Ignorance Was Bliss - Interview with the Creator

Presenting: Ignorance Was Bliss

An interview with the creator, Kate Wallinga

This is a podcast about how we become who we are — about making just about anything sound normal, from PTSD to podcasting to serial murder. It’s about people’s stories. Are you sure you really want to know?

https://iwbpodcast.com/

Episode Transcript

(00:19):
In this interview with the creator,I am joined by Kate from Ignorance Was
Bliss. The conversation eventually drifts frompodcasting to Kate's personal story, which to
me is fascinating. So I hopeyou enjoy listening to this as much as

(00:40):
I enjoyed talking with her. Youstarted Ignorance was Bliss a couple of years
ago, and if I'm not mistaken, you have a PhD in psychology and
something else, right, Well,I have to correct you a little bit
on both counts. I started Ignorancewas Bliss three years ago, so it's

(01:03):
been forever. And I have asie d, which is like a PhD
sort of, but it's more practicalbased rather than research based. Okay,
like I did research for my dissertation, but the course work is more geared

(01:26):
toward like a PhD is a littlebit more geared toward academia, and a
SAID is more geared towards working inthe clinical field. I've never heard of
that shows you how far I madeit in school, but so originally and
and you know, Ignorance Was Blissis not technically speaking, a true crime

(01:49):
podcast, but we agreed to haveyou on. You know, the true
crime pod because number one, youhave a lot of true crime content,
and number two, as you liketo say, it's adjacent to true crime.
So if some of your a lotof your episodes may not be an
actual it may not be a truecrime story, but it is about true

(02:13):
crime. It started off as fullytrue crime, like my first sixty or
seventy episodes were either specifically about acrime or they were setting the stage for
a crime that I was going todiscuss, but they were there forensic psych

(02:36):
in nature, because that was myspecialty, was in forensic assessment. And
then after that point, I don'tknow, six or eight months in I
kind of just I hit a littlebit of a wall with doing just true
crime, and I wanted to talkto other podcasters, but there were some

(02:57):
people that I wanted to talk tothat had like less than no interest in
true crime itself. So I waslike, sure, come on anyway,
let's talk and see what happens.And it turns out that what I'm really
interested in is collecting stories. Andso if the story ends up being about
crime, cool. I have alot of personal and professional experience around that

(03:21):
the story ends up being around Idon't know, gaming, or tattoos or
writing I can make it up.We're good, let's play sure, Yeah,
very free form, and that's partof That's one of the things I
really love about it is that justwhatever happens happens, I dig it,
And as I said, a lotof times it is true crime or related

(03:45):
to true crime, or in someway about the underlying or what's the way
I want to put that. Thefoundations of true crime, I guess would
be the way to say it.But then you you know, like you
said, branched out into other things, and even those stories that you that

(04:09):
you collect, as you say,oftentimes are related and I don't know,
I dig it. What I'm tryingto say is I like your format.
I like you know. I've listenedto probably at least one hundred hours of
your show so far. Oh Iworry for you. Well, I mean,
that's the thing is that I madea decision when I started my show

(04:31):
initially that I want, you know, I want to I want to I
want to enjoy what I'm doing.I want it to be more fun than
stress. And so initially that justmeant I was not going to set deadlines
for myself. And so I've hadweeks where I literally released five or six

(04:53):
episodes in a single week, andI've had other weeks such as this past
one where I think my last episodewas eight or nine days ago because I've
been unwell. I have my firstvaccine, and so I'm not reacting especially
well to that, which surprises absolutelyno one. And that's all, okay,

(05:17):
it has to be okay, youknow, if I don't cope very
well with deadlines anymore. I've beenon disability since twenty fourteen, and I've
forgotten how to deal with that.And over time, that concept of deadline
branched out to the concept of topic. And I guess to back up a

(05:39):
little about a year and a halfin, I attended a conference as a
not a presenter, but like,I had a table at a conference and
people kept telling me that I wasn'ta real true crime show. Then I
was like, I'm literally a forensicpsychology just like, and you're telling the

(06:01):
stories of true crimes that happened,you know, and so and what what?
What they mostly I think meant wasthat they wanted a narrative story of
a specific case, and a lotof my stuff is more about the process
or like you said, the underlyingmental you know, condition or mental illness,

(06:26):
or you know, just the person'sstory that leads them up to this
seminal event in their life. Andto me, that's more what crime is
about. But somehow people have anidea of what true crime is. I'm
using visual quotes which I know youcan't see, but they have an idea

(06:47):
of what true crime is. AndI don't do rules very well. So
I decided, okay, then I'mnot a true crime show, and I'm
going to apply that that same mindsetof I'm not going to follow deadlines to
I'm not going to follow a specifictopic. And if somebody comes on my

(07:10):
show and you know, and Ichat back and forth with my guests a
little bit before I hit record,and if they have a topic they really
want to talk about, like aspecific case or a specific type of crime
or something like that, I'll dothat. I got no problem with that.
But often I see my show assort of a platform for people for

(07:31):
listeners to hear their hosts in adifferent setting, in a less structured and
more casual, interpersonal settings. That'sexactly what we like to do here with
this just set and have a conversationand you know, with me, it's
it's a little directed sort of,but you know, whatever happens happens,

(07:55):
you know, I do. Andwell, you had us post the episode
on Chris Watts, and I Iwill admit I didn't listen to it recently,
but I listened to it a whileback. And that episode, I
believe is the one where you hadthe uh, the host of the heck
is the name? What's up?What's ups up? Yeah? I knew

(08:16):
it was something cheeky like that,and I was like, I'm terrible with
names, um, but yeah,I listened to that, and that is
kind of you know, there's astory in that episode about a true crime,
but there's also it branches off inmany directions. I enjoyed that one
a lot, in fact, andI'm i'll, i'll, I'll admit that

(08:39):
every time I see a Chris Wattsrelated post or anything on the internet,
you know, mentioning Chris Watts,I cringe because it's everywhere. But I
really enjoyed that episode. Well,I appreciate that, and and that's that's
the goal is is that there arepeople in the true crime podcast community,

(09:05):
and I mean people that I amfriends with and that I have a lot
of respect for yourself included. I'mnot even going to start listing off a
ton of names, but like Mindsof Madness and Malice, and you know,
there's a bunch of really solid narrativetrue crime podcasts out there that I
know well, and I don't wantto compete with them, do you know

(09:30):
what I mean? Like they dothe research and the writing and present a
coherent story and I could do that. I can write, and I don't
mind doing that. I can reada script, but I don't feel a
need to compete in that way.And so I kind of decide. I
thought that I was going to putout like twenty episodes and be done.

(09:56):
I just passed three hundred, soapparently I was in correct there. But
you know, the goal was whatcan I add it's different? And this
is apparently what I can do that'sdifferent is kind of take the story but
put more of a why on it. And I really like that there isn't

(10:18):
enough of that out there. Ihate, in my opinion, we need
more good narratives too. I meanthere's I'm kind of a freak when it
comes to it. I listened topodcasts eight hours every day because I can
listen at work. So it's all. It's all. I listened to all
day's podcasts, and I need morenarratives. But I also you mentioned Malice.

(10:43):
She goes at it at a verydifferent way too, at which I
really like. But I dig it. You know, It's it's good to
have that little island in there amongthe sea of podcasts that's like, Okay,
this one's actually unique and good andall that, you know, And

(11:03):
I'm still happy to sit down andtalk serial killers when I never wrote anybody
wants to. I just didn't wantthat to be what my show was.
Right. Well, I'm glad youevolved it beyond just that. You know,
it's what made you want to starta podcast in the first place.
Okay, Well, my father movedin with us, and I loved my

(11:31):
father very much, and he wasalso kind of an asshole. And now
when he moved in with us ata crisis point in his life and he
needed a place to be, andso I do understand that he needed support
and he needed attention, but heneeded like he would literally hover outside my

(11:54):
bedroom door sort of as soon ashe could hear me getting up in the
morning, and he start talking tome right away and would sort of continue
and I would be like, I'mgoing to take a run to CBS or
something maybe like can I go withyou? And I'd be like, oh
God. And I realized like betweenthat that was just sort of the tipping

(12:16):
point because I also have four kids, and I've been married twenty years now,
and I kind of I went ondisability in twenty fourteen, and I've
kind of lost like a sense ofself and a sense of productivity, and
I wanted to have my own personalityagain. And when my dad moved in,

(12:37):
that was sort of what tipped meover this edge of like I cannot
be everything to everyone and I reallycouldn't be my father's therapist, and I
needed my own space and he neededspace, you know, to sort of
he needed silence, I think alittle bit once in a while, and

(13:01):
I hope so I don't know.And so he moved in in late November
of twenty seventeen, and on Januaryfirst, twenty eighteen, I went to
my husband and I took hold ofhis shoulders really intensely, and I said,
I'm going to start a podcast becausethere's something that I can do.

(13:26):
That's in its own room and itrequires quiet, and I can close the
door behind me and I can tellpeople I'm recording right now. I need
a break, yes, And that'skind of where it started. And you
know, when I between January firstin February approximately February first was my first

(13:50):
episode release, I kind of thoughtabout, like, what do I know?
Talk about what you know? Right, And well, I know crime
stuff. I worked as a forensicpsychologist in the New Hampshire State prison system
and in the Massachusetts Locked Psychiatric Hospitalsystem, and then later I went on
and did crisis work, which isif somebody shows up in the emergency room

(14:13):
with suicidal or homicidal thoughts or psychoticbreak that kind of thing, and you
need to figure out what next.And so I was like, well,
that's that's what I know about.And I hear a lot of other podcasts
true crime, which is what Imostly listened to. They would be talking
about a case and they'd be like, but I do even understand why would

(14:35):
they not be found guilty by reasonof insanity? Or what does schizophrenia mean?
Anyway? And I'd be sitting onmy couch alone six months after they'd
released the episode answering them out loudbecause I knew, yep, oh,
I knew. And I appeared ona couple of other shows on Nature Versus

(15:01):
Narcissism and Minds of Madness and acouple others, and you know, just
nobody's going to knock down your doorwhen you don't have a good recording setup,
and when you're not sort of outthere. They don't know where you
are when you're sitting alone on yourcouch talking to yourself. So I was
like, all right, well I'mgoing to start a podcast and address some

(15:24):
of the basics. And it justnever stopped. So far. Well good,
I'm glad it didn't. So threehundred episodes, that's a that is
a metric ton of episodes of like, that's unfathomable to think, I don't
know how to shut up. It'sit's I'm glad you haven't m So you

(15:50):
said you went on disability and youtalk about this and ignorance was bliss sprinkled
throughout episodes. You have a spinalcondition and spondylitis. I believe that's exactly
what it is. And so basicallymy body has decided that I need a

(16:11):
second spine and so it's a reallythin sheath of bone that starts at your
tailbone and fuses your vertebrae. Andso my back's about twenty to twenty five
percent fused right now. And thatsheath of bone that forms, you know,

(16:32):
it effectively removes a lot of yourflexibility. But it's also super brittle.
And so all I did was stepwrong on a playground and I broke
my back. Yeah. No,I don't recommend it, and that that
creates very sharp shards of bone thatare sort of floating really dangerously close to

(16:55):
your spinal cord. And um.I tried to go back to work after
that and made it about two weeksand was like, I just I'm done.
I I can't give my job thefocus that it needs when I'm in
this much pain. Yeah. So, well, and at that point you
were were you? You were aprofessor, weren't you. Well, I've

(17:19):
also taught, Yeah, I meanat that point, I was working as
a crisis clinician and I was teachingpart time, um, mostly just for
fun. Okay, all right,So it's man, that's horrible to think

(17:41):
about. I just imagining that thatcondition is just ouch. Is there any
kind of decent treatments or anything likethat for it. No, they're really
not um. They for certain people, they suggest im, you know,
suppressants like you hear you heard oflike Humura or umbrel sometimes. You know,

(18:07):
there's a lot of TV commercials forthose. But because I have four
kids, they are all germ magnets, and so being on an amino suppressant
is not a great idea for mebecause I already get real sick with anything,
you know. Like I said,I had the first dose of the
the COVID vaccine a week and ahalf ago, and I'm still struggling with

(18:32):
that and I'm not looking forward tothe second dose. But I also am
really looking forward to getting everybody outof the house because my whole family has
been on lockdown with me since thishas started, and so you know,
it's it's not fun and there's alot of weird extra things that go with
it. Most recently, I've beenhaving problems with my eyesight and in a

(18:55):
painful, unpleasant way that they're tellingme is will be never going to really
get better. So you know,it's it's a lot, and I miss
it. I miss working tremendously,so being able to start the podcast and
being able to talk about these thingsthat I learned. It lets me feel

(19:18):
a little more productive and like I'mdoing something with my practical and academic experiences.
Yeah good, I'm glad it existsto let you do that. So,
like I guess, mostly what you'redoing is probably pain management and you

(19:38):
have to be careful when you move. I imagine that's yeah, not even
pain management anymore. You know,it's so hard to be on maintenance.
Basically that would be opiates. Yeah, you know, so I can take
ibropofe and or time on all,but I'm not on anything stronger. I
was for a while, and Ireached a point not when I broke my

(20:02):
back. And I have a lotof weird medical stuff happened, including in
twenty ten, I died in childbirth. I got over it, like I
you know, I didn't stay dead. I got better. But but but
I came out. I spent aweek and a half in a coma.
I had thirteen surgeries then in threeand more later that summer. And when

(20:26):
I came out of the coma,I had an eighteen inch decision from sternam
to pelvis and a grape fruit sizehole through my abdominal wall, none of
which is fun. And I spentabout two months in the hospital, and
then I was on home health carefor another eight months nine months after that,

(20:48):
and they kept bumping me up onopiates. Then they kept like I
was on literally the maximum human dosageof opiates and absolutely got first dependent and
then addicted on them and stay downthem way longer than I needed to be,
and was definitely overusing them. Andit just became a matter of like,

(21:14):
man, I'm in a lot ofpain, you know, both physical
and emotional pain, and here's thispill, and it doesn't make it better,
but it makes me forget that I'min so much pain. So I'm
going to take two, you know. And it was a problem for you
know, like I never overdosed.I never ended up, you know,

(21:37):
I never was in a car accidentor you endangered my children and or you
know, anything along those lines.But I was definitely overusing and it was
taking it too far. And sowhen it reached a point where I realized,
like, I can't be on maintenanceopiates meaning every day, you know,
I can. I can have themif I have a procedure or something

(22:00):
like that, but I can't justbe on a maintenance dose because that first
of all, I've already proven thatI go over that cliff a little too
easily. And secondly, I'm fortythree right now. In theory, I've
got a lot more years left inme. And so what do we do
when the pain gets worse? Yeah, you can't just keep piling more medicine

(22:22):
on it. No, there's literallya maximum human dosage. And so if
I'm already on that and then thepain gets worse, what happens. And
so I decided to get off painmeds altogether. And that's not like I
still question that decision a lot ofdays, but ultimately it's better, Like
I'm a better parent for it,I'm a better partner for it. And

(22:45):
so then you're not chasing that.You know, you're not waiting till your
next dose all the time, youknow what I mean? Yes, definitely,
And you know, and so there'sno the moral is, there's really
not a treatment it. Um.I am on one medication that helps a
little bit with nerve pain for it, and um otherwise I'm you know,

(23:08):
right, I have epilepsy. SoI'm on meds for epilepsy. That's that's
what I'm on. Um, Soyou said you died in childbirth? Was
that Do you have any like memoryof that or is it just kind of
wiped like you went to sleep oneday and woke up and they told you,

(23:29):
hey, you've been in a coma. Like well, I have complete
retrograde amnesia for the year leading up. So I don't recall the pregnancy.
I don't recall. Really, thatis crazy. That's full year of my
kids lives. I went to Pariswith my mother and sisters. I don't
remember that. Sorry about the train, by the way, I mean sorry,

(23:52):
It's like it's a couple of blocksdown. So I'm gonna mute myself
and let you continue on. Okay, So I don't that. There's a
year of my life that is justgone. And I have seen photos and
I used to blog, and soI've read my blog and that's sort of
how I patched together. But it'snot real memory for me. It's it's

(24:18):
like how you could recite a bookthat happened. I still don't have full
sensory narrative memories from that year.I do recall giving birth. I recall,
you know, the baby was bornhealthy, he was fine. And
it was about twelve hours after thebirth that I started to say, I'm

(24:38):
having pain and this is not like, hey, I just gave birth pain
because like, let's be real,given birth isn't it's not. It's not
fun, so yeah, it's goingto hurt. But this is my third
live childbirth, so I kind ofexpected, you know, but this was

(25:00):
this was extra. And I kepttelling the doctors and nurses something's wrong,
something's wrong, and they were like, oh, it's gas paying, drink
more ginger ale. And it waslike my god, like what help,
it's my third baby, Like Iknow what gas payn feels like, you
know. And after three days theydischarged me, and I was in so

(25:25):
much pain. I couldn't walk outto my car, and my husband tried
to drive me home and I couldn'tget out of the car to walk into
the house. And and I rememberall of this like painful sort of trauma
memory, which is like crystal clear. And I sat in the car and
cried and I was like I can'tdo this. You go. You have

(25:47):
to take me to the ear,like there's something wrong here. And the
whole time I kept telling nurses something'swrong, something's wrong, and I saw
one doctor through that time, andshe came in, she tapped on my
belly six times and said, maybeyou tore a ligament and walked out.
And I still don't know which ligamentshe meant, but I was pretty sure

(26:07):
that I hadn't happened either. SoI get to the ear wait several hours
to be seen, and then theyget me into the CT room. And
normally, you know, radiographers CTtechnicians are really good at maintaining the poker
face because they're not supposed to tellyou what they see, right, They're

(26:30):
supposed to wait for a doctor tointerpret the results, and then then they
tell you. So I'm in theCT scanner and they get it up and
running and it's making a lot ofnoise, and I hear from up over
behind my right shoulder, holy shit, like, oh, don't do that.

(26:52):
That's a terrible answer, don't dothat. And by the time I
got back to my ear room,so five minutes, they already had the
head of the er there. Theyhad the head of the ob gyn clinic
that I had seen outpatient come intothe emergency room, which never happens.
And what had happened was that duringthe process of childbirth. Somebody in the

(27:22):
delivery room had strapped throat. Wehave no idea who it was. Could
have been me for all I know, like just someone head strap and that
got into my bloodstream vaginally, andbecause my uterus was already in flame because
of you know, baby, myuterus ruptured. So you know, gas

(27:45):
payne ripped organ. Totally same thing, right, totally saying why not.
So I had my first of thosesurgeries that night here I live in Salem,
Massachusetts, and the first surgery washere that night, and then the
next morning I was airlifted down toMGH and by the next morning I was

(28:07):
in a coma at mass General.And so I remember all of it,
and I remember the helicopter ride andit was a crystal clear March day.
It was beautiful, and I rememberthinking like, I'm never going to get
from Salem with Boston this fast everagain in my life. And plus I
was on some pretty good pain medsright right at that particular moment, so

(28:30):
you know, that helped. AndI remember like it was very much like
you see in the movies your TVshows where you come in for a landing
on the roof of the help ofthe hospital and the staff are like sort
of doing this weird hunched over runto get to meet you at the at
the helipad. I remember that,and then that's it all goes black.

(28:53):
I don't remember anything else. Andthen ten days later I woke up and
I didn't know my own name,I didn't recognize my husband. I had
lost my ability to hand right,I had lost my ability to just stand
or walk probably more like I,like I said, I lost that year
of my life. So there wasjust nothing, like, there's no it

(29:21):
could have been a day, itcould have been six months. Like I
had literally no idea what was goingon, what had happened. And I
happened to sort of wake up asmy husband was walking in the room,
and I knew that I knew him, even though I didn't know who he
was, and so I was like, Okay, well this guy looks okay,
Like I guess we're gonna go withthis, and you know, I

(29:49):
must. He says that I askedseveral thousand times just on the first day,
what happened, what happened? Whyam I here? What happened?
But I couldn't really ask because Iwas on a ventilator. In a feeding
tube, and so it was alot more of like me trying to gesture
that, like the fuck and soone of the things that they did with

(30:12):
my husband and my older kids.So this was my third child that I
got sick with, and the oldertwo were ten and five at the time,
and the hospital social worker gave themone of those posters like you give
to a kid in preschool, whichit's like an all about me poster.

(30:37):
You know my name is, andhere's where I live, and here's my
favorite color, and here's my favoritemusic. And they had them fill that
out for me. And I thinkthe purpose for that is both to give
the family a tangible project to do, and also it provides sort of a
reminder to the staff of the hospitalthat this in the bed is a person

(31:02):
with preferences and with thoughts and witha history, and so try to give
them, even though they're unconscious,try to give them that respect of remembering
that they're a person. And soI would lay awake after I came out
of the coma, and I didn'treact to all little couple of the first
beds they put me on when Icame out, So I was awake a
lot one of them made me thinkthat I was falling out of the bed

(31:26):
vertically, Like that's how bad myvertical was that I felt like I was
going to fall, like to theceiling. So I'm lying on the side
that didn't have a hole in it, holding onto the the handrail of the
bed to make sure that I didn'tsomehow fall out and go on to the
ceiling. Of course, because thathappens. You know, I didn't have

(31:48):
a whole lot of reference by thispoint, Like none of this happened as
far as I was concerned. Andso I would lay there and I would
I would study this poster, andI was learning about myself, like I
was learning what my own name was, and that's how I learned what my
favorite color was and what my favoriteband was, and like I didn't have
any any self memories at all atthat point. And people talk about like

(32:13):
in the coma, was there abright light? No? I was gonna
ask, No, there was not. But here's the thing, And I
don't know whether this happened in likea split second or whether this was a
ten day long fever dream like itcould be either could be both. I

(32:34):
don't know, and I didn't rememberthis until months later, months after I
got out at the hospital and hadbeen home and we were driving to my
husband was driving me to see oneof my daughter's softball games, and so
the next town over from Salem,there's a well there used to be a

(32:55):
really good Chinese restaurant. I don'tknow if it's still there, but as
we were driving past it, Ihad the mother of all panic attacks.
And I'm not prone to that,just out of the clear blue sky,
just hyperventilating and sweating and terrified andwhatever. And that's when I remembered that
at some point during the coma,I had a dream that instead of my

(33:16):
husband taking me to the er,he took me to that building, except
instead of it being a Chinese restaurant, because that would have been weird,
it was like an outpatient you know, obgu i n specialty urgent care kind
of place, and that I lethim do that. I let him drive

(33:37):
me there, and I got outof the car and I ran into that
building and died. That was whathappened in my dream, and so I
had completely forgotten that entirely until wewere driving past it and my brain started
to scream about, Oh my god, he's going to drop you off.
You're going to go in that building. You're going to die because you know,
I don't know, You're going togo in and get egg rolls and

(33:59):
suddenly it's going to be an outpatient. OBG man, I don't know.
Brains are weird, man, Yes, yeah, yeah, I was definitely
going to ask about the light atthe tunnel. So, And I've seen
several documentaries of people who were incomas for years and came out, and
sometimes they'll they'll say that, yeah, they have memories of actually being in

(34:20):
the coma, like Hey, I'mhere, but I can't move, I
can't open my eyes, I can'tdo anything voluntarily. But I was there.
So there's no memory, no dream, no just that one ye otherwise
no nothing. And I mean Iwas conscious for apparently, conscious for several

(34:42):
hours between when the helicopter landed untilI was fully out until I coded the
first time. And I don't haveany memory of that. And the only
reason I know that happened is thatthe nurse, one of the nurses that
was on the medical surgical floor,so not the ICU, but the step

(35:04):
down after happened to have been oneof the nurses that helped transport me from
the helipad to the ICU, andhe made the comment to me, he
was like, wow, you're alot less angry than the last time I
saw you. And I was like, I don't know who you are were
you talking about? And I reallyhate this conversation a whole lot. But

(35:28):
he explained that, you know,when you when you got off that are
that that helicopter, you were angryand I was like, well, they
were trying to kill me, youknow, effectively by refusing medical care.
So I feel like anger is areasonable, reasonable reaction to life. In
that moment, He's like, ohyeah, totally. He's just like,

(35:49):
yeah, it's nice to see you'reYou're a lot happier now. It's like,
plus, I think you're going togive me morphine soon, so you
know, being nice at the momentespecially exactly, So, how long did
it take before, as you said, you didn't remember people. How long
did it take before you were finallyeventually like oh, yeah, actually I

(36:09):
do know these people and they're tellingme that I know them kind of situation,
but I you know, I don'tknow you. How long was it
until you were finally like oh,yeah, I do remember you. Um
No, that didn't take too toolong. I recognized that I was supposed

(36:30):
to know people pretty quickly, andit was hard for me to learn names.
But early on that was kind ofthe only information they were giving to
me was names. And plus,when you're in the emergence it were when
you're in the ICU, rather youcan you can only see a very limited
number of people, so that helped. I wasn't seeing a long list of

(36:53):
people, and so I could startmemorizing a little at a time. One
of the challenges is that there areparts of my personality that are the same
as they always were. I've neverbeen very good at following rules, and

(37:14):
I've always been kind of a wiseass and things like that. And then
there are other parts of my personalitythat have changed significantly because being in a
coma for a week and a halfis a form of a traumatic brain injury,
and so my thinking and my processingand my personality have changed. And
trying to find those two things,you know, what is what is really

(37:37):
who I am now versus trying tobehave the way people around me expect me
to behave. That was tough,and I, you know, the story
that we that we tell, andI'm kind of stupid proud of this,
so I tell it whenever I getthe chance. Is that a few days

(38:00):
after I got out of the coma, but before they took me out of
the ICU. So it must havebeen maybe, you know, if I
came out of the coma on dayten, so this was maybe day fourteen
or so, and they they hadto I was on six ibs when I
came out of the coma and theyhad to get me down to one in

(38:22):
order to move me from the ICUdown And so that's how I know I
was still in the ICUs because Iwas still literally strapped to the bed and
just covered in ivs. And therewere these three I refer to them as
the three smart guys instead of thethree wise men, these three residents that

(38:43):
always traveled in a pack all thetime, and they woke me up.
The nurse woke me up very veryearly every morning, five thirty or six,
so that I was awaking time forthe three smart guys and whatever other
doctors and nurses and whatever wanted toattend could come through to do rounds.

(39:08):
So what happened when when when myuterus ruptured. I developed what's called necrotizing
fasciitis, which is the flesh sheetingbacteria you read about in tabloids. Familiar
with it, yes, and itkills a lot of people, especially if
you have it internally. And sobasically about there's about four million live births

(39:30):
in the US every year. Ofthose, about one hundred women develop neckrotizing
fasciitis in the way that I didinternally. Of that hundred, ninety eight
of them die, one loses allfour limbs, and one walks away.

(39:51):
So this made me kind of amedical unicorn, I guess. And so
everybody, like my room was supercrowded on rounds every every morning, and
so my nurse was like trying toclean me up, like you know,
like putting you Sunday best on akid before church or whatever. Like that's
kind of what my nurse was doing. There was clean up on Aisle five.

(40:12):
It was not just that's enough.So I'm on my side. My
hospital Johnny has been bunched up aroundmy neck like the world's whitest necktie.
I'm wearing socks. That's it.That's all I got going on. I
got no dignity. I'm miserable.The meds haven't kicked in yet. And
one of the three smart guys comesand he starts standing in my head and

(40:32):
he starts talking at me and somethingabout a procedure I was having later that
day, and I don't know it, like informed consent kind of thing.
He just had to tell me whatprocedure I was facing, and he just
was talking at me, and Icould this. I just could not cope,

(40:53):
and so I was like, stop, stop, stop, stoptop stop,
and he stopped and he was baffled, and you could tell there was
this feeling of like the lump inthe bed is talking to me, like
patients don't talk back to doctors.What are you? What are you doing?
And I was like, now's nota good time for me. I

(41:19):
don't know if you've noticed, butI'm busy right now. I need you
to not and he was, youknow, he sort of nods, and
then he's like, well, okay, but I have to give you this
information and then I have to goon to the next room and give him
information, and you know, inand on and then we have to do
rounds. I'm like, okay,okay, you're an important guy. Fine,

(41:46):
I respect that take off your pants. He just sort of he blinks
at me. He goes and hesaid, look, I have no dignity
right now. I have nothing.There's nothing like I have nothing right now.

(42:07):
So I figure if you dropped trouillbe we'll be comparable. But like
it levels the playing field a littlebit. So if you need to talk
to me right this second, rightnow, take off your pants and exactly.

(42:28):
And he sort of takes a breathand you know, sort of shakes
himself like like he's just waking upor something, and he goes, I'm
going to go talk to the guyin the next room and I'll come back
like that would be great. Andthat was sort of when when I told
that story later, that's when myfriends would tell me like, that's when
we knew you were back. That'swhen we knew you were you. That's

(42:50):
just it's hard to imagine all that. And I'm going to be covering this
guy. Um, I find amnesiaand things related to it very fascinating.
I'm gonna at some point, ifI ever get my ass and gear,
I'm gonna be covering this guy namedClive Wearing in England. It's the worst
case of amnesia documented. He onlyhas minutes of memory. Have you ever

(43:14):
seen the movie Memento? Yeah?Yeah, Well his his is a different
His is anti interrograde memory. Hisis a short term memory disorder. He
effectively is not able to encode.He either it's not really clear whether he
can't encode from short term into longterm memory or whether he can't recover it

(43:37):
from long term memory back into Okay, I'm going to go into lecture mode
for a second. We have threekinds of memory. Working memory, which
is immediate, it's what happening,what you perceive right right this second.
And then you have short term memory, which is where you can remember things
for maybe three minutes, sometimes lasttimes more. And that's you know,

(44:01):
short strings of numbers or somebody's nameif you've never met them before, that
kind of thing, new information.And then your long term memory is everything
else, right, and that guyit's hard, you know, how do
you really test it? We don't. We don't have good testing for it.

(44:23):
It's hard to know whether it's acase like it's clear that his working
memory is okay, he can doyou know, mental arithmetic, he can
play the piano. You're talking aboutClive wearing right. Yeah, so you're
familiar with him, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and he can
he can, yeah, he canplay the piano. That he has long

(44:43):
term body memory, he has proceduralmemories, he knows how to do things,
he knows how to speak, um, that kind of thing. Um.
So he has long term memory andhe has working memory. But there's
something that's not working correctly int tween. There's something about the short term memory
is screwed up for him. Ihave challenges with the short term memory now,

(45:07):
but that's unrelated. That's a wholeother issue is that I developed epilepsy
and now have ADHD because of it. That happened years later. I'm super
super fucking walking with health things.But oh, no doubt about it.
Right. But so for me,it's a my short term memories challenge now

(45:32):
it's not even so much a challenge. Is just different ADHD memories just a
different executive functioning process is different thanwhen you're you know, neurotypical. But
this guy, like, so,what I have is retrograde annisia, which
means just for a block of timeup to now, I couldn't remember just

(45:57):
black, just nothing. But fromthat moment, from from the moment that
I woke up, I could startto form memories. And I had lost
a few procedural things, like likeI said, I lost the ability to
handwright. But I was able torelearn pretty quickly. And um, you

(46:19):
know, I learned memory techniques andthat sort of thing to be able to
memorize doctor's names and the medications thatI was on in in the you know,
the things that you need to knowwhen they keep asking you every time
you see a new specialist, andthat kind of thing I got. I
got pretty good with that. UmSo I never had a problem like Wearing

(46:42):
did with the short term his Inhis case, he seems to have long
He never seemed to lose significant procedureslike like handwriting, basic functions. He's
you know, yeah, he canmake a cup of coffee. He can
he can function. If you're justlooking at him, you can't tell there's

(47:06):
something wrong, because you know,he's I don't know, I'll find him
absolutely fascinating. He he when hewakes up in the morning, he doesn't
know where he is, but hesomehow knows that he's at home, and
he somehow knows where the dishes areand all this. But he has no
memory of it. Now it's absolutelyhorrifying because well, he has no no

(47:27):
narrative memory of it. He can'texplain it to you, and that,
yeah, it's terrifying. I mean, so, I developed epilepsy in twenty
sixteen, unrelated as far as weknow, unrelated to the brain injury from
having been in the comaum. Butthen again, we don't know why I
developed epilepsy. I never had aleisure in there, I never had a
problem there. I just dropped witha seizure and spent five hours in status

(47:51):
up elepticus one day. And wedon't know why, because this is how
I do, and leading up tothat, I was pretty neurotypical. I
functioned pretty normally, and I thoughtand I spoke pretty normally. Since then,

(48:12):
I struggle for words. That's whythe cadence of my speech is halting
at times, especially if I'm tiredor if I'm distracted, I'll lose words
or I'll get derailed or that kindof thing. But I still think narratively,
I can still tell a story.He doesn't seem to have that.
There's something there with his verbal memoryor his ability to It's not clear whether

(48:40):
he knows the thing but can't putwords to it, or whether he doesn't
know the thing at all, buthis body knows it, Like it's not
there's no why do you quiz that? Yeah, especially when he doesn't even
remember why you're sitting in front ofhim. You know a few like what
he does is if he looks awayfrom you and looks back, it's like,

(49:00):
hey, when did you get here? I know he's not that extreme.
He like kind of accepts it.He knows something's wrong, he don't
he doesn't know what it is,and they tell him what happened, and
he forgets a couple of minutes laterand it's right back like he can't form
new memories. And that's horrific tome. And there was another guy I

(49:23):
seen, I forget his name.He was very similar to that, and
I believe he's like the second worstcase ever documented of amnesia. And he's
just as fascinating in a different way. I mean, I've had so I
have epilepsy. Initially it was believedthat it was a reaction to SSRIs.

(49:46):
You can get something called so SSRIsor antidepressants, and you can get something
called a serotonin storm, which soundsa lot cooler than it is. But
basically, you just get too muchserotonin in your system and it's not helping
your mood, but your brain justshorts out. And so I had my
first ever seizure in two thousand andnine and I was on Zoloft at the

(50:12):
time, stopped taking Zoloft, didn'thave another seizure for three years, and
then we thought, let's try adifferent antidepressant. And so I think it
was effects Or that I tried thesecond time, and within a week of
starting effects Or dropped with another seizure. So we were like, clearly,
I have an oversensitivity to both norUP and apron and serotonin reuptake inhibitors can't

(50:38):
take those, Okay, got it, And so we didn't assume epilepsy for
a long time. But I hadtwo seizures and then the big one,
the one that lasted for five hourson and off. That one was out
of the blue. I was atin fact, on three different medications that

(50:58):
should have prevented seizure that I wasn'ttaking for that reason. One was an
anti anxiety, one was an antihistamine, and another was for nerve pain.
But they all should have made meresistant to seizure, except apparently not.
And so the moral is I've hadafter that. I had one more episode

(51:22):
in twenty eighteen. So I've hadfour major seizure events in my adult life,
and each of those I recall prettyclearly, both the lead up.
If somebody's had a migraine ever sortof, you can get an aura.

(51:43):
That's kind of what it feels like. That's the best I can describe it.
It's like you feel a little dizzy, your skin crawls a little,
you feel off, your vision getsweird. And I've learned now that if
that starts happening, we're not goingto assume it's a migraine. We're going
to go lay down and get helpjust in case. And then when I
come out of the seizure, soI don't remember the seizure itself, and

(52:05):
I'm quite grateful for that because everythingI've heard, because I have grand mouth
seizures at the ton of chlonic bigshaking, yeah, misery and every muscle
in your body tenses up. Ohgod, it hurts so much. You
ache for days like it's your hairhurts when you ake like it's. So
I'm fine with not remembering that partbut but I remember each time. There's

(52:31):
a little while from minutes to hours, but not more than a couple hours
where I don't remember what happened andI don't like So the first time happened
when I lived in New Hampshire andI actually ended up we lived about a

(52:52):
half a mile away from one ofthe hospitals that I worked in, so
I knew the EMTs that showed up, like I recognized when by the time
they got to me, I hadcome out of the seizure and was sitting
up, but they still had mego to the yard to get checked out,
and I recognized like I knew thatI knew them. I knew I
was home. I recognized to myhusband, but I hadn't tried to talk,

(53:15):
you know, in large part becauseI had bitten my tongue, which
is not great and um, andso they ask you what's your name?
And that's such a that's the kindof question where it's just there's it's evocative,
like you know that you're supposed toknow it. Even if you don't
know the answer, you know thatyou're supposed to know the answer. That's

(53:37):
why you say, what do youthink my name is? Well? But
I looked at him and I wasjust like, oh, yeah, my
name's and it just wasn't there,Wait a minute, what the fuck is
my name? I had no idea, and like for an hour, I
didn't know. And that's when Igot upset. Like I wasn't upset to

(53:59):
wake up up and have found myselflying on my driveway when we were supposed
to be in the middle of ayard sale like whatever. I didn't much
like yard sales anyway, no bigdeal, right, But but this experience
of not being able to give themmy basic I didn't know my name,
I didn't know my day to birth, I didn't know what day it was,

(54:20):
I didn't know who the president was. And now I understood why we
ask those questions to people. Andthat's terrifying. And that's there. There
comes a point where you learn.I learned after the third like the big
seizure, that one, I hadlike about three days of not with that.

(54:44):
With that third one in twenty sixteen, it was to the point where
they had discharged me from the hospitaland I was home and I have four
kids. My fourth is adopted,and the little one we had adopted about
not quite a year prior, butshe'd been living with us for two years
by then, and she goes runningthrough the living room and I looked at

(55:05):
my husband inside, who's that?Oh, just a random child ran through.
As far as I was concerned,I was just like, I'm not
hallucinating, right, Like, it'sactually there's a little blond girl right there,
right help me out here. Noidea, none, no idea.
And you start to learn, basedon the reactions of the people around you,

(55:27):
that there are certain questions you're notsupposed to ask. And one of
the questions you're not supposed to askis what's my name? And you're also
not supposed to ask what's the nameof the child that's in your living room.
You just you just learn to fakeit, and you learn to put
on a poker face and to notlet people know when you are entirely disoriented,

(55:50):
and to not let people know whenyou are terrified. Because I can't
remember what sentence comes next. Youjust roll with it. That's horrifying,
You know, I have I havemedical issues of my own, but nothing
like that. I it's I havean eye condition. I believe we talked

(56:13):
about this. Actually have pigmentary dispersionsyndrome where my irises are literally disintegrating and
it can lead to glaucoma because thatthe iris particles will clog up my tear
ducks eventually. Well it might,so I have a good chance of developing
glaucoma, like, like a realgood chance. And I feel you on

(56:37):
some of that. But you are, and you say it in your podcast,
you are medically interesting. I findit fascinating. It's I'm sure it's
not pleasant. I'm not saying likeanything like that. I just I find
it absolutely fascinating. And if I'velearned anything about you, you probably do
as well. You know, there'sa lot of things in life that are

(57:02):
fascinating clinically but shitty to live with. Yeah, and a lot of my
health stuff falls into that condition.You know. It's likewise, I mean,
anything relating to any child getting sickof you know, if it's another
child, it's like, oh,that's interesting, and when it's your kid,
it's like, oh my god,everything about this sucks and I hate

(57:23):
it. Yeah. We've got oneof our daughters has a condition called hell
what was that called? She grooming? She will like it's something to do
with her vagus nerve. I believeif you trigger, like are you familiar

(57:43):
with like what ASMR actually means,not like what people think it means.
Yeah, the the involuntary reaction tosomething. She has that where it will
she will literally pass out, likeif you're brushing her hair. Vasovagel syncope
cope, it's grew grew some kindof grooming syncope um of some sort.

(58:05):
I don't remember the actual You probablysaid it there and it just didn't click
because I was like, yep,not gonna remember all of that. Well.
Vezovegel syncope specifically is when at thevery it's people who pass out with
the side of blood. Yeah.I have a friend, like one of
my best friends is like that.He's covered in tattoos, passed out for
every single one of them. Yep, yep. And and I mean we

(58:30):
had a a a close friend ofmine's partner. Um, they were at
our house one year for the SuperBowl. This must have been like two
thousand and ten. I want tosay two thousand and nine. Maybe I
don't know it was. I can. I can remember it, but not

(58:50):
very well, so I don't Idon't know if I really remember it.
If I remember talking about it,um, but there was some sort of
injury on the field, and Idon't know sports ball, so it's just
somebody blood and the next like we'reall looking at the TV. And then
the next thing we know, herpartner is literally flat out on the on
the floor next true, you know, behind the couch because he saw the

(59:15):
blood and just like a tree checkedout for a minute. Yep, yep.
My daughter will do that if ifyou're brushing her hair and it feels
like good or you know how likesometimes you'll get goosebumps from somebody caressing maybe
your scalp or something or whatever yourback. That was like, sometimes she

(59:36):
will literally just fall over like likeshe just shuts down instantly, and it's
like she's like, what happened whereshe doesn't? You know? It's crazy,
And I was like, that's interesting. But we got to be careful
about brushing your hair. Don't brushyour hair while you're doing anything else.
Don't brush it while like one day, when you're driving a car. Don't

(59:58):
brush your hair while you're driving acar. Probably not a good idea,
no, probably not. And it'scrazy and they hell, they don't know
why it happens. It's just somesome people it happened. Does it happen
to her when she does it herself? No, Yeah, that's that's one
of those odd things, is thelike ASMR Like I can whisper and I'm

(01:00:19):
fine, but if somebody else doesand I like, but you know,
like it, I have a likea nausea reaction to it, and I
do not find asmar pleasant. Well, and there's many there's many forms of
it. A lot of people wouldsay watching Bob Ross videos triggers that in
them, Like they'll get goosebumps,They'll it'll make you sleepy, like you're

(01:00:40):
on drugs. Yeah, the wholethat's more hypnotic. That's that's me ya.
It's hard to say. But butas to your your point previously,
that's the kind of thing that isfascinating to talk about theoretically, you know,
but when it's your kid, Yeah, boy, I really hate it,

(01:01:05):
you know. As you know,my youngest is adopted from a trauma
background, and she has an attachmentdisorder, and it's really really hard to
explain to people what it's like forher because it's super rare, especially in
the US, especially now, attachmentdisorders are more associated with like children who

(01:01:29):
are raised in orphanages or children whoare profoundly abused for years and years.
Usually Child Protective Services in the USsteps in, and we don't have the
orphanage system like they do, andyou know, Eastern Europe that kind of
thing, so people don't see itas often. And I mean I worked

(01:01:52):
in a couple of different hospitals.I worked in the prison system, and
then I worked extensively in both emergencyrooms and people's homes, and I never
saw a case of this, neveronce, and then I end up adopting
a child with it, and it'sfascinating clinically, like her therapist. When

(01:02:14):
we get a new therapist, thenew therapist's always like you can tell that,
you know, they're not really goinglike oh boy, oh boy,
but there's a part of them it'slike, oh this is cool clinically,
and I'm like, it is,yeah, because they don't see it,
and it's probably something they were like, oh, this is so rare,
and I get to kind of studyit firsthand, right, But then living

(01:02:36):
with it, you know, Imean literally every day we have something where
we're like, yep, there itis. You know, I can't ever
predict how it's going to manifest.But her personality just is different. She
doesn't have an imagination, and Imean that entirely, like she doesn't know

(01:03:00):
how to imagine things, and shedoesn't have empathy and um, and yet
she can lie and she can't anddoes extensively because she's not lying to be
creative or even to get out oftrouble. It's because kids in in in

(01:03:27):
abusive situations as a as a defensemechanism, they try to figure out what
the adults around them want to hear. So like when when she first came
to us, she had a hardtime with even if you would like,
you know, when I if Itake the kids to Target or whatever,
if they you know, assuming theybehave in the store, then at the

(01:03:50):
on the way check out, I'llbe like, pick out a you know,
a matchbox car, and I wouldshow her like you want a red
one or a blue one? Andshe would cry because she had been read
is the first two years before shecame to us, that she always had
to choose the girliest option, thatpink or purple were the only correct options,
and so being given not make Iwish I was making this up man,

(01:04:13):
And so being given red and Blueas an option bothered her a lot
because she couldn't decide what was theright answer and what answer is going to
get me hit because she was prettyextensively physically abused before she came to us,
and so it took us a longtime just to get her. You
know, like basically, I haveto sort of even now if i'm if

(01:04:35):
I'm giving her an option, Ican't make eye contact when I do it.
I have to show her here areyour choices, but not look at
her. Well, I'm thinking,because anyone you want and it has to
be okay, And I have tomake sure because if she can't tolerate eye
contact very well, it makes hervery very uncomfortable. And so I sort
of hold out, like, hereare your choices, or I'll just point,

(01:04:57):
you know, pick something off,pick one thing off that rack,
and then look away, because ifshe sees me looking at something, she'll
think that's the right answer. She'llgo with it, and it feels pressured
and probably doesn't like being pressured.She was, she just doesn't know,
and so like you can't deal withit very well. I guess it's probably
a better way to put it.Accurate. Accurate and and and so you

(01:05:19):
know, we've always tried to raiseour kids with the understanding that like,
look, everybody screws up, You'renot going to get in trouble for screwing
up. You're going to get introuble for lying about it, because yes,
I need to be able to fixthe problem. So like literally today,
this afternoon, this morning, Iguess it was. My husband is

(01:05:39):
a college professor and was going tobe running a meeting for incoming students,
and like literally five minutes before hismeeting started, we lost internet in the
house. And so he comes uplike I was on I was upstairs in
our bedrooms on the second floor.Kids were on the first floor. My

(01:06:01):
husband was in the basement in hisoffice, and so he comes running up
like, you know, he's textingme like what's going on? You know,
and we go into the living roomand the end the instinct with kids
is to try to ask them questionsthat are yes, no questions, you
know, keep it simple. Doyou want that? You know? Are

(01:06:24):
you hungry? Did you go?And so that was my husband's question,
was did you move anything on thistable? Because we have like one table
in the living room where the modemand the power strips and that kind of
thing all set, and he waslike, and he asked. Both she
and my eleven year old were inthe living room, so he was like,
did you did either of you guysgo over there? And my eleven

(01:06:45):
year old was playing a game onhis phone and was barely grunted to acknowledge
we were in the room, youknow. So we're like, Okay,
it wasn't him, and she waslike no. And the thing is that
she said that no because that wasthe answer she thought she was supposed to
give. But now as soon asshe heard the word, it became her

(01:07:06):
truth. So she's gonna try tostick to her guns. Man, did
she? And meanwhile, so's Igot. So we've talked about this.
I have one who does the samething. Ah's kill her. So she's
playing on the Wii, right,the wi you the little handheld console art
and it's literally plugged in to thatpower strip. So it's like, I

(01:07:31):
have literal visual proof that she weretouching things over there. It's fine that
you were. I just need youto tell me because that helps me problem
solve, yes, and preferably showme what you touched. You know,
I'm not gonna bite you over it. No. But as soon as she

(01:07:51):
said that no, it's like herbrain heard her mouth say no, and
now suddenly that became her truth andshe was like, no, I didn't
touch it. I wasn't over thereany And she's not digging in an aggressive
or oppositional way. She's not tryingto manipulate. It's like she really believes
her own words. Now, yeah, it literally became truth. And I

(01:08:15):
wanted to ask real quick, howare her communication skills? Is she will
she initiate conversation with people or doesshe more of the quiet type who will
answer you if you talk to her, but just kind of lives in her
own world, you know what Imean? Well, she can't live in
her own world because I don't thinkshe has much of an internal world.

(01:08:35):
She does not initiate conversation much withpeople her own age or older, but
she will answer any question anyone asksher. Ever, So that's kind of
scary because you know, you teachlittle kids like don't tell strangers your name
or where you're from, and ifa stranger asked her what's her name,
she just blurts it all out.No hesitation there. She has no idea

(01:09:00):
what a stranger is. She doesn'tlike, you have to understand the difference
between truth and not truth and thensafety and danger before you can understand what
a stranger might be. So she'sgot no concept there. When she does
talk, it's very much like youknow, when a toddler gets talking to
you about they're telling you the storyof you know, they saw a dog

(01:09:24):
in the backyard or whatever, andyou're like, you have told me the
same story twelve times in the pasttwo days, and I just don't give
a shit like that feeling that's herall. She still tells stories about things
that happen in like first grade,when it's like, it's stories that have
nothing to do with anybody else here, and that's not what I asked you
about. It's just the story thatshe knows. So it's the story that

(01:09:47):
she tells. And the other interestingthing about her communication she's very, very
interested in younger children. Like whenwe go to the playgrounds, she wants
to play with babies and todd there'snot not to play with them in the
way that you know. Preteen girlswill sort of get like into that babysitter,

(01:10:09):
caregiver gene thing that's not her.She she sees them as her equal.
And so there have been times whereI've had to sort of intervene with
other parents because it makes them uncomfortable, you know, and to be like,
look, she doesn't know that she'solder than your kid. You know,
it's she's got a disability. Youknow. Usually there are times we're

(01:10:30):
all just say she's got autism,because that's something people understand, although she's
not autistic. Um. The otherinteresting thing about her when she speaks is
that you know how someone sounds whenthey are traditionally deaf, Yeah, you

(01:10:51):
know that sort of echoy almost sound. Um, that's what she sounds like
when she speaks. She doesn't enuncivery clearly and she does not project,
which is exciting because another thing aboutme health wise, because apparently this is
just the show about how Kate's healthis all fucked up, is that I

(01:11:12):
am deaf. I hear about twentyfive percent of what normal people do,
and I don't sound deaf. Well, you weren't born deaf. For you,
this is a result of going intoa coma, right. No.
I developed it sometime between age fiveand sixteen, because up until age five
I had regular hearing tests and theywere fine. And then when I was

(01:11:35):
sixteen, I got tested and Iwas down to fifty percent normal hearing and
they don't know why. So Ilearned, but I did learn to speak
with normal hearing, and so Ican sound that way. She doesn't seem
to have any concept of projection orof speaking clearly. It's been really really

(01:11:58):
hard and still now, I meanhe's been with us for six years now,
and she still we can't convince herthat she needs to look at me
when she speaks because I can't hearbecause she can hear. Yeah, you
need to. You need to hearand see their mouth to put it together.
Yeah, and I'm sorry I haveyou on only audio here at It's

(01:12:21):
not you, it's me. I'man extreme introvert, so like extreme,
I can't exaggerate that enough. It'sso it's not you, it's me.
Well, and that's it doesn't botherme because but I have on earbuds that
are noise canceling and I'm listening onone hundred percent volume at all times now
and I just got a new mictoo, so hopefully it sounds nice and

(01:12:44):
clean. Well, I mean,you asked me about earlier. You know,
could I hear the fan on it? And I could only hear when
you said I'm going to go turnthe fan off. And I listened to
you turn it off, and Iwas like, oh, okay. But
but that's the thing is that Iso I am deaf. Don't sound it.
Her hearing is perfect, but shesounds deaf. So between the two
of us, we're kind of amess. Right. Do you do the

(01:13:06):
talk and she'll do the listening.Oh she doesn't listen, or the hearing.
We'll say hearing, yes, fairso, And what do you think
her level of self awareness is?This? Isn't like is this like a
physical brain? Is it like damaged? Is it? Is it purely psychological?

(01:13:27):
Or you know what I mean?I think that your brain forms neural
pathways. So I mean I thinkyou are hard coded to become who you
are and to be like good atcertain sports or to be good at math,
or to be good at music orgood at art or whatever. By
the time you're two or so,you have that range set of like here's

(01:13:51):
the worst you'll likely be in yourlife and here's the best you'll likely be
in your life, based you know, and then where you fall within that
ring depends on your environment growing up, and that includes whether you have injuries
or that sort of thing later inlife. So I used to have an
identic memory, so people know whata photographic memory is, right, is

(01:14:15):
every you can remember everything you see. I used to really remember everything.
Yeah, I had that for everythingI heard that if I could hear it,
I could remember absolutely everything. SoI could remember like fifty digit numbers
on the first pass, just becauseI would remember the sound of the numbers,

(01:14:35):
and that was pretty easy. Nowthat's gone since developing epilepsy and subsequently
ADHD. But that's that's how Ifunctioned, and now that's gone. So
I've had an injury, so thathas restricted and shifted my brain. My
range rather lower. Right, Butassuming no brain injury, assuming on that

(01:15:00):
with me, then then I hada range of how far am I going
to push that ability to memorize stuff? And in my career it helped me
to be able to memorize a lotof stuff because talking to people, the
longer I could just talk to youand maintain focus on you and not be
scribbling and writing the whole time,the more you were likely to tell me.

(01:15:25):
So I would push that and honethat and work that. But if
I had taken a job that didn'trequire me to memorize things, I probably
wouldn't have honed that capacity is long. So do you see what I'm saying,
Like, there's a but there's thatrange that's hard coded. That's that's
neurology, right. And so forher her I mean CPS was called on

(01:15:48):
her biological mother for the first timewhen she when my daughter was about six
weeks old. So the abuse beganimmediately, and it began early and often
and hard. And this is akid that was abused in every way you
can imagine a child being her.So by now I think it's pretty well

(01:16:15):
neurologically coated in which is a longway of answering the fact that I don't
believe there's such a thing as onlypsychologically. So it's some kind of mix
of of environment and her wiring herit's it's it's mixed, basically. Yeah.
So what is Like I said,what do you think her level of

(01:16:39):
self awareness is? It's not verygood? Um, I mean even in
terms of like bodily agency. Shedoesn't know when she's hot or cold,
she doesn't know when she's hungry,or full, like we have to watch
her very carefully because she'll go outsidenot dressed for the weather. I mean,

(01:17:01):
the first time I realized she didn'thave a concept of hungry or full
was when it was before the adoptionwas finalized. She was just still I
was her legal guardian, but herbiological mother lived with us for like four
months before we invited her to stopdoing that and live anywhere else, and

(01:17:23):
she left the baby here when shewhen she moved out. And so it
was in that span of time betweenbiological mother gone and adoption being finalized,
and I had to go pick upmy daughter at the high school, which
is literally a quarter mile away,and so I left mine, ten year

(01:17:44):
old at the time, in charge. I like, just keep an eye
on her. I'm gonna go pickup Emily at the high school. I'll
be right back. He's like,no problem, done this a thousand times.
And we got pizza delivered, andso I set a piece of pizza
on her late and I was like, you eat your pizza. I'll be
right back. We're good, We'regood, cool, okay. And I

(01:18:08):
come back five minutes later and there'spiece pizza on her plate. And usually
we had to watch her because shesort of bolts her food. She used
to eat really really fast, becausekids that are neglected often do that.
But in this case, she stillgot a piece of pizza on her plate.
And I was like, that's weird. Maybe we've had some progress.

(01:18:28):
Maybe she's starting to feel less.It's called food insecurity, right, Like,
maybe she's starting to believe that she'sgoing to get her next meal so
she doesn't need to pound all thefood down at once, Right. So
I opened the pizza box and thiskid, this little she was too she
was like she was wee, youknow, and she had eaten five pieces

(01:18:54):
of pizza in five minutes. Well, she set one aside for everyone else,
one piece, and then the restwhere you know the classic cartoon,
cut a slice, put it ona plate, and you take the bulk
of it. She just got shejust kept pounding, and I mean you
could seem like she got up andher little belly was all distended, and

(01:19:15):
you know, she was a littlepale and sweaty. It was like,
we're gonna stop eating now, okay, Like and she had no idea that
she was full. She didn't.She's not able to tell us when she's
getting sick, you know, orwhen she's nauseous. Still, so she
doesn't have a sense of bodily connection. She doesn't have a sense of body

(01:19:39):
agency still, like she doesn't know. You know, toddlers sometimes they wear
clothes and their pants are fallen offtheir ass or whatever, and that's pretty
normal. But by the time they'reate, they should have a sense of
like, hey, my clothes don'tfit right, this is not comfortable,
yeah, Or my hygiene isn't rightafter using the bathroom or something. This

(01:20:00):
isn't comfortable. I'm gonna go fixthat. She doesn't have that, so
we still need to be a lotmore involved in her daily care and to
sort of point out to her,like, hey, those pants look like
they're pretty tight, you know,maybe go put on some that fit.
And she's got no idea what youmean, Like she just goes and puts
on a different pair and you haveto remember to go in and the ones
that are too small out of herroom. She does not have any concept

(01:20:27):
of how she comes across to otherchildren, you know, and other adults
see her as a smiley, cute, little blonde girl, like that's all
they see because she mimics very well, she acts normal, especially if there
are other children around. She canact like the other children do, and
so you don't realize something's wrong untilsomething has gone very extremely wrong. Is

(01:20:50):
she aggressive? I don't. We'vetalked about her before, but I don't.
There's some things I wanted to askyou and didn't. But so she's
not aggressive at all or anything like, No, she's not. She is
aggressive towards animals at times. Wehave to be and we have to be
very clear with her about they areliving things, because I think that her

(01:21:12):
aggression is not that she is tryingto hurt them, but that she doesn't
understand that this is not a movingstuffed animal, but it's a cat,
do you know what I mean?And so, and one of the challenges
for her is that so one ofthe reasons that you know that she does
not have autism is that people withautism are really really good about learning rules.

(01:21:36):
Yeah, you know, and oncethey learn a schema there like this
is how the world works, andthey don't like it when you break the
rule because they learned that rule.And so, for instance, if somebody
with autism learns don't pull a cat'stail, then you don't even joke about
pulling a cat's tail. No,don't do it. Don't ever with my

(01:21:56):
daughter. You have to. Wehad to take her literally from room to
room throughout the house and be like, we don't pull the cat's tail in
the living room, and we don'tpull the cat's tail in the dining room.
And they're open to each other,like it's not like they're separate rooms.
But still we had to take herto each area of the house and
be like, and we don't pullthe cat's tail in this bathroom, and

(01:22:17):
they don't pull the cat's tail,and that that mean know what I mean?
She just can't generalize, She can'tform rules. So what's her intelligence
level? Is she? Is sheable to do, you know, like
math? Can she read well?Is she curious about stuff like that?

(01:22:40):
Wow? Okay, well there's avery different questions. She is at grade
level or above for math and readingcomprehension, which is actually to our detriment
because it makes it really hard toget extra services from school. And my
biggest concern for her is that nextyear, so starting to fall twenty twenty
one, will be the first timethat she'll be the only kid from my

(01:23:05):
family at her current school, rightthat. Right now, she's at the
same elementary school with my eleven yearold, but starting this fall, he'll
be at the middle school and she'llstill be at elementary school. And we've
already had some problems with her onthe bus, behaving unsafely in different ways,
and so I want her to getyou know, the short bus.

(01:23:28):
I want her to get door todoor transportation to protect her. And you
can only get that if the kidis on an IEP, an individualized education
plan, and we can't get heron an IEP because her grades are too
good. Wow, which kills mejust well, you there are a lot
of people who who are extremely intelligentwho need special care in many ways.

(01:23:54):
A lot of people with cerebral palsy, for example, they are intelligent,
inwardly normal people. It's you know, they have a physical disability, but
they do need that extra care.And if if she needs that care and
can't get it because she's too smart, that's just that makes no sense to
me. It's terrifying. I mean, she is the only one of my

(01:24:15):
children who has had a ride inthe back of a police car so far,
and coincidentally the youngest starting early right, well, yeah, she was
seven at the time, I thinkshe had just turned seven, and my
husband would drive her and her brotherlike their their bus stop is like Kitty

(01:24:38):
Corner are on the block from ourhouse, and so my husband would would
go with them to the bus stopand wait until they got on the bus,
and then he would get in hiscar and go to work. And
you know, especially when it wasdark in the mornings, and he would
stand across the street from them,you would he would get them, you

(01:25:00):
know, we'd helped them across thestreet because it's not a great intersection.
But then he would go back tohis side of the street so that as
soon as they got on the bus, he'd get in the car and go
and get to work on time.And so we had a day where you
know, he did that. Hesaw the bus come, he could see,
you know, you could see underthe bus some series of little feet

(01:25:24):
walking up to the bus and gettingon, and he waited, bus pulls
away, No kids left there atthe bus stop, and so he got
in his car and he went towork. And maybe twenty minutes later,
I'm awakened to the sound of anadult male in my home speaking out loud,

(01:25:45):
whom I did not recognize I didnot love that. And so what
had happened is that my daughter decidedto play hide and seek without telling any
of the other kids and without theirengagement, because she doesn't have any concept
that other kids don't get her orsee her thoughts or understand what she wants,

(01:26:10):
or that if they say no,they mean no. So she went
to hide without telling anybody she wasgoing to hide. She just went and
hid. And so in even youknow, my older kid, he called
to her. He was like,hey, buses here, get on the
bus. But then he got onthe bus and he went and said with
his friends, and the bus pullsaway. And now here's one of the

(01:26:35):
things about her is that she can'tproblem solve like at all. That was
something I was going to ask aswell. She can't even recognize that it
is a problem until the problem isso big, you know, because many
kids would recognize, oh shit,this is a problem. The bus is
here, I better go get onthe bus. That didn't dawn on her,

(01:26:57):
Like she could see the bus fromwhere she was hiding, but it
didn't dawn on her that this ismy signal to stop playing a game that
no one else is playing and grabbedmy backpack and get on the bus.
She just stay until, you know. And so it wasn't until the bus
drove away, and it took herseveral minutes, because it was long enough
for my husband to get in hiscar and drive and go to work before

(01:27:21):
it really started to dawn on heralike, I was supposed to be on
that bus. Yeah, that bushas not come back for me. And
now they walked home from the busstop every day, and I made sure
that they both walked home. Imade sure they did it separately as well
as together. I made sure theydid too, you know, each way

(01:27:42):
around the block, so that theyknew how to get home, because I
most days I would meet them atthe bus stop, but just in case
I wasn't there, I wanted tomake sure that they could get home.
And so we had practiced this.And this is like December, so it
was like four months into the schoolyear. And so the point of that
is to say, I know,damn well, she knew how to get
home from the bus stop, buther she just shorted out. Her brain

(01:28:06):
just shorted out, and so shejust stood on the sidewalk and screamed and
screamed and screamed and screamed until wehad like half a dozen people calling nine
one one because my child is standingon the sidewalk screaming. And as soon
as the police showed up, shewas able to explain to them exactly what

(01:28:28):
her name wasn't where she lived,and she was able to demonstrate how to
get to her house, and thenshe invited him in and offered him a
drink. Jesus Christ, kid,Like, how do you you can't make
the shut up? Like you can't, you cannot, You can't prepare for
this stuff, So they just can't. They accepted her invitation into the house.

(01:28:49):
I'm saying, they're not supposed to, like can of a young child
like give permission to enter? No? But apparently yes, And so that
was not great, that was notideal and uh yeah, so things like

(01:29:10):
that, like she just she can'tproblem solve because in order to problem solve,
you need to kind of recognize thata problem is happening, and for
her, it's not until she's entirelyflooded and then she doesn't know what to
do and her go to less now, but it used to be quite often

(01:29:31):
that her go to would just bethese screaming tantrums because that's what her biological
family paid attention to, and soit worked, and it took us a
long time to convince her like maybenot maybe use your words. Yeah,
absolutely, And that leads me intoa question. I wanted to ask,

(01:29:53):
what about the people who were abusingher? Did they face any charges?
Are these people where they should beright now in your opinion? Well,
so, the only person that everhad legal custody prior to us, it's
her biological mother. Her biological fatherhas been aware of her, and I

(01:30:15):
believe that her biological father is theone who called child protective services when she
was six weeks old, because Ithink he was aware enough that this is
not a person who should have achild alone. But they were never together,
like they were just a hook upkind of thing. They were.

(01:30:39):
They dated in high school, theyhad broken up, but they were still
sort of friends with benefits through college. And that's how they got together.
In the fun fact that I hadskipped is that so her biological mother is
our former nanny, and she wasan excellent nanny because she got how we

(01:31:00):
parented and she was also good aboutidentifying. Hey, I'm overwhelmed, right,
now I can't. I need somehelp. So cool. And then
when she started talking about wanting,when we started saying, I'm going to
go back to work soon. U. The kids are getting old enough to
go to school and daycare, soyou're gonna We're gonna buy a house that

(01:31:25):
doesn't have an in law apartment,so you're gonna you're gonna be on your
own. Go She's well, Idon't want to be alone. I guess
I'll have a baby. And I'mlike, don't. That's not a way
to solve that. Don't do that. But she did that, and so
I was just like, Okay,look, you know, peace and god
bless kind of thing, like Iwish you luck, but I I cannot

(01:31:45):
take responsibility for you for this decision. And for the first two years she
lived two or three hours away fromus. And the version we kept getting
is like the Disneyland version of like, oh, I found a new boyfriend
and he's great, and here's thesefamily photos, and isn't she cute?

(01:32:06):
And everything's wonderful and she's always wearingpink and we got her ears pierced,
and didn't you know, just allof this is cute? See whatever?
And I was like, that's fine, Like you do you. And then
a couple of months after the babyturned two, I got a phone call
in the middle of the night thatsaid, my family has disowned me,

(01:32:30):
that I am living in a motelthat rents by the hour or the month,
that I don't have any support here. I'm I, you know,
very very depressed, very overwhelmed,and I just lost my job at the

(01:32:53):
mayonnaise factory. Yeah, that's nevergood. You never want to lose a
job at a mayonnaise factory. Canyou imagine what that smells like in the
summer? Like seriously, So sheyou know, she agreed she could be
safe to get to us, andso she did. She came here.
We basically set up the baby ina pack and play, and I took

(01:33:16):
the mother immediately to the er becausethat's how concerned I was for the mother's
mental health at that time. Andshe ended up being admitted to a psychiatric
hospital. And the next morning,at you know, eight or nine in
the morning, my older kids wereall off to school and my husband was
off to work, and I'm kindof sitting there in the house with this
baby who just woke up in astrange place. And she was kind of

(01:33:40):
scarily fine, like you know,a two year old should kind of be
disturbed at waking up in a stranger'shouse, and she was fine, and
so kind of looking at the kidslike I don't I don't know what to
do. I don't know what todo right now, you know, Like
and there's knock on my door andit's Child Protective Services saying we have been

(01:34:01):
looking for this kid for several months. That basically every time they got close
to being able to take custody fromthe biological mother, the biological mother would
move and change jurisdictions or change hername, and she also had a super

(01:34:24):
common last name, so it washard to find. So the biological mother
has never faced charges because big,big, heavy use of visual quotes here,
All she ever did was neglect thekid emotionally. That's a lot though,

(01:34:46):
well to me, it takes alot more effort to neglect a child
than to physically abuse a child.You know, like one slap and you've
effectively physically abused a kid, Butneglect tikes months and months and year years
to do um. And it's acommitment, like you have to neglect your
child, you have to actively neglectthem, like every day you wake up

(01:35:09):
and you make the same decision,I'm gonna I'm gonna pay just as little
attention to this kid today as Idid yesterday. And that's why the child
doesn't enunciate, doesn't project her voice. She never asked questions, so like,
imagine a two year old not askingany questions. Call that has never
happened with mine, holy cred right, bizarre right, But that that was

(01:35:33):
a thing. And in fact,if you asked her questions, she would
duck and run like because she didn'tknow how to cope with being spoken to
as a person. UM, herbiological grandmother, I believe faced charges.
I was able to get a restrainingorder against her for threatening to break into

(01:35:56):
my home and take the child whetherI wanted to or two or not.
So that wasn't great and UM,but I believe that ultimately the like we
didn't we didn't get involved in thebigger picture court case, which had to
do with UM drug use in traffickingthrough her home. UM, and she'd

(01:36:18):
never had she'd never had custody ofthe child. So we know because we've
since seen the Child Protective Services reportsthat the biological grandmother behaved as daycare for
a long time, and she usedto keep a whiteboard on her kitchen wall
of how often she had to againwith the visual quotes, had to hit

(01:36:42):
the child every day. And thisis a kid who came to me at
too, So you're talking less thantwo years old and you had to hit
a kid, you know not Ever, it can get They can get on
your nerves pretty bad. There's nobut you don't have to have you have
to hit it out that it doesn'tsolve it at all. And I had

(01:37:03):
three in diapers all I had threekids younger than two at the same time.
I have twins and a son.My son is a year and a
half younger than my twins. Ohyeah, I three three in diapers.
It was, And it can getto you sometimes having to chase around three
kids. And I could get theSometimes you'd be like, man, I

(01:37:26):
could just I could just slap youreal good, and that would feel all
right because you're getting all my nerves. But then it's like, what good
is that going to do? Well? And I mean, like, I'm
not even getting into the spanking versusnot spanking debate, because frankly, if
a spanking is delivered by a parentwho is not who is in control at
the time. Yeah, I'm nottrying to hurt you. I'm trying to

(01:37:48):
hurt your feelings a little bit,you know, a little bit like I'm
okay with that, frankly, Likethat's that's a parenting decision, like a
cry it out decision or that kindof thing. Like oftentimes to you,
well, oftentimes, I've found thatit doesn't take much to get your point
across. You just give them alittle pat and you have to accompany it
with, you know, a facialexpression that shows disappointment, or you have

(01:38:11):
to say hey no if you're youknow, a little pat can hurt their
feelings if you if you do itright, and you don't have to actually
hurt them physically. Well, imean, my daughter is so used to
physical punishment, corporal punishment, thatspeaking to her she just goes blank.

(01:38:33):
We call it the stone face.She just it's like a shutter comes down
over her face and she just tunesyou out until you stop talking. And
so for her, it's two fingerson the forehead and it's just a tap,
it's just a hey, I'm right, Like I need you to listen
and I need you to not touchthe stove or not run into the road
or whatever. You know, it'ssafety concerns, but whatever, like that's

(01:38:55):
that's not what I'm talking about herethe game. This is a woman who
is hitting for distance, you know, and also the boyfriend that the biological
mother hooked up with when I thinkI'm not sure whether she was still pregnant
when they got together or whether shortshortly after, Like I don't know exactly

(01:39:18):
what point in the baby's life hecame on the scene, but I do
know that they moved in together withina week of meeting. And he's a
registered sex offender. That's never good. No, so he's already lost.
He had already lost custody of hisold or two kids. And the biological
mother's solution to this problem was to, like, you know, CPS basically

(01:39:45):
sat her down and said, like, if you leave the baby alone with
him for literally a minute, we'retaking her. And so her reaction,
like my reaction would be like,okay, then I'm leaving him, but
her reaction was, Okay, I'lljust never leave him alone, leave the
baby alone with him, which meanslike taking the baby into the bathroom or
that sort of thing, except wealso know that she did the baby alone

(01:40:08):
with him, because there are moviesthat feature my child. Wow, that's
that's horrible. Yep. I mean, you know, I don't want to
dig too much into that, butthere's there's been no charges filed against anyone
for anything that happened to her.I don't know. I don't know as

(01:40:30):
far as whether there are charges againsthim. That's not up to me because
anything that he would have done wouldhave been before she came to my home.
So she came to my house inOctober of twenty fourteen, and there
has been no question of you know, abuse or neglect since then. In

(01:40:57):
February of twenty fifteen, we kickedher mother out, her biological mother,
and then in August of twenty fifteen. In February twenty fifteen, kicked the
biological mother out. In March,CPS closed its case. They were like,
we don't have any concerns about you, So as long as you agree
not to hand custody back over tothe biological mother, then as soon as

(01:41:21):
you file for adoption, we're removingthe case. So that's what we did,
Like we kicked the biological mother outand then two weeks later, she
got in touch with us and said, I'm never going to get better,
you keeper, And so that's whatwe did. And there's never been any

(01:41:41):
no consequence check in or you knowwhatever. So well, I don't know,
because he So what I do knowis that sometime after the adoption was
finalized, the some some video surfacedof my child and a friend of mine

(01:42:04):
happens to work fairly high up inMassachusetts called DCF in Massachusetts Department of Children
and Families, and a friend ofmine happens to work in the either right
or wrong office, depending on howyou look at it, and so she
actually recognized my kid from these videos, and she got in touch with me

(01:42:29):
and she was like, look,I need you to promise that you'll never
ask for these files like you youneed to not see these videos. And
you know, this is one ofmy closest friends, and I know her
well and I trust her well enoughto be like, you know what,

(01:42:49):
Okay, my curiosity does not extendto my own kid in that sense,
I don't need to see that.So whatever that was, whatever is on
those which I mean, I know, I just don't want to go all
that graphic into it. But itis absolutely child sexual abuse and it was

(01:43:11):
performed before she lived here, sothere's nothing that we could contribute to the
court case. And she's had medicalevaluation since then, which I have given
her a clean bill of health.So because when she came to us her
on her there's a thing called nursemaid'selbow. Who you heard of that it's

(01:43:35):
some kids get yanked up by theirwrist or their hand a lot and their
elbow pops out of socket a lot. And that happened very early, at
like within a month of her cominghere, that her her elbow went out
of joint and the problem and shedoesn't cry, so we didn't know what

(01:43:56):
was wrong at first until we tookher to the doctor and the doctor's this
is the deal. And in youknow, we had all her old records
transferred to our current pediatrician, whowas like, oh, okay, you
and I are going to have asit down. You need to file for
legal guardianship right now. Even ifyou don't end up adopting, you need
to have guardianship so that I cantell you it's in these records, you

(01:44:17):
know. And her hips also dislocatedall the time we're is that from some
kind of injury from child sexual ABUACE. Okay, so so it actually damaged
her for quite a while. Wegot her involved in gymnastics, which helped

(01:44:42):
a lot. So she's fine now, she's not hyper flexible anymore, build
up some strength and her tendons,all that good stuff. Yeah. Plus,
you know she's no longer being yankedup by the arm or sexually abused,
so her body has been able toheel. Well, that's good.

(01:45:02):
I don't know, it's just I'mI'm going to be stuck on that for
a while now, like somebody needsto somebody needs to pay the piper for
that. It's just how I feel, you know what I mean. I
mean, you know I would likethat on the one hand. On the
other hand, I'm not going toexpose my child to the extra level of

(01:45:27):
evaluation and observation that the criminal justicesystem applies. Yeah. I can understand
not wanting her to wanting to dragher through all that. You know,
Um, I know the name ofthe boyfriend first and last. He's on
Facebook, IM I don't. Imean, like I said, I know

(01:45:48):
her her biological mother's name, butit's so common that I don't know where
she is right now, but wehave a harassment protection order in place against
her. Um we needed we neededto just close those lines of communication entirely
once the adoption was finalized. Andin Massachusetts they m they don't amend a

(01:46:14):
kid's BIRSTHT certificate when they're adopted.They reprint a brand new one. So
on this kid's adopt BIRST certificate,it says that my husband and I are
her biological parents. Interesting, youknow which I mean? I guess,
yeah, that's like I prefer that. You know, there are states that

(01:46:36):
have like, you know, adoptionrights and that kind of thing, and
I just feel like in the waythat it's it's it's it's my right with
my older three kids to decide whohas access to them. There's no such

(01:46:57):
thing as grandparent rights. There's nosuch thing as just because we're family,
you get access to my children.No, you have to actually behave like
a non toxic human being in orderto have access to my children. And
if you can't do that, thenyou don't get to there's around them.
There's no there's no legal protection,I guess is the right way to say

(01:47:18):
it. You don't have any legalright to the kids. If they're not
yours unless you have legal custody.Well, and that's and that's the thing
is that the both the biological parentsboth signed termination of parental right agreements and

(01:47:40):
nobody else ever had custody. Sono, none of those families have any
illegal access to her. So behavewell and we'll let you see. Um.
Sorry, if if they wanted to, you know, if they like
I'm I'm pretty sure I'd have tocheck, but I'm pretty sure. I'm

(01:48:01):
still friends on Facebook with her biologicalfather and paternal grandmother and they've never once
asked to see her. And likeher biological father lives within ten miles of
us. Well, I'm glad youguys, you know, took her in
and her trying to give her thebest home you can. Not all kids

(01:48:23):
get that, you know what Imean? Yeah, Well, I mean
that's are we the best ever?And no? And of course there are
people who are probably better shooted inone way or another. But that being
said, a clinical psychologist and acollege professor can probably do a decent job,

(01:48:43):
you know, in having three mentallywell older children can can help protect
and help care for her. Iwas going to say they can help I
mean, man, we have takenaway a far from podcasting, but this
is kind of my point is thatthis is my kid is legitimately and literally

(01:49:05):
a sociopath in the meaning of theword the inability to connect with other human
beings on an emotional level, Likeshe just doesn't get how people work,
and she doesn't understand emotions are empathyor an attachment and it doesn't even matter

(01:49:27):
to her. She doesn't care thatshe doesn't right, No, she doesn't
notice. And yeah, we've talkedabout this, and it won't make it
into the worst if I ever actuallyget around to throw that together. It
won't make it into my episode thatwe talked about. But we talked about
it, and yeah, I haveone who is also possibly a psychopath,

(01:49:51):
So I understand that, you know, and that's kids just are and recognizing
that about a kid, in recognizingthat, Okay, there are ways I
can help structure her life and steerher into certain professions, such as she

(01:50:12):
would make a really good nurse,like not necessarily a nurse in an outpatient
facility, but a nurse in ahospital for instance, or a nurse or
in a recovery room or something likethat where she's following doctor's orders and she's
relaying information back and forth. Shecould probably do that pretty well. She's
not. She wouldn't make a greatdoctor because she doesn't have bedside manner.

(01:50:34):
She would make a terrible teacher,like real bad. She says she wants
to do people's hair for a living, and I'm like, I don't think
you have the ability to communicate withpeople well enough to do that. That's
a very social job, it reallyis. And you have to be able
to know how to listen to whatthe person is saying to you, you

(01:50:57):
know, even forget the small talkjust for a second, I think is
a huge part of the job,but just the mechanics of the job itself,
to sort of understand what the personis asking you to do, and
they may not be using exactly thewords you think of. You know,
if they say trim half an inchoff, but then they show you and

(01:51:17):
they mean an inch well, andyou know, or vice versa. Yeah
you said when we talked before thatshe she lacks an imagination. So when
somebody's telling, when they're describing toyou what they want you to do,
you have to be able to imaginethat yeah, yeah, no exactly she
can't. She can't. I mean, she's still like the thing that she

(01:51:39):
likes. She likes to do myhair when she has the chance, which
is why my hair is long,is because she likes to breed it and
whatever. But she does the samething, like the same four hairstyles every
time. It's the same process andthe same method, and they're not getting
any better at it because she's notShe doesn't self assess very well. So

(01:52:00):
like if someone else points out toher, hey, you could do this
better, she will do it betterusually the next time. But there are
times where I'm like, kid justneeds downtime, Like kids just needs to
be able to play and not feelassessed or evaluated. And so I'm not
going to tell her that she's doinga shitty job at a French braid.
I'm just gonna tell her, hey, you did a French braid, good

(01:52:23):
for you, And I'm going toleave it at that. But she's not
ever progressing. So if she getsreally good at doing that French braid,
though, that's okay, she might, but she's not going But like right
now, she isn't improving. Doyou see what I'm saying? Because I
just showed her the basics of howto do one, and then I've not

(01:52:46):
given any like, hey, maybeif you do this part tighter, or
if you do this first and thenthat versus the other way. I'm just
like, you know what, justlet the kid play. She's happy,
I'm happy. I'm not leaving thehouse. We're good. It's fine right
away, right, And that's whatI'm saying. So what I'm saying is
that there are jobs like being anurse doing data entry stuff, um,

(01:53:12):
back office work. So she wouldn'tmake a good front office receptionist, but
she could do filing and back officework. She'd be really good in the
court system, for instance. Butshe would not make a good cop.
She would not make a good teacher. She would not. She says she
wants to be a scientist, andI finally I find it took me literally

(01:53:34):
years to figure out, what doyou mean? Because what do you want
to study science? Generally speaking,you have to have an imagination to do
that. You have to shit,you have to imagine what you're trying to
find out, and then imagine waysto find out, and then measure whether

(01:53:55):
it was good or not, whetherit was successful or not. And none
of that and I kept like askingdifferently, like what kind of science do
you in a study? And she'dbe like, I don't know, like
science, like okay, yes,but like astronauts science or like science and
she's like both. And I finallyit took like six months ago, I

(01:54:15):
finally because she can't answer when I'mlike the question why doesn't make any sense
to her? She cannot answer thatquestion. And so finally we stumbled upon
that she likes the idea of dressingup. She likes the idea of the
white coat. And I'm like,you could just wear the white coat without

(01:54:36):
being a scientist. And there's otherjobs that let you dress up, Like
if you were a nurse, youcould dress up in scrubs, but in
lots more colors. And she waslike, oh then I want to be
a nurse. Oh my god,Okay, kid up. So you know,
it's it's about I feel like justacknowledging this is who the it is

(01:55:00):
not all kids have the same amountof empathy. This is a kid who
doesn't have really any and so we'regoing to steer her in certain directions.
If we didn't because we didn't haveto keep her, you know, I
had agreed to help her mother outwhen her mother was sitting a hard point.
But when I realized that her motherwas stealing from us and engaging in

(01:55:24):
sex work out of my home andkicked her mother out, I could have
said take the kid with you,or I'm calling DCF to come get the
kid today, Like I could havedone those things. We just made the
decision that, like, this isa child who mimics other children a lot,
Like if they laugh, she laughs, even if she doesn't get the
joke, you could tell it's afake laugh, but still she mimics in

(01:55:48):
a lot of ways. And solike, oh everybody else is laughing,
maybe that's what I should exactly,And so she acts normal ish in a
way, and in barre In mind, the kids in the foster system have
often been exposed to some serious shitand so a lot of them are already

(01:56:10):
traumatized as it is, so itcan be hard to recognize where our kids
at. And so we decided,okay, we have the ability, if
you can help, then do right. And so we're going to have this
kid stay here and we're going todo what we can to steer her away

(01:56:33):
from the her sociopathy turning into druguse and sex work and crime, right
and that, and that's all ofthat is to me. It's inextricably linked.
That like when I sit down,which I have done, when I

(01:56:55):
said, when I walk into aroom with someone who is a known or
rapist or killer, serial killer,you know, and I have to get
information from them for an assessment orfor a court testimony or whatever. And
if I walk in with a lotof preconceived notions and a lot of judgment,

(01:57:18):
They're not going to talk to me. Why would they. I have
to be able to walk in witha pretty open mind and just be like,
all right, tell me your story. Let's let's just talk. Let's
just you know, I got toget certain basic siety you, but let's
just talk. Let me help meunderstand you. And you know, I
mean someone would still tell me tofuck off because they would like and why

(01:57:41):
wouldn't I? But others that's howyou that's how you get in, and
that's how you understand, and that'show you start. When they start to
realize that I'm not measuring them bythe worst thing they've ever done in their
life, but instead I'm looking atthem as a whole person, and that
there are factors in their lives thatled up to who they are. That's

(01:58:06):
forensic psychology. That's what it's aboutfor me, And that is why I
started to fade out of the truecrime, like the real narrative true crime
genre after a while. It isbecause I was like, we are simplifying

(01:58:26):
it too much. You know,I cannot tell you flailing my arms at
the universe. Stop. Everybody onthe planet needs to stop talking about the
McDonald triad, like like it's areal thing, right kills me? Okay,
So for listeners, and the McDonaldtriad is the myth that serial killers

(01:58:49):
are prone to wedding, the bedan, animal abuse, and fire setting.
And the answer to that is,first of all, those are statistically
slightly more common among serial killers thathave been interviewed, which means they have
been caught. We don't know onesingle thing about serial killers that have not

(01:59:16):
been caught. And we also don'tknow how much of the non serial killer
population does exactly those three things andgrows up perfectly fine. Well, And
a lot of times you hear andpodcasters are really guilty of this. They
will like it's almost like if youhave one of those things, if you

(01:59:38):
are prone to bed wedding or oror you know any one of them.
It's like, well, you're morelikely to be a serial killer. And
it keeps getting regurgitated over and overand over. It kills me. You
know, hey, I have beenknown to set a fire. I never
like burnt a house down or anythinglike that. I didn't commit a crime,

(01:59:59):
but you know, hey, fascinatedby fire. Fire's pretty fucking cool
man, you know, And likeeverybody at some point in time has squeezed
a puppy too hard when they pickedit up. And I'm not a serial
killer. By the way, Idon't assume that at all about you.
They just had to clarify that justbecause I've set a fire I'm not does

(02:00:23):
not mean I'm a serial killer.No, you might be. I don't
assume that you're not, right,don't. Like In fact, I kind
of assume everybody is until I havesome reason to think otherwise. But um,
that's fine. But like everybody's hurtinganimal, you know, everybody's hurting
other person, whether it's intentional ornot. And usually we grow out of

(02:00:44):
that. Like, like, likeI said, the bed wedding, it's
like that's a neurological issue. Andalso the real problem is that the assumption
is that it's not that they wetthe bed, it's that their mother's taunted
them for wedding the bed, right, which is the next level thing.
And it's all bullshit. It's allkills me, because what matters more is

(02:01:09):
not a list of demographics about you. It's about explain to me how you
got here. Have you talked withany infamous serial killers that we may have?
I have all right now I can't. There are some I cannot speak
about, even though like one hasan entire podcast dedicated to him, but

(02:01:36):
I can't talk about it because Idon't have a signed release from him.
I do have signed releases. Fourthree, well, four one is a
pair of kids. They were notserial killers, but they did a fairly
infamous murder called the Dartmouth Killings orthe Dartmouth Murder. And I think,

(02:02:00):
oh god, I don't remember whatyear it was now it's not in front
of me. Late nineties, earlytwo thousands, um in New Hampshire.
Their names are Robert Tullock in JimmyParker, and I had them sign a
release because I ended up writing apaper on them. And I wanted their
permission before I brought it back towork with me. And I was just

(02:02:25):
fascinated by them because one was seventeenand one was sixteen, and they literally
chose. They chose they killed ahusband and wife in a very up close
and personal way with knives. Isthis the kids that they like knocked on
their door and convinced them that theywere like students or something like that.

(02:02:46):
Yeah, I'm doing in an environmentalservice. I've heard this story somewhere on
a podcast. I believe it mayhave been yours, actually might have been
mine. And you know, actuallyI think, um, I heard it
on a cuple I believe true crimehorror story may have covered that as well.
I don't know, but um,but yeah, yeah, I know
I know the crime you're talking about. So I had them. I had

(02:03:06):
them time signed releases so I'm allowedto talk about them. And I think
that they're both fascinating, especially nowthat they've been separated in jail. In
prison, I have a signed releasefrom pamelast Smart, who is the woman
who had the high school kids killher husband. Sure, I know that

(02:03:30):
that sounds very familiar. There's aNicole Kidman movie called to die for that
is loosely based on the crime.But she was twenty three, he was
twenty four. She had work aslike um she helped run like the audio
visual department at a high school inNew Hampshire. And she's starting it started

(02:03:53):
up an affair with a fifteen yearold and convinced him and two of his
buddies to assess her husband. Andit boils down to the fact that she
did not want to have to sharecustody of their dog. But that is
well, I've heard some really dumbreasons to kill somebody, and that one's

(02:04:14):
up there with them. It's prettybad. It's awful. And I mean
she's she's a whole messa. Wow, she's a whole mess of stuff.
And then the other one I have, I do have assigned release, but
I have opted not to go intoclinical detail about her because frankly she's scary,

(02:04:36):
but I will talk about the impressionsthat I got of her, like
in the day room at prison.And her name is Sheila Labar. That
sounds really familiar. She is alsoin New Hampshire. This is because I
worked in the New Hampshire prison system, so that's the where many of the
people I knew that I could getreleases from. We're there, and Um

(02:05:00):
she had. She's originally from FortPayne, Alabama and came up to New
Hampshire in the early two thousands.Never actually married this guy, William Labar,
but um lived with him and tookhis last name. And he was

(02:05:21):
a what's it called not an orthopedesbut when they cracked your back, chiropractor.
Yes that he was a chiropractor withseveral offices, pretty well off,
and he owned a farm in umEpping, New Hampshire, and they had

(02:05:45):
several farm hands come and go withoutcontact, and some of that was because
they were paying a lot of themunder the table, and they tended to
go to the local homeless shelters orwalmarts and that kind of thing to pick
people up. A lot of peopledid make it to the farm, work
there for a while and leave alive, but we don't have any real record

(02:06:09):
of that. She did marry oneguy from Jamaica in order to help him
coming into the country for a while, and they divorced and that guy is
quite lucky to have escaped that relationshipalive. But she's has been convicted of

(02:06:30):
killing two farm hands. She's suspectedof having also killed Bill Labar, and
then since then they have found humanremains that belonged to none of the above
on the property, so probably morethan that then, I'm certain. So
you're definitely taking serial killer status there. She sounds really familiar, and again

(02:06:57):
it was probably you probably mentioned iton your podcast at some point as why,
And I listened to so many thatit's hard to pinpoint specific For the
most part, it's hard to pinpointspecific stuff and where I heard it,
and I get that, yep.Now, Unfortunately I had to cut this

(02:07:18):
conversation off right here, well prettysoon after this anyway, Um, I
had some stuff I had to doin real life, and we'd talked for
quite some time at this point.So h I would love to talk with
Kate again if I get that chance. I will try to let it be

(02:07:41):
known to listeners where to find that. Um. So, yeah, thanks
for listening. I hope this wasn'ttoo long for you, and for me
it wasn't long enough. I couldtalk to Kate for five hours