Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome back to What's at Risk. I'm Mike Christian. Jessica
Happy is a Honduran Ecuadorian writer based in New York City.
She is the author of the recently released First in
the Family, A Story of Survival, Recovery and the American Dream.
(00:25):
She has been featured on ABC News and HBO Max,
and her work has appeared in The Latino Book Review,
The New York Times, Vogue, and Paper Magazine. Jessica is
a board member of Time of Butterflies, a nonprofit supporting
families through domestic abuse recovery, and an organizer with the
Central American Writers Group. First in the Family, A Story
(00:49):
of Survival, Recovery and the American dream sings with Love
and shouts with rage, offering an uplifting account of resilience
and recovery while calling out the seductive dangers of the
American Dream. For the past eight years, Jessica Hoppy has
meticulously chronicled her recovery from drug and alcohol abuse. She
(01:11):
vividly illustrates how the so called American Dream can act
as a deceptive lure for first generation and immigrant youth.
She takes the reader on a remarkable investigation of her
family's history. Written from the perspective of a first generation
LATINX woman, Jessica's memoir is about breaking harmful cycles in
(01:32):
her family and redefining success on her own terms, independent
of societal expectations. The result is a book of bracing honesty,
heartfelt emotion, and vulnerability, leaving the reader with an urgent,
uplifting message of hope. Well, hello everyone, Our guest is
(01:52):
Jessica Happy, author of the new book First in the Family,
A story of survival, recovery in the American Dream. Jessica,
how you doing.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I'm great. I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Mike, great to have you. Thank you for joining us.
Maybe a good place to start would be for you
to tell our listeners. So just a little bit about
your background.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
My name is Essca Happy, and I'm a writer living
in New York City. I'm also a person in recovery.
I have been in recovery for eight years and I
decided to finally write about my experience a few years ago.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Now, you grew up in San Antonio, is that correct?
And you're of Honduran an Ecuadorian background. What was it like, Yeah,
when you were a child growing up, Yes.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I was born in San Antonio and Texas, and because
my grandmother passed, we came back to New Jersey. So
when my parents immigrated here, my father came from Ecuador
and my mother came from Honduras, and they met in
New Jersey. There was just a burgeoning, a big community
of Pan Latinx immigrants in Morris County, New Jersey, and
(02:56):
that's where they met. And they moved to San Antonio
for opportunity, the way many immigrants do and many us
you know, Americans do. And unfortunately, my grandmother passed and
they returned to New Jersey and I was raised in
a small town in New Jersey, in the suburbs of
Morris County.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Now, your perspective, is a first generation LATINX woman is
is that the reality of the American dream is not
necessarily what it seems, especially for first generation and immigrant youth.
Can you maybe just talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Yeah, when I got sober, I realized that sort of
the thinking of achievement and of your sort of validating
your worth and sort of measuring my sobriety as well,
we're sort of, you know, using.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
The same framework, which is sort of this hierarchy of achievement,
and so when I felt very ashamed of learning that
I was suffering with this disorder, obviously because there's a
lot of stigma behind it, right, And there was a
lot of fear that my family felt, and I think
also shame, the feeling that they had misguided me or
(04:09):
let me down. And my parents are not drinkers. If
it really was no alcohol in my home, but there
is a long legacy in my family that course was
hidden for these reasons, and so it was sort of
a shock to everyone. And I had all my life
really focused all my efforts in just sort of achieving
(04:32):
the things that my parents I could clearly see and
they would communicate to me were opportunities that you know,
were not afforded to them. They really had to get
busy with the survival of being here and taking care
of our family. And so it really was put, you know,
up to me and my sisters to turn that page
(04:55):
to scale those heights, and my sisters and I really
took that responsibility for seriously. I didn't understand the systems
of privilege and what how I existed, you know, within
that spectrum of privilege to marginalization, right because we all
experience it differently in different ways. We all have certain
(05:16):
privileges and we all face different challenges. This is the
place where you can be anything you want to be,
and you know, whatever you put your mind to and
work hard enough. That pressure really it just fore really
heavily on my back, and I didn't rise to the occasion. Unfortunately,
(05:37):
it was too much to bear.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Substance abuse is often generational and often stems from intergenerational trauma.
Yet it's often kept quiet in families. And I know
this because it's in my family.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
I think.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
I think for our listeners out there, I bet there's
many people would relate to what you're talking about, having abuse,
and you know, substance abuse inner generational in your family
and not addressing it in a healthy way. What are
some of your thoughts about that, and particularly in the
trauma side of it. Maybe you talked a little bit
about it with your dad, but what affected you.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
I think less with my father and more with my mother.
We are three girls and very very close to our
mother and our father. Also, there's a bit of a
language barrier between my father and I where I'm not
able to communicates as deeply as i'd like to but
I do make that effort because it's incredibly important. And
(06:36):
what I found was when he embraced me, and when
I thought he might not understand or he might reject me,
he actually deeply understood and he accepted it. What I
learned when I'm talking to my parents, and they would
often have these responses like, oh, you didn't learn it
from me, or you know, I didn't raisee you like this,
and things like that that would hurt me. I would
(06:56):
get upset. I would get angry, but in the past
with other things, but this was incredibly important. This really
was life or death. I came into recovery after a
near death experience. It was incredibly serious, and I knew
that I needed my family on this journey. This was
going to be a family mission. We were all involved
(07:20):
because what I learned was I am not first in
the family. And that's the point of the title, which
is to say, we come from a long line, and
we really need to excavate the reality of these traumas
and the harms that were perpetuating, because I believe that
they're often a result of our environment, a lack of resources,
(07:42):
a lack of care and erasure, and a trauma of
assimilation and migration that we experience as immigrants of the
Global South in particular.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Now you found your way to alcoholics anonymous, which is
kind of a normal path for people. Yet I think
you discovered that AA's recovery approach which is not necessarily
culturally sensitive to indigenous and Bipop experiences and perspectives. Tell
us a little bit about that, because I find that
very interesting. It's a big theme in your book, Love
(08:12):
to Hear More.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yes, it was a very big theme. During the pandemic.
Everything changed in AA, right. The whole premise is to
go to a meeting to be together, to identify with
others and share your story and how you're working your
program in that day, and that really worked for me.
(08:35):
I was very lucky. But from the beginning, there was
a lot of resistance towards being honest in the ways
that I needed to as it related to sexual assault,
as it related to issues any kind of issues of misogyny,
and most of all, a particularly sensitive topic was racialized trauma.
(08:58):
And this is a huge, huge legacy in my family.
And Bill and Bob tell the story of the Washingtonians
who were a group of sixty totalers in Baltimore, Maryland,
and they gather, you know, much like AA, to share
their experience with alcohol and support each other. And that
was a time of serious social condemnation regarding anything, you know,
(09:21):
alcohol use, alcohol used, disorder related because it was the forties,
it was the eighteen forties, which was the height of
the temperance movement. So they were extremely successful. Their membership
surpassed one hundred thousand at their peak. Alcoholics Anonymous has
no opinion on outside issues, Hence the AA name never
(09:41):
ought to be drawn into public controversy. So when I
would bring up things once the pandemic happened and the
BLM movement had this wonderful uprising to bring to our
attention the grave, grave injustices that we face and continue
to face, this was just absolutely radio act. In my experience.
(10:07):
It's just like it was like, do not say BLM
if I brought up my experience, either it would just
not be brought up at all, which was maddening, or
if it was brought up, it was just like immediately
shut down. And there are a lot of special interest
groups and this doesn't occur in every room, right, every
room is unique. However, the traditions are the traditions, so
(10:31):
people feel very emboldened to silence others and to control
the conversation in the room. It was very frustrating to me,
and also that the reasoning that I was being silenced
was explained to me as me and dangering others, and
that me bringing up things like BLM or bringing up
(10:54):
racialized trauma could harm someone else and trigger relapse in
that person. Isolating it was really harmful and painful, and
I had a moment where I shared with my home
group how I felt openly. We did some research and
it led me to the true history of the Recovery
Movement RIGHT, which is a Native American network of support
(11:16):
groups established nearly two hundred years before AA was even
a dream or a thought. And it was this practice,
the Healing Circle, which was created by Handsome Blake how
Didnashawnee leader who had sort of these visions. He had
an alcoholic comatose really and his family believed that he
(11:40):
was dead, but he really was just in a coma,
and when he awoke he had seen these visions. He
by oral tradition, gave us what was really the first
iteration of the twelve steps. I'd say right, And so
I was completely overwhelmed by this information. I really wanted
(12:03):
to share it widely. When I spoke to others, They're like, wow,
I never knew that simultaneously, many many people of black,
Indigenous people of color in the rooms are feeling the
way that I'm feeling. Wow. Was that liberating? Wow, It's
just such a historic moment. And we all meet and
(12:23):
that's where I you know, that's where I practice my
recovery now with a BIPOP group, and we talk about
all experiences of addiction, right like, any way that you
relate to it. It doesn't have to just be drugs
and alcohol. And that's the other beautiful thing, which is
that in the Native American practice, the idea was that
(12:45):
we were that people were losing their way because they
were being separated from their life ways, from their traditional
life ways, and they were being me to feel shameful
about who they were, and then they were incurred, not incurred,
but they're forced to assimilate to the settlers cultural practices, values, traditions, religion.
(13:07):
That was something that I related to that the people
that I commune with deeply related to. And so it's
really a coming back to that really honoring the people
that I discovered in my research were at the forefront
of the recovery movement, and to acknowledge that that history
and those voices have been suppressed and erased. And so
(13:30):
my hope with the book was to bring those to
honor those voices and to say that their work is
very much alive and well, and I hope to even
in a small way, perpetuate that.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
I didn't know that Native Americans played a pretty meaningful
role in the work to become the modern recovery movement.
So I think that's wonderful. And obviously it's going to
be more effective depending on someone's background and how what
their perspectives are. So I think it's great that you've
highlighted that I read in the introduction of your book.
(14:02):
These are words that you wrote which struck me. I
wasn't cured with an epiphany. I didn't dig into scholarly
texts or see a doctor, and there was no intervention.
I allowed myself to feel. I gave myself time for
my instincts to return. I love those. Maybe you can
dig a little deeper into that for us.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Thank you. Yeah, it's nice to hear my writing back
to me sometimes, Oh wow, that was very nice, lovely live.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
It struck me as I was reading, as I was
just sort of going through your book particularly.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
I appreciate that. First of all, I just want to
say that to acknowledge the Indigenous culture and to acknowledge
the Indigenous roots of recovery or the indigenous history of
our country is relevant to all of us, and it
should be important to all of us, and it's liberating
for us all. And these are not to say that
(14:57):
one story, one history is important. It means say that
we don't have the full story about the history that
we're given unless we correct the record. And I think
that is freedom right for all of us, because we
can face the truth of how we got here and
who we are, and that's the only way. Just like
in AA they say the first step is acknowledging that
(15:19):
you have a problem the only way that we can
move forward. So I really hope that that resonates with everyone.
And I think that bill involved legacy. And when I
interviewed katery akoyas, who's the head you know of the
indigenous movement as of wellbriety you know that stands today,
she told me she has an enormous gratitude for AA
as do I, you know, and that all these things
(15:41):
need to co exist and we need to work together.
So that really is the message, and I hope that
everyone can relate and appreciate that history. And as it
relates to recovery, we know and doctors you know, have
tons of research that the deepest recovery, the most profound
effects are when our bodies can sort of overcome and
(16:05):
move beyond survival mode because there's so much chemically, there's
so much occurring in the body and the brain and
the cortisol effect and heart and the heartbeat that just
doesn't allow us to think as ourselves. You're sort of
hijacked emotionally, which is what I writ in the book,
very similar to being drunk or high right, not entirely yourself,
(16:25):
and that can be very effective. Like for me, I think,
I just I couldn't do with the trauma that I
was running from, and the things that were told to
me were things to be very ashamed of, particularly my
sexual assault. The story that was told to me behind
what had happened was a deep, deep shame that I
was harboring for such a long time, and my family
(16:48):
arrived in a blaze that was a dream, right, the
land of opportunity. And so admitting to myself that both
of those ideas are a lie and coming to the
truth of those that gave me an incredible starting ground
for myself. And that's important to acknowledge because it just
relieved me of a shame that I've been carrying about,
(17:08):
not just me, but who my family was, because yeah,
there was a long legacy of substance use and they
had very very critical consequences.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Now, beyond what you've done personally for yourself and within
your family, you also have gone very public. Obviously this
book is evidence of that. After your cousin died, I
think from a drug overdose during the pandemic, you went
public about your sobriety, so public actually that it led
to an interview on ABC News with Debora Roberts. That
was a pretty brave thing to do. What was behind that?
(17:39):
What prompted you to go that public?
Speaker 2 (17:42):
When my cousin died, I was distraught. It was in
the middle of the pandemic. And I don't know if
you if you know about the statistics for the first
time in twenty twenty three, for the first time, it's
been reported that death's really to drug overdose have actually decreased. However,
(18:04):
the data only represents people who are racialized as white.
It doesn't represent people of color. The way I was
understanding that information intellectually, there was such a delta, such
a gap between those facts and statistics that you can
just understand right just factually on paper, and how it
(18:25):
was emotionally narrated in the hearts and minds of my family.
If I could communicate with them and they could sort
of see so they could understand the narratives and the
propaganda and the stigma and the stereotypes. But then they
also had to see me be recovering from this sharing
my experience. And I'd always been really susceptible to the
(18:46):
opinions of others. I'm the youngest child, I'm a big
people pleaser. I really want to control the way I perceived.
How could I reconcile being an addict, an alcoholic, a
drunk as people would call me, with this persona But
when my cousin died and it was the pandemic, and
(19:06):
I knew we constantly get the story of addiction narrated
in this way where people of color are criminals and
white people are the paradigm of recovery. I was just
so struck. I knew that I needed to break through
that I felt like I was contributing to that in
(19:27):
a way by hiding and staying silent, and so I
stepped forward, and so it forced the matter. And I
was just very paranoid that people would read that and
learn not from my first person's perspective. So a producer,
I made a short video on my platform, on my Instagram,
and I cried the whole way through, but it was
(19:50):
incredibly liberating. How do I talk to my family about this?
My family still talks about it like this, and it
makes me afraid or it makes me uncomfortable. I want hide,
or I don't know how to get help, or where
do I start? How do I begin? And I was
so moved by that, And that's what I want to
encourage people to step into what their real story is,
you know, to sort of interrupt any kind of limiting
(20:11):
beliefs and narratives that we've internalize and try to externalize
them replace them with our voice, because we all deserve
to be who we are and discover who we are,
and assimilation and aspiring and basing our lives off of
and basing our value off of our achievements and what
(20:33):
we achieve and hitting these benchmarks that we all know
all too well, right, you know, a college degree, a
house with a white pi E fence, a marriage and
two children, and a savings and a four to one K.
You know, we are a culture that is obsessed with
acquiring things. And so I learned a lot about myself
and my addiction to that most of all, and I
(20:55):
started replacing them with things that could really ground me spiritual,
emotionally and community. So I just came out with it,
and I think it kind of pulled the trigger. And
then Deborah Roberts was lovely enough to invite me on
her show too, and her producer Ayanna particularly advocated for
(21:17):
me to be part of that story, to represent people
of color as a face of not just the effects
of substance you disorder, but a face of recovery. And
I thought that was really wonderful. But yes, I was terrified.
From my father to lot, he's a big fan of
(21:37):
the news and news programs.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Yeah, I'm sure he's a big fan of you too.
And you now have parlayed that into writing this book.
When did you decide to write the book. It's just
coming out now, but with a lot of fanfare. I
might I might have seen some of the reviews, which
are really almost grateful. The perspective I read is that
it's people are great to you for writing it, you know,
(22:02):
for saying things that most people don't say.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
So I was like, this, this really needs to be
part of a conversation. Even with a book and the
wonderful fanfare, it's still a challenge to propel that narrative
on a mainstream platform. Actually it's still been challenging. But
you're right, there have been so many beautiful reviews and
responses and readers who are willing to come to the
(22:27):
page to understand and not to feel defensive in any way,
and allow, you know, a perspective that deserves to be
in conversation with. Right, not that one narrative should be
more important than the other, but to be a part
of to stand shoulder, to hold all of these equally.
And just as I have read countless memoirs and books
(22:49):
from white men and white women, and I have taken
things from all of them. Likewise, we can read the
perspective of Cheney Allen, who was the first black woman
to write a book about her alcohol in nineteen sixty seven,
and learn about Frederick Douglass who was in recovery himself
and a big part of the abolitionist movement and the
(23:09):
temperance movement for black folks. So all those things are wonderful,
that beauty. They contribute to the history of people in recovery,
and it's all wonderful to learn and see. It really
gave my recovery. It just breathed new life into it,
gave me such a grounding purpose and I poured all
of that into the book, and that really was what
(23:32):
caught me through because it's incredibly difficult to write the book.
I came to writing later in life, and that was
a result of me sort of, you know, playing by
the rules and going to college to fulfill you know,
my parents' dreams and expectations, and then not being able
to quiet the voice within me that said, hey, I'm
(23:54):
an artist, Hey I'm a writer, and I want to
give myself a shot. And so it was very hard
one but in that moment it was all very miraculous
and fast. The book deal and then the process of
writing it has been about two years in earnest in writing,
and my editor and my agent will certainly tell you
I would be editing it right now if I could
(24:15):
changing things.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
You get a final version eventually, right.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
So, yeah, they prided it out of my hands, and
hopefully there will be many, many more discussions to be
had and from this book, and the most beautiful thing
is to hear from readers. Right yesterday there was a
Wonderful Books to Grammar who reviewed the book in a
video and said how much it made him think of
his own family and family so he could so benefit,
(24:40):
and that the book wasn't just for people in recovery
from substance use disorder. He really felt this was a
book for the entire family and for all of us
to sort of understand our own humanity. Anyone in recovery
will tell you that the root of it is an isolation,
and the root of it is a loneliness. And I
believe that we don't belong, that we're not enough, and
(25:01):
they're not worthy, and we're not worthy of love. And
that's really what was killing me. And so if you're
going to see the love of others, you have to
begin to learn to love yourself, and I didn't know
how complex that journey would be, but I have developed
a practice for loving myself, and so I really hope
(25:22):
that it can serve as sort of a blueprint. Perhaps
people will feel more strengthened and supported and knowing they're
not alone identifying with this story in many ways, and
they will share their story or even own it privately,
because there's so many things we don't admit to ourselves,
and that's just incredibly liberating, Like you know, turning my
(25:43):
cameraund myself and telling my Instagram platform that I'm an
alcoholic and you know, crying, you know, ugly cry, and
then there's such a beautiful response. You know, we never know.
I think it's the thing that we fear the most
that when we step into it and we find that
loving response then and you know, that salvation that we
can offer each other, that's really the self, right So,
(26:05):
and that's available to everybody, anyone, at any time, even
in this conversation. We're in that practice right now, you
and me, which is really beautiful.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Well, that's so well, said Jessica. Jessica Hoppy, the author
of the new book First in the Family, A Story
of Survival, recovery in the American Dream, and it is
a very inspiring book. You may not heal people, but
I'm sure you're going to inspire a lot of people
to look a little deeper and feel a little better
about themselves too.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
So thank you so much, Mike.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Well, that's all for this week. I'm Mike Christian inviting
you to join us again next week on What's at Risk.
Also check out our podcast at Wbznewsradio dot iHeart dot
com What's on your Mind? Send us your thoughts, comments
and questions to What's at Risk at gmail dot com.
(27:00):
One word What's at Risk at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
A big thank you to our producer, Ken Carberry of
Chart Productions