out and do this thing.
I'm good at this thing, feeling good at something, because
going through complex trauma and going through narcissistic abuse is
all about invalidation of yourself, gaslighting yourself, being riddled with
self doubt. You really can't have self doubt if you're
a stunt person because you've got to do things kind

(44:43):
of perfectly. There's a precision, and you can't have self doubt.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
No, And I've literally never made a mistake at work. Never.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
I mean injuries that were not my not because things happen,
but I have never made a mistake.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Doesn't surprise me, because I think that over control that
trauma survivors often have, narcissistic abuse survivors often have, is
just that you got to use that in the practice
and art of what you did. A lot of people
don't have that, so that could end up starting to
look like OCD, that could look like other kinds of
overcontrolled behaviors. It could also flip to the other side
and become things like binging and purging food. It could

(45:22):
become addiction, it could become dysregulated sexuality. Like we could
see it play out both ways.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
I think there was always something in me, which is
why I name the book Glimmer. That was just although
all of these horrific things had happened to me, that
I knew that I was here for a higher purpose
and I couldn't make sense of the pain if there
was a purpose for the pain. And I always felt

(45:47):
like my purpose was to help people, because if I don't,
then what was it? Awful?

Speaker 1 (45:52):
Right to find the meaning and the purpose and the
suffering is the way to come out the other side,
because without that, the suffering will swallow you up, and
it does swallow many people up. You shouldn't be here.
The severity of what you endured and the lack of
support you had after it happened. You are a living
monument to resilience and strength because so many people don't

(46:15):
get the support they need through mental health, or they
don't give themselves permission to harness their gifts. Because I
think everyone has their gifts and they don't find the
meaning and purpose, and the trauma swallows them and they
go into the void.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
Yeah. Completely. I read something where they say you're what
your ancestors have been waiting for, and that's what I
feel with me.

Speaker 1 (46:35):
It's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
And I think that my aunt really tried to break
the cycle, and she was shut down by the people
that she trusted to tell and she wasn't able to
fulfill our story. And I really truly believe that that's
what I'm here for.

Speaker 1 (46:52):
That's amazing. I've never heard that line, you are what
your ancestors have been waiting for. It's really profound, and
it's a inturger generational cycles and when they end right,
and in some cases in your family, they may be
continuing because some of your family members don't want to
see it.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
And you have to be willing to let go of
what's pulling you back. Like a friend said to me, Kim,
it's like you have one leg over the hill, but
you're letting your family still tug on your other leg.
You've got to let them go so that you can
get over the hill right right, which is exactly what

(47:29):
I needed to do. It's exactly right because staying split doesn't.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
Work in the metaphor I've often used with clients as
a hot air balloon, right they I mean back in
the day the car tooon. They cut the little sand
bags out, but they let the weights out. But using
the sandbag analogy, it is very often cutting out those
toxic people and just snip, snip, snip. Balloon's not going
to float. Otherwise you're just sitting in this balloon that's
just sitting on the ground. There's no point but to sore.

(47:55):
You do need to cut that stuff off, whatever it is.
It's not always people. It's a whole lot of other
things too that you have to be willing to do it.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
I think a lot of it too is Unfortunately, there's
a lot of therapists out there that shouldn't be therapist.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
Girl, you just said a mouthful.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
I'm just saying, and I've seen a lot of them
because when I didn't have money to pay for a
good therapist. That's a real big problem. Because even with
my mom, she has this thing in her back pocket
where she's like, I've been in therapy for twenty years,
So what if you're not seeing the right person, If
you're not getting the right therapy, you're going to stay

(48:32):
in the same place. You're never going to move forward.
Things are never going to shift for you. And writing
this book, I think it took from beginning to end
about three years. Almost I've grown more than I have
in my entire life. And the catalyst of all of
that was my daughter.

Speaker 1 (48:52):
How old does she know she's a and you want
her to know your story? How much does she know?
And how do you envision that unfolding with her?

Speaker 2 (49:00):
Well, she's, thankfully, an extremely confident, amazing.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
It doesn't surprise me soul.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
And unfortunately I had to have a conversation with her
earlier than I wanted to because of her being left
out of the family. I had to address that with her,
and I wanted to be as honest as I could
with her, and I didn't want her to carry around
this feeling of even if I said it's not you,
it wasn't enough. And she even said to me, she said, Mommy,

(49:29):
I want an example of what you're talking about, because
something up of that school. You want an example, So
I want you to give me an example. And my
husband was with me, thankfully, and he just said, you
know how, mommy, and Daddy's number one job is to
protect you. I'm not going to apologize and she said yes,

(49:53):
and he said, well, mommy wasn't protected when she was
your age and she was really hurt. And she says, well,
who hurt you, mommy? And I said Mena's dad, because
that's what she calls my mom. And she said did
he hurt your heart? Or did he hurt you with
his hands? And I just said both, and she just

(50:16):
hugged me and she said she was sorry, and then
she walked away into a puzzle.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
I was chisten too. What a beautiful question, she asked, Yeah,
that's a question most adults wouldn't think with his Did
hurt your heart? Did he hurt you with his hands?

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Wow, what an insightful And.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
I was like, check, mommy's doing something right.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
Oh yeah, clearly, clearly. And each one of these things
is building a brick in a wall of safety that
she has in the world. And she securely attached to you,
she securely attached to her father, yes, and every day
that secure attachment is practice. When you're being open with
her and she is protected, she will never be the

(50:59):
child who not watched at the party, and that will
make her confident in herself in the world. Yes, not foolhardy,
but confidence.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Yes. And there's something that I'm living out now, which
is the truth is so easy. Why don't we say
it more? And in that moment with her, and when
she walked away, I said, this is exactly what I mean.
It's so easy. She can take this. Of course, she's eight.

(51:28):
I'm not going to sit there and tell her things
she does not need to hear. But she needed to
hear something and she needed to be validated. And I
also said to her, just because people are adults does
not mean that they're making the right decisions, and does
not mean that they aren't caring around pain, and does

(51:50):
not mean that their pain is not bleeding out into
other people. And unfortunately, that's what's happening in Mommy's family.
Mommy's family's had a lot of pain, and they're not
dealing with the pain properly, and so it's coming out
in other ways. And I'm sorry that you were hurt
by that, because I don't want you to ever feel

(52:11):
that that has anything to do with you.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
That idea of always letting children know that the pain
of the adults around them is not their fault is
so absolutely crucial that it also explains their behavior and
them not coming around is not your fault. That's all
that any child ever needs to hear. But also what
I love is because this is very different than the
message you got as a child was that adults are fallible,

(52:35):
adults are flawed, adults aren't always right. You weren't told
that you were like, well, adults right, where everything we're
doing is right. No, we're not harming you. You're the
one who's the problem. You're the one who's wrong, holding
space for that idea that no, adults always don't do
the right thing. We're a safe space. You can tell
us it's okay, that's huge. My conversation will continue after

(52:56):
this break. You're breaking through each of those things one
at a time. But you know, why don't we tell
the truth. It's so easy. Listen, You told the truth
to your sister and she walked. You told the truth
to other family members and they shamed and judged you.

(53:17):
So maybe saying the words is easy. What comes back
at you is not to tell the truth is actually
to blast through a lot of what you believed for
social relationships in your life. And I think a lot
of people listen. When you become authentic, when you heal,
when you push through this, your social circle gets a

(53:37):
lot smaller.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
Oh yeah, fast, Yes, And I like that.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
Yeah, no, no, no, I because it's a true safe place.
Otherwise it's an illusion.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
Right.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
It's like having a fully stock kitchen and all the
boxes are empty. You're like, I'm still hungry because this
actually isn't food.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
Yes. And I think when you step away from the
family or the system that is the dysfunction, I can
see things so much clearer. Yes, Yes, because when you're
in it and you're having daily conversations on the phone
and you're doing these things, you're still, you know, moving
in that toxicity with them. So in order to really

(54:13):
see it for what it is, you have to step
away from it.

Speaker 1 (54:16):
Yes, And you can't see it clearly. There's no version
of this, Kimberly where you see it clearly and you
stay in the system. So to stay in the system
means you don't see it clearly, see it clearly. Don't
stay in the system. It's a dynamic system like that.
And I think what people try to create is like,
can't I both know it doesn't work. They're just they's
two bullys and so man, a lot of people, it's

(54:38):
just too scary.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
We shame people. I mean, I can't begin to tell.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
You how many times I've read stuff when somebody's a
strange from their family, Well, what's wrong with you? How
about maybe they're the most courageous person in the room
that they were able to do that. But that societal
level shaming of people who set that distance boundary or
cut out all together. Yeah, I actually think it's remarkably
courageous when people can do that.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
With my sisters, I realized, not quick enough, but that
their trauma was bleeding out into their parenting and I
was not going to have that for my daughter. And
I also was not going to let her witness it either.
I don't want her to have one sliver of my childhood,

(55:26):
and unfortunately she will in the sense of this is
who I am and this is where I come from.
But I want her to just be around strong, loving
women who have all of the best intentions and can
say I'm not perfect and I'm not human and I

(55:47):
know I need to work on this, and I do
that with her, I lose my patience. I'm not a
perfect mom. Mommy's had stuff, Mommy's doing her best, Mommy's
gonna work harder. I'm going to try harder, which gives
her the gateway to tell me when I've heard her,
you know that hurt my feelings, Mommy when you said
that in that way, right, right, And it gives her

(56:09):
permission to have that conversation with me, which is so
important because I never had that conversation with my parents.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
I'm going to do something that sometimes happens with our
guests because I'm a shrink, and that's how I hear things.
Is you When you were saying what you just said,
you were saying the things you want to tell your daughter,
And one of the things you said is I'm not human.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
Oh I'm not human. I did say that I'm doing
a lot of inner child.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
Work, and it's great. That's great.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
And she's probably going to be really mad at me
for saying that. Why because I was very disconnected with
her for a long time. I saw us as two people.
I saw her as the victim, as the person who
didn't do anything. Why didn't you speak up? Why weren't
you strong enough? I blamed her, I put the blame

(56:55):
on her.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
I'm not human again, And through.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
My work that I've been doing on myself, I have
reconnected with her and feel finally that we're living in
the same body, because I didn't realize how much we
actually weren't. So I literally have a picture of her
on my mirror and I talk to her, and I
can see when I put a picture of myself as

(57:22):
my daughter's age and a picture of my daughter next
to each other, there is this pain behind my eyes
that my daughter doesn't have.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
That has to be such a profound feeling, grief for
your inner child, the joy for your own child, and
the wish for the child you were that she should
have never had had that pain behind her eyes.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
And I think when you come from a strong survivor
space where you want to be this strong survivor, I
often did this thing in my head where I was said,
you're fine, always trying to power through it or not

(58:08):
make her relevant enough, when truly she survived the worst
of it.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
She did, She did, she did, She carried that burden.
That integration becomes so important in that attunement so we
can all be in one body, yeah, right, Because it's
the more we dissociate that stuff out, the more, it
can actually command us and control us and pull us away.
But you said it's okay to make mistakes. You want
to teach your daughter it's okay to make mistakes. That

(58:35):
pressure to not because the idea is if I don't
make any mistakes, if I'm perfect, then I don't have
to be plagued by that self blame and self doubt.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
Yes, and I think there is so much shame around
it that I always felt I didn't have, which I've
learned that I have a lot of. I don't know
what it is about that, the shame part that feels
so vulnerable, I guess because I think I felt like
I shouldn't have shame because it wasn't my fault. But

(59:04):
it just doesn't work like that.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
No, it doesn't work that way. Another thing i'd love
to hear, first of all, and talk a little about
your husband, because one thing as I was reading your books, like,
oh my goodness, how is Kimberly ever going to enter
into healthy adult relationships? Your husband sounds amazing, by the way,
absolutely amazing is and your relationship with him together the
two of you sound amazing. Was it always healthy?

Speaker 2 (59:24):
Relately?

Speaker 1 (59:24):
Like, did you just go through and meet healthy man.

Speaker 2 (59:31):
Like lucky. I'm alive. God. No, no, I was married
before my husband. Oh okay, okay, and I married my
father in a very similar way, and it was very
unhealthy and he was a good person. He was a
survivor as well, and so we kind of bonded on that.
And I think the moment that he said to me,

(59:55):
I think we should start trying to have kids, that
was like my dead stop and I divorce them.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
Okay, all right. I would almost call that a psychological
palate cleansor let's just get that one out of the
way so you can go into healthier relationships. Unfortunately, sometimes
people get stuck in those. You know. The other thing
I want to say about your husband those One thing
I love about the relationship the two of you've created
is you have been through something, You've experienced that complex
relational trauma, and he protects your vulnerabilities, he never weaponizes them.

(01:00:27):
That's an important part of that survivorship is that for
many people who've been through any form of especially familial trauma,
is that they feel protected that once someone learns that
about them, that that's never thrown in their face, that
they're never called dramatic or any of these things. But
rather this is the most fragile, vulnerable part of this

(01:00:49):
person in the role of loving them, the duties of
the relationship and the role of loving them. I must
protect this above all else. And so even in the
worst fight that a person has the mindfulness to keep
the reins back to say, We'll have our arguments. People
who love each other argue, but that absolutely not I
love this person. What I really love about that story, Kimberly,
is that many people who go through severe intrafamilial sexual

(01:01:13):
trauma feel that they'll never have a normal, healthy relationship.
Absolutely they can. You didn't land there at the first time,
but you got there. Were there other relationships where you
saw some of these themes that you would relate to
your trauma through.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
My twenties, throughout your twenties. Yeah, it was one after
another after another. Yeah. I think the really difficult thing
when you've been abused is your idea of intimacy. Well,
there is no intimacy because you don't know what that is.
So you have to teach that to yourself. And that's
a real bitch. And I still feel like I struggle

(01:01:48):
with that still to this day. I don't think that's
something that will ever go away. I think when you're
introduced to sex at an age that is just unfathomable,
you can't comprehend what it's supposed to be. And I
went through that period of time for a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
I know you had a journey with more than a
few bad therapists, but as was therapy a useful part
of the experience of sort of getting into a healthier
sense of your body sexually or did that come to
you in other ways?

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
My therapist that I got in my late twenties that
I still have, she really was a life changer for
me and really helped me. She's the one who really
was a catalyst for my divorce, kind of really shed
the light on me and sort of what I was
going through and what was healthy for me and not

(01:02:42):
healthy for me. But there needs to be something done
for people that don't have that, and I have. You
know someone in my family right now who just came
forward to me who my grandfather abused, and she's in
her forties and she is a mess. You know, as

(01:03:05):
far as she wants to heal and she wants to
get better, she doesn't necessarily have all of the means
to do so. And so it's like, where did these
people go that sort of fall through the cracks, that
have been through something so traumatic and don't have the
means to get really good therapy, and what does that
look like? And I remember seeing a trauma therapist and

(01:03:31):
this was actually quite recently. I went to see this
person with my mother. Doctor Matte and doctor Bruce Perry
and doctor Richard Schwartz are all doctors who I've been
working with, and so I asked her if she knew
of any of them, and she goes, no, I haven't
heard the names. And I thought to myself, Okay, well,
you're not a trauma therapist because they're this is what

(01:03:53):
they did, this is what they do. Are not a doctor.
But I think that that's something that is becoming more
available because of the Internet. Like I was able to
say to my cousin, go to YouTube and put in
doctor Gilbormate and just listen to his videos and how
he feels about trauma and how it resonates in your body.
And I'm watching it live out in real time with

(01:04:16):
my mother, her siblings. You know. I get a phone
call a few months ago, this aunt beat up this uncle.
You know their siblings and they're in their seventies, and
my mom's like, can you believe it? Yes, I absolutely
can believe it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
Can believe. I don't see how any other way it
would go if these people have never had the proper
intervention as to how are we going to get this
reached out? It's a big, big nut.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
To crack, right, Yes, but what you're doing here is huge.
You know, I follow you on Instagram and just listening
to you explain things when you live it, but you
don't have the names for it, so it feels like
you're the only one who's living it. So it feels
very lonely, confusing all these things. So to have that

(01:05:05):
and to have you spell it out is so helpful,
and I think that that's something that is really such
a useful tool.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
No, I appreciate that, and I think takes me back
to something you said, because I think it's just an
important thing for people to hear that idea that family
gatherings and families that have this, that there is these
intergenerational cycles is actually where this often does happen. It
could be a grandparent, could be an aunt or uncle,
It could be an older cousin somebody are not usually seeing,

(01:05:37):
and then they come into these family gatherings and then
there's a lot of chaos. Right. So it's funny we
say this around pool safety. Right. If you were ever
at a large gathering of people and there's a swimming
pool and you've got a child, the only responsibility you
have that day is to keep eyes on your child.
It's the same thing. And I think some people say, well,
that's going to seem strange. So if that seems strange,

(01:05:59):
you're protecting your child. And it doesn't mean you don't
leave the house, but it does mean that once you
bring a child into the world, you have a singular
role in the world, and that is to keep that
child safe in every means that is within your power.
And I think that's one thing I've very very much
learned from your story, that those kinds of awarenesses in
large groups. I think it's a really important thing. You

(01:06:19):
had pointed out what has worked for you in terms of.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
Healing, journaling, journaling, writing, writing your feelings down, validating yourself
being with someone who validates you. I mean my husband,
it took him time with me. It's not like we
got together and it was this perfect thing. When we
first got together, I was still having a lot of
flashbacks and body memories and I had to sort of

(01:06:45):
have that conversation with him, Okay, during this time, I
might just need to be alone. So we got really
good at him saying Okay, do you need me here
or do you need to be alone? Do you want
me to walk out of the room, Like what do
you need right now? And from the moment he heard
my story, he always was confused as to why I
talk to my family. That was always his question, how

(01:07:07):
can you talk to your parents? How do you talk
to your parents? But he never not supported every decision
that I made and every step that I made to
get where I am now. So he never belittled me
for talking to my mom, or my dad or my siblings,
and he would come with me and support me. And
what I soon realized is that I needed him around

(01:07:30):
when I was around my family, which made me realize
that I wasn't safe around my family because I needed
somebody safe with me to feel safe around my family.
And he let me figure that out on my own,
and that was necessary because I wouldn't have been able
to do it with him, telling me to do it,
because I would have resented and felt like he told

(01:07:52):
me to do this thing, and I did this thing.
I had to learn it on my own. I think
you just have to be really forgiving of your self.
And it's such a cliche to say it's not your fault.
Everyone always says that it's so easy to say that.
It doesn't mean you don't feel like it's your fault.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
Correct, correct exactly, And you know it's a to never
spend time with anyone who wants to, you know, magnify
that belief that well, of course it was your fault
or why didn't you leave or whatever nonsense people come
up with. But there is no magic eraser where people
say this wasn't your fault.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
Yes, And I think recognizing who isn't safe in your
life on any level, and that doesn't mean, you know,
sexual abuse. It just means that you leave their house
and you don't feel fulfilled or you don't feel those
are the people that shouldn't be in your life.

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
That's a huge one. And I think that when we
say safety, I do think a lot of people do
think of frank abuse like, well they didn't hit me,
or abuse, I said no, no, no, no, exactly what you said.
When you leave that encounter, and some people experience that
is a depletion as an exhaustion as I don't feel
like myself. It's almost like that you're not fully like

(01:09:06):
snapped into you pay attention to that. You know, your
book's remarkable. Everyone, you have to read this book. It's
so good. And I'm not just saying it because Kimberly
is here, because if Kimberly said I'm not coming on
your show, she could have easily done done. I would
have been so blessed to have read this book. I
think it's a great book not only for anyone who

(01:09:27):
survived trauma, but who loves somebody who's been through trauma
and often is not sure. How can I reach to them?
How can I be there for them? How can I
be present with them? I think it's also a real
gift if you fall in love with someone who's experienced
that or love I have a dear friend or family member.

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):
I appreciate you and just validating me and my story,
and you have no idea how much it means to me.

Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
So thanks well. I appreciate you so much. Honored by
your willingness to bring your story to this platform so
we could talk about it. You know, people talk about
trauma and it sometimes doesn't always hit the tone if
you will, and I think that this is very real,
it's very raw. You don't make it sound like, oh,
five easy steps. There are no five easy steps. Some
days are hard, some days are nightmares, some days are good.

(01:10:13):
But it also doesn't mean that you don't find love.
It doesn't mean you can't be a wonderful mother. A
daughter sounds amazing. It sounds like she's inherited a lot
of instincts you never got to express, and you've created safety.
That's all to pay it forward one could ever hope
for in this life. So again, thank you, so.

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):
Much, thank you, thank you much.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
Here are my takeaways from my conversation with Kimberly. First,
the Crimes Against Children Research Center reports that one in
five girls is a victim of child sexual abuse, and
the Department of Justice reports that in ninety three percent
of cases, the perpetrator is known to the child. What

(01:10:52):
happened to Kimberly is unforgivable and tragically all too common.
The harms of child sexual abuse reverberate throughout a person's life.
Kimberly shared some of this. In her story, we see
a permanent loss of trust and sense of safety in
the world, impacts on her pure relationships, difficulties in school,

(01:11:15):
physical harm, difficulties in adult relationships, and a wide range
of psychiatric fallout, including complex post traumatic stress disorder, post
traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, self harm, eating disorders, and
substance use. When a child is sexually abused, it changes

(01:11:35):
the trajectory of their life, and when we consider that
so many children are not believed, that re traumatization magnifies
all of this fallout. In my next takeaway, Kimberly was
incredibly honest and shared that when her grandfather died when
she was eleven, her emotion was relief, and she recalled

(01:11:57):
feeling dissociated during his funeral the day when people were
supposed to be sad, and her family, so good at
playing at appearances, did just that. But I am grateful
to her for sharing her relief on that day. It
is an emotion that many abuse survivors share and that
can bring up internal conflict, even though it is completely

(01:12:18):
normal to feel relieved when a perpetrator dies. For our
next takeaway, family systems with shroud abusers and don't protect children,
allow self interest and status quo to be valued over
the safety of children. She cited doctor Gabramatte, who noted
that her deeper trauma, above and beyond the abuse, was

(01:12:40):
not being protected. In Kimberly's case, it was a complex
web of multiple traumatized adult family members and other members
of the community who benefited from their alliance with her grandfather.
Silence was kept in place by fear and doctor Fried's
concept of betrayal blindness to see it meant the system

(01:13:04):
came crashing down. Another punishment that these kinds of systems
uses ostracism and they will close out anyone who dares
speak out. Kimberly took back some of that power by
going no contact, but it took her a long time
to get there. For other systems out there, this operates
in different ways, but the message is often clear, especially

(01:13:26):
to children. If you speak out, the fallout could be
worse than what you are enduring. In this next takeaway,
while Kimberly's family system was more congruent with a psychopathic
family system, a remorseless, brutalizing, and abusive patriarch in the
form of her grandfather. These kinds of harmful systems often

(01:13:47):
have a truth teller within the system. It was once
her aunt, and in the next generation it was Kimberly,
and by speaking the truth of the family system, she
was labeled a drama queen, which is a form of
gaslighting designed to silence and pathologize women and girls who

(01:14:09):
see it. Clearly. In my next takeaway, going back to
betrayal blindness again, Kimberly experienced intergenerational betrayal blindness. Her story
of the communion dress is a clear example of that.
Their lack of acknowledgment of what had happened and her
family engaging in behaviors that revealed that unseeing of what

(01:14:33):
had happened. However, in this case, when betrayal blindness is
happening within multiple people, it is deeply invalidating and magnified
Kimberly's pain and sense of distance from her family. For
our next takeaway, there is a day when a survivor
of intrafamilial abuse has to protect their own children. The

(01:14:57):
catalyst for this can come in many ways. In Kimberly's case,
it was the exclusion of her daughter from an activity
with cousins. Many survivors who were not protected face a
call to action when it is their own child. There
is also a recognition of how different a trauma survivor's
experience may be from their own childs. Kimberly captured this

(01:15:21):
eloquently when she talked about the pain behind my eyes
that my daughter does not have. These intergenerational cycles can
be broken, but many generations often have to suffer to
get there. For our next takeaway, Even though Kimberly had
been making the choices to distance and disengage from her family,

(01:15:44):
there are the ongoing griefs that often never quite dissipate.
As she started achieving her success professionally in writing her book,
she just wanted her family's validation and pride. Family is
often the first place many people want to share the
successes we are eternally that child holding up the good

(01:16:04):
grade or picture we drew and wanting to be seen.
Even when people have mentally quit their families, that emotional
and primal pullback can remain, and working it through is
the hard work of healing from trauma. As Kimberly put it,
she says, we must let go of what is pulling

(01:16:24):
us back and in our last takeaway a recap of
what Kimberly said worked for her is an overview of
what works in healing from any form of trauma. A
good therapist whom you trust and who gets it, journaling
and writing, being with people who validate you and protect you,
and self forgiveness. No matter how severe the trauma, there

(01:16:47):
can be a path forward, but it is often a
circuitous and painful process to get there.

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Dr. Ramini Durvasula

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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;}Surviving Generational Abuse with Kimberly Shannon Murphy