My Mom Committed Murder

hello my name is Lauren eager my mom killed somebody when I was 2 years old and I was s to live with my genius but sociopath dad and that kind of set the tone for my childhood and upbringing and sort of the reason that I wanted to come on the podcast was because I noticed that when I would talk about this story good things would happen and what I mean by that is people would either come together or they would feel comfortable opening up about their own stories or trying to connect with people or find help in the ways that they needed it so that's the main reason and then I think a lot of people can relate to being in a place that they don't want to be in or in a situation that's less than ideal for them and I guess it sort of serves as a reminder that no matter where you come from you can always start over you can always change your life as long as you can think about it it's possible and um yeah you're only one decision away from having a completely different life and that's truly my story so absolutely I think the last thing that I want to say is uh I the only reason I'm able to live like a remotely normal life and I would actually say I'm living a very privileged life abnormally so um is because people were kind to me when I was a kid if I didn't have the community or people around me that decided to be kind to this young child that was going through something I don't think that I would have turned out the way that I am and so I guess as a call to action I want to ask people to be nice to the kids around them because you never know what they're being going through or what's happening to them in their life and you can genuinely change their life these are the people that are going to be part of our society as you get older and so you should think about that when you're treating kids a certain way speak preach amen I agree with you 100% so I guess I could start out by talking about my mom and her crime since normally growing up when when I would talk about my mom people would say oh my gosh so what happened you know uh someone you she killed somebody and so here's the story so my mom was a stripper and she was really deep in the drug and alcohol scene alcoholic the whole nine and without telling too much of her story she had her own traumas as a kid so grew up with five other siblings um all of them having their own problems as well my grandmother had run away with her stepdad and had all these kids and there was a huge age Gap I would say that my biological grandfather maybe is not the most respectable person in the world I never met him and didn't care to and so anyway they had six kids together and one of them was my mom like I said my mom grew up with a troubled childhood my aunt decided to be a stripper with her sister and they started working at this club together and they did this for a few years they both had drug and alcohol problems my aunt actually ended up dying a month before I was born in a drunk driving accident and so that sort of set the tone for where my mom was right she was pregnant with my dad who I'll get into how they met which was at the club but they got together had me and you know of course 8 months pregnant and her sister dies in this drunk driving accident and I think that this sort of started really unraveling my mom and bringing back a lot of Trauma from her own life and during the between when she was pregnant with me and when I was 2 years old when the murder happened she was really again unraveling like I can't think of a better word for it um everything was triggering for her it was just really a difficult time and plus add my dad into the mix who's a sociopath and also a genius it just wasn't a good combination so that being said uh my dad sort of manipulated her into having a relationship and she ended up uh going back to her drug dealer's house at the time and I don't know 100% what happened that day I don't know where I was I don't know any of the details really we just know what she said when she turned herself in the next day so she fled the scene of the crime uh the guy was stabbed 47 times and uh what we've heard from my mom is that she was being restrained or abused in some way again I I don't know like we'll really never know what happened that day except for my mom who doesn't really talk about it so essentially she was triggered tried into this event happening the way that I understand it is she was restrained he let her go and sort of pleaded with him and he said okay if I let you go will you be good and she let her he she got out and ran and grabbed a knife and stabbed him obviously a lot of times and this was the drug dealer this was the drug dealer okay when my mom uh turned herself in it was like a full-blown Ops like she immediately went to prison she was sentenced to I believe 30 years it could have been 20 to life I don't know the exact sentence but she served around 20 so she got out for good behavior in the end um that's what happened right like that's in a nutshell and and I know that was a long story but that's how it started yeah yeah and you were two right I was two when that happened and who were you living with so I was really pushed around between my grandparents and my parents and different people in the community like an aunt or something like that my whole life so when I was two I went to go live with my dad and his mom the reason I say my dad is a genius is because he did uh take the MCAT when he was in going into medical school he graduated high school early he also was part of Mena so 150 plus which is considered genius and uh decided to go to med school when he was 15 um when that happened he passed the exam but eventually got kicked out of school for drug sale and basically distribution so he was always just pushing the envelope of what he could do and part of the reason for him doing that was because he was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder earlier in his life which my grandmother his mom was aware of so growing up I knew that my dad had these diagnosis I didn't know what they meant obviously growing up with my dad was a horrible time it was just the worst I mean pretty much anything you can think of we didn't always have the lights on in our house we always had running water but I mean mildew in the shower I mean barely any food in the fridge if there was it was old or stale a lot of times I would get up and put myself on the bus and eat like the same box of blueberry morning which I don't know if anyone remembers that cereal from the 90s but that's what I would eat on the way to school teachers would brush my hair they would bring like toothbrushes to school because I wasn't brushing my teeth which is really sad but um so that went on for quite a while until I was around 6 years old and then I was kidnapped by my dad's drug dealer so there's sort of this ongoing theme through my life of being affected by my parents drug dealers apparently um so the way that that happened is my dad owned a car lot with this guy I'll call him Jay and my dad was having a relationship with Jay's wife okay who I'll call K so Jay and Kay have two kids together a boy and a girl the girl is my age I grew up around her but her mom was also addicted to heroin so she was always at our house like shooting up it was really bad I like watched her do it when I was a kid and so did her daughter and still to this day I can't get blood drawn out of my inner elbow because it bothers me and um so I just have like a lot of weird little things like that because of it but I think I turned out roughly okay um so anyway Jay and my dad had this car lot and they were also running this drug deal through it and again my dad is a sociopath he's always trying to think of what can I next what exciting scheme can I come up with or get away with right and so he started having an affair with his partner's wife and had a like drug deal going on with with him um eventually Jay finds out that my dad is sleeping with his wife and shows up with his older son to the car lot and I'm at the car lot with my dad so this is after school one day and uh he gets out of the car and he's swinging a bat at my dad the the older brother gets out or Jay's uh son and uh they're both swinging at my dad my dad's pretty big so he takes them both down the kid ends up going to the hospital I think he was in his late teens at the time I don't really remember but late teens I think ended up going to the hospital like severe injuries um Jay is obviously pissed and my dad flees the scene of the crime with me again a theme of my parents um and goes to my grandmother's house so we get to my grandmother's house and my dad hides in the closet and he's like all right sh and my dad my grandmother is always protecting my dad so she was like all right be quiet don't tell anywhere anyone where daddy is please come to the door and I immediately point to the closet he's in there like I don't know to this day like if you ever found out that I gave him away that he was in there but yeah no regrets um so they pull him out and my dad basically gaslights the police who by the way are people that he grew up with in the same town so this is like his like high school friends that are now cops that have been like trying to catch him for various crimes over the years and he's really intelligent so he's pretty good at getting away with them and covering his tracks and so they're like you know we got you Todd whatever and they're like no uh you're coming with us and he says so you're going to arrest me because I slept with my partner's wife that doesn't make any sense like he came to my work in front of my little daughter with a baseball bat and in front of all of our customers and my family and you're going to try to arrest me so he basically gaslights them and they're like fine we'll let you off and they go to find Jay and of course Jay is like pressing charges because his son's in the hospital all this crazy stuff so that sort of starts to die down and Jay ends up trying to frame my dad for breaking into his house so my dad drink a lot of Mountain Dew growing up and so he's like planting Mountain Dew cans around the his house like trashing his house throwing cigarette butts everywhere cuz my dad also smoked just making it look like he did it calls the cops and says this guy you know broke into my house whatever and up until like 10 years ago this was the only crime that my dad ever got convicted of and it was one he didn't even do oh my God so they ended up sending him to jail he gets out after a couple days CU they can't prove that it was him and my dad at the time had a good lawyer and so Jay's pissed like rightfully so like but also it's not illegal to sleep with somebody yeah so anyway Jay comes to my school one day and picks me up and that was not out of the ordinary they always like shared cars again they worked at used car lot so it was like always different cars one or the other maybe one of them would be in the lot and needed to come get me whatever so Jay comes to get me I did think it was weird that his daughter wasn't there because usually he would pick up his daughter and then me and we would go together um to his wife's house right cuz they were friends even before the affair and before the drug deal and before the car lot so it was all kind of just in the family I guess you could say so I thought that was weird Jay ends up pulling up to this house that I don't know so it's not Jay's house the one that he you know fake broke into um and it's not my dad's house I'm like where are we and so we get out and he's like you're going to stay here and wait for your dad to pay me so I guess like after that fight happened They seized all the drugs and the money that was at the car lot so it was like a big investigation into what they were going to do and you can actually still find information about this like online so anybody listening you could probably Google it yeah um but so anyway they they all get seized and I guess he wanted my dad to pay him back for because he like blamed him for the situation Andy didn't even get caught like didn't go to jail for sending his son to the hospital so he's basically holding me Ransom in this house and again I have no idea what house this is um I walk inside there's a couch in the living room I'm 6 years old so I don't know how I remember all of this but I think it was just really traumatizing there's like 14 people sitting on a small sofa like some of them are like shooting up other people are like doing coke there's people having sex and watching porn like in the corner just like all this crazy stuff like happening in this living room and house and so I walk through and there's like here's the living room and you walk around to a kitchen so he pulls me into the kitchen I'll never forget the smell of the kitchen there were just dishes everywhere it was just this like wreaking smell like if you've ever smelled that smell of like dirty dishes you know exactly what I'm talking about it's like burned in my brain so we walk through that kitchen and there's another like little garage area where he had pulled his car in where Jay had pulled his car in and there was a bunch of kids on this mattress and I think that maybe they were I don't know what was going on with them to to be honest like I think that there were police involved in this situation too like years later um for maybe some other crimes that were happening but without going too deep into that there were kids on these mattresses maybe some of their children that were in this house like basically living in this trap house cuz they couldn't afford their own apartment or whatever so we're all in this mattress room and I don't know how many days I was in there I think I was in there for maybe a couple days like it wasn't immediately it was all it was not all in the same day I remember being hungry I remember like wondering how I was going to get out eventually Jay leaves the house and pulls the car out and when he does that I'm faking like I'm asleep and we push the mattress underneath the car door so that it prevents it from closing so these little kids are like in there with me some of them are like older you know like maybe 10 11 I don't know maybe some younger it's kind of hard to remember but um anyway so I I go out the garage door after he leaves and sneak my skin little ass out the door and walk all the way back to my dad's mom's house my grandmother's house when I get there I find out a police officer had seen me on the road and followed me all the way back I still don't know like how I found my way back there but either way I walked all the way back and my grandmother's like freaking out had no idea I was gone my dad basically had come to find out told him like keeper I don't care like I'm not giving you any money I'm not doing anything like she'll figure it out basically I'm six like um so anyway doesn't come to get me my dad had fled so because he was in trouble for this other crime I guess he had gotten out on like parole or something this is also googleable and it's hilarious you can find it it's like Todd Steven Porter is found at a barbecue place in 2007 because he's cooking barbecue remember I told you my dad has a very high IQ but he's also very full of himself right like antisocial person it disorder like kind of makes you want to be charming and impress people and so he cooks really good barbecue and he was working at this place where he had fled meanwhile he just left his daughter yeah with basically my grandmother and God knows who and uh the FBI finds him and arrests him in 2007 for this crime and he goes to jail that is sort of ongoing and I lived with my dad's mom for a couple more years before my other grandmother my mom's mom got full-time cust of me for like the rest of my life basically so during this time did you have any contact with your mom like were you visiting at all or yeah I I visited my mom a couple of times uh in jail one when I was really young like maybe I was two or three so my dad would let me or I guess not let me but he would he was forced to let me see my mom's side of the family like I think it was every two weeks so I would get like a weekend there and uh they would meet halfway and then drop me off and I loved going there and that's part of the reason I ended up she ended up getting custody because I was so eager to always go home to you know my mom's mom um so I did visit her a couple of times um my mom's very emotionally unregulated like think about it you know you go to jail before even Google is a thing and then you're just stuck in there right and you're coming off all of these drugs alcohol like she had been drinking since she was like and maybe not even a teenager yet like very very young so I guess from that perspective she was just sort of unhinged into a little kid that's very scary to see and to understand and when you visit a prison it's not easy yeah and it's not fun there's like bright lights in your face they search you they like make sure cuz she was at like a state prison right like it wasn't like a jail so um it just very overwhelming for me as a kid and I think my grandmother was just like I don't want to make you do this again so I I maybe did it a couple more times and then never did it again okay yeah my mom also decided to be like a born again Christian when she went to prison which sort of affected our family in a way she would send me she's a very good artist so she would draw me like pictures when I was I know six seven eight of her memories which are incredibly disturbing like I told you about her life right so she' draw these memories and send them to me which I don't think was appropriate for like I was told when I was probably like or what had happened to her so I mean I grew up knowing she had killed somebody my dad would tell me like Mommy killed somebody and the only thing I remember comparing it to like cartoons because like Wy coyote did you ever watch those so I would compare it to that um because it's all I could compare it to as a toddler so I don't know it was just a weird situation she you had that like mindset about your mom from yeah really young right I knew she like had killed somebody right it's pretty powerful thing for sure so at this time you're so did your dad end up going to jail my dad went to jail in and out he's never been sent to prison okay which is and that was after they caught him at the barbecue place right and then they ended up basically figuring out that he wasn't guilty of the crime that he'd been set up for but he had been harassing Jay's wife the entire time so she had like I don't know some kind of restriction on him where he couldn't I don't know if it was exactly that he couldn't come near her or if it wasn't if it was that he couldn't see the kids or something there was some restraining order in place and he just kept breaking it and harassing her and seeing like what he could get away with and um anyway that being said it was basically because he was violating that that he ended up going to jail yeah and then you lived with his mom for a little while yeah so my grandmother on my dad's side was very protective of my dad his whole life like he that was her like bright shiny star was really smart student it's really sad because there's a lot of wasted potential on my dad like incredibly high IQ in like incredible discipline if he wanted to right and uh could be very charming and um persuasive of people and at the end of the day manipulative because those are the traits of a someone with antisocial personality disorder that has a really high IQ and so my grandmother just let him get away with whatever and a lot of times like people would ask like why didn't your grandmother get you out of that situation but my dad didn't let her like it was it was it wasn't something that he was like telling her about right and I wasn't allowed to say you know Daddy didn't keep the lights on or I haven't taken a shower I've been in the same jeans for six weeks you know that wasn't like something I could say I just kind of lived it dayto day it was just something I dealt with and what age did that stuff continue for I mean I lived with him basically from two so like when my mom got arrested to like 8ish and then it all sort of starts to morph together so between 6 and 12 there was sort of some ongoing battles between my grandmother trying to get custody of me and my dad trying to keep me okay which eventually resulted in my dad having to let go and it was your mom's mom my mom's mom who's an angel like she's perfect in every way I love her to death but my dad's mom has since passed away she actually died from covid so not that long ago I tried to talk about this story um in 2019 and I had written a book and I was going to publish it and she threatened to sue me because of what I said about my dad and I was really scared I was in college at the time like about to graduate I was like I don't need this in my life so I didn't and so I waited to talk about it publicly until basically now right yeah have you published the book or not yet I have the book I'm waiting for a literate agent I'm I've got a couple people but um nothing lined up yet so I mean if it publishes great and if not I think I'll just think of it as like kind of a memoir if my kids ever want to know like the history of their family or something they can read it and understand where they came from so even though it probably be depressing I won't give it to them when they're three right exactly give them some time a little bit so at this at the time that you were 12 that's when you moved with your mom's mom and then did life like drastically change at that point for you I mean I grew up really poor my grandmother didn't have much and I I don't know if she would say that like she gave me everything that I needed and I would say my life was a little bit sponsored by the community like people would notice what I was going through and try to help me out a little bit um and our family out but I was like girly we're we're living on the land out here like you're growing your own onions like we're timing our trips to to the grocery store like I don't think that we're you know not poor um but she just didn't see things that way and I'm really glad glad she didn't um but yeah I grew up with nothing you know I mean I didn't have internet not no AC for a long period of time we did eventually get it when I was later but um yeah no internet my entire life uh no TV we did have one television but it didn't have cable it had like Sherlock Holmes DVDs that we had so that was about it um I learned to knit which is great uh great passion for someone that's raised like they're Amish but isn't oh my gosh yeah but yeah yeah so it was it was great I mean like I said really poor but that's not a bad thing I think it just it taught me to be really grateful for what I have now and I do kind of get overwhelmed by my life a little bit sometimes um it feels like a lot of responsibility to I mean you know neither of my parents went to college my grandparents didn't go to college I'm the first one this is like I'm treading new ground in a lot of ways and there just wasn't a lot of people to look out for me like in my earlier years I had to do it for myself and sometimes when I look back I just I feel like I don't deserve it in a way um or like something's going to be ripped out from under me and so it's formed all of these interesting little personality traits that I have like for example I can't sleep alone I've never been able to sleep in a bed alone like I'm married now and when my husband's gone I have to sleep with with a TV on cuz I won't sleep through the night um I slept with my grandmother when I was younger like in in our house I had my own bedroom but I would crawl into bed with her as soon as she'd fall asleep she'd be like you have to sleep in your own bed no because I would get these horrible nightmares about this van that would come pick me up in the middle of the night and do all these insane things to me that I had seen people do to each other unfortunately including Kay's daughter and her brother um so I would just have like those types of nightmares and I would tell my grandmother can I just tell it to you just let me say it so then you can tell me it's not real and she wouldd say no you scare me with those those are terrifying don't tell me please let me sleep I got to tell you she's like all right fine go ahead so I tell her but um and then she'd be like hi gosh I I'm not going to be able to sleep with the nightmares that you have um so can't sleep alone uh really hard time doing it even to this day and I'm 28 you know so um I also have kind of this fear of like missing out on stuff I think because I watched my parents waste so much of their life I was just like that would suck to die like we only have one of these and I mean to anyone that's like has a victim mentality that's like oh like I'm depressed or this horrible thing has happened to me or something I'm like wouldn't you do anything to change that I'm terrified of being stagnant like that I don't know that there's anything worse and people say like how have you gotten by like with these horrible things um honestly I think it's that I'm just terrified to not experience every human emotion by the time I die like I want to travel to every place I can I want to be friends with people and have like deep lasting relationships I want to have meaningful a meaningful marriage or kids one day or just like every experience that I am given I'm willing to take I would much rather feel the full spectrum of emotions and like including trauma and pain and see some of the worst things that a child can be exposed to I would rather all of that still than live a completely boring gray life I I would rather experience the whole spectrum and it's crazy to me that people sometimes don't right and but it is an interesting way to reframe it right it's like okay well that's true I have seen the worst so yeah you give a different perspective on it for sure yeah like it should remind people that like you're resilient you could if you've been through that why can't you accomplish extreme things right so and then do you have a relationship with your mom now no she did come to my wedding um she called me like not long ago and was like they didn't serve enough water at your wedding there was too much alcohol there I was like it was a wedding like I don't know what you want from me I was the bride you know um my husband and I paid for it ourselves and my family came but not for very long and they were just so so preoccupied with their own thing which is you know another we've always I've always kind of been the black sheep of the family because of my mom which is funny because they all have their own problems in one way or another like my uncle's homeless and schizophrenic and it's like it's like I'm not you guys like I I don't know it's just really weird it's a weird uh family Dynamic for sure but she just like got upset that there wasn't enough water being served to her at our wedding and there's too much alcohol and telling me that I'm going to become an alcoholic I mean you can't really blame her right cuz she's had no time to adjust to the way that the world is I mean I would be so overwhelmed if I was out here like when did she get out how long ago I want to say like fiveish years ago a few years ago yeah uh but I don't know it's she's gotten a lot from it like she got out of jail her first job out of jail was at Goodwill which I'm a huge fan of love me some Goodwill um and you know got a job at a a hotel cleaning after that did really well for herself had a cleaning business of her own and one day she was walking in my hometown where my grandmother lives her mom and was stopped by this guy and it was her High School boyfriend and they're married now wow and he just saw her walking and they're now married isn't that insane yeah that is talk about you know yeah and also like a Redemption Ark MH like so how is she doing would you say in life now I mean she's great great she just the biggest problem for her I think is uh the emotional disregulation yeah she just has no idea uh how to regulate anger or happiness like Joy she also the way she expresses things to me is sort of coming from a place of jealousy which I think is really common for mother and daughter relationships there can be like some resentment where it's like oh you're younger and I want to control the way your fate turns out because I made you and I didn't do what I wanted with my life and so now I have to pass it on it's like you can't you can't live like that with your with your child and so she has a little bit of that um which I've told her right um but it's just been a long and winding road for her I think she needs time to adjust the outside world and she needs to look a long take a long look in the mirror and think about the way that she affects other people I think because of what she's been through she's like oh I I can get away with this now because of what I've been through it's just not the case um and no one has ever let that happen for her so I don't know why she'd think that now would be any different but which is sort of sad in a way right but you know it is what it is and then what about your dad my dad the other day I was at a Starbucks and um I was I saw this call come up I was like hello cuz I you know sometimes they answer spam you never know right it's like it could be something that I need I was in the process of buying a house hello it's my dad and I just sat there and I was like I don't know what to say what do I say and I just sat there on the phone and he was like I just wanted to let you know I was thinking about you and how long had it been since you talked to him eight nine 10 maybe probably 10 years wow and he just randomly called yeah I mean I was probably 19 okay or yeah so maybe seven eight years maybe yeah I mean it's just what did you say back thanks and then I hung up wow and uh blocked the number in case that was a new one I have a long list of blocked numbers on my phone but um so would you say your relationship with him really kind of like ended after yeah well the last thing that he said to me so obviously I've had a bunch of relationships in my life just like anyone else I mean not everyone else but most and uh during one of them he really didn't like the way the guy was treating me and got really aggressive toward him come to find out for good reason but he ended up scaring the guy so bad that he actually like broke up with me and because my dad said I'm going to kill you and the guy believed him which he should because my dad's insane um actually Side Story on that so my dad had this girlfriend a few years back you can find this online too and uh so she he was living with her the name was Julianne and she had diabetes and so he was he was living with her taking care of her she also had her own daughter who he was living with so he had this kind of like new family basically um that started I don't know when I was maybe 14 13 and it had been going on for a while and she ends up dying from an insulin overdose and if you take a moment to reflect on the story I've shared my dad took care of her and my dad also graduated early to go to medical school and I don't know about you but that sounds pretty sus to me yeah um he did nothing happened to him I did there was a case opened on my dad because of all of the crimes that he was like kind of connected to but no one could really do anything about and I was like I literally I can't prove it but I know that this was my I know that this is what happened like I I just know um her daughter ended up calling me and was like your dad did this and I was like girl like I know like I support you like whatever you want me to do I'll do um but it was her mom you know can you imagine like right your mom just is being taken care of by this guy they're together and then all of a sudden this happens and she just has this like gut feeling that my dad did it which me too like you're not alone in that um so we talked for a while but she really resents me I think just because my dad is my dad you know but there's nothing that's been a long theme in my life too like when I was growing up like in high school and stuff my my mom published a journal in our newspaper in our hometown and it was about her crime and how she was coming back from it and how she was a Christian and she was encouraging people to convert and to Christianity and that Faith saved her and all these things so it's just like an Outreach thing she published it in our newspaper and a bunch of people from my high school saw it and were like uh what like and I hadn't really talked about my story before and it kind of forced me to just embrace it and be like yes my mom killed somebody and this is how it it affected me in the following ways here you go make your decisions and unfortunately a lot of those decisions were people's parents saying you can no longer be friends with her um so I lost a lot of friendships and this was I think when I was like you know 13 14 I was right about to go into high school um and because of that my grandmother my mom's mom sent me to live with my aunt in Els Salvador cuz she lived there she married a guy from El Salvador so my cousins lived there and uh I was sent away to live there for like 2 years so that they could the news would blow over and I could maybe save some relationships in high school and then I ended up having like it was fine in high school I mean a lot of people didn't like me still we grew up in a small religious town so and then you moved back after the two years there no yeah so I I lived in El Salvador and then I moved back to the us back to my hometown yeah so um I'm glad I got that experience because I feel like it helped me see the world in a new way and if I ever had the chance of being a victim like that definitely took it away just seeing another country that lives completely differently and understanding you know try trying to learn another language and being humbled over and over again by not knowing the culture or how to act in certain situations or how to form friendships in that culture it just it was very humbling um so I think it made me a better person for sure but and then when you got back you said that it was you were in high school and then it was fine pretty much with like the people around you yeah I mean I still the the guy I dated in high school I dated him from high school to college we were together for quite a while um and great guy but his mom just would never let it go there's always something she just like would give me a hard time anytime I was at their house I mean I dated him for years every Christmas I would hear about it she would make like remarks at my grandmother like any holidays we would spend with you know if my grandmother would come around his family she she would just make comments about like how she wouldn't know what good wine taste did like or like how to act in certain situations because of our pedigree in some way it was just like a very odd situation and eventually I got really sick of it and the guy like never stood up for me so I just eventually like came into myself and I was like I can't be with somebody like this this is not going to work for me um and I really thought I was going to be with him forever but at the end of the day that's why our relationship ended so kind of affected me for a long time and I do think that sorry I do think that it's interesting and incredible and I always say this that you know the way that you grow up it's like you have this decision of for the most part I feel like you have a decision of what path you choose to take you know you either let your childhood and the things that have happened to you define you or kind of make you and build you up and lead you to a better life and kind of like you said like embracing it and speaking out about it and making other people know that you know this happened to me and it's true traumatic but I'm living as normally as I can and I'm kind of you know I'm open about it and that's great but it really is interesting to me like how different like you even said how how different your life could be because of the things that you experience at such a young age because you know obviously being dealt those types of cards that's one thing but then even seeing the things that you saw yeah I feel like that on its own could have easily LED you down such a different path I think I've just been terrified of it like I just like seeing it from such an early age I was like this is not ever something I want to be involved with like I watched my parents be addicted to all kinds of different things watched my dad's girlfriend shoot up heroin and how ugly that made her like truly and I really do think it's sad because people get sucked in by this addiction and I was actually just talking to somebody the other day like a therapist and she was saying do you think you have the addiction Gene because it's a gene that actually can express itself in your in your own body and I said no I don't have it there's no way like I can I have like a drink of alcohol once in a while like just for fun you know go out party like I went to college you know it's just never affected me abnormally like I like my weed gummies to go to sleep they're legal in my state and um yeah I just I've just never had an issue and so I was like oh I certainly don't have it and she's like I raise you this I think maybe you do it's just to something else because like my all of my aunts and un Les have their like one thing like one of them is like really into schooling and she like can't let that go she's just been she has like a doctorate now she's like super smart but is addicted to like that next phase of her life like achieving more and more uh from a professional setting um so I don't know if I do I think maybe you know I'm sort of addicted to like experiencing everything that I can like if that's one but like I I genuinely feel like might be out of fear like I'm am just terrified of dying too soon or dying um before I can do everything right if I if there was like something that could turn me into a vampire and I could live to 150 I would I would do it instantly I want to live like for as long as possible and people are like well what about when you're old like are you going to be in pain I I don't care I want to be as old as I possibly can be experiencing everything right so I don't know it's just expressed itself in these weird ways yeah and I think too for some people I'm sure you know growing up around that and seeing that even if it does scare them they might be intrigued like CU I feel like some children would have the mindset of like well why did my parents choose this type of Lifestyle over me like let me try it and see why like if it really was worth it that's a good point I've never even thought about it like that yeah cuz I think because really if you think about it so many people can take these different paths not even like thinking oh well I'm like knowingly I am choosing to go down the worst of the two like it could just be curiosity because you grew up seeing it or because it caused so much trauma or you felt like this specific experience or drug or whatever or addiction took a parent away from you or took an experience away from you that's a great point because I actually found Kay's daughter who I'll call Mia like a few months ago because I went looking um after I started like thinking about this story again and like reflecting on it and I was like I wonder what happened to her so I did find her um and unfortunately there was like a a big background there on like different things that she was connected to and arrests and um I remember thinking back my our my dad who kind of served as her dad because her dad was also not around that much um but my dad would drop us off at the skating rink in the town that we lived in at the time and go hang out with you know her mom and you know I guess they would act like they were taking care of the kids meanwhile they just dropped us off at a skating rank there was a manager working there that definitely was into little kids um and would always give us free stuff we'd come back there and he'd give us like free skates every time because obviously you know my dad I mean my dad made some money he was working in a carlot but like you know wasn't rolling in do that's for sure um but they would he would give us money to play with like the games like the machines you know those like n like '90s machines they have in like those arcade games that's what they're called so you know play with the arcade Gam um he would give us Sharpies to like write in the stall to like write things and be bad you know he'd like encourage bad behavior yeah give us skates give us free lockers and I was always like this is weird and um the girl who I'm referring to as Mia uh would spend a lot of time with him and only now looking back do I realize what H what was going on but back then I was just like this seems weird I don't think we should do this like he seems I don't like what I'm feeling and um I remember one time we We snuck out of the house and uh went to the skating rink so we were supposed to be at the house with them and we' snuck out went to the skating rink to play and he let us uh go up this hill like that was in the neighborhood so drove us up there and let us skate down the hill and I ended up falling and like really scraped up my shoulder and my knee and to this day they I still have scars from it because it was such a hard fall and when I got my grandmother picked me up that next day from school and she's like what happened I said oh I felt the skating ring she said this isn't happen though skating Rank and um so she was she I remember her having like a heated conversation with my dad and saying he took them up there and let them skate and look what happened and he's like okay I'll take care of it and the I don't know if these two things are related but knowing my dad it seems like they would be the skating rank ended up closing down and we never saw that guy again I don't know but I'll just say that so the whole rank shut down the whole ring shut down the genius in him I don't know man I don't know so I know that you said that um I guess kind of like when everybody started finding out about your mom it was kind of the something where you were like all right I'm just going to embrace it like this happened to me whatever um but then I also know that you mentioned that you post on Tik Tok about your story kind that that kind social it or it's actually the silliest reason so my friend and I had a competition because she like went viral on Tik Tok one time and she was like and I said it's easy to go viral on Tik Tok that's ridiculous I go viral on Tik Tok tomorrow she said no you can't and so we had this like little bet and I was to see who could get more follows and likes like in a month MH and she was and so I I was losing and I was like all right it's time to pull out it's time to pull out the big guns so I posted it being like oh it'll just go viral and it'll just blow over it didn't blow over everyone was there were people from the town that my I lived with and with my dad that were messaging me like I remember this drug bust like I remember the lady that worked at the front desk at their car lot messaged me and it was like I have thought about you every single year my entire life I cannot believe you've turned out so well like you're so well spoken whatever I I've always thought about you I always wondered what happened to you and um yeah so it's was just like crazy how viral it went I mean I think it was like 3 million or something I mean that's not even in the grand scheme of thing it's not crazy but 3 million people like a lot of people right so and the fact that it reached like people in your hometown well oh it definitely did cuz I I know that the algorithm is supposed to be like kind of random but it's not like it was pushing that [ __ ] out to my family and stuff yeah so did you just make one or have you like kind of stuck with it and talked about it in depth so I made the one and it it went really viral and people just had so many questions and and they were like saying you can't say toddler about like certain things that were happening during the time I was growing up with my dad and I was like yeah but that's because I said toddler because I started Living him with him when I was like two yeah but people worked up about random things as the internet does and so I made another video to clarify and then another part because people were like I mean when I say thousands like it was like tens of thousands of comments I think of people like I had to use one of those online systems that would like go through comments like tell you what they were saying to like filter them out like a like an AI tool to like tell me what to answer and so um I ended up making like five or six parts um but then I privated them because I was like I don't really need these to stay here and I won the challenge I won the challenge and then I figured I would talk about it on the podcast just to have it like out there and say it all in one place and because right after I posted those um hundreds of people were reaching out to me I mean I had my Tik Tok messages open by accident I I was a new to Tik Tok okay and so there was like a hundreds of com of messages some people were telling me stories that were like so sad and I took time to read them all and reply because it really seemed like they needed somebody to tell like one girl was like I've never told anyone in this my whole life and I feel like I need to tell somebody and I feel like I can tell you and told me and it was just like a heartwrenching story like so dark and um I just I sat there like all night I stayed up and talked to her and I was like you know this is like okay we can get through this whatever and um so anyway she's been following me ever since but just things like that I was like if I can do that on a grand scale and make people feel like that that they can tell their story too because what happened to me had nothing to do with me at the end of the day I didn't choose any of that I didn't choose who my parents were I didn't choose that people in my hometown hated me because of what my parents did um I I think like I do live with guilt about it which is weird like it's a weird thing to experience you always question things you did as a kid um like oh did did I look weird when I did that or did someone not like me because of X Y or Z of the way I said the story or did I overshare or did I unders share and what I've realized after looking back is a lot of people are just reflecting on their own experiences when they're like looking at you like that because i' get some weird looks but I think a lot of the time they're just like realizing that they've forgotten about something that they don't want to think about and it's coming to the surface and I really am a believer that you shouldn't put things so far tucked away in your own S I really think that's not good yeah and I think too like you just mentioned it is so important for other people it doesn't even matter the age at this point but for other people to know that obviously not everybody grows up the same you know and some people grow up there's like a spectrum of how dark things can get for sure and it's heartbreaking and it's terrifying and it's scary but I think that it is so important especially if there's people like you in the sense that I feel like turn out to be so well spoken and so open and so good but at the same time not everybody I I feel like people still try to suppress things especially if they turn out one way because they're like I don't want people to know that there's even remotely another side of me like you know what I mean that's negative because I think that that can become a fear also like I feel like you want to be so opposite of what you were raised to see and the people that you were raised around that like becomes something where you almost become ashamed of it and you don't want to talk about it but like you have been me mentioning basically this whole episode is it's important to just embrace it and not be ashamed of it because it happens in so many different ways more than we think and I feel like if there's shame around what happened to you or you know different experiences or traumas you've had then I feel like it kind of just makes you feel more isolated like even if you're doing well deep down within yourself I feel like you're going to feel some form of isolation or like well these people don't really know who I am or what I went through and and what's the point of that you know I think it's better for people to know who you are and what you've been through because then they can appreciate where you are today and that's you're speaking about it that's really true I think that's happened to me a lot recently that's been a theme of my life because you know as I've built my different relationships and I have like my best friends that I've been friends with for you know 10 11 been 20 years um it starts to come out more that the people that really do know you the best that can really be there for you are the people that know every side of you and I think when you've you know spent your life in a mildewy shower with lights that don't turn on or hungry stealing school lunch or watching your dad's girlfriend shoot heroin and not know what's going on no matter what it is or if it's all three or or even more than that yeah um it really comes down to the people that know you know that that affects you even if it doesn't look the way you expect it to absolutely yeah and uh my husband always tells me you know whenever it comes up I always say like you know should I share that like somebody asked me this should I say like I mean it's kind of related he's like I mean it's part of everything that you are like it's part of every part of your personality is defined by what's happened to you as much as you have tried and failed to Escape that fact um but I think that at the end of the day you have two choices you can let it Define you and let it guide you to be whatever you want because you recognize your own resilience or you can let it Define you and you can follow the path or you can fall off right and um so I think it's just that choice if you if you can't have the choice of it happening to you or not you might as well have the choice of how you recover from it I guess that's just always been the way I look at it yeah and I I 100% agree with you and it's sad because I think that you know some people don't have the the strength and the the mental strength the physical strength whatever it may be or maybe you know they're around it so much and they don't feel that there's a way out that they're almost like predestined for that future and it's so sad because I feel like especially with addiction and and drugs and lifestyles of all of that sort even like with I feel like the dancing the stripping it's like it's not easy I feel like to get out of I think it's it's for a lot of people that didn't grow up that way it could be easy for them to say like oh there's so many different things that you could be doing but like that's all that they were that's all that they know that's what they were raised on you know what I mean so it's like it is sad too that I feel like some people you know I feel like at a certain point you have a choice but like if so much happens so young it's almost like your your brain doesn't even understand yeah the other choice or the opposite of what you've seen or experienced it that's so true and I think yeah a lot of people don't realize that I think um I have a friend that I've been friends with for like 20 years and she didn't grow up the best either but I always text her when I feel a certain way or like if I get impostor syndrome or I feel guilty or like I don't deserve something good that happens in my life because I feel like I've made some kind of deal somewhere along the way I get this like weird another weird part of my personality that's the thing like you said it really is all part of what you've gone through like that's why your body and your mind reacts the way it does yeah so we just bought a house and I texted her the other day and I said why why do I get this and I was just like crying because I just you know after after my life I was in a Lowe's parking lot the other day and I went in there to look at um like shower drains like cuz I wanted a brass one how stupid is that like I I'm not happy with my black Builder grade perfectly fine never used like shower drain that's insane like my drain didn't use to even work when I was a kid I would stand in dirty water because but I think that too it's I think it the interesting and special thing about that though is that you realize it like you're aware of it it's how that doesn't mean but that doesn't mean you're not deserving of it like I almost feel like it's kind of it's one of those things that you could look at it and be like this is so stupid like I know the opposite of this but it's also one of those things that you kind of can look back and smile and see like how opposite and how far you've come and and be like wow like I grew up this way and now I have these opportunities I think people describe it as something called survivors guilt like you have like I have this feeling of like this other girl I went to school with or my dad's girlfriend's daughter or so and so and it's like I watched all these horrible things happen to them and why didn't that happen I don't know a weird thing but so I asked my friend the other day I said um you know why why me like how do I get this and she responded and it's it's usually my screen saver um she said uh you never stopped believing you were still going to have the life you dreamed of and deserve you worked hard anyways you showed up anyways you smiled anyways you loved people anyways you kept trying as hard as you possibly could always you were grateful for your life even when it was absolute [ __ ] that's why you get it yeah and like I guess that helped that helped me reframe something and I guess anyone that has Survivor guilt that's a good way to look at it like maybe you deserve it if you just do it anyway just show up anyway just smile anyway get through it anyway and then eventually one day um The Challenge has passed and because you did all those things you've earned this life that you can now enjoy and I know that's kind of a [ __ ] up way to look at it especially for someone that maybe like from the outside doesn't have their own trauma or survivors guilt but if you do like maybe that's a good way to look at it but too I think that you're even by you coming on here and sharing your story that takes a lot I mean I tell people this all the time it takes a lot of courage and strength to do even if it's something that you kind of have accepted and embraced and you're like open about it it it still takes a lot to sit down and just lay everything out there and just be like kind of from start to finish like okay this is how I grew up this is the things I saw you know this is what my parents did because a lot of times I think you mentioned this as well but people will or not and they shouldn't do this but people will Define Who You Are by someone else's actions just because like you surround yourself with them or they're your parents or they're your friends and that's not really a fair thing like we're all individual we're all our own people but you know for you to come on here and share what you've been through even if you're accepting of it it's not easy like you know there is still like anybody could look back at that whether it's yourself looking at the Young you or me like listening to it it's heartbreaking and it's sad and it's not an easy thing to reflect on so the fact that you're willing to be so open and share those things like I said it makes other people feel like okay like I'm not alone or what I went through you know it's not okay but she gives me hope that I I'm not failure because of it or I should I'm not a certain way because of the decisions that my parents made exactly right and the other thing that I noticed is when people would I would talk to people about this if they were teachers they saw it a little bit differently because they see so many kids that go into school and they like don't have their teeth brushed or their hair brushed or they realize they've been in the same outfit or their parents aren't picking them up or they go to the principal's office to try to get their parents to come in and their parents still don't come and they just have absolutely no uh connection to their children and being a teacher like if you really care like that must be so difficult because I had some teachers like that that were like trying to watch out for me and just like failing over and over again at like trying to get this kid help and they just don't get it that must really I mean that must suck right because it's like as a teacher there I feel like there's only so much you can do it's like you have to become like the parent but in a teacher way which is so sad it's even harder now because there's like all these laws and people get upset if you take their kids somewhere like versus back then like teachers would drive me to my grandmother's house right cuz they'd be like her dad's not going to get her like it's 6:00 p.m. you know what I mean um like she's walking or I'm taking her so I think like nowadays you can't you can't do that someone will be like I don't know what you did with my kid or what snack did you give them it's like I don't know I just think it's really too bad because teachers really do so much they put so much on the line every day just to give children like a barely normal life away from home that they a lot of times don't otherwise get and it's just a real shame it is it's heartbreaking it's sad and it's really unfortunate the different things that children go through and people in general and you know all we can do is spread awareness and talk about it and that's what you did and that's important and incredible yeah you can do it that's right and you have this platform too for that reason right like it you are passionate about bringing people's stories to the surface and not letting them just stagnate and become nothing it's like let's just Embrace what's happening in the world and the real day-to-day life of people or their backgrounds or their childhoods and I mean I listen to some of those and I'm like gosh it couldn't get any worse than that but like people say that it it's just no you can't compare right they're they're all like in their own way Own Way special in a way they're special too is you never know how something big or small is going to affect somebody everybody takes things differently like what could affect me in a certain way could be so much better or worse for somebody else so that's another reason why you can compare because it's like you don't know what that did to someone or didn't do or you know how they did or did not get through it so but that's why too that's I think that's the beauty of you know and what makes it so unique is that we are all so different so we have we can relate in different ways and that's why I tell people all the time I'm like look when you come on here and you talk about what you've been through just because somebody hasn't experienced exactly your story or exactly what you've experienced doesn't mean that they can't relate or they haven't had similar feelings and that's why it's so important for people to speak up and talk about it and I think you know feelings sometimes too like talking about our emotions it's like I don't know not everybody wants to do it it's hard it's not easy and you know I think a lot of times you can be looked at as like sensitive and and emotional but that's the beauty of life like who wouldn't want to be that why would you want to be cold and dry and and not relate to people like I can't imagine not being like wanting to relate to somebody that's like I mean that's what I do that's what I want to do you know so it's it's important and I think it makes human connection really really special so true I was uh talking to a girl the other day and again one of the people that reached out and um she was like yeah I I went through a divorce when I was 10 my parents went through a div div and she said I know that might sound silly compared to you and I said it really doesn't because I that seems so incredibly hard to me because if you think about for me it's like my car my parents are characters in my life I never was emotionally bonded to either of them I was able to separate myself right and become my own person and who I wanted to be versus for her she had this incredible attachment to both her parents and their relationship with each other and then it breaks and people change during a divorce right that seems incredibly difficult to me I don't know how I would have handled something like that versus you know just being able to say Well they're characters I never bonded to my mom and so that's why it hasn't affected me or my dad has antisocial personality disorder so I can kind of just put that in a box and call it what it is um versus I don't know just yeah and it is different right and it's almost like too I it's interesting because I feel like you kind of because you viewed your parents's characters you kind of were able to form your own like lifestyle and choices like I want this for myself and like you kind of molded and meshed what you wanted for yourself and exactly you didn't let you know what I mean like yeah I will say my grandmother is a big part of that like think the older I get the more I'm like I'm just my grandmother yeah like I love animals as you know and um I'm very in touch with nature and so is she like when I would be upset as a kid she would tell me go tell the trees about it yeah and they can handle it do do it to one of the bigger ones though cuz the little ones are a little sensitive you don't want to talk to them badly we want them to grow I love that and so I would do that like that sounds crazy to some people but um you know we were just always like that that's just how my family was or I guess me and my grandmother not really our family but um yes the older I get the more I just see myself like I'm watering my little money tree and I'm like okay like how are you doing this morning and are you okay no but yes like yeah she's good no no that's great though that's really sweet awesome well seriously you did such a good job thanks and thank you for coming on here and opening up and sharing your story well I'm I'm happy to be here so thank you