The ACEs of Grief: Understanding Trauma & Healing with Honey Badger (Part 1)

[00:00:06] Hey there, listeners. Welcome to Shit That Goes Under Our Heads, the podcast where we normalize conversations around mental health. That's right. I'm Dirty Skittles and alongside my amazing co-host, you, Rex, we are here to share stories and tips from our incredible guests. Each episode, we deep dive into struggles and triumphs of mental health, offering practical advice and heartfelt support. Because no one should feel alone in their journey. Join us as we break the stigma and build a community of understanding and compassion.

[00:00:35] Tune in and let's start talking about the shit that goes on in our heads. One, welcome back to another episode of Shit That Goes On In Our Heads. I have my amazing co-host, Dirty Skittles. And today we have Ruth, a.k.a. you will know her from our very first interview, Honey Badger. Welcome back, Ruth. I am so excited to have you on the podcast.

[00:01:04] Thank you so much. I'm very honored to be back and to talk about something that is deep to my heart and talking about grief. Okay. All right. I mean, I'm happy to hear your story. I'm sad that we didn't have like music for your name revealed because people want to know who Honey Badger is, you know? So, no, I'm just kidding. I just... That would be amazing. Yeah.

[00:01:35] This is the right platform for that type of talent, but you know. Where'd she call me the raccoon? I forgot about that. I forgot about that. That was an amazing conversation, by the way. It saved lives. It did. Somebody somewhere is thanking us for that. Somebody somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. That lady talking about some kind of foamy, the raccoon. Oh, that was... Yeah. So, yeah, I'm here.

[00:02:05] I've thought about this a lot. My experiences, I think, stem as an educator. And so I try to take the approach of like grief and what does it mean and read all the books. And you can read all the books that you want, but I think unless you really go through some profound experiences

[00:02:24] that you'll never understand what it's like for someone who has or is experiencing some really profound loss in their lives. And I just... Yeah. So I went through a rough time, but what I want to open this with is that I think for people in general, that it's really hard to talk about this, right? Nobody wants to talk about the subject of losing someone.

[00:02:54] Nobody wants to talk about what it's like to support somebody who's experienced loss. Nobody wants to like even open up to share what it's like to experience when you experience loss. So I think that's a... I mean, I've been talking to people who've experienced loss lately, and I think we have this common thread that the expectation is really pretty messed up as a society.

[00:03:18] In the United States, anyway, I can't talk about other countries, but we don't like to talk about it. We don't like to talk about all the hard stuff. So I start with like... There is a screening assessment that you can take, and it's called ACEs, and it's Adverse Childhood Experiences. I'm not sure if any of you are familiar with that.

[00:03:43] It's a 10-question questionnaire, and it screens you for your risk of adverse situations that you've experienced up to the age of 18. And what the questionnaire talks about and asks is... And I'm going to kind of warn you that there's some trigger here. So if you're sensitive, I'm really sorry. I take care of yourself.

[00:04:11] But it talks about, have you experienced physical, emotional, or sexual abuse? Have you experienced physical and emotional neglect? Have you... Is there household dysfunction, including mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence, divorce, incarceration? It even could be... The questions really aren't about school environments and bullying, but I really think that counts. And bereavement is a big one.

[00:04:38] And poverty, which is loaded with risk factors and the most vulnerable globally, really. And the statistics are that there was a study in 95 to 97. And the study had 1,700 people answering these questions when they were in for healthcare. So it was very interesting. Of those 1,700 people, 87% experienced only 0 to 3 ACE scores.

[00:05:05] But 64% of those participants had at least 1 ACE score. So that's a fairly low risk. And 12.4% experienced 4 plus ACE scores. And I have eight. I have eight. I have eight. When I first did this in early, like mid-2000s, I'm like, ooh, I have eight. What does that mean?

[00:05:29] But the impact of this is that you have an increased risk for negative health outcomes such as cancer, smoking, alcoholism, severe obesity, COPD, heart disease, diabetes, suicide attempts, drug use, missed work, stroke, broken bones, depression, STDs, risky factors. Right? So that's pretty imperative to kind of connect the dots here. What our childhood experiences are versus how we are now as adults.

[00:05:58] And it doesn't mean that if you have a high ACE score that you are going to be doomed and gloomed, but it does mean that you really need to pay attention because you are more at risk for developing cancer, for example. So, and I think from what I've read that the tools become so important that as of June 1st, 2019, it's a standard of care in the United States when people are seeking mental health support.

[00:06:24] So before you seek support, they should be giving you this assessment to see what your risk factors are. And the reason why I bring this up is because I think thinking about all the loss I have experienced in my life, our family did not handle that in a very healthy way. My first lost experience was I had a cousin who was two years old, who had was died in an accidental, accidental drowning.

[00:06:54] And I remember my mother being on the phone with my aunt and she was just very cold and asked what happened and then just hung up the phone. I mean, that was it. And then I asked, I knew something was wrong. I asked her what is wrong. And she's like, well, your cousin Tim is dead. And I'm like, oh, okay. I'm like six years old. I didn't know how to handle that. I'm like, I loved this little boy.

[00:07:20] He was just this shining light in the universe, but I just didn't know how to handle it. I wouldn't talk to my siblings and they were kind of cold about it. And we never talked about it again, ever. And funny thing is my mother never talked to my aunt again either. So that was like, I'm not sure what happened here. I know death is hard, but I had a very unhealthy start to coping.

[00:07:46] And I had a very unhealthy start to kind of comprehending what just happened. And that kind of carried over to like today, it carries over with me. And I feel really bad about the fact that he died accidentally and that my mother couldn't like even have a conversation with me or the rest of us just to say, okay, this is what happened. This is why it happened, you know, anything you need, but times are a little bit different then.

[00:08:15] But I don't know. I just feel like that set me up in this whole situation of working forward and trying to work with children and try to give them what they need to survive in this world. So I do have some recommendations as far as books for children to deal with death. So I can always give those titles to you and you can post them if you'd like to. I mean, I think for sure people might be would be interested in that.

[00:08:45] Some really good ones, too, that are recommended by therapists. So I'll tell you, Ruth, that when I started my therapy, I had to take that assessment, probably because I was like really fucked up in the head at the time. But it did open up doors, right?

[00:09:03] It made me understand like why what had happened in that for that last quarter of 2022 affected me so tremendously that I didn't know how to handle it. And I and I think like with your mom, you know, back in the day, nobody talked about shit like that. No, they did not. Not even one iota. No, I think that's very true. And it was a very unhealthy like, oh, we don't talk about it.

[00:09:32] It didn't happen. Right. And that just impacts you as a young child. And it kind of it set the tone of communication for my family for the rest of their existence as we as long as we were a nuclear family. I think that set the precedent, which was really unfortunate. Yeah. So I think that. Coping with death, I mean, it's always tragic. And I think.

[00:09:59] I you know, it's like there's so much going on with people's lives. We really, truly never know the story behind somebody else. And I think that's why it's so important to be kind to people, because you just don't know what their backstory is. You don't know if you're just going to like give them a little snark that day. That's going to set them off for the rest of the day and maybe impact their life for the rest. You know, I just feel that it is. I don't know.

[00:10:29] So I feel also that until you experience like the tragic loss of like, I mean, like during the pandemic, let's go there. It was really super hard for everybody. Right. We were all closed down. We didn't know what was happening. We were afraid to go out in public. And for those people who have had parents in nursing homes, I my heart is with you because I had my mother in a nursing home at that time and it was shut down. She had dementia.

[00:10:58] So I couldn't visit her. I couldn't even call because of a family dynamic, which was a very unfortunate. So I just had to live my like for a year without knowing what was happening with my mom. And that was really disheartening. And my sister, Diane, at the time, she was like, OK, well, I'm from out of state and I can call because I can play dumb. So, yeah, go for it.

[00:11:27] So she would kind of get she couldn't get the information that was HIPAA related because of the weirdness of our family dynamic. But she knew she was OK. Right. So when the lift happens that in New York State, you could finally go back and visit your loved ones in the nursing homes. We had to make appointments. So we made an appointment to go visit my mom and it had been a little bit over a year at this point.

[00:11:53] And when we went there, it's I just don't know how to describe the lack of humanity in a nursing home. I mean, I know they do the best that the staffing can. I know that these there's a place where these elderly need to go to be cared for. But when you go on to the floor where she was a risk because she was a flight risk, she had sundowners.

[00:12:21] She was kind of a challenging patient to deal with. But when you step off the elevator and go on to the floor, I mean, the first thing that hit me was the stench of feces and urine. And I'm walking down the hallway and I'm just kind of like in shock because no one should have to live like that. No one that is just it's there's no dignity in that at all.

[00:12:46] And we went to see my mom and I wasn't even sure she would recognize me. And I think she masked a lot. So she would pretend she did. But she didn't give me a very hard time as much as my other sister who came with me. But when we went into her room, her bed was stripped. She had dirty hair that was like past her shoulder, which was would never happen if she could.

[00:13:15] I have any say about it. And I think the hardest thing when I say, hey, mom, because you're being very cheerful. How are you? How's it going? And she looked at me and I said, it's been a long time, mom. I mean, what's going on? And she just looked at me and she was, I thought you were dead. I mean, and I don't know if she because of the dementia. I don't know if she really meant it or it's been a long time or do you know what I mean? I don't know where she was coming from with that statement.

[00:13:46] That's a lot to shoulder. Like, oh, you thought we were dead? Well, we were in a pandemic, mom. Everybody was having had to stay home and we wouldn't we couldn't come see you. And and then she would like pick at my sister. So it's my poor sister. She always got the brunt like that. I don't understand why. But so the grief.

[00:14:09] Of losing a parent or a loved one, the long goodbye, that is so hard because you have to let go of everything you knew about that person. And now this is your reality. And this reality could be just a somebody you don't even recognize, but you care for. So I guess that's a really tough situation.

[00:14:42] And while she was there, my I had another sibling, my heart sibling who had been diagnosed with cancer in 2015. She had an aggressive breast cancer, metastasized. And that whole situation helping her with her cancer.

[00:15:02] This is really not my story to tell, but as a person who cares about another person, just watching her go through all of that, all the testing, all the treatments, calling me and saying, hey, my medicine came today and had one of those little hazard signs on it.

[00:15:20] You know, it's like, oh, gosh, I don't even know what to say and what that kind of treatment will do to you physically killing your healthy cells along with your bad cells and just being her support for eight years. Every week we would have a conversation. We would have video calls and just talk because she just needed that that stable. And I needed that, too.

[00:15:46] So my mother passed away in 2021 and my sister that she died in November, like the day before her birthday. And in December that year, my sister decided that she was just going to stop treatment because it wasn't doing any good. And it was terrible on her body.

[00:16:08] And the answer at this point was in her bones and in her response on her lungs and her liver. So we spent the quality time with her, which I think was fantastic. We were able to fly her up that summer and we spent a great summer with her in her last days. And she knew we knew it was going to be fairly quick. She was pretty frail. She couldn't eat very well.

[00:16:38] So I she left in late July, I believe. And she passed away in early September. And that was the hardest thing because all my families, most of my family, hey, you want to go down there? I said, I can't go down. You can't get really inexpensive, cheap flights that are that short of a notice. And you can't get back. You have to get back on the airlines time. And I can't afford to miss that much work.

[00:17:07] I don't know what I'm going to be doing to being able to help her in that moment. And I think that was that flight or freeze situation for me. It was like, I don't want to deal with it. Just don't like it's too much information, too much things going on. And it was a very difficult thing for me to see her pass away. But I know she passed away, not in pain.

[00:17:31] So and it was fairly quick once her process and her diagnosis, like we can't help you anymore with one of those last visits. I knew it would be fairly quick after that. So while I am dealing with that and I'm dealing with like the funny thing about my mom, not every person has a great relationship with their mother. Right.

[00:17:58] And it was funny when my father had passed away in 2015, that was like my that was crushing to me. We had a tumultuous relationship growing up and he was a researcher and he was kind of emotionally unavailable. But he was an interesting guy and he had a lot of great stories. And we became really closer as I was an adult and he was aging and he would tell me the most amazing stories. This man lived such a wonderful, interesting life.

[00:18:29] And he called the shots when he was diagnosed with heart failure. He called the shots. He was going to die at home. And that was probably the most gracious, beautiful death ever imaginable to be able to honor somebody's wishes about dying at home. How peaceful and how controlling and safe you feel when you're in that situation. So I yeah.

[00:18:56] And the grief of that death can be really complicated with family. Right. I mean, you never expect your family or people who are close to you feel, OK, we having a situation that's an emergency. We're all going to work together to help this person through their last days or months on this planet. Well, oh, no, I picked the short end of the straw.

[00:19:24] Family can be really difficult, really super difficult to deal with. Because there are there's egos involved and there's I hate to say in my feeling about this particular case with my family. There was money grab, not really money grabs, but thing grabs. Right. Like, oh, here's the house. I'm getting the house.

[00:19:49] And my father, since he is not living in that house right now, I am going to do some lawyer work. And the house is now mine. Right. The property is now mine. So and to me, honestly, it's never about the things with family. To me, I don't care. I would be happy with like some little tchotchke that would make me happy that I have memories over someone. And that's what I hold precious. Right. Right.

[00:20:19] But some I will tell you that if you have never experienced death in your family and you think that your family members are going to be rational human beings, I want to very strongly caution you that have these conversations now with your family. And if you have these conversations now with your family, you will get a sense of maybe how it's going to fall down.

[00:20:47] So in that, always have your legal documentation very set up and very clear and very finalized because it will be a free for all if it is not. And you don't think that Uncle Tim from Wisconsin is going to come at you and demand all this stuff. I'm making that up, of course. But you just never know what's going to come out of the woodwork.

[00:21:11] So always, if you can, have that documentation set up and make sure that the wishes of you or your loved ones are very well known because I think that is that cautionary tale. It was crazy chaos with my siblings. And that's a form of grief, right? Because you grew up with these people, your sisters and your brother, and you feel like there is some camarade to my siblings.

[00:21:39] And that's a form of grief, right? Because you grew up with these people, your sisters and your brother, and you feel like there is some camaraderie there. There is family there. We're always going to be adults and pull this together. And unfortunately, it's really not true, and especially in my experience. So I ended up actually after I deal with things with humor.

[00:22:03] I'm just going to say, right now, here and there, like, okay, I had my sister, like, it got really super weird. One of my sisters, for my other sister, emailed all of us siblings together and said, hey, just want to let you know that there's been somebody in your household that's been diagnosed, not household, but somebody in your family that's been diagnosed with skin cancer and to get yourself checked. And I'm like, well, that doesn't feel good. What does this mean?

[00:22:32] Because, of course, I'm compassionate. I want to make sure whoever this is that they're feeling supported and they have everything that they need because that's who I am. And I'm like, okay, well, why are you coming up and saying all this? Why isn't this person who has cancer? Because why doesn't she, if she wanted me to know, she'd be telling me. But it got into this really weird circle of back and forth.

[00:22:56] And I'm like, I'm just saying, I am just saying, if you, if this person wanted me to know that they had skin cancer, I feel this person should say it to me themselves and not go through this third party. And then finally, the sister, of course, who had skin cancer was like, ah, you're such a bitch. Sorry, I'm just very clear. I just want to respect boundaries.

[00:23:24] And I also want to say that I really want to be supportive. And it just went around. And it's just, finally, she just said, you need mental help or something like that. And I was like, okay. I wrote back, somebody in your household has been diagnosed with mental illness. And you must be screened. You know what? I would have done the same shit, though. I'm not going to lie. How many siblings?

[00:23:52] I have five siblings and three step-siblings. Are you guys close in age? I'm the youngest of all of them. I am four years younger than my brother. And my eldest sister is 12 years older than I. So it was just chaos. And I believe my mother, extremely manipulative and set up this precedent with my older sister. Definitely a codependence with her.

[00:24:22] Very unhealthy communication. Very manipulative. Very, I mean, it got to the point where when I was visiting her and she was a little more cohesive, that there was a journal that you would write in every day. And because she was so petty and so mean, I would take the humor side of it. And I would say, oh, yes, mom and I played poker today. I won the amethyst ring. You know, I know that's really passive aggressive. And it's horrible. But was my also my coping mechanism. Like, you know, I'm just trying to communicate with you.

[00:24:52] And then all you're doing is really giving me a hard time and dictating, like, when I can show up and when I can do this and when I can do that. And I just it just didn't feel organic. And I'm just definitely I'm more of an organic approach person. Like, what do you need support with? I will be there. No, I don't need support. You're not going to come over. You're not going to do this. OK. So when my granddaughter was born, I took her over to see my mom. And all of a sudden that was a problem. You know, you're just a Disney daughter and you're not helping and you're not this.

[00:25:21] It was very toxic. What is a Disney daughter? Cinderella, maybe? I don't know. I will tell you. Sure. I'll tell you that death and major life illnesses bring out the absolute worst in families. The absolute worst. One hundred percent. They really do. And I think that so when my mother had passed and then my sister had died in the following September,

[00:25:52] and in the meantime, I have my family that I'm trying to deal with. And my husband's not doing great. And I'm really worried about him. And I've been having conversations with him in passing. Like, and I kind of laugh about it now. I remember that summer. I'm like, I'm looking around the garage and I'm like, you know, because he spent a lot of time out there. I'm like, I really need you.

[00:26:14] I would really like you to pack up some of this stuff and just make sure that it's taken care of because I don't want to do it when you pass away. There's a lot of stuff in there. He collected things. And so all the walls are covered. And I will add, they still are. And so I was like, and I said, you know, I would really like it if you would have a will or you need to let me know what you want in life. Because I want to make sure that your wishes are respected. And he was not good about this at all.

[00:26:43] He was like in denial. So when my sister died in September, that was, that set me off. Right. That was like, that was my heart. That was like my world. It just felt like it fell apart. And I remember we had a Zoom meeting with some of my nieces and nephews, my son. There was a core of us that got together. And I remember like, I just brought out the whole big bottle of Angel's Envy, right? I am swigging that bottle.

[00:27:14] So that was not a healthy way to deal with it either. And I feel like, and it was definitely a binge thing. It's not something that I do often, if at all, ever again. So it's like, I had to like, okay, I need to get my shit together. I need to like focus on working toward like some normalcy one day at a time. I was getting my grandson through school.

[00:27:39] And then my husband really just took like a really sudden turn of really being exhausted and not having any energy. And I sat him down. My grandson and I sat him down on a Monday. And I just remember saying, dude, you are not okay. We're really worried about you. And when are you going to be ready to go to the doctor?

[00:28:03] Because he, I'm a strong believer in respecting people's wishes as far as like their own autonomy. Like I am, yes, I am ready. No, I'm not ready. I'm okay. And I'm like, I, and where my mental capacity was, it was really hard. Like to push harder, like push hard and be that like Fisher wife screaming at him. Like you really need to go. I wasn't going to, I didn't have the energy. I was like, I'm really worried about you. I really need you to go to a doctor.

[00:28:33] And he's flat out refused. He goes, I don't know why I don't want to go, but I am not going to go. I said, okay, I respect it. I don't agree with it, but I respect it. And three days later, he ended up in the ER and he had eight blood clots in his leg and he was air flown to a hospital out of state. And that set a whole other thing going on. That was a very difficult time.

[00:28:58] And the doctors were okay at first, and then they weren't okay. Communication with the hospital was really poor. When I could get down there, I could only be down there for a couple hours because I wanted to keep things as normal as possible. My grandson was going to school. I would run down there for a couple hours and then run back. And then that was the whole day because it took a long time to get to the hospital. Hi, all.

[00:29:26] Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I'm G-Rex. And I'm Dirty Skittles. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. We'd love to listen to your feedback. We can't do this without you guys. It's okay to be not okay. Just make sure you're talking to someone.