Born to a drug-addict teenage mom, Julie was given up for adoption and raised by a stoic military dad and Fundamentalist mom whose obsession with demons comes close to resembling the mother from “Carrie”. There is much more to her story including her humor and resilience.
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Episode Transcript:
Paul Gilmartin: Welcome to episode 139 with my guest, listener Julie J. I’m Paul Gilmartin. This is The Mental Illness Happy Hour: two hours of honesty about all the battles in our heads from medically diagnosed conditions, past traumas, and sexual dysfunction to everyday compulsive, negative thinking. This show’s not meant to be a substitute for professional mental counseling. It’s not a doctor’s office, it’s more like a waiting room that doesn’t suck. Website for this show is mentalpod.com. Please go check it out. There’s all kinds of good stuff on there. I want to remind you, those of you in the greater Toronto area, I’m coming to do a live show with Scott Thompson from Kids in the Hall on Saturday, November 16th at 4pm. There’s a link on my website so you can go there and buy tickets or find out more information. I’m really looking forward to doing that. Also tentatively planning on doing a group recording of listeners on that Friday night, November 15th and being joined by therapist Susan Hagen, who was a previous guest on this show and really helped me through some confusing bullshit. Wouldn’t that be great if that was her card? “Susan Hagen: helping ya through some confusing bullshit.” Let’s get into it, I want to read-- this is from the Struggle in a Sentence survey filled out by a woman who calls herself T-Bone. About her anxiety she writes, “I have to sit or lie perfectly still or else my tendons will snap, my bones will bend backwards, my jugular will explode, and my lungs will collapse.” About her alcoholism/drug addiction she writes, “It is my own decision and for my own good, but when I think that I will never again sip on an ice-cold glass of Hendrick’s gin with soda cucumber and lime, I feel like my soulmate has died, and I want to weep.” About being a sex crime victim she writes, “Defiantly refusing to give in to the extreme shame and self-blame engrained in me by this pervasive rape culture and not buying myself for one second.” About her anger issues she writes, “Inability to distinguish between a conversation, a debate, an argument, and a fight, because everything sounds like the world is shouting accusations and insults at me, and all I can do is shout back.” About have borderline personality disorder she writes, “The butt-end of a joke and an all-around nuisance.” About her PTSD she writes, “Like an overly dramatic nightmare sequence in a poorly-produced TV show or movie, where the character dramatically bolts awake screaming. Except I’m awake, and what I saw actually did happen to me, and it can take hours of talking to myself in a rage before I can realize that it’s not happening right now.”
[intro plays]
PG: I’m here with--
Julie J: [laughs]
PG: I’m here with Julie J, who is a listener. We’re using a pseudonym for her so she can open up more freely. We’re just laughing-- I sublet this space that I’m recording in right now from somebody, and this is their last month of having it leased. Every once in a while when I’m interviewing somebody here, the realtor will pop their head in to show a prospective tenant the space, and it can be really awkward sometimes, because you can be in the middle of something super emotional, and the door swings open, “And then he touched me!” and “This is where we’re renting?” The furniture doesn’t come with it. It doesn’t include the victims.
JJ: [laughs]
PG: So Julie and I were just laughing about that. Thank you for coming.
JJ: Thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it.
PG: We corresponded via email. You told me a little bit about your story, and I said, “Would you be interested in recording?” Your intent was not to pitch yourself as a listener when you sent me-- do you remember what your intent was when you sent me the email? Was it you were relating to a guest?
JJ: I think I was thinking about adoptee issues--
PG: That’s it.
JJ: --and maybe suggesting a guest who had been adopted as a child.
PG: Yes. I always love when somebody suggests a subject that I haven’t covered or hadn’t even really thought about. I suppose I’ve thought about it before, but there’s so many other issues that I felt were kind of more pressing. But I think it’s a great topic, and I’m glad you here. Don’t let us down.
JJ: I try my best [laughs].
PG: So where would be a good place to start with your story? There’s so many things. You’re a court reporter-- not a reporter, a transcriber.
JJ: Court interpreter.
PG: Court interpreter. You speak Spanish.
JJ: Correct.
PG: Is it civil?
JJ: It’s a combination of criminal and civil. It used to be 100% criminal, and now I do both criminal and civil work.
PG: Is the civil a little more mellow?
JJ: The civil is much more mellow most of the time. Sometimes it gets contentious as well, but criminal is everything from murderers, rapists, child molesters. Alleged [laughs] murderers.
PG: Alleged, sure, sure. I’m sure there are a portion of them that were innocent.
JJ: Right, right.
PG: What portion of them, do you think?
JJ: From the trials that I have done, maybe 1%. Also as a preamble, I’m not here to disparage the institution of adoption. I think that there are issues that are inherent to adopted kids, such as abandonment issues and attachment issues and identity problems. But I know that there are biological situations and adopted situations that are great and ones that are just not so great. I don’t want to make it sound like, “Adoption is so bad, don’t do it!”
PG: [laughs] No, I don’t get the feeling that that is going to be an issue. I think on the episodes where this podcast does succeed, I think it’s because we take an issue that is multifaceted and we go into detail about it and we don’t necessarily say, “Hey, this is awesome,” or, “This is terrible.” It’s just kind of, “This is what it is. How do we feel about it? How can we deal with this?” So you were given up for adoption because you were born to drug-addicted teenage parents.
JJ: Correct, yes.
PG: They were 15 and 16?
JJ: My biological mother was 15, and my biological father was 21.
PG: What state was that in? Isn’t that technically--
JJ: Statutory rape?
PG: --statutory rape?
JJ: [laughs] Yeah, well that was in Washington, D.C. in our nation’s capital.
PG: [laughs]
JJ: My biological mother went to live with a relative in Japan to sort of start her life over, because she had drug problems. When she got there, she realized she was pregnant, and she was five months along. So she had me in a hospital in Japan, and then from there, I was given to an American that I don’t know who that person was, and that person contacted my parents. He knew that my parents were in the process of adopting a son from Korea. It was just like he called them up and said, “Hey, I got another baby here, I’m not sure if you’re interested.”
PG: “You want a twofer?”
JJ: Yeah, exactly. It was kind of like finding a home for a kitten. They were like, “Yeah, all right, why not? Yeah, okay.”
PG: So they took both of you?
JJ: They took both of us. So my mom went from having no children to having two young children within the span of two weeks. My brother’s a year older than me, and he was about a year and a half when he was adopted. I’m not sure I was, I don’t know, five or six months when I was adopted. I never could relate to, “I came out of my mommy’s tummy.” I always felt like I came from the sphincter of an extra terrestrial [laughs]. You just feel like, “Man, am I an alien or something?”
PG: Wow.
JJ: This was the early 70s. There were no classes or screenings for potential parents. It was just like, “You want a kid? All righty, here you go.”
PG: “There’s the smoking lounge.”
JJ: [laughs] Yeah, exactly.
PG: Actually, it wasn’t even a smoking lounge, it was everything was mixed in-- I remember the smoking and the no-smoking section. That was my favorite. Where if you were on the edge of the no-smoking section, it was like, “This is really great.”
JJ: You were like, “Fabulous. This is fabulous.”
PG: The first thought that occurred to me, because I’m always filtering everything through my experience, is my mom had a similar situation where she didn’t think she could get pregnant, they adopted my brother who’s seven months older than me, found out that she was pregnant with me as soon as the papers came through. So in seven months, they had the both of us and then a 13-year-old cousin came to live with us, because his family was having issues. So she went from having no kids to having three kids in a year.
JJ: Oh my goodness. That’s hardcore.
PG: Yeah, that’s hardcore. As if she needed more stuff on her plate with all the issues that she had and the--
JJ: She’s like, “I can handle it. Bring it on!”
PG: --and an alcoholic husband. But back to your situation. So was it just your brother and you?
JJ: It was just my brother and me, yep.
PG: What were your parents like? What were your first impressions?
JJ: My mom-- my dad--
PG: You first impression as an infant.
JJ: [laughs] My first impressions, I know.
PG: What was your gut feeling when you pooped your pants?
JJ: [laughs] My dad was in the military, so he was gone a good portion of the time. I really look back and feel like my mom essentially was the one that raised us sort of as a single parent in many ways.
PG: Was your dad a combat vet?
JJ: He was a combat vet, yeah, from Vietnam. Yeah, he’s very military. I remember going to go see the movie Avatar, and that military general in Avatar is sort of like a caricature of my dad. My dad doesn’t really understand depression or nervousness or anxiety. He’s like, “Snap out of it! Just snap yourself out of it!”
PG: “Do pushups.” Wouldn’t it be nice if that worked for you?
JJ: Totally.
PG: Do you think that works for him? Or do you think he tells himself that works for him?
JJ: I don’t know. I’m so envious of his genetic makeup that whatever he thinks works for him seems to be working for him [laughs]. Sometimes you can kind of convince yourself, you can think, “Yeah, maybe I can just snap out of it.”
PG: That’s the worst thing to tell somebody with depression. “Just be grateful. Just be grateful!”
JJ: Yeah, exactly, exactly. It’s interesting, my dad actually has an identical twin brother, and his twin brother had his biological children. My dad, his family is from Denmark originally. He was raised here in the United States. But he was always so-- there was such a different relationship between my dad’s twin brother and his children and my dad and myself, in terms of-- my dad kind of romanticized the blonde-hair blue-eyed kids of his identical twin’s family. Like, “Oh look at them. The quintessential Scandinavians.” I have brown hair and brown eyes, by the way. I just was like, “Can I just dye my hair blonde and get some contacts?”
PG: Strike three. Was your uncle more emotionally open than your father?
JJ: I think that my uncle was more-- it seemed like there was more of an attachment with his children. I’m not saying that my dad didn’t love me, I think he did, I think he does. But there’s like a limited capacity, I don’t know how to quite explain it. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not his biological kid, and maybe he feels kind of the same way I do, like I was dropped off my aliens, and he’s like, “I have no idea what’s going on with this kid.”
PG: Is it fair to say that you get the feeling that your dad is committed to trying his best to guide you, but there’s a lack of empathy for what you might be feeling in your skin?
JJ: Right, right. Definitely, that’s really good. That’s excellent.
PG: That’s kind of the feeling I get with those parents that are very, if not controlling, type A, fixed in their way of how they see the world, and they expect everybody to go through the world the way they go through it because it worked for them. But they either lack the ability to empathize with others or don’t want to take the time to do it. I don’t think they understand how much their children want to be felt. Guidance is obviously super super important, but there’s got to be that feeling that you’re being mirrored and that you know that your feelings are valid. What do you remember about your feelings and how your dad perceived your feelings?
JJ: I think I was always really struggling to make a connection with my father, always trying to find common ground. I remember as a teenager, suggesting starting running together. We used to run the city races like the 5ks and the 10ks, and thinking, “Oh this is what’s going to do it. This is going to seal the deal for us. This will be our father daughter experience.”
PG: How would he let you down during those? [laughs]
JJ: Yeah, how sad. I don’t know, I think maybe I just was hypersensitive, and he was just like, “Right on, right on, man. That was cool, Okay, let’s go home.” So it was not like, “This means so much to me.” I’d be like, “This means so much to me, dad.” He’s like, “I’m going to need a beer after the race,” or something [laughs].
PG: It sounds like he just doesn’t know how to speak the language of emotion.
JJ: Right right, totally.
PG: I’m always amazed by the parents you hear where they’re like how you describe your dad. After they pass away, they’ll find a letter that they wrote to somebody gushing about their child, but they never were able to say that to the child. That just amazes me. What is the most poignant moment that you remember having with your dad? The one that touched you the most deeply?
JJ: Wow, that’s a tough one. That is a tough one. I think one of the moments that touched me the most deeply was I went to his retirement gathering several years ago. At that time I was an elementary school teacher in Watts. My dad got up to give a speech, and he said, “And if any of you think what you’re doing is important, it’s not as important as what my daughter is doing.” I’m like, “What? Wow, okay.” Not that I-- I mean, I did my best as a school teacher. As a school teacher, you always feel like a failure, by the way. One of your listeners in the survey was saying how he didn’t want get behind on the grading, and it’s like, three weeks into the school year, you’re behind. You’re just behind on everything, and I always felt like a failure as a school teacher even though my heart was really dedicated to that. But I didn’t even know that my dad knew really knew even what I did for a living, much less that he was proud of it.
PG: What did it feel like when he said that?
JJ: It was shocking. I was pretty shocked. I felt happy that I had at least made him proud in some way. Which I think we’re all like, “I could never please you.”
PG: I had this moment driving with my dad. I was doing a radio show - this is in like 2000 - and had taught myself how to use sound recording equipment and editing, and I had bought a sound effects library, and I was doing this radio show where I would create sketches. Every week had a theme, and I would create sketches for it, and I would do voices. It was just super involved, and it was a labor of love, and I was really proud of it. So I put the very best ones that I had, the very best sketches, onto a CD when I went home, and I thought, “I’m going to play this for my dad on the way home from the airport when he picks me up.” I played it for him, and there was complete silence. I said, “So what did you think?” He just kind of looked out the window, and he said, “I didn’t think it was your best stuff.”
JJ: Oh gosh, that’s brutal.
PG: I just remember feeling like I got punched in the stomach.
JJ: That’s brutal.
PG: Then I remember laughing, like two seconds later, and going, “Why do you keep going to the well?”
JJ: Right, that’s exactly it.
PG: That was the moment when I went, “Okay, this guy clearly doesn’t know how to relate to a child.”
JJ: That’s just brutal, I’m so sorry you went through that [laughs].
PG: Well I wasn’t saying it for you to feel sorry for me, but I’m saying it to let you and the other people know that it’s so common to have that feeling of going to the well that’s dry.
JJ: Gosh, and we always go back.
PG: We always go back.
JJ: I always go back.
PG: It’s crazy making.
JJ: It is crazy making. In fact, last Thanksgiving I went to my folks’ house and made the entire Thanksgiving meal for them. I like to cook, but I had bought a pumpkin cheesecake from Trader Joe’s as the dessert, and at the end, my dad was like, “Where’s the pumpkin pie? Where’s the homemade pumpkin pie?” I remember thinking it was funny in a way, it was kind of hurtful, but at the same time, you’re like, “All righty. Thank you very much, a mental note to self.”
PG: Are both your parents still alive?
JJ: They are. My mom unfortunately has severe dementia now, so she’s a different person now than she used to be.
PG: How old are your folks?
JJ: My dad is 76, and my mom is 77.
PG: How old are you?
JJ: I am 43 years old.
PG: So what was your mom like?
JJ: My mom, she was a fundamentalist Christian. My dad actually hopped onboard that train a little later on down the line. I think her religion gave her a lot of comfort. There were some interesting things that happened, that’s for sure. She had a very terrible childhood. She was sexually abused by her biological father over an extended period of time, from the time she was a small child until the time she left home.
PG: Oh my god.
JJ: I think she turned to religion. It was a comfort for her. On a side note, she had my grandfather babysit us as children, and I remember asking her about that later, “You think that was a good idea?” She was like, “The lord tells us we need to forgive. I love my father, and I forgive him. You need to learn to forgive him to.” Interestingly I don’t remember any incidents with my grandfather at all, but my mom came home once to find him with no pants on in my room. I don’t have any recollection of that, so it’s like, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears, does it count?” [laughs] Oddly enough, she continued to have him babysit us--
PG: After she found him with no pants in your room?
JJ: Exactly.
PG: Oh my god.
JJ: I think it’s this level of denial that just-- I think the general theme of my childhood when I look back is just unprotected, just completely not protected at all. I think in a way I just felt like I wasn’t worth protecting.
PG: The other thing that strikes me is that your parents both sound like-- slaves is too strong of a word, but slaves to tradition, where the thought of questioning what happened before them and questioning the authority was just too terrifying for either of your parents. Because I mean, to survive in the military, you can’t question authority. For your mom to have survived that and then to become a fundamentalist Christian, you can’t be asking yourself. You can’t be questioning. It just sounds like it was a safe way for them to turn their minds off and to say, “I’m going to accept everything as it is,” and while I think there’s a certain kind of beautiful surrender in that, there’s a lot of shit getting swept under the carpet.
JJ: Right, that’s a really really good observation. Yes, totally, totally. My mom, it’s interesting, because she invented these refrains for each my brother and I, and she would just interject them at regular intervals. I think that she thought that they were something positive. Mine was, “You were headed for a Japanese orphanage, and if we hadn’t adopted you, you would’ve landed in that orphanage and no Japanese would’ve ever adopted you, because you’re not Japanese.”
PG: She would say this to you for what purpose?
JJ: Over and over. I think it was to--
PG: Make you grateful?
JJ: Make me feel grateful, or make me feel relief that I had been saved from certain doom. My brother’s - I feel bad - my brother’s was worse than mine. My brother’s was-- just as an aside, there was no basis in reality for either of these. I think these were things that she just made up. His was, “You were the son of a Korean prostitute, and if we hadn’t adopted you, you would’ve been a steely boy on the streets of Seoul, Korea.”
PG: Oh my god.
JJ: Her words, yeah. I remember my brother and I, just made us feel like shit. Yeah [laughs].
PG: Wow. Wow, and I suppose in your mom’s mind, she thought she was imbuing you with gratitude, and she didn’t know that she was making you feel like trash.
JJ: Right, totally, totally. In her defense-- I feel bad, because I feel like I don’t want to paint these people out to seem like these one-dimensional characters. I remember listening to your show with Christian Finnegan, and he was like, “Now I’m rounding up to just rip them to shreds.” [laughs] There definitely were sweet moments and things like that. Unfortunately the overarching theme of things was not that, which is--
PG: Well let’s hear some of the sweet ones, because I think a lot of times, that gets lost, and I’m as much to blame as anybody else. I think that that’s what makes confronting the abusive times so difficult, because you can’t hold those two ideas at the same time, or it’s very difficult to.
JJ: Right, you feel like you’re betraying one version or another.
PG: Yeah, but people are complicated.
JJ: Very, very complicated. My mom used to sew, and she sewed matching outfits for us, and she entered us in a mother-daughter lookalike contest [laughs].
PG: Did you look alike?
JJ: We did not look alike, and we did not place in that contest, unfortunately [laughs]. But I felt so bad. It’s something that’s so poignant, because from the perspective of a woman who wasn’t able to have her biological children, to enter us in this contest to create this bond, or I don’t know.
PG: Do you think she was doing it for her or for you?
JJ: I don’t know. I’m not sure. I’m sure it was partially for her in a few ways.
PG: What are some other sweet moments that you can think of?
JJ: Let’s see…
PG: “That’s it.”
JJ: Yeah, “That’s all.”
PG: The failed contest.
JJ: The end. [laughs]
JJ: [laughs] Yeah, that’s funny. I may have to get back to you on those. There’s some funny-- well they’re not very sweet. But it’s interesting, because I read this author whose name is Elizabeth Kim, and she wrote this beautiful memoir about-- she was from Korea, and she was adopted by a fundamentalist couple. I guess adoption’s real big in the fundamentalist [laughs] circles. There were so many things that I read that rang true. Her situation was a million times worse than mine, but there are things in there that just seem so implausible that a person that isn’t a fundamentalist just could not have any point of reference for. So I can give you a couple of those nuggets.
PG: Sure, sure. My thought about the fundamentalist adopting is, thank god. Thank god the people that are vehemently anti-abortion, when they step up and they do adopt kids, I think to myself, “Hey, at least they’re being consistent in their view.” It’s the ones that are anti-abortion and they’re taking a thousand fertility drugs and adoption is completely out of the question. It’s like they want people to birth these children, but they don’t really care what happens to them once they’re birthed. I want to say the word “birthed” one more time.
JJ: Birthed, yeah I like it.
PG: So go ahead, you were starting to say--
JJ: Also interestingly, I had also discovered that there are counselors that are specially trained to work with people who were traumatized by fundamentalist upbringings, which I don’t know where these counselors are, but I probably need to find one.
PG: Mostly bars.
JJ: Yeah, exactly.
PG: And Baptist towns.
JJ: [laughs] So yeah, my mom had a violent temper. She was very volatile and violet. I was a clumsy kid. I was uncoordinated and had motor skill problems, which I later discovered is common among kids that are born to very young mothers. She thought that--
PG: I would imagine also if they were drug addicts and alcoholics, that that can also affect--
JJ: Yeah exactly, the coordination issues.
PG: And impulse control is the other thing I’ve heard with fetal al-- I’m not saying your situation, but fetal alcohol syndrome, somebody told me that one of the symptoms of it is that that person grows up having difficulty with impulse control.
JJ: Yeah, I’m not so sure I struggle too much-- I think I mentioned in one of my emails to you that sometimes I say something really inappropriate, but that happens not too frequently.
PG: [laughs] What was the example that you gave me?
JJ: “I hope you and your family get ass-fucked by a clan of macaques.” [laughs] I’ve said stuff like that before, which is horrific.
PG: What are macaques?
JJ: [laughs] They are a species of, I don’t know, monkey or baboon or something.
PG: That is fantastic. I always think of that moment from - what is that Martin Scorsese movie - The King of Comedy, where Jerry Louis is on the payphone, and the woman fan is saying, “I love your stuff, I love it!” “Thank you very much.” “You’re my favorite comedian ever!” “Thank you, thank you very much.” “Can I get an autograph?” “Ma’am, I’m busy right now.” “You should die of cancer!” [laughs]
JJ: [laughs] That’s too funny.
PG: But yeah, I do love that when it’s just all of a sudden. Out of nowhere that rage just pops up. How could your mom not have all of that negative energy that she took from your grandfather over those years? How could that not come out in some sick sick way?
JJ: Exactly. I think that she had rage-blackouts, which makes total sense. I think she wasn’t really aware of what she was saying or doing when she would go into these rage-blackouts. She was very controlling, fastidiously clean, and I think just anything that threatened the order of things was extremely upsetting to her. So klutzy me, spilling milk or dropping something and breaking it. She freaked out about that kind of thing. It was a vicious cycle, because it caused anxiety for me. I would be like, “Please dear god, don’t let me spill the milk.”
PG: [laughs] Aww.
JJ: Because I’m drinking milk out of a glass or something, and then I’d spill it and get punished for it.
PG: Were you hit?
JJ: Yes, I was hit. Yes. She had a few signature moves.
PG: What were they?
JJ: Her signature moves. She used to grab me by my ears and smash my head against the wall. That was a signature move.
PG: Oh my god, I’m so sorry. What did that feel like?
JJ: Yeah, it wasn’t-- I don’t know anymore. I can’t really remember, if that makes any sense. I remember the motion of it, but I don’t remember the pain, the physical pain of it. I remember going into my room afterward, and I had a couple stuffed animals on my bed. I would sit and talk to them, and my stuffed animals would say, “You are a very bad little girl. You need to shape up.” Now I look back and I think, “I didn’t even have my stuffed animals on my team. Couldn’t they have said, ‘Hey, we’re with ya’?” I remember unfortunately, I think this happens with a lot of kids that are in this type of situation. It’s like I was so convinced that I was bad and horrible that I became dependent on these beatings to atone for my “badness”. If that makes any sense.
PG: It does make sense. It does make sense. I think when we’re little and we’re struggling and our lives are overwhelming, we need to create some type of system in our brain of how things work. We need to create some type of logic, and oftentimes it has to fit with what’s happening in a way that doesn’t betray the people in charge of us. Because then we have to think the terrifying thought that, “This person is in charge of me for the next however many years. So I need to create some way to picture the logic of all of this in a way that lets my parents off the hook so I can survive.” So often then it’s, “I’m a bad person.” That’s the easiest route to go, is to blame yourself.
JJ: I remember I loved my parents so much. I loved them, and I wanted them to be proud of me, and I wanted to be like their biological child and work for that. Somehow I thought that if I could fulfill whatever it was they wanted me to fulfill, that I would achieve that somehow.
PG: In your mind, what did you think that was? Or were you searching to find what that was?
JJ: I think I was searching to find what that was. I was a very sensitive kid. I always was kind of trying to gauge where they were at emotionally and trying to placate them in that fashion. Unfortunately with my mom, there really just wasn’t a formula to follow to achieve that. She unfortunately had her own demons that she was battling, and there just was not anything that you could do to avoid-- it’s funny, your guest, Mark Roberts, I think mentioned that as well, in terms of his upbringing, that there just wasn’t a formula in terms of not having them be mad at you or upset with you or disappointed in you.
PG: It had to have been really scary and frustrating.
JJ: Yeah, it was frustrating.
PG: What do you remember thinking about yourself, your image of yourself?
JJ: I just thought that I was the spawn of Satan, that I had just come from hell, literally. The crazy thing is is I still struggle with that, and I feel I do all of these outward things to be like , “I’m not from hell. I’m donating to charity. I’m helping this person with their groceries to the car.” I try to do all these things, but deep down I’m still like, “You’re from Satan.” Just so you have a point of reference, when I was about four years old, my mom was really really big into about talking about demons and demon possession. That was a huge topic of conversation for her. She came into my room when I was about four years old and said, “Your room is filled with demons.” She said, “But don’t worry, all you need to do is invoke the name of Jesus Christ, and these demons can’t harm you. But you have to believe 100% with your whole heart, because if you have any doubt, these demons will know. Then they will be able to bring you harm.” And I remember thinking--
PG: Oh my god!
JJ: I remember saying in my head as a kid, “I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe.” Then in the back of my head I’m like, “I don’t really know if I believe.”
PG: That is the biggest-- I can’t think of a more torturous sentence to say to a child than that.
JJ: It caused severe insomnia for my entire childhood. I was terrified, and I would soak my sheets with sweat just out of pure fear. I couldn’t sleep, because I just was certain that that’s where I came from and they were coming back to get me. My mom, as a response to my insomnia, she would say, “Your biological parents must have been mentally ill for you to have these problems.”
PG: I’m so sorry, Julie.
JJ: [laughs] I mean, it’s kind of, there’s a funny element to it now.
PG: I’m sorry, but I can’t even laugh at that, and I’ve heard a lot of stuff on this show. But that has to be some of the worst psychological torture that I’ve heard in the 120-odd episodes that we’ve done of this show.
JJ: Wow. Wow. Yeah, I think that she was trying to protect me, and that that was something that she really believed in. Another story, this will be-- I won’t belabor these stories, but-- and it’s so absurd now. Now when I look back on it, I’m like, “It’s just so absurd.” But as a kid, your parent could just tell you anything, and of course you’re going to be like, “Okay, I’m on board. I believe it.” I was about eight years old, and I was playing with my dolls. She came into my room and she picked up one of my dolls and said, “This doll is possessed by a demon.” And she said, “The only way to get rid of a demon is to set this doll on fire and burn it.” Within a flash, my brother’s in the background looking really eager, and he has the garbage can lit and a pack of matches, and he’s like, “Right on, that’s what we have to do.”
PG: [laughs]
JJ: Of course I’m like, “By all means. By all means, let’s get rid of it.” Now when you look back on that and you recount that to someone, people are like, “Are you kidding? You’ve got to be kidding.”
PG: It sounds like your mom got high from imbuing herself with this power to--
JJ: Maybe, I don’t--
PG: --sort out the supernatural. It’s like, in a way, she was making herself like your god. Like, “I know these things that you can’t see.” What an ego trip.
JJ: Maybe. In a way, I feel like-- she’s always been the type where she’s like, “I know where I’m going when I die. I’m going to see my savior.” Anybody that is so convinced of something like that, in a way, I feel some envy. “Wow, that’s great, I don’t have that kind of assurance about--“
PG: I don’t even know where I’m going for dinner.
JJ: Yeah, exactly. I think it’s that way in all-- there’s many sort of sectors you can go to like Sukha Gukkha Buddhism, and these people are chanting and they believe this chant will bring them these great-- and maybe it does, maybe just by the fact that they do it, it does. I think I just don’t have that gene, where I’m just a skeptic. Or I think there’s so many possibilities.
PG: I kind of shudder to think what you would’ve been like if you had drank the Kool-Aid. With all this stuff that had happened to you, if you hadn’t become a seeker and a questioner. I’d picture you in an unhappy marriage, abusing your kids verbally, and believing in some traditional orthodoxy to explain away your rage, but then unleashing your rage on people less powerful than you. That’s the image that I have in my mind, of somebody--
JJ: That seems to be the--
PG: --somebody that doesn’t do the soul-searching. Because it sounds like to me, how could your mom do soul-searching when that would involve going, “I was molested from two to eighteen by the man who was supposed to protect me.” I understand people not wanting to go into that dark dungeon of rage and fear and sadness and abandonment and all of that stuff, but man, it’s such a price to pay to not go in there and poke around and say, “Hey, how did that stuff really make me feel?”
JJ: Right, and in a lot of ways, I think that she survived in the way that she was able to. There is something to be said for that. There were casualties, but--
PG: What do you mean when you say “causalities”?
JJ: In terms of victims of her rage or her abuse.
PG: Meaning you and her brother.
JJ: Exactly, yeah.
PG: Or you and your brother.
JJ: Exactly. But at the same time, I think well, it does exhibit some strength that she went on and she made it in some way.
PG: I can cut this out, if you’d like. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?
JJ: The worst thing I’ve ever done, oh gosh. I think-- I know this is going to sound really pathetic. There’s, I don’t know. The thing that I regret the most. I sat behind this kid in the sixth grade, and his name was Joey. He had a deformed arm, because he had been burned in a severe fire or something. I was just such good friends with Joey. The kids started making fun of us and calling us boyfriend and girlfriend. I was mortified, obviously. Then when Valentine’s Day came around, I gave everybody a Valentine except for Joey.
PG: Why?
JJ: Because I just was like, “I don’t want them to think that there’s something happening between us.”
PG: Oh, okay.
JJ: I know that’s not that bad, but still, it’s horrible. I wish I could go back and be like-- I mean, he was so hurt by that, and I just wish that I had not been so concerned with what other people thought. I wish I could just be like, “Yeah, fuck you.”
PG: But you were a kid.
JJ: I know, but still.
PG: So what’s the worst thing that you’ve done as an adult that you can think of? Telling people they should be fucked in the ass by a macaque?
JJ: Yeah [laughs] yeah probably that. Or just saying really horrific things like that. Like I said, it happens maybe once every two to three years, but it’s almost like something that I can’t control, like something takes over and I just say something. Like there’s all these filters going, “Don’t do it! No! Oh it’s-- oh, there it is. It’s gone. That’s it. That’s the end. It’s over.” Back to applying ChapStick. Yeah, I compulsively put ChapStick on.
PG: What is the theory or feeling behind putting the ChapStick on? It just feels good to do it, or your lips actually do get dry?
JJ: I think when I’m nervous, yeah, they totally get dry. My mouth just dries out.
PG: Are you nervous?
JJ: Oh yeah.
PG: Why?
JJ: Splaying my--
PG: I suppose because--
JJ: --splaying my everything on a buffet to the general population.
PG: Well you know, almost all the guests except for friends of mine that are comedians, most of the guests that I have always tell me that they’re nervous before we start. I understand. Some of this stuff is hard to even think about, let alone voice to another human being. Let alone say into a microphone that’s going to be aired. But I hope you know that I’m on your side, and I’m not looking to make you look bad or do a “gotcha” or tell you you’re possessed by the devil.
JJ: [laughs] Yeah, that’s funny.
PG: But I would like to remind you that if it weren’t for me, you’d be in a Japanese orphanage and nobody would adopt you.
JJ: [laughs] I totally appreciate that about you. I’ve listened to so many of your podcasts, and they’re all just amazing and so helpful to so many people I know.
PG: Well I appreciate that. For so much of my life, I thought the answer was to try to control other people instead of to just listen and not judge them. When I got sober and I experienced people just listening to me and not judging me, I realized that’s what I’ve wanted my whole life. I always thought it was about impressing people or controlling people, that that was the solution. Then I realized that those are drugs. Really dangerous drugs to me. It’s so hard to look at the things about yourself that need work in a way that doesn’t demonize you. In a way that says, “Oh okay, I’m not perfect. That’s okay, that’s just my particular wart.” Or whatever you want to call it. In a way that doesn’t make you less than anybody else, but just kind of lets you know, “Hey, this is a little issue I got. I’m just going to kind of keep an eye on that and hopefully give other people the leeway that they’ve given me in so many circumstances, because I couldn’t see that that’s I was doing.” Does that make sense? Do you feel like you are able to look at parts of yourself that are flawed in a way that isn’t self-hating, but is accepting and, “Hey, let’s move forward and just be aware of this”?
JJ: Wow, it’s tough. I think it’s so much easier for me to forgive other people and not forgive myself. Forgiving yourself is just such a huge, huge-- I mean, cognitively I can see how it’s done, but in terms of being able to emotionally synthesize that, it’s just such a challenge. It seems sometimes so difficult. So I don’t think I have gotten-- I think I deal with severe issues of self-hatred.
PG: What are some of the greatest hits in your mind of why Julie’s a piece of shit?
JJ: I feel like I just made all the wrong decisions. Unfortunately, shitting situations beget shitty situations. As you might imagine, I chose terrible people for love partners. People that mimicked my home life situation. As a result, now I’m 43, I’m single, I’m not married, I don’t have children, I’m not in a stable family situation. It was tough because I feel like my friends and classmates went on to establish these stable situations, and my personal life played out like a low-rent episode of Cops. It’s embarrassing, I carry so much shame about that. I’ve had friends say, “You need to go get yourself some self-esteem,” and I’m like, “All righty, I’ll head to my woodshed and cobble a little hat together.” You think, where do you get that from?
PG: It’s so funny, Julie, the first five minutes of meeting you, my first thought was, “She looks so put-together. She’s got a good sense of humor. She’s personable.” Yet you have this incredibly low self-esteem. You have the thing that so many of us suffer from. I’ve had people tell me this before, “I wish you could see yourself through my eyes.” I wish you could see yourself through the eyes of the universe that created you and see those good parts of yourself.
JJ: That’s mighty kind, that you so much. I’ll be writing a check to you momentarily [laughs].
PG: What do you like about yourself?
JJ: That I haven’t given up. That I have not given up yet. I think I’m a kind-hearted person, and I try to give as much as I can. I think that’s a good coping mechanism for anyone who struggles with the kinds of issues that we do, in terms of getting ourselves out of our space and serving other people. But outside of that-- no, I’m kidding [laughs].
PG: You got a good sense of humor. Can you see that?
JJ: Yeah, sometimes. Yeah sometimes, it depends on the day. It definitely depends on the day. I do think that there are-- sometimes you look back at your life, and you’re like, “That’s absurd. I can’t--“ and there is humor in those things, which ultimately you have to laugh at those things and not just steep in the brine of agony, which is so easy. It’s so easy just to settle into that liquid [laughs]. But it’s hard. I think that there is so much loss in life, and there’s so much, like you were saying, like you’re going to that well, you’re going to your dad and you put this thing out that you created and that you put your heart and your soul into, which was the voiceover tape that you made. And to have your dad--
PG: It was a CD, it wasn’t a cassette. God dammit this--
JJ: I’m sorry [laughs].
PG: --fucking interview is over.
JJ: You can tell how old I am, right? Yeah, in my 40s.
PG: [laughs] I’m 50.
JJ: It was all about the tapes. You look very young, by the way.
PG: Yeah, thank you.
JJ: But it’s the loss of coming to the realization that you’re never going to get anything out of that. It’s almost like a death to grieve when you finally come to that point where you say, “This man is not going to wrap his arms around me and say, ‘Good job, son. I’m so proud of you.’” Letting those people go in our lives. I still yearn for them. I have a very superficial relationship with my parents, and I’ve had that relationship for years, just because that’s the way it panned out. It’s not that I wanted it to be that way. I wanted it to be so much more, but they didn’t want that. I have to respect their wishes and go to people that do want that.
PG: So who do you go to?
JJ: I’ve got great friends. I have a biological sister who’s just an amazing person.
PG: How did you find her?
JJ: That’s a convoluted story which might be boring. Just to clear any kind of confusion up, she and I share the same biological father, and our biological mothers are sisters. It sounds very Mormon, but drugs were the mitigating factor in that equation.
PG: How old is she?
JJ: She’s three years older than I am. I remember as a child, laying in bed and just praying for a sister and wanting to have a sister that loved me, and I got that. I got it.
PG: What did that feel like?
JJ: Huge. I met her later in life, I was about 29 years old, and she is so loving. Her life was horrific in a whole different way. She was raised by my paternal grandmother, and we just cling to each other now.
PG: She live near you?
JJ: She doesn’t. She lives on the other side of the country. But we see each other and we spent our first Christmas together last year, which was super emotional.
PG: Does she have a family?
JJ: She is, she’s married, she has a daughter and a grandson.
PG: But obviously there’s something, a bond with you that’s very kind of primal and--
JJ: It is.
PG: --sounds almost unshakable.
JJ: It’s interesting, when we met each other, we touched each other’s faces and looked at each other, our bodies and our similarities, and we were like, “Oh my gosh, somebody that looks like me.”
PG: That must’ve been amazing.
JJ: It really was. It was amazing that she was so open to it like I was. Because you hear these other people that are like, “Okay, whatever. Nice to meet ya. Take it easy.” It’s a huge huge blessing, and I’m really grateful for that.
PG: What do you remember thinking or feeling in that moment when you were touching each other’s faces and going, “You look like me,” and seeing that her energy and her curiosity matched yours? That the well wasn’t dry?
JJ: It was just so surreal. It was like the twilight zone. It was beautiful, it was super fulfilling. Very very fulfilling.
PG: Do you get that feeling when you connect to her now, when you talk to her on the phone?
JJ: Yes, and we laugh about-- she has the same issues I do with depression, and she’ll call and we’ll laugh about our issues together. She’ll say, “Oh, do you feel like this?” I’m like, “I totally feel like that!” She thinks, “Damn our biological father. We got these genes from him!”
PG: [laughs]
JJ: I have a relationship with him as well.
PG: Is he still an addict?
JJ: He is an addict still. I cannot believe he’s alive. I just can’t believe that man is still alive.
PG: I guess what I meant was, is he still a practicing addict?
JJ: He’s a practicing addict. He does not use the hard drugs anymore. He’s an alcoholic and he smokes marijuana pretty much all the time. Which I guess that’s fine for some people. But he’s a really interesting character. He’s got these kind of philosophical things to say sometimes. He’s like, “Well you know, I’m a back street Buddha.”
PG: [laughs]
JJ: He’ll come up with these really odd sayings. Sometimes he gets inappropriate. I remember he said, “If you weren’t my biological daughter, we could be boyfriend and girlfriend,” and I was like, “That’s inappropriate.”
PG: What did that feel like?
JJ: Really depressing. Very depressing. I think as any female feels, we feel objectified, and I definitely feel disposable as a female. I remember when I was 26 feeling old, like, “I’m over the hill. I’m 26,” and now I’m like, “Geez.” It’s hard though.
[music]
You know what that sound means. It’s time to give our sponsor a little bit of love. Actually our sponsor this week is not actually a sponsor, it’s a charity that I want to plug. It’s called Comedy Gives Back. It’s on November 6th, and it’s a 24-hour live-streamed benefit for Malaria No More. Those of you that are for more malaria, you can still tune in and enjoy the comedy, but I have a feeling that you’re probably a pretty tough comedy fan. The website that this benefit, Comedy Gives Back, is on is dailymotion.com. Did you know that you can donate as little as a dollar to Malaria No More, and that saves a life. You don’t get to pick which life, though. So you do take the gamble that you’re going to be keeping some potential asshole alive. But I still think it’s worth rolling the dice. So if you want to know more, you can go to comedygivesback.com, and you can also just go there and donate. Don’t forget to check it out, it’s November 6th on dailymotion.com. Thank you in advance for supporting this great event, and again, donate and learn more at comedygivesback.com.
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JJ: I had mentioned to you, I think in my email, that I was involved in the youth group, and the youth pastor, he did unsavory things [laughs].
PG: [laughs] That is the first time that word has been used to describe molestation. Unsavory. He didn’t use the right spices.
JJ: Yeah, exactly.
PG: How old was he and how old were you?
JJ: I was 14, and I think - I don’t know his exact age - I think he was in his late 30s, and of course--
PG: Did he groom you?
JJ: He [laughs]--
PG: No, I don’t mean physically groom you. Did he groom you as in winning your trust, “You’re my buddy--”
JJ: Oh absolutely, and it was just like--
PG: --get you away from the pack.
JJ: Yeah, and the crazy thing-- I mean, made me feel special. I ate it all up, I wanted to please him and wanted to make him happy and wanted to continue to get what he was giving. The interesting thing is is, during that same time, he went on that game show or that dating show, The Love Connection, and his date said, “This man is not interested in grown women. He spent our entire date ogling young teenage girls.”
PG: Really?
JJ: Sometimes I feel like I have such mixed feelings about that whole episode, because in a way, I feel like there’s part of me that’s like, “Who can blame the guy? We were hot pieces of ass.” Philosophically, you think there’s this biological element to it, where-- and again, yeah, biological element, you’ve got to employ cognitive override. But I feel bitter toward the biological realities, which are young teenage girl symbolizes the incarnation of fecundity. Which means he’s thinking, “Bend over and let me fertilize you.” It definitely is like there’s self-control issues obviously, and obviously it’s-- the other thing is is I--
PG: So you understand his impulse. You don’t understand his not-stifling his impulse?
JJ: Right. I think I understand the not-stifling, too. I think I feel like, “Yeah, it must be hard for people to-- you see these teenage girls who are perfect.” I didn’t think I was perfect then, but now of course I look at pictures with me and my girlfriends at church camp in our bathing suits, and I’m like, “Holy shit. Geez.”
PG: The irony is that those girls look at themselves in the mirror and fucking hate themselves.
JJ: Right, exactly right. You just spend your entire life hating yourself, and that’s-- reading the surveys of people that listen to this podcast, it’s like, “Man, we just hate ourselves. We all just hate ourselves.”
PG: “Why couldn’t I have appreciated myself as totally molestable?”
JJ: Exactly right [laughs]. Too funny. I think I felt like such a chump. I just felt like after I realized that, “Hey wait a minute, this is not cool--”
PG: Did it happen one time or multiple times?
JJ: It happened over a period of about two to three years.
PG: How did he ease his way into it? I’m fascinated by the gamesmanship of the predator and how it-- it’s almost like fishing, where they throw it out there, and there’s a reeling in. There’s an increasing where they just step things up bit by bit by bit. There’s a sick genius to it.
JJ: Definitely.
PG: What was his sick genius?
JJ: That’s such a good question. I think it was so insidious at first. First it started off with a lot of compliments like, “Your eyes are beautiful.” It started off with--
PG: Which your dad never said to you, right?
JJ: Right, exactly. It was like--
PG: “You’ve got good eyes. Good run.”
JJ: [laughs]
PG: “I’m gonna go kill Charlie.”
JJ: Oh my goodness, too funny. Yeah, just these compliments. The funny thing is is when I compared notes with other victims of his, it’s like he fed us all the same bullshit. We’re like, “Wait a minute, he said that exact same thing to me. ‘You’re the only one, and this is our special relationship,’” and that type of thing.
PG: They should teach kids in first grade, if anybody ever tells you, “What we have is special,” there should be like a button that you can just push.
JJ: Right, yeah totally.
PG: Because I hear that phrase over and over and over again is, “People wouldn’t understand what we have. What we have is special. We can’t tell the others about this.” He fed you all that stuff, too?
JJ: Right, yeah.
PG: So how did it start off and how did it progress? If you’re comfortable talking about it.
JJ: Yeah, I’m trying to think. Again, it was very insidious and then--
PG: Your attraction to the situation was purely because he made you feel special with his words.
JJ: Right, and I think-- yeah exactly. I felt special, and I felt like I was getting love.
PG: The attention, the look in his eyes.
JJ: Yeah, exactly. And physical affection. I think I was brainwashed. I think I thought I would marry him or something. I think I was like, “Oh we’re totally going to get married.”
PG: You were 14 and he was 30.
JJ: I was 14 and he was in his late 30s.
PG: Wow.
JJ: I didn’t start to break out of that-- I think it was around my senior year of high school where he had come to some school event that I was in, and my teacher said, “It’s so nice that your dad could come.” [laughs] For some reason, I’m like, “My dad?”
PG: “This is my lover!”
JJ: Yeah, exactly. Then I started thinking, “Hey wait a minute.”
PG: Because you weren’t seeing him as a dad-figure--
JJ: Right, no.
PG: --you were seeing him as a boyfriend, as a--
JJ: Right, exactly. As a, right.
PG: That is amazing. It’s amazing how the human brain can see what it wants to see. Like the beautiful person looking at themselves in the mirror and seeing a gargoyle. God. What were the alarm bells that were going off in your head, and when did they start? Did they start before that person said, “Oh so glad your dad could come?”
JJ: I think that as far as I remember, that was right around the time that they started. I remember I started to kind of extricate myself from the situation. I didn’t get any opposition from him, because of course he had hedged his bets with several other situations.
PG: At 18, you were getting along in the tooth.
JJ: That’s right, exactly [laughs]. Right, and then I went off to college, and then at college was really when I was like, “Wait a minute. This whole thing was wrong.” I did go back to the church a few years after that with a couple of the other victims. We went to the church elders, which probably was not-- we probably should’ve just gone to the police. We said, “Look, this guy’s a pedophile. He’s a pervert.” They just ripped us, I mean just ripped us to shreds.
PG: How?
JJ: Just like they were like, “Do you have any evidence? Where are the semen samples?”
PG: Like you would-- why would somebody make that up? I know there are the occasional circumstance where somebody does do that, and it’s awful. But god, can’t you not be a dick for that?
JJ: Right, and why would so many-- the thing is, the numbers are staggering. He’s this, of course, revered member of the community. He’s very charismatic and has these people that just defend him tooth and nail, no matter what. I don’t know that it would’ve done any good if we had gone to the police either, because he knew everybody. It was not a super small community, but it was a pretty decent-sized community, and he just knew everybody. I think the thing now that weighs most heavy on my heart is, doing the line of work that I do, I know the recidivism for pedophiles is like 99.9%. What are the odds that he’s like, “Oh, I’m stopping that.” I think that he’s probably still victimizing people, and that’s the hard part.
PG: Is there anything that you can do to-- I mean, have you gone to the police, or is it just something you--
JJ: I think at this phase, I just wouldn’t do it. I feel like - and it sounds so selfish and I know it’s selfish - I just can’t put myself up for that type of-- I’m sure they could go back and go, “She’s got mental problems. This girl’s got mental problems.” I’d be like, “Yep, you’re right. I do. I do have mental problems.”
PG: But I wonder, can police be-- and I don’t meant to make you feel guilty or pressured about this, but my thought is, of those girls, that are going on the church trips with this guy right now that have no idea what they’re getting into, I wonder, and I’m just throwing this question out there, is this something you can call the FBI and say, “Hey, surveil this guy.” I suppose it’s not a federal thing. But I wonder, is there a way that somebody could watch this guy? Because it seems like within the span of two weeks, you would have evidence on this guy that you could go-- like anonymously call. Do you know what town he lives in?
JJ: I do, yeah. Maybe. Maybe I have some homework to do.
PG: Yeah, or maybe we’ll do it for you, I don’t know, if you don’t feel like doing it. But I hate to think that there’s somebody out there actively--
JJ: Right, and who knows? Maybe he’s not, I don’t know.
PG: If he hasn’t been caught, I can’t imagine. I can’t imagine. Most people have a conscience, and the compulsion to do something that goes against your conscience has to be so strong that I think you don’t have the power of choice. If that guy does have a conscience, his compulsion is overriding his conscience.
JJ: Right, maybe. Or maybe he feels entitled to it. Or maybe, I don’t know.
PG: Yeah, who knows. Did we dwell on it too much?
JJ: Dwell. Steeping in the--
PG: That whole dynamic, I feel like I could do a hundred episodes on it and still have questions of how’d they get away with it, how it leaves the person feeling. The most fascinating thing to me is how the child can be convinced that this person is appropriate and then feel completely differently and appropriately a short time thereafter. Do you think it’s because that person does such a good job of talking to them as if they’re their age?
JJ: Probably so.
PG: So that you don’t think of them as the 30-year-old. You think of them as, “Oh this guy, he’s cool.” Instead of somebody who was older, they’d be, “No, that’s creepy. That’s not cool.” I don’t know, what’s your--?
JJ: I’m not sure. I just don’t know.
PG: Were you physically attracted to this guy at any point, or was it just an emotional--?
JJ: It was both. It was definitely both, yeah.
PG: Did the physical attraction come in at a certain point, or was that there in the beginning?
JJ: It came in. It definitely came in. after you’re showered with attention and “love” and someone complimenting you. So yeah, it definitely came in after.
PG: Thank you for being honest about all that. I know that’s got to be hard to talk about. What are you thinking and feeling right now?
JJ: I remember listening to this episode of This American Life, and this guy, he just really wanted to kill his abuser. I never felt that way. I think I turned it all on myself, and I still do. “I’m such an idiot, why couldn’t I have been smarter? Why couldn’t I have deflected that?” I think that’s the hardest part for me, is that issue.
PG: I encourage you to go look at a picture of yourself when you’re 14 years old and look at a picture of - not necessarily him - but look at a picture of a guy in his late 30s. Then ask yourself out loud, “Why couldn’t I have been smarter than this person?” I think you’ll get your answer. Because a lot of times, I think when we look to blame ourselves, we picture ourselves as a little adult. We shrink us down like we still have the smarts of an adult, but we’re in a 14-year-old body, when the reality is no, we’re emotionally 14 or maybe even 7. Who knows how old emotionally you were with all this shit that happened to you?
JJ: Yeah, and I was, at that age - just to give you a point of reference - when I was 14, I did very well in school. I played in the church bell choir, and I crocheted sweaters for my stuffed animals. I was a young 14. I used to volunteer at a convalescent home. So yeah.
PG: He saw you coming from a mile away.
JJ: [laughs] Yeah.
PG: He did. He did. I watched this-- was I reading a book? Or I was watching a documentary or something, but somebody was talking about-- oh I know what it was. It was this book that this woman wrote. It was fiction, but it was kind of based on the Debra Lafave, do you remember her? The teacher that seduced--
JJ: Oh yeah.
PG: It was written as a satire, but one of the things that this woman would look for in a victim was whether or not they would talk. Whether or not she could control them. That made perfect sense to me, because she would be like, “Oh that 14-year-old’s really hot. I really want to fuck that guy. But he brags to his friends, and that’s going to expose me. This other guy gets good grades and he’s worried about offending other people. I can get him to stay quiet.” I would imagine that’s what he sought out. I don’t imagine any of those victims that you knew were cantankerous and kind of loud--
JJ: Right, no, all very--
PG: --boisterous.
JJ: Exactly, yeah.
PG: I hope you can see that what is beautiful about you was used against you. That that is beautiful, what he misused. That’s not-- and I hate to see that you’re blaming yourself, because you’re a personable person. I liked you the first 30 seconds I met you. You have a nice smile, you have a nice energy about you. You’re warm and you’re welcoming.
JJ: Thank you Paul, I will increase that check amount [laughs]. I do appreciate that, that’s very kind.
PG: I just hate to see people keep beating themselves up about the very thing that is special about them. That them’s my two cents.
JJ: Those are good, those are worthwhile two cents. Getting back to-- I wanted to-- I know this completely tangential now, but as an adopted kid, I think we deal with issues of identity. I don’t want to make it seem like I was this perfect kid. I wasn’t, and I was a little bit of a weirdo, because I made up people - friends and family - that I didn’t have. I remember people would ask me about my ethnicity, and I would make something different up every day, like, “My grandmother’s an Inuit from Alaska, and my grandfather canoed over from the Azores.” Every day would be something. At first people would be like, “Wow, that’s fascinating,” and then the next day like, “I think there’s something mentally wrong here.” [laughs] But in terms of searching and trying to connect with a certain identity is definitely--
PG: How could you not escape into fantasy, though, when your room is surrounded by stuffed demons? How could you stay in your body for that experience, walking on eggshells around your mom, feeling like trash? What kid wouldn’t escape into fantasy?
JJ: Yeah, I definitely had a rich fantasy life.
PG: I got to say, Julie, of all the coping mechanisms that people have from traumatic childhoods, yours are like the sweetest, the least scary. I hope you can get to a point in your life where you can see yourself through other people’s eyes.
JJ: Thank you, I appreciate that.
PG: How awkward would it be if I came on to you right now?
JJ: [laughs]
PG: [laughs]
JJ: Yeah, that’s too funny.
PG: So pretty in that top. My little baby. My little baby guest.
JJ: Too funny.
PG: Oh god.
JJ: That’s awesome. I love being able to laugh at this stuff, because that’s what it’s about.
PG: It helps. It helps so much, it really does. What’s the next thing that you-- we didn’t even talk about your brother.
JJ: Oh yeah, yeah my brother. I love my brother, I loved that guy. I still do. I just think that both of us were the quintessential products of a violent upbringing. He became very violent and got into a lot of fights at school. He was violent with me and beat me up. I was a situation that he could control. He was bigger than me and stronger than me. I remember when my mom went to hit him, he was about 16, and he caught her hand in midair and he said, “You will not be hitting me anymore. You will not be hitting me anymore.” She never hit him again after that. But I have a lot of compassion for my brother, because he went through the same sort of situation that I did. In a lot of ways, I’ve got good memories with him, and I also have some difficult ones. I loved him so much, and I just wanted to get him to like me. He just hated my guts. He just hated my guts. I remember my mom spent a lot of time locked in her room dealing with her own depression issues, and my mom rarely cooked because she didn’t want to get her kitchen dirty. We ate the most bizarre combinations of food. I remember eating frozen Brussels sprouts mixed with corn flakes, or eating Wyler’s lemonade by the spoonful out of the can, the powdered lemonade can.
PG: Eating the powder?
JJ: Just eating the powder by the spoonful [laughs]. I remember we thought it was such a boon when we could go to Long John Silver’s and pay like 19 cents for the fry dregs in the bottom of the fry basket. My brother and I would scrape together this change and be like, “Let’s go to Long John Silver’s and just get these--“ I think, “Gosh, how am I not diabetic or obese?” I remember eating biblical quantities of sugar as a kid. It was such a source of comfort I think, for both of us. My brother was always very, “No one will ever love you. You’ll never have children.” I remember him socking me in the boob when I was about 12 as hard as he could and telling me that he hoped that would give me breast cancer.
PG: Jesus.
JJ: He just did these sadistic, sadistic things. I told you he used to take my clothes off and make fun of my private parts. He never did anything molesty, but-- and I think we’re all self-conscious about our private parts. We’re all like, “How does this measure up? I don’t know.”
PG: How old were you when he did that?
JJ: I was probably about 12 years old when he did that. It’s funny, later down the line-- there’s this website. It’s kind of like a docu-- it’s not a porn website, but it’s called like “1,001 vaginas”. I’m like, “I wonder what other people’s vaginas look like.”
PG: Are you thinking of the website, Vaginas of the World on Tumblr?
JJ: It may be that one, yeah. And then you’re like, “Okay, there are some idiosyncrasies in that department.”
PG: I encourage anybody, especially young guys who have looked at nothing but porn pussies, to go to that website. And women who hate their vaginas to go to that website and see what a variety there are, because porn is having such terrible effects on women’s and men’s views of their junk. But go ahead, so he would make fun of your body.
JJ: Right, yeah.
PG: Did you believe him?
JJ: I totally, totally believed him.
PG: You probably had body shame before that, too. If you were a conscientious 12-year-old.
JJ: Yeah, exactly. I no longer am in contact with my brother, and that was a huge loss for me to mourn. In contrast with my parents, I feel like my parents - even though they did some things that were not good - I don’t think that they did anything about of sadistic malevolence. I think my brother unfortunately did things that came from that place. So it just ultimately was not safe for me to have a relationship with him as an adult. Which is sad, it’s so sad, because I just loved him so much and he was my only companion for-- we moved around all the time, and he was my only playmate.
PG: Did you have nice moments with him?
JJ: Yeah, definitely.
PG: What were some nice moments?
JJ: In fact, I recently-- because I don’t harbor resentment toward my brother. I just feel like it’s just better for both of us to--
PG: I think that’s a really important distinction, that it’s about you protecting yourself. That it’s not about punishing that other person. You don’t even have to hate that other person to cut contact with them. It’s just that you love yourself. You’re trying to love yourself.
JJ: I’m trying to. I’m trying to take healthy steps to protect myself. I still love my brother, and I recently - just so that he knows that I love him and I’m not harboring anger or anything like that - when I was a kid, about seven years old, our father bought us these two little toys. It was those toys where you press the bottom and then they were all connected with a string. It was a little animal that was connected with a string. There was a little cork at the bottom and they did a dance or something. Of course I broke mine within the first two minutes. I’m like, “Hey, this is-- ohh.” My brother immediately gave me his. I kept that all these years, and I sent it to him just a couple weeks ago. I wrote him a thank-you note, and I said, “I’ll always remember these kindnesses that you showed me.”
[silence]
JJ: So there you have that.
PG: What’s coming up for you right now?
JJ: It’s hard to let go of people that you love.
[silence]
JJ: Sorry about that.
PG: This interview’s over.
JJ: [laughs]
PG: There’s no crying. You didn’t warn me I was going to have a baby on the show.
JJ: [laughs]
PG: How awkward would it be if I got a tissue out and I started mimicking you crying. “And then I cut contact with my brother because he was mean to me.” [laughs]
JJ: [laughs] Oh my gosh, that’s too funny. Too funny.
PG: It does help to laugh about the stuff that’s so complicated. Have you ever been a support group?
JJ: I have, yes.
PG: What was that like?
JJ: It was great. It was really really great, and I definitely need to revisit that.
PG: What was the issue of the support group that it centered on?
JJ: It was depression. But it was interesting-- and it would be good to get in a more specific one.
PG: How did you find it?
JJ: Through Kaiser Permanente. Yes, I’m still one of these people that’s hanging onto my health insurance by a thread.
PG: That’s always a good feeling, too.
JJ: Yeah exactly, isn’t that fantastic?
PG: Russian roulette of healthcare. Do you want to touch on the abusive relationships that you had, or do you feel like they’re worth going into? I guess the question I have is, how cognizant were you of, “This is unhealthy”? Were you afraid to get out of them? Did they progress in their unhealthiness? Was there a pattern to them?
JJ: There was definitely a pattern. I was definitely afraid to get out. One of my first relationships was extremely physically abusive. This particular person used to tell me that he was going to kill me. I remember thinking, “Please do. Please kill me at your earliest convenience.” [laughs] Just because I didn’t see any way out of it. Miraculously, I got out of that situation and got into another fabulous situation right after.
PG: What do you feel when you’re around guys that are present and genuine and have the ability to be intimate? Does it make your skin crawl? Why--
JJ: Why did I make those choices?
PG: Why the guys-- and I know it’s because of how you were treated as a child and what they say about trying to go back and get a redo on the past, but I guess I want to know the feelings when you do encounter somebody that isn’t a nut job, that isn’t controlling or abusive. Do you just feel nothing towards them? Is it boring? Is it exciting at first and then they bore you? Have you had those experiences?
JJ: I have had those experiences, and I’ve had experiences where I had opportunities to date or go out with or have a relationship with a great person, and I didn’t take it. I think the reason I didn’t take it is because I didn’t feel attracted. I think that passionate attraction, for some reason, was cultivated around these chaotic situations. Feeling like, “I’m so attracted to this person.” So the people that I was really attracted to-- I’ve had some counselors say, “If you’re really attracted to the person, you need to run in the other direction.” So unfortunately, I think it was that, and I didn’t recognize that. I was also very used to, conditioned to, forgiving people who perpetually did horrible things.
PG: Sure, if you feel like you deserved it on some level. What would you tell yourself? Would you say, “I brought it up, I shouldn’t have said that. He was having a bad day”? What were the excuses you would make in your mind for his behavior?
JJ: Those types of things, yes, I instigated it in some way. It was definitely the cycle of violence in terms of he was very remorseful after each violent incident and would cry and tell me that it would never happen again. I believed that, I mean you really do-- and I think that that person believed that, too, but just couldn’t control that.
PG: Would you escalate things or would you shut down? How would you react as you could see him building towards this rage?
JJ: I would usually shut down. I would just shut down. Because I didn’t engage, it was like that kind of escalated it even more. Or I’d try to look for a place to hide.
PG: That breaks my heart.
JJ: I feel a lot of shame. I feel so much shame that I chose these terrible situations. I’d feel sorry for these people and I think as a child, I was bringing home stray animals. My stuffed animals were like a ragtag collection of discarded ones like in a gutter or that I bought for a quarter at a garage sale that were missing parts. So I think when people would cry, it would just break my heart. I’d be like, “Okay, we can work everything out. Everything will be fine.”
PG: Do you have any moments in your life where you’ve felt true compassion for yourself and what you’ve been through?
JJ: Very fleeting, I think, very fleetingly. It’s tough, too, because I think most people that go through these things often question, “Is this real? Did this really happen?”
PG: I so relate to that.
JJ: You think, “Am I just contriving this?” But then there are these hard facts that are there.
PG: You were questioning your integrity as a young child. So that’s not an easy thing to undo, that tattooing of your psyche, of, “I’m bad. I’m wrong.” We don’t undo that generally on our own without intensive help, therapy, support groups, a social worker. Because for me, the template was, going to support groups around my fear of intimacy and developing intimacy with people whose stories were similar to mine, and then that became the template for me trusting and beginning to believe that I was lovable because they loved me. I just can’t help but thinking, it would help you so much to get into a support group around - I don’t know what it would be - fear of intimacy, love addition. Have you ever read anything about love addiction?
JJ: I have, yeah.
PG: What did that bring up or strike you as?
JJ: Yeah, I completely relate to it. For me, it’s like when relationships don’t work out, that’s like the express highway to suicide for me. I think there’s so much behind it, like, “You weren’t good enough for anybody. Not good enough for your biological parents. Not good enough for your--“ and then it’s just this snowball or avalanche of, “You suck. You’ll never be worth anything.” The two times where I did try to off myself, out came right after those situations went south. Just as an aside, during the phase of unconsciousness in each of those times, and those times happened ten years apart--
PG: Unconsciousness during the suicide attempt.
JJ: During the suicide attempt.
PG: Can I ask how you tried to--
JJ: Overdose, yeah. I just remember thinking the exact same thing both times, which was something very mundane, which was, “I got to get back to planet earth and feed my animals.”
PG: You’d be surprised how many people have that exact same thing. Either their kids or their animals. But oftentimes their animals. Yet they can’t have the same compassion for themselves.
JJ: Right. I don’t have a relationship with my biological mother. I think that I represent a lot of pain and shame for her. I totally get that. She lives this different life now, she’s a super successful person with another family. In a lot of ways, I feel like I was always-- the kids that I hung out with, we were always sort of the marginal kind of-- I always felt comfortable in those groups of people that felt like they didn’t belong in some way.
PG: Have you gone through periods of promiscuity?
JJ: I would say-- okay, I totally will answer, and yeah I have no problem answering that question. I was raised to not be promiscuous in the fundamentalist religion. That said, by that barometer, I would say yes, I have been promiscuous [laughs]. By the societal barometer, no I haven’t. But that said, I am ashamed. Those situations cause me the most shame when I reflect back and think, “Oh gosh, how did that happen?”
PG: Because of the guys you chose? The act you did? The circumstances of it?
JJ: All of the above. I think as a kid, I really idealized what my future was going to be like. I remember thinking, “Things are painful and hard for me now, but I’m going to have a husband and a family. It’s going to be sweet, and it’s going to be good. I’m going to save myself for that person.” Then you pan to scene two [laughs].
PG: Hey, it’s closing time. Nice van.
JJ: [laughs] That’s a hoot.
PG: The reason I ask is, most people who have been victims of sexual abuse or exploitation go one way or the other. Their sexuality completely shuts down, or they go through periods of promiscuity, or both, they alternate between one of the two. My experience has been both, where I alternate between shutting down and then a flurry of either looking at porn or when I was younger, being really promiscuous. I hope I didn’t put you on the spot by that.
JJ: Oh no, not at all.
PG: I get this - and I’ve shared this on the podcast before - when I’m interviewing women who’ve been sexually abused, I have this little voice in the back of my head that is like, “Listen to you, you fucking pervert. You want to know more details. You want to know that they’re pervy just like you.”
JJ: That’s too funny.
PG: It’s a tough area for me as an interviewer, because I’m constantly second-guessing my integrity.
JJ: But it’s a totally valid question, and I think it’s a valid and adequate or appropriate question because of that, as you said. Because it either galvanizes this hypersexuality or it just completely shuts you down like that. As I said, I think I totally romanticized the, “I’m going to be a virgin when I get married.”
PG: What’s the next thing? Have we touched on pretty much all the stuff, or are we leaving anything out?
JJ: Let’s see here. I think just talking about some self-care. I have been through therapy several years. I could use maybe 50 more years of it. [laughs] Or a pre-frontal lobotomy. In terms of coping mechanisms I have, there’s a couple of things that I wanted to mention, and they might be helpful, they might not be helpful. The first thing is, I have had friends and family that have passed away, as we all have. When I feel down or when I feel like I don’t want to participate, when I do make the effort to participate, I picture them up above cheering me on going, “Yeah, you’re doing it. You’re living life. You’re still on planet earth, and you’re doing it!” For some reason, just picturing them up there is--
PG: Helpful?
JJ: Yeah. The other thing that’s--
PG: It’s interesting that you can’t picture people being proud of you until they’re dead.
JJ: [laughs] I know, yeah. Right, yeah.
PG: Why do you think that is?
JJ: I don’t know. I think that my constant prayer now is, “Lord god, if I die, just take me to a place of peace so that I’m not constantly tormented.” I have read hundreds upon hundreds of near-death experiences. I think I’m like, “This life’s shot. Hopefully there’s hope for the next one.” No, it’s not like that. But the near-death experiences, most of them are very very positive and there’s a lot of love. Even the ones that end up in “hell,” they call out for help, it seems like help comes to them. Just also, I am not a fundamentalist Christian anymore, in case you were wondering.
PG: Are you a Christian? Is your faith nondenominational?
JJ: I consider myself a Christian. I don’t go to church. I’m very liberal in every aspect in terms of I’m pro-choice, pro-gay marriage. If you want to see me have a grand mal panic attack, you can drop me off at an Evangelical church. It’s tough, I feel jaded in that sense. I think churches do a lot of good things and there are good things to be gained from going to church. I don’t really read the Bible so much, because there are just some disturbing stories in that book. The other thing is--
PG: The Old Testament isn’t very feel-good.
JJ: It’s brutal, yeah. Lots like, “Here, take my daughters. I don’t need them. Rape em, do what you want with em.” The other thing that I do is when I’m really really in the depths of depression, I’m single, I have to pay my bills, I’ve got to go to work, I’ve got to do my laundry and have these things to get done. If I just want to go to bed and stay in bed and I have these things that are hanging over me to do, I have a digital timer. I just say, “For ten minutes, I’m going to tackle laundry. I’m just going to set this for ten minutes, and then I’ll go back to bed.” I actually use that timer when I’m getting ready in the morning because I’m such a daydreamer that if I go to the bathroom without the timer, I’ll just stare at the tile forever. I’ll be like, “Holy moly, two hours have gone by.”
PG: Wow.
JJ: I can just launch into a transcendental meditative trance. Yeah, got to keep myself on track. Just keep on track. The final thing is - I feel like I’m going to get some flak for this - I have read a lot about Holocaust survivors. They’re so fascinating to me that anybody survived, the coping and the survival skills that it took to come through something like that. I always think-- I’ve read just dozens of books on that.
PG: Have you read Man’s Search for Meaning?
JJ: I have, yep. Viktor Frankl.
PG: So profound.
JJ: It is. If you’ve read any Primo Levi-- he’s kind of depressing, he ended up committing suicide after surviving the Holocaust, so maybe you could omit that one. But he’s a really profound writer. But I think about if somebody were to escape from a concentration camp and they’re just crawling out of horror, and for some reason this person ends up on my doorstep and I have to feed this person and clothe this person and love this person and keep this person warm and care for this person. And realize that that person’s me. I have to take care of myself like that, in the third person.
PG: I’m glad you mentioned self-care. I would imagine anybody that has a relationship to the Holocaust, a personal relationship to it, I think they would be touched by knowing that. Because anybody that’s been through something really difficult, if there’s going to be any spirituality at the center of it, it’s going to be, “How can I use this to help other people? How can this not be all bad? How can evil not completely win?” What you just said to me is somebody who is looking for that-- I don’t know if lesson is the right word? But to take something from it, so that the people that live through that, it wasn’t for naught. That it can actually help humanity maybe take a step forward. That’s my thought. I’m glad you touched on self-care, because it is - and especially for people who were sexually exploited - it is one of the hardest things to practice, to care about your body.
JJ: Right, it’s very difficult.
PG: Very difficult. I struggle with it constantly. I shared that I went blind in my left eye about a year ago for five minutes, and I went and had some tests done and after the second one was inconclusive, I was like, “I’m tired of caring for myself.” The last round of tests that were done, I’ve yet to call the doctor to find out if they discovered anything, because I just don’t care.
JJ: Oh my gosh. You still haven’t called?
PG: No.
JJ: You need to call, Paul.
PG: It hasn’t happened again. If it had happened again, I would’ve called. But honestly, it’s like the path of least resistance--
JJ: I get that.
PG: --with self-care. What do you feel when you have those moments? Can you share a moment of self-care that you remember?
JJ: They’re very mundane moments sometimes, like you said, like in terms of like, “I need to eat fresh vegetables and fresh fruits. I am taking my vitamins now, because this is healthy for me. I’m drinking this jug of water because I’m hydrating my body and permeating my cells with water.” So they’re mostly like that. I know you mentioned Pema Chödrön, and who knows how to say her name, but she said, “The trick may just be to keep moving.” When you’re moving - this is my addendum to what she said - is just make the healthiest decision that you can for that moment.
PG: I agree, I think that’s great. I think so often the key is baby steps, because we want to do something-- “I’m going to become a Buddhist. I’m going to lose 50 pounds,” instead of just, “I’m not going to take five more bites of this, because if I just wait 15 minutes, I’m going to feel full. I’ve had enough to eat.” Maybe that’s the place to start. Returning your shopping cart. Using your turn signal. Just little things like that, where, “I’m going to care about the world around me and my place in it and take just a little bit of responsibility.” I don’t know. The fuck do I know.
JJ: That’s perfect. It’s perfect, yeah.
PG: I said before we started recording we might not have time to do the fears and the loves, but I have the feeling your fears and loves are going to be really good.
JJ: Oh no. You’re going to be like, “Those sucked.” Just kidding.
PG: Was there anything else that you wanted to touch on? What other horrors have we missed, Julie?
JJ: Yeah, exactly. I don’t want people-- I just don’t want this to come off as a “woe is me,” and I want people to feel sorry for me--
PG: It’s not. Put that thought to rest.
JJ: Okay.
PG: It’s not. It’s not. It’s coming across as somebody who’s seeking to better their life. I’m reading a continuing a list from Nadya, and she says, “I’m afraid I won’t have the courage to leave this country when I finally can.”
JJ: I’m afraid I will snap and do something totally atrocious like chuck a baby out a window and every good thing I have ever done in life will be neutralized.
PG: [laughs] That is awesome. “I’m afraid my boyfriend will fall in love with someone else and leave me.”
JJ: Here’s the next one of mine. I’m afraid of getting older and living a long life and watching all the dudes my age lusting and chasing after young chicks.
PG: “I’m afraid my parents will become very sick because of their self-destructing habits, and I will be stuck here in the suburbs taking care of them.” I think she needs to move out of the suburbs.
JJ: Yeah, that might be a good move for Nadia. I’m afraid of getting burned beyond recognition and living through it and becoming a groaning crust of charred flesh.
PG: That’s why I wanted to do your fears. Because I knew there’s an inner writer in you that has such a way with words and imagery. “I’m afraid my apartment will be for sale and I won’t be able to afford to buy it.”
JJ: I’m afraid of becoming quadriplegic and losing the option of being able to commit suicide.
PG: I have that one, too. “I’m afraid I’ll run through my savings and won’t be able to pay rent or living expenses and will have to ask my ex-husband for money.” That’s got to be painful.
JJ: Yeah, that’s difficult. I’m afraid when I die, I’ll get sent back to this planet. God will tell me I was a fucking ingrate and will send me back to become a limbless torso in an African ditch.
PG: [laughs] I’m glad I went with my instinct, which was to extend the podcast for the carnival going on in Julie’s head. “I’m afraid I will never have the guts or patience to write a book.”
JJ: I’m afraid my elbow skin is beginning to resemble the scrotal sacs of elderly men.
PG: [laughs] “I’m afraid my car will break down, and I will have to get another one, which will eat half of my savings.”
JJ: I’m actually out of fears, believe it or not.
PG: Awesome. Those were so good. Let’s go to loves. Go ahead.
JJ: I love it when I’m in a daydream and when I come back reality, I have forgotten that this body is my physical manifestation on this planet. I feel this moment to be introduced to myself for the first time.”
PG: That’s beautiful. Nadia says, “I love putting out a piece of clothing I haven’t worn in a while and seeing that it still fits.”
JJ: I love getting the mockingbird outside my window to copy my whistle pattern.
PG: Oh that’s cool. “I love reading a very brainy and confusing book and realizing that a paragraph in, it makes perfect sense, crystal-clear sense to me.”
JJ: I love watching the Maria Bamford show on YouTube and her making me laugh so hard at our darkest struggles.
PG: I could tell about a half hour in that you’re a fan of Maria’s.
JJ: Oh really?
PG: Yeah.
JJ: Too funny.
PG: “I love hearing my daughter talk about me in a complimentary way when she thinks I can’t hear or I’m not paying attention.” That’s beautiful. By the way, anybody that has never checked out Maria’s comedy, go check it out. If there is a custom-made comedy for this podcast, it is Maria.
JJ: It is, it really is. She saved me, really. Really. I love locking into a tight harmony with my singing partner.
PG: Oh that’s cool. As a tone-deaf person, I look at people that can harmonize like Martians. “I love watching live theater from up close and seeing expressions on actors’ faces and forgetting that I am watching them play-act.” That’s a great one.
JJ: That is good. I love the word “bundt,” as in, “bundt cake.” Those three consonants together.
PG: It is a good word. “I love seeing older couple who seem very connected to one another.” I like that.
JJ: Yeah, me too. I love when my dog barks when she still has a ball in her mouth.
PG: [laughs] “I love the smell of roasted broccoli.”
JJ: I love identifying flora and fauna with my Audubon field guide.
PG: That may be the dorkiest thing I have heard in the loves.
JJ: [laughs]
PG: That’s fantastic. “I love seeing and hearing my boyfriend speak Spanish.”
JJ: I love it when my cat is walking somewhere, and she stops and leaves one front paw hanging in the air, as if she is weighing options and the placement of that paw determines something very important in her fate.
PG: “I love picking berries, especially wild ones.” Yeah I love that, too.
JJ: Yeah, wild berries, those are good. I love listening to this podcast. It really is an incredible blessing.
PG: Aw, thank you. “I love hearing my two younger daughters talk in their bedroom when they are playing and getting along.” That’s got to be very nice.
JJ: I’m out.
PG: Well let’s end with one of Nadia’s. “I love reading a quote that seems very relevant to my life or inspiring.” Well this might sound corny, but my conversation with you, for me, has been very inspiring and enlightening. I’m glad we met. I’m glad you contacted me, and thank you for being so open and honest and vulnerable and funny.
JJ: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it a lot.
PG: Many many thanks to Julie J. Just loved talking to her, really enjoyed her company. Boy, really a greatest hits of shit that can happen to a kid, and she’s still standing. What a survivor. Before I take it out with some surveys, I want to remind you guys that there’s a couple of different ways that you can support the show if you feel so inclined. You can support us financially by going to the website mentalpod.com and making either a one-time PayPal donation or a reoccurring monthly donation for as little as five bucks. Once you sign up you don’t have to do anything unless you want to cancel it or your card expires. You can also shop through our Amazon search link, and that way Amazon gives us a couple of nickels and it doesn’t cost you anything. You can buy a coffee mug on our website, you can buy a t-shirt. We now have women’s tees. That is actually handled-- I don’t know if I have a link up for that yet, but those are being sold through Estoy merchandise, which is estoymerchandise.com. You can support us non-financially by going to the iTunes, writing something nice, giving us a good rating, or spreading the word through social media. That really really helps. Or transcribing an episode. If you want to transcribe an episode, email me at mentalpod@gmail.com. Just be forewarned, it takes an average typist a full day to transcribe an episode. Let’s get into the surveys. This is from the Body Shame survey, filled out by a woman calls herself - where is her name - No Worries I Am Fine. That’s what she calls herself. She writes, “My face is too masculine. I’m too tall. My torso is too long, and my legs are too short. My eyes are too squinty. My nose is too wide. My ears stick out. My feet are too big. I have manly calves. Most of all, I hate myself for hating my body. As a feminist and as a woman who loves other women of all shapes and sizes, I am deeply uncomfortable with my inability to apply my philosophical and political views to my own body. As a side note, despite being a lesbian, I rely on sexual attention from men to feel validated as a desirable, and therefore worthwhile, human being. This screams daddy issues. I know, my relationship with my father is indeed distant, although this was my doing.” Thank you for that. This is same survey, filled out by a guy who calls himself Bill McNeil. He writes, “I’m fat and I’m shaped like the world’s ugliest pear. I’m also incredibly unhappy with my dick, which is the main reason I’ve never had sex. The funny thing is, it’s maybe average on a good day and certainly not a micropenis, but I still despise it.” I actually like to order the micropenis when I’m at a really fancy restaurant. Let’s see, this is same survey filled out by a guy who calls himself Will Chuck. By the way, these are all pseudonyms, so if you know anybody named Bill McNeil, don’t walk up to him and go, “I didn’t know you got a small crank.” Will Chuck, what he dislikes about his body, he writes, “Recently while hanging out with my girlfriend in bed, I saw a list. At the top were two names: mine and a close male friend of hers. It was a list of pros and cons. The first one that caught my eye was under the other person’s, and it read, ‘huge dick.’ We’d had a bit of a rough patch recently, and neither of us were sure we’d make it through. I’ve always been insecure about my penis size and sexual prowess as all men do, but this has rocked me to the core. Since then, our sex has been much less frequent and much shorter. I cannot bring this up with her because I feel like it won’t accomplish anything. It’s been months and I still think about it almost daily. The fear tends to dissipate when I’m around her, but comes back in full force as soon as we are about to be intimate.” Dude. You got to talk to her about that. I’m sorry, but that’s-- [laughs] and I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing at what an uncomfortable situation that is. But I don’t see how that’s just going to go away on its own. That’s my two cents. This is from the Happy Moments survey, filled out by a woman who calls herself Runner Gal. She is 50, and she writes, “My 50th birthday this past July, my dearest friends and partner who is female each took a turn telling me how they felt about me and describe what they liked about me. I was so certain that who they were describing couldn’t be me that I was tempted to look to see who was sitting behind me. It was really hard for me to sit and listen to all of their beautiful words and kindness. I never heard these positive things growing up. As a matter of fact, I always believed that I was a loser. The positive words and feelings made me think, “Fuck it. I am a good person. I am a great mom. I am thoughtful and kind to other people, and I can accomplish anything I put my mind to. I really feel this way after hearing this. What a transformation. It also validated all the work I’ve been doing in therapy. Working with my wonderful therapist over the last four or so years has been transformative. I finally feel as though I am that person I always wanted to be, but just didn’t know how to get there. I really feel as though I have arrived. I only hope that everyone has a chance to experience this.” That’s awesome. This is from the Shame and Secrets survey, filled out by a guy who calls himself Paul, You’re a Great Man for Doing this Show. How do I not read that? How do I not stroke myself publicly with that? I wonder if that would be considered public exposure, for stroking myself by reading that. And then I’d have to register as a sexual offender. He is male. Really? “He’s male”? Fucking jackass. He’s straight, in his 30s, was raised in an environment that was a little dysfunctional. Never been sexually abused. Deepest darkest thoughts: “Suicide. I often fantasize about sex and intimacy with teenage girls.” Deepest darkest secrets: “When I was a confused, horny teen, I touched a couple different young girls inappropriately, the shame of which has always been a major driver in my self-hatred and thoughts of suicide.” Talk to somebody about that. Go talk to a professional about that or a support group or somebody. Or a friend that you can really trust, but talk to somebody about that, because that’s just too much to keep inside. Sexual fantasies most powerful to you: “My greatest fantasies revolve around feminization. My wife would force me to start wearing women’s underwear then clothes then makeup, take complete control over our sex life, and ultimately force me to be a sex toy for other men while she watches and masturbates.” Thank you for sharing that, by the way. Can’t see what the next question is because the printer cut it off. Darn it. [laughs] Oh, would you ever consider telling a partner or close friend your fantasies? “I’m working on opening up and sharing with my wife, which has always been a very hard thing for me, for fear of pushing my significant other away. I’m open to it, but it will take a while.” Do these secrets and thoughts generate any particular feelings towards yourself? “Discomfort, confusion. I’m not at all attracted to men, but the idea of not having the control and being dominated by both a woman I care about and who cares about me as well as a man is just undescribably exciting to me.” I think that’s awesome, that you have a sexual fantasy that doesn’t hurt anybody. Get into it, dude. Get into it. But yeah, I would tread lightly in terms of how you bring that about to your partner. I think we have a responsibility, too, when we have a fantasy to not overwhelm our partner with wanting something that might be so new and something they’d never thought about. Oh shut up, Paul. Just shut up. This is from a survey that’s rarely taken called the Young Male Abused by Older Female. Filled out by a guy who calls himself Mister Twister. He is in his 20s, he’s straight, and he writes, “When I was about five, I was repeatedly molested by my dad’s girlfriend. She would force my face into her naked crotch, made me suck her nipples, and would play with my penis. My dad knew what was going on, but for some reason, never intervened. Also I lost my virginity to an older woman. When I was about 21, I had a one night stand with a woman in her late 40s. That night was preceded by about a week of deep shame and embarrassment. She looked really good.” That was preceded? I’m confused, because it’s proceeded. I’m not sure if that thing caused the shame, or the shame followed. Anyway, “She looked really good for her age, though, for whatever that’s worth. The only people that know about my molestation are my grandparents and a “talking doctor” I saw when I was about seven. As for the 40-something-year-old I lost my virginity to, turns out two of my friends were watching the whole time. They went back to the hotel room and told our whole group. We still had five days of vacation left, which is a long time to go to have to face a group of people with whom I was barely acquainted knowing the whole story. I still get teased about it, but I learn to just own it. With the molestation, I don’t feel anything. I don’t remember a lot of hairy details - ha ha, pube joke - and I feel completely numb about the ordeal. I can’t tell if that’s healthy or unhealthy. Sometimes I worry I have a victim complex and that I don’t exert myself to my full potential professionally and socially because of that. It’s like I feel that because I’m a victim of sexual abuse, I allow myself to take a life-long ‘snow day’. I still feel a little shame about how I lost my virginity, but I’ve decided it’s really not worth dwelling on. Maybe one day, it will make a funny story. However, I felt like the odd guy out with this particular group of friends and acquaintances, and this pretty much pigeonholed me even further. I’ve always felt socially awkward/oblivious. I once heard a psychologist say that he can instinctually discern if a person is a victim of molestation. I often wonder if I exude whatever it is that those other people seem to put out. Sexually, I feel very deficient. I’m terrible at sex, and I’m too jumpy/nervous to really take my time and get it right. I wonder how much of my problems are innate and how much was caused by my sexual abuse.” By the way, of all of the surveys that I’ve read of males that were abused as boys by teenage or adult females, almost all of them have tremendous performance anxiety and have little or no confidence sexually. This next survey is from Happy Moments survey, filled out by a guy who calls himself Clark Kent. He writes, “When my wife found out that I cheated on her, we had a bad year, but through it, we grew. Unlike some people, she was able to forgive me completely. It amazes me that someone could fight for a piece of shit like me. It made me work for forgiveness and feel I was worth something again. After that we took a vacation together, just the two of us, to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We hiked and our cabin was near a stream. We had our window open, laying in bed, feeling the cold air and hearing the stream. In that moment, we had no problems. We struggled for this moment of love and peace.” Beautiful. I like the bittersweet ones. This is an email I want to read from a listener who calls herself Kitters, and she writes, “Paul, I’m the poster child for being mentally and physically fucked up. Among the myriad of health issues, I’ve struggled with depression my entire life. I’m a recovering self-injurer, almost seven years. Prior to that, I self-injured on a daily basis for 23 years. When I was pregnant, no one warned me that childhood trauma memories would be intense as a mother. I was, and still am, constantly fearful of being a shitty mom. As my girls approached five and six years old, I started to have trauma flashbacks triggered by everyday events as normal children. I was already in therapy for five years at that point and realized cutting wasn’t working for me anymore. I could either get treatment or move on to other forms of self-injury. One incident started the chain reaction of events leading towards my first and only hospitalization for self-injury. My youngest daughter knocked over a glass of milk at dinner. Immediately I was launched into my first episode of disassociation. I felt I was back at my parents’ home as the four-year-old me accidentally knocked over a glass of milk at the dinner table. My mom smacked me across the face and told me to go to my room. I froze in place trying not to cry, and I obviously didn’t move fast enough upstairs to my room. My mother grabbed my long braids and proceeded to drag me by my hair, pulling my body up the stairs. In that moment, my mind was trying to get back to my own little girl who spilled her milk. I felt I needed to punish myself for being lower than dirt, and I began to get up from the table to go cut myself in the bathroom. I stood there, looked at my daughter’s face, and noticed she wasn’t sure what my reaction would be. I bent down, kissed her forehead, and said, “It’s okay, darling girl of mine. Accidents happen.” From then on, I knew this wasn’t the legacy I wanted to perpetuate. I wanted to be a better mom, stop torturing myself, and deal with the triggers that lead to self-injury. I went to S.A.F.E. Alternatives nearly seven years ago. It was the hardest thing I ever did.” S.A.F.E Alternatives I believe is in Chicago, and I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. “And I have struggled with a constant fear of fucking up my kids and being the worst mom on the planet. It still creeps in, because I never had a positive parenting role to emulate. I now have two beautiful girls in middle school. They are happy, loving, smart, funny, creative, well-adjusted girls. I think I can count that as a win. I have a new therapist - my old one retired - who specializes in EMDR, and I’m beginning to deal with the memories/flashbacks of childhood trauma. It’s not easy, but nothing in life ever is.” Thank you so much for that. And finally, I want to go out on a Happy Moment filled out by Travis. He writes, “I made my therapist cry at yesterday’s session. She said, ‘I am so happy you are progressing and using mindfulness on a daily basis.’ As someone who dislikes praise, I was shocked to find myself swelling with pride. I cried too, and I walked out of the office euphoric.” That’s so beautiful. Thank you guys for listening. Thanks to Julie J. Thanks for supporting the show by filling the surveys out and being donors and all the stuff you guys do. Transcribing, going into the forum. I really really appreciate it, and I love what we’re building. I’m really proud of this. It brings a lot of meaning into my life. So thank you, and I hope that if you were feeling hopeless before you started listening to today’s episode, you have a little bit more hope, and you know that you’re not alone. So thanks for listening.
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