WEBVTT 00:00:00.419 --> 00:00:03.467 This is Forres Elise interviewing Ellen Wagner for the Creative Pus 00:00:03.500 --> 00:00:10.896 Project on September 14, 4th. OK. I have a weird thing with dates. 4th at 00:00:10.929 --> 00:00:16.675 10:15. All right. So, I'm going to let you take the floor. Oh, by the way 00:00:16.708 --> 00:00:21.436 , I know you have 2 berths. You can start with the first one and then go 00:00:21.469 --> 00:00:25.837 into the 2nd, or we can do the second as like a 2nd recording block. So 00:00:25.870 --> 00:00:29.596 let's start with the first. OK. That sounds great. If we could try to keep 00:00:29.629 --> 00:00:34.246 them separate, let's keep them separate. Let's start with the first 00:00:34.279 --> 00:00:38.027 because I think that's more the details that relate to the art the art 00:00:38.060 --> 00:00:43.476 that That I made based on the birth, but we definitely want to but then 00:00:43.509 --> 00:00:49.237 I'll get to the second one. so if you could just Take us back to that time 00:00:49.270 --> 00:00:53.957 , you know, go back as far as the conception, if you can. I was in art 00:00:53.990 --> 00:00:57.207 school. I was 22. 00:00:57.240 --> 00:01:04.206 Uh, living in Washington DC all alone, uh, no family around, lots of 00:01:04.239 --> 00:01:12.239 creative, interesting friends. I wasn't particularly focused on, um, 00:01:12.430 --> 00:01:17.036 School or anything even though I was in college. I've been in college by 00:01:17.069 --> 00:01:22.757 that time for 5 years and I've been this is my 3rd university. I was 00:01:22.790 --> 00:01:28.717 looking to move as far away from my home in Iowa and anything I knew as 00:01:28.750 --> 00:01:34.926 possible, so Washington DC was about as far away as I could get. So my son 00:01:34.959 --> 00:01:39.525 was born in 1988, 00:01:39.558 --> 00:01:45.885 but he was conceived on a trip I took on the back of a Harley riding 00:01:45.918 --> 00:01:51.447 through the month of December from Washington DC to San Diego and then 00:01:51.480 --> 00:01:58.885 down the Baja coast. I'd bought the Harley for my boyfriend at the time. 00:01:58.918 --> 00:02:04.647 Um, and I thought this was just like the most amazing madcap adventure 00:02:04.680 --> 00:02:09.646 possible. And I distinctly remember coming through Phoenix at the time on 00:02:09.679 --> 00:02:14.077 December 23rd. 00:02:14.110 --> 00:02:18.237 1986. 00:02:18.270 --> 00:02:22.517 I remember the weather and everything about it, and I intended to go back 00:02:22.550 --> 00:02:25.626 to college, of course, in January. 00:02:25.659 --> 00:02:31.827 Christopher was conceived on a raucous night in Mexico on the Baja coast 00:02:31.860 --> 00:02:36.737 amongst a lot of tequila shots, and I knew it the moment that it happened 00:02:36.770 --> 00:02:42.737 . I absolutely knew it. I just knew it. And then I remember I had to go 00:02:42.770 --> 00:02:50.275 back to school. 10 days later, and I had said goodbye to the father, the 00:02:50.308 --> 00:02:55.077 presumed eventual father of of this child in front of the whiskey a go go 00:02:55.110 --> 00:03:03.110 on Sunset Boulevard on January 14th, 1988. Said goodbye. I knew pretty 00:03:03.689 --> 00:03:10.005 much I would never ever see him again, and I did not see him again until 00:03:10.038 --> 00:03:15.775 Christopher was 2 for 6 hours once and then I didn't see him again until 00:03:15.808 --> 00:03:19.707 Christopher graduated from high school. So that was a long time, no 00:03:19.740 --> 00:03:24.116 conversation with the father at all. So I had no support and no family and 00:03:24.149 --> 00:03:27.555 no people around and everybody told me I should give up this child while I 00:03:27.588 --> 00:03:34.008 was in college and that I should not follow through this pregnancy. And I. 00:03:35.399 --> 00:03:37.399 Explored the options, but not too far, not too far. Just went ahead and 00:03:40.819 --> 00:03:43.646 decided, no, I was going to figure this out somehow and I was going to 00:03:43.679 --> 00:03:48.786 keep this child, you know. So it was just Christopher and I. My pregnancy 00:03:48.819 --> 00:03:56.335 , I remember being um. Exciting. Even though I was the only one 00:03:56.368 --> 00:04:03.376 participating in it, and there was there was nothing like baby showers 00:04:03.409 --> 00:04:10.096 with crepe paper. It was a lot like the conception was. It was based with 00:04:10.129 --> 00:04:14.505 strange friends around me who had a lot of drug and alcohol problems, and 00:04:14.538 --> 00:04:19.137 I was trying to keep it together and try to figure out where, how I'm 00:04:19.170 --> 00:04:22.825 going to Create a life for this child in the future, and what was I going 00:04:22.858 --> 00:04:29.217 to do in Washington DC with this child as an as an art school graduate. 00:04:29.250 --> 00:04:35.995 So how are you handling being 23 and I'm sure partaking in tequila and 00:04:36.028 --> 00:04:44.028 your youth? I quit immediately about. When I really realized how pregnant 00:04:44.608 --> 00:04:49.616 I was 2 months in, I quit smoking marijuana immediately. I quit doing any 00:04:49.649 --> 00:04:54.217 kind of drug that I was used to doing, including ecstasy, 00:04:54.250 --> 00:05:00.015 cocaine, acid, anything, anything. I mean, I was a girl who liked a drug 00:05:00.048 --> 00:05:06.575 salad. I loved it and so I, I quit doing that. Um, and I became an artist 00:05:06.608 --> 00:05:12.575 model to support myself. And that was an interesting transition for me as 00:05:12.608 --> 00:05:20.608 a woman to go from being um. A very young sexual, really sexual young 00:05:22.028 --> 00:05:25.676 woman who felt really uncomfortable with her sexuality, but yet expressed 00:05:25.709 --> 00:05:30.817 myself probably more sexually than most women did. And yet I was really 00:05:30.850 --> 00:05:38.197 uncomfortable about it, and I found that when I was pregnant, both the The 00:05:38.230 --> 00:05:42.317 transition that happened, I found interesting that I liked myself 00:05:42.350 --> 00:05:46.637 physically more because when I was an artist model and I was taking my 00:05:46.670 --> 00:05:53.387 clothes off now, it didn't seem sexual. Now, The thing I think that it 00:05:53.420 --> 00:05:57.637 probably you have to understand is that before I was before I was an 00:05:57.670 --> 00:06:02.567 artist model. And before I had Christopher, I'd also worked in a strip 00:06:02.600 --> 00:06:06.325 club, not as a dancer though, because I so don't look like a dancer. 00:06:06.358 --> 00:06:11.995 However, I had this desperate need when I was in college. To be 00:06:12.028 --> 00:06:16.476 objectified as a woman, which sounds like a totally weird thing in the age 00:06:16.509 --> 00:06:21.555 of feminism, but I needed to know. 00:06:21.588 --> 00:06:25.317 Where I was or a placement as a woman or what men thought about me, 00:06:25.350 --> 00:06:30.075 because growing up, I'd had really bad experiences with boyfriends, with 00:06:30.108 --> 00:06:35.765 brothers, with my father. And so I wanted to be seen, believe it or not, 00:06:35.798 --> 00:06:40.476 when I was about 21, 22 years old before I was pregnant, I really wanted 00:06:40.509 --> 00:06:46.366 to be seen. Like a really sexy girl. I just wanted to know what that was 00:06:46.399 --> 00:06:50.166 like for a little while. So having had that experience as a cocktail 00:06:50.199 --> 00:06:54.486 waitress, it was a lot of fun. Made a lot of money, bought a Harley. So 00:06:54.519 --> 00:06:59.127 were your family and boyfriends, did they say negative things about your 00:06:59.160 --> 00:07:03.526 My family had no idea what was going on with me. I live so far away from 00:07:03.559 --> 00:07:07.447 everyone. When you when you said you had a hard time with them growing up. 00:07:07.480 --> 00:07:12.776 Oh. Did they give you body image? Oh yes, terribly. My nickname as a 00:07:12.809 --> 00:07:16.586 child was Ellen Capell in the Watermelon. That was the nice nickname. The 00:07:16.619 --> 00:07:21.937 nickname I grew up with that caused me all the trouble in my life until 00:07:21.970 --> 00:07:27.967 about years of therapy and working through it, just this past summer was 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:36.000 Uh, Double ugly. Double ugly. I loathed the nickname. I loathed it and I 00:07:36.178 --> 00:07:39.627 was known as Double Ugly and Ellen Capell and the watermelon and smelling 00:07:39.660 --> 00:07:45.346 Ellen so much that by the time I'd run away from home, and I mean run away 00:07:45.379 --> 00:07:50.906 from home and never speak to your family again. I needed to somehow 00:07:50.939 --> 00:07:56.546 psychologically unravel this these nicknames and these impressions I had 00:07:56.579 --> 00:08:01.467 of myself and so I put myself in these really bizarre situations like 00:08:01.500 --> 00:08:06.127 working in a really high end strip club on M Street in Washington DC. And 00:08:06.160 --> 00:08:09.926 watching the other girls, one was a college friend who was a feminist 00:08:09.959 --> 00:08:14.166 artist who did work while she was a stripper. It was amazing basing her 00:08:14.199 --> 00:08:19.245 work on audience reaction. I felt that I needed I needed to learn 00:08:19.278 --> 00:08:24.887 something about myself. So for about 5 months, I cocktailed 5 nights a 00:08:24.920 --> 00:08:29.967 week, dressed as a playboy bunny, just to work through this body image 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:35.765 thing I had. And it worked. I worked through something for sure. But I 00:08:35.798 --> 00:08:40.525 think even more so, was gaining all this weight while I was pregnant and 00:08:40.558 --> 00:08:43.684 really getting comfortable with myself. I wouldn't get up on a stage and 00:08:43.717 --> 00:08:47.235 take my clothes off for money, but I would get up on a stage and take off 00:08:47.268 --> 00:08:51.125 my clothes to have people make art. So I think there's there's a 00:08:51.158 --> 00:08:56.725 difference there that it's a hard line to see the difference between these 00:08:56.758 --> 00:09:03.405 two things, but for me, moving into motherhood and accepting myself as 00:09:03.438 --> 00:09:08.366 sort of um You know, diva sitting on a lotus flower for people to paint 00:09:08.399 --> 00:09:12.417 and seeing me as an object of beauty and fertility was a whole lot 00:09:12.450 --> 00:09:18.616 different than the experience I had when I watched colleagues or peers, 00:09:18.649 --> 00:09:22.217 other women making hundreds of dollars, taking their clothes off in front 00:09:22.250 --> 00:09:25.015 of me at night. These were two different things for me. But they were both 00:09:25.048 --> 00:09:30.976 , I think in some ways to help me get over a lot of body image, which You 00:09:31.009 --> 00:09:37.895 know, became the narrative, the narrative arc that ran through all of my 00:09:37.928 --> 00:09:43.936 life as a young woman was that narrative. And it's taken me till I'm 50 00:09:43.969 --> 00:09:50.135 now. It's taken me literally till probably just this summer to be able to 00:09:50.168 --> 00:09:54.936 totally unravel it and not let it, to let those names, those thoughts of 00:09:54.969 --> 00:10:01.956 my sexuality and who I was, you know, and being a girl. Being a girl that 00:10:01.989 --> 00:10:07.515 was raised in a um a strict Catholic background in a small country town in 00:10:07.548 --> 00:10:14.157 Iowa. And I was pregnant when I was in college, unmarried, I didn't tell 00:10:14.190 --> 00:10:18.596 my family I even had a baby. I didn't tell my family that Christopher was 00:10:18.629 --> 00:10:25.976 born until The day Christopher was born. The day Christopher was born, my 00:10:26.009 --> 00:10:30.287 mother, I know this because she told me the story later, had to tell my 00:10:30.320 --> 00:10:34.135 family who was having dinner together that night. So Ellen had a baby 00:10:34.168 --> 00:10:38.135 today. and my family just were like, Well, how can that be? How can she 00:10:38.168 --> 00:10:43.936 have had a baby? And I did. That's how things, I think, worked with me. I 00:10:43.969 --> 00:10:47.417 found myself to be an incredible outsider in my family, so everything I 00:10:47.450 --> 00:10:55.450 did seemed to Happen really in my own world. Yeah, so, wow. OK, so, OK, so 00:10:58.038 --> 00:11:03.606 take us back to the, the um pregnancy. Let me tell you a little bit about 00:11:03.639 --> 00:11:07.986 the pregnancy. 00:11:08.019 --> 00:11:15.177 People told me I couldn't have this child and. I, I explored abortion 00:11:15.210 --> 00:11:22.706 options. I went far. I really. I went to the point of. Scheduling having 00:11:22.739 --> 00:11:28.456 an abortion in Washington DC. Because the father wasn't involved and I was 00:11:28.489 --> 00:11:32.217 just so beyond what I could do and I felt that this was the only thing I 00:11:32.250 --> 00:11:39.106 could do. So I scheduled this and I go to the appointment. And nothing, 00:11:39.139 --> 00:11:44.866 the doctor doesn't show up and I'm like, oh my God, this is rough. So the 00:11:44.899 --> 00:11:51.385 next thing that happens I remember was maybe I'm at that 0.14 weeks 00:11:51.418 --> 00:11:57.996 pregnant and you're probably past, you know, making that choice. And so I 00:11:58.029 --> 00:12:02.106 remember the Women's Health Clinic made another appointment for me in New 00:12:02.139 --> 00:12:05.427 York City and I was supposed to drive to New York City. I couldn't imagine 00:12:05.460 --> 00:12:08.537 doing this, but at that time I could. It's like I was going to drive to 00:12:08.570 --> 00:12:14.366 New York City by myself, get on or get on a train and check in. To a hotel 00:12:14.399 --> 00:12:19.186 room ostensibly entirely by myself and have an abortion. I thought I could 00:12:19.219 --> 00:12:23.086 do this and I planned to do it. I made the appointment. It's gonna do it 00:12:23.119 --> 00:12:28.586 all alone. And once again, something happens where they call me and say 00:12:28.619 --> 00:12:31.856 it's not going to happen, doctor doesn't come out. I mean this freak 00:12:31.889 --> 00:12:37.667 experience. I could never figure out how this came to be that now I'm past. 00:12:37.700 --> 00:12:43.346 I'm so far past the time of even considering this that I recognize I'm 00:12:43.379 --> 00:12:50.717 having a baby. This conception is a surprise. This This this even idea 00:12:50.750 --> 00:12:55.275 that I'm going to have a baby is a surprise. I'm sleeping on a couch at a 00:12:55.308 --> 00:13:01.686 friend's house with my dog. I have no job anymore. I have no money and I 00:13:01.719 --> 00:13:06.057 can't call my family and tell them. What has happened to me because 00:13:06.090 --> 00:13:11.375 there's no love and there's no support there. So I slept on a couch. I 00:13:11.408 --> 00:13:15.775 literally slept on a couch till I was too fat to sleep on the couch on the 00:13:15.808 --> 00:13:20.086 corner of 16th Street and Columbia Road, just blocks from the White House 00:13:20.119 --> 00:13:24.456 , just straight up the street from the White House. It was an amazingly 00:13:24.489 --> 00:13:29.616 complicated time, but you know friends were kind of around and then a 00:13:29.649 --> 00:13:34.946 friend volunteered to go through birthing classes with me. We did 00:13:34.979 --> 00:13:39.066 something called the Bradley method, which was very not so much on 00:13:39.099 --> 00:13:44.667 breathing techniques. It was based on intuitive connectedness, which I 00:13:44.700 --> 00:13:49.586 really liked and what exactly was going to happen that day when you went 00:13:49.619 --> 00:13:56.346 to the hospital. And so I felt psychologically, probably more prepared 00:13:56.379 --> 00:13:59.346 than other people seemed to have told me they were when they went in to 00:13:59.379 --> 00:14:04.936 have a baby. I felt pretty I felt pretty ready about what was going to 00:14:04.969 --> 00:14:10.037 happen that day because I'd written a birth plan. I had planned to take my 00:14:10.070 --> 00:14:14.385 best friend from college, a woman with me to hold my hand. A friend had 00:14:14.418 --> 00:14:18.967 come along who said I could live in his apartment with him for a couple, 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:22.145 you know, a former boyfriend who said, you can come and live with me after 00:14:22.178 --> 00:14:29.015 the baby was born. You know, um, and we'll see what happens. So I felt 00:14:29.048 --> 00:14:34.395 fine going into the actual delivery. I think one of the other reasons I 00:14:34.428 --> 00:14:37.917 felt pretty good was I was having this artist modeling experience and I 00:14:37.950 --> 00:14:41.986 was really comfortable with myself physically, and I was working with 00:14:42.019 --> 00:14:46.436 midwives, which was a little different than going to a hospital. So every 00:14:46.469 --> 00:14:50.476 time I would go to a midwives appointment at Georgetown University, there 00:14:50.509 --> 00:14:55.606 were often different people in the room. So there would be students there 00:14:55.639 --> 00:14:58.717 and there would be maybe a different midwife than I'd had the last time. 00:14:58.750 --> 00:15:02.236 So it was sort of like, Ellen's having a baby and it's a community event. 00:15:02.269 --> 00:15:07.625 And so when the actual day came in the hospital, I do remember lots of 00:15:07.658 --> 00:15:12.505 people came in to watch. It was more like a learning experience and an art 00:15:12.538 --> 00:15:16.586 happening kind of thing, or at least I thought when I was going in, it's 00:15:16.619 --> 00:15:20.787 going to be a lot of people because people were excited about coming to 00:15:20.820 --> 00:15:25.505 see, and I had invited a lot of people along the way that were in the 00:15:25.538 --> 00:15:29.635 midwifery department to come and watch the birth because I wasn't afraid 00:15:29.668 --> 00:15:35.287 yet, and I had no plan to have a There were no video cameras. Um, we did 00:15:35.320 --> 00:15:39.816 take some photos, but it was a living be there event, so people were kind 00:15:39.849 --> 00:15:43.967 of invited to come and people showed up, which was nice. There were a 00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:48.836 number of women in the room. The best thing I remember happening And the 00:15:48.869 --> 00:15:53.736 thing that I always like telling people about. Was that if this woman came 00:15:53.769 --> 00:15:59.135 in the room that I had never met before and that she was not a midwife I 00:15:59.168 --> 00:16:05.005 had been introduced to previously. But she came, she came into the room, I 00:16:05.038 --> 00:16:12.125 remember. And I didn't have a long labor. It had started. The night before 00:16:12.158 --> 00:16:16.375 , and I didn't I didn't tell the people in my house that it started on 00:16:16.408 --> 00:16:20.057 Sunday night, but I knew it was through the night. I knew I was laboring 00:16:20.090 --> 00:16:24.246 alone. Which for me always seemed like the most natural thing to do is 00:16:24.279 --> 00:16:27.417 just you're in your own headspace. 00:16:27.450 --> 00:16:32.106 This woman came in. And she was like this angel, and I remember her 00:16:32.139 --> 00:16:38.116 sitting down behind me and said to me. You're not in pain. You're just 00:16:38.149 --> 00:16:43.967 connected to this bigger part of the universe. And This the sensations 00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:49.275 you're feeling are all a part of this birth process. And there's nothing 00:16:49.308 --> 00:16:53.076 here that's going to hurt you, and you're going to be fine and we're going 00:16:53.109 --> 00:16:57.875 to breathe through this. And she just held me with this huge sense of love 00:16:57.908 --> 00:17:02.635 , and I remember even though my son's father was not there and he didn't 00:17:02.668 --> 00:17:07.276 know the baby was being born that day, I could feel him in the room. I 00:17:07.309 --> 00:17:12.024 felt my grandma in the room who had passed away about 6 months earlier. I 00:17:12.057 --> 00:17:17.245 felt this huge sense of love in the room, not from my immediate family or 00:17:17.278 --> 00:17:22.986 people that other people would think you would possibly invite in. That's 00:17:23.019 --> 00:17:27.265 not who was there for me. It was other people. It was people who just came 00:17:27.298 --> 00:17:35.176 to be there for the experience. And so for me, the whole. The whole 00:17:35.209 --> 00:17:43.209 birthing part went very quickly. There was no pain. I remember having a 00:17:43.699 --> 00:17:51.526 primal scream that was extremely exciting. It just felt like the Big Bang 00:17:51.559 --> 00:17:59.035 theory was in me, and I loved it. I loved the birthing part. That part, I 00:17:59.068 --> 00:18:04.045 remember thinking, was great. It was so different than What other people 00:18:04.078 --> 00:18:07.717 told me afterwards and people wanted to share with me before, it was 00:18:07.750 --> 00:18:13.887 exciting. It was a roller coaster. I remember things like being offered an 00:18:13.920 --> 00:18:18.446 epidural, and I said, Oh no, this will be the one thing I will do totally 00:18:18.479 --> 00:18:23.085 drug free. I will remember every sensation and every moment. I remember 00:18:23.118 --> 00:18:28.166 not being able to handle smells in the room because I was too. Sensitive 00:18:28.199 --> 00:18:32.607 to everything. Everything was a sensation. Smells made me want to vomit, 00:18:32.640 --> 00:18:36.795 and that was cleansing. I thought I wanted to have a lot of music in the 00:18:36.828 --> 00:18:41.325 room. I didn't. I just wanted the sound of people in the room. I remember 00:18:41.358 --> 00:18:44.127 , and this is the first time I remember, and this again, there was a 00:18:44.160 --> 00:18:48.085 target on the wall. They wanted me to focus on, and I said, remove the 00:18:48.118 --> 00:18:53.946 target. I can't have these sort of visuals in the room. I needed it to be. 00:18:53.979 --> 00:19:00.186 Just a clear, clear headspace because I felt this need to go so deep in 00:19:00.219 --> 00:19:05.857 my head and into my psyche. I didn't want it to be as much of a physical 00:19:05.890 --> 00:19:10.666 experience. I wanted this deeply spiritual connectedness, because I 00:19:10.699 --> 00:19:15.666 thought, this is it. It's you know life is a one time thing and this is 00:19:15.699 --> 00:19:19.486 probably the only time I'm going to have a child. This really is the only 00:19:19.519 --> 00:19:23.867 kind of child I'm going to have with this man. And I wanted it to be 00:19:23.900 --> 00:19:29.785 perfection. I wanted to be something I would never forget that was perfect 00:19:29.818 --> 00:19:33.476 and glorious and 00:19:33.509 --> 00:19:40.357 Filled with details that I would want to share again that hopefully would 00:19:40.390 --> 00:19:43.916 enable someone else. If I kept telling this story over and over, someone 00:19:43.949 --> 00:19:47.756 else would hear this and say, I'm going to have a birth like that. I'm 00:19:47.789 --> 00:19:51.756 going to have this sort of experience where angels are in the room singing 00:19:51.789 --> 00:19:58.666 and you feel like. This is what I was meant to do. And I've told people so 00:19:58.699 --> 00:20:05.585 many times, you know, I'm, I'm a fuck up in so many parts of my life, but 00:20:05.618 --> 00:20:09.676 the one thing I'm very good at is birthing children. I could be a midwife 00:20:09.709 --> 00:20:15.785 . I could probably pull over and deliver a child. So by the time I was 00:20:15.818 --> 00:20:22.456 pregnant, Well, Let's stop and say, I did not talk to the father of 00:20:22.489 --> 00:20:25.976 Christopher. My son's name is Christopher Robin. I didn't talk to 00:20:26.009 --> 00:20:32.156 Christopher's father. I saw him briefly once in California for one night 00:20:32.189 --> 00:20:36.357 for a few hours, and that was it. No, no conversation, hardly even 00:20:36.390 --> 00:20:43.085 remember what was said. And then I saw him again. 18 years later when 00:20:43.118 --> 00:20:46.996 Christopher graduated from high school and he finally wanted to reconnect 00:20:47.029 --> 00:20:50.526 with his father, and by then I was married. I'd been married for many 00:20:50.559 --> 00:20:58.075 years and I was way over the pain of being left, you know, I was over it 00:20:58.108 --> 00:21:04.535 and and I felt like I was um. Psychologically, 00:21:04.568 --> 00:21:11.156 and uh. And purposefully and life, everything was going just great in my 00:21:11.189 --> 00:21:16.127 life. So I was ready for this new thing to happen and to reintroduce 00:21:16.160 --> 00:21:22.377 Christopher to his father for the first time. So after An exhaustive 00:21:22.410 --> 00:21:28.377 search, lots of phone callings, lots of calling to the universe. I gave 00:21:28.410 --> 00:21:35.815 his father a deadline like in my mind. It was very specific. It was 12 00:21:35.848 --> 00:21:42.256 o'clock, March 15th during the last commercial set of The Young and the 00:21:42.289 --> 00:21:47.656 Restless, which I used to draw to every day without fail for 20 some years. 00:21:47.689 --> 00:21:52.147 Those were studio hours for me. I told a friend the night before. If he 00:21:52.180 --> 00:21:55.476 doesn't call by tomorrow, I quit thinking about him. It's been 18 years, 00:21:55.509 --> 00:21:58.506 you know, a girl's got to move on, even in her heart. I've been holding 00:21:58.539 --> 00:22:02.946 this man in my heart even though I was married. He still had part of my 00:22:02.979 --> 00:22:08.426 heart, and there was a lot of unfinished. You know, but forgiveness, but I 00:22:08.459 --> 00:22:13.746 had reached out two months before looking for him, just out of curiosity, 00:22:13.779 --> 00:22:20.026 and since I hadn't had a call back, I decided that that morning at noon, 00:22:20.059 --> 00:22:24.387 that was when we would never think about this anymore, and I would have to 00:22:24.420 --> 00:22:32.107 call it quits. And I'll tell you at 11:57, I swear it's the truth, 11:57, 00:22:32.140 --> 00:22:38.585 the phone rings. I turn it over and I see the caller ID. I take a huge 00:22:38.618 --> 00:22:44.026 breath, like, like your first gasp of air, you know, out of water and I 00:22:44.059 --> 00:22:48.926 pick up the phone and I said, is it really you? And he said, yes, it's 00:22:48.959 --> 00:22:52.967 really me. I said, I can't believe you made it in 3 minutes. And he's like 00:22:53.000 --> 00:22:59.127 , I'm on time, aren't I? I said, no way, you know, and it felt like I had 00:22:59.160 --> 00:23:04.575 the conversation I remember flowed. Like we had just spoken maybe 2 hours 00:23:04.608 --> 00:23:09.176 ago because I said I, I, I, I'd waited 18 years. I've waited 18 years. I 00:23:09.209 --> 00:23:13.575 gave you till noon, you made it. You made it at 11:56, 11:58, you made it 00:23:13.608 --> 00:23:20.516 ? He said, Well, I'm, I'm under the wire. So I, so I reconnect with my 00:23:20.549 --> 00:23:25.877 son's father then on. June 28th. 00:23:25.910 --> 00:23:30.545 19 2000. 00:23:30.578 --> 00:23:34.156 07. 00:23:34.189 --> 00:23:39.617 And 3 months later, I was pregnant. Not even I saw him 2 or 3 times in 00:23:39.650 --> 00:23:47.650 between. I saw him once in July. I saw him once in August, and by 00:23:48.608 --> 00:23:52.055 September I was pregnant. 00:23:52.088 --> 00:23:59.335 with his baby? Yes, not, and I'm married at the time in a rather high 00:23:59.368 --> 00:24:05.706 profile marriage here in, you know, and. Arizona, people knew me very well 00:24:05.739 --> 00:24:12.986 , very well, and I was not pregnant with the. With my husband's child, I'm 00:24:13.019 --> 00:24:18.585 pregnant with my son's father, and I'm going to have children. This is the 00:24:18.618 --> 00:24:22.825 amazing part I say to people, I have children by the same father, by the 00:24:22.858 --> 00:24:27.746 same father who does that these days? Sure there was an 18 year hiatus 00:24:27.779 --> 00:24:32.026 with no conversation, but you know, a couple of tequilas, and before you 00:24:32.059 --> 00:24:37.706 know it. You're pregnant again. OK. 00:24:37.739 --> 00:24:41.785 So 18 years later, did he look kind of the same? I mean, a lot changes in 00:24:41.818 --> 00:24:46.377 18 years. He was so good looking when I knew him. That was the problem 00:24:46.410 --> 00:24:52.617 with this man. He was so outrageously forced, he was so good looking. He 00:24:52.650 --> 00:24:59.176 was so outrageously good looking when I knew him. Women just Took their 00:24:59.209 --> 00:25:06.026 clothes off in front of him and he didn't say no. He did not say no. And 00:25:06.059 --> 00:25:14.059 He had a lifestyle in Hollywood. That, you know, basically shamed Charlie 00:25:14.180 --> 00:25:18.387 Sheen. He made Charlie Sheen look like a choir boy during his life in 00:25:18.420 --> 00:25:25.545 Hollywood. So when I found him again, he was, um, he looked the same. He 00:25:25.578 --> 00:25:33.578 was still stunningly handsome. He physically is 28. It's outrageous. 00:25:34.578 --> 00:25:39.706 I met him again, but he had changed a bit. He was more settled, and he was 00:25:39.739 --> 00:25:46.946 a person now who could work consistently and maintained a fairly seemingly 00:25:46.979 --> 00:25:52.967 normal lifestyle. He wasn't he was no longer a roadie for Ozzy Osbourne. 00:25:53.000 --> 00:25:59.916 So he, he seemed to be living a more um. Just a more normal lifestyle, and 00:25:59.949 --> 00:26:06.516 he'd looked the same, and the thing was, the electricity was immediate. It 00:26:06.549 --> 00:26:11.666 was just I felt like I was in a way back time machine that I had literally 00:26:11.699 --> 00:26:17.397 way back time machine myself back to when I was before I was pregnant when 00:26:17.430 --> 00:26:24.377 I was 23. Here I was presenting this myself to this man again. Almost like 00:26:24.410 --> 00:26:31.377 a bride would, and I really mean that. I had prepared to see him. I looked 00:26:31.410 --> 00:26:37.097 better than I ever had. I had really thought about it. I had, I had 00:26:37.130 --> 00:26:41.456 cleaned my house. I had done my taxes. Everything was done. I just wanted 00:26:41.489 --> 00:26:48.006 to feel like I had hit some sort of a milestone when I met him. And it was 00:26:48.039 --> 00:26:53.166 the first time in my life since I was 22 that I had some freedom. Here I 00:26:53.199 --> 00:26:59.736 was a 40. A 42 year old woman with some cash in the bank and some time on 00:26:59.769 --> 00:27:05.217 my hands. I sounded like an eagle song, and I just played it out over 00:27:05.250 --> 00:27:10.575 three weekends, you know, having a torrid affair. I really, really did 00:27:10.608 --> 00:27:16.236 because I needed to know. This also is important. I needed to know I was a 00:27:16.269 --> 00:27:19.357 woman because I've lived through, I'd lived through a marriage with 00:27:19.390 --> 00:27:26.956 celibacy, 100% celibacy including my wedding night. I swear it's the truth. 00:27:26.989 --> 00:27:33.357 I told it to everyone and so here I was a woman. With the child left the 00:27:33.390 --> 00:27:37.736 nest now because he was 18, he was going off to college. My husband had 00:27:37.769 --> 00:27:42.456 moved away to move on with his career and expected me to follow him again 00:27:42.489 --> 00:27:49.256 in my celibate marriage now of 15 years. And I was a young woman suddenly 00:27:49.289 --> 00:27:54.217 with freedom like I hadn't known. I felt like I was 22 again or who I 00:27:54.250 --> 00:27:58.526 wanted to be when I was 22. And who I wanted to be when I was growing up 00:27:58.559 --> 00:28:02.597 and done with school and ready to hit the world. Well, here I was ready to 00:28:02.630 --> 00:28:09.075 do it again. And it was almost like I recapitulated right back again to 00:28:09.108 --> 00:28:15.016 where I was and more people. It was not a happy pregnancy the second time. 00:28:15.049 --> 00:28:17.696 You would have thought the first pregnancy would have been really sad and 00:28:17.729 --> 00:28:20.416 under tragic circumstances. 00:28:20.449 --> 00:28:27.137 But it wasn't And this one, the 2nd 1 with my son. Ansel Jackson was 00:28:27.170 --> 00:28:30.976 fraught with sadness. Here I was with a man I always wanted to be with and 00:28:31.009 --> 00:28:38.476 I thought about for 18 years, and yet I was in the middle of a messy 00:28:38.509 --> 00:28:43.127 divorce and ending a life I had no intention really maybe of ending. I 00:28:43.160 --> 00:28:47.406 hadn't really thought when I was having an affair and figuring out what's 00:28:47.439 --> 00:28:51.967 sex. You know, it was Paradise Bad, the dashboard life. It was a meatloaf 00:28:52.000 --> 00:28:56.686 song and I couldn't get over it, and I just didn't think, Oh, what's it 00:28:56.719 --> 00:29:00.285 going to be like when I unravel all of my life, my grown up life? What's 00:29:00.318 --> 00:29:05.117 that going to be like? And so my pregnancy. 00:29:05.150 --> 00:29:12.117 When I was 42 was a hidden secret pregnancy. It was totally secret. I hid 00:29:12.150 --> 00:29:18.075 in my house. I didn't let next door neighbors or close friends see me. No 00:29:18.108 --> 00:29:22.156 one knew what was happening, but my closest friends who maybe lived out of 00:29:22.189 --> 00:29:28.217 town. And the father by then had decided to come and move to Arizona to be 00:29:28.250 --> 00:29:35.246 with me. He now was the one interested in having a child, and I was not. I 00:29:35.279 --> 00:29:39.857 was the one who couldn't who said, I can't trust you. You've left other 00:29:39.890 --> 00:29:42.815 children. I can't trust you well enough to have a child. And I'm a big 00:29:42.848 --> 00:29:45.575 grown up adult who knows what it's like to raise a child alone, and I 00:29:45.608 --> 00:29:50.397 didn't think I could do it. So there was a lot of disharmony. So at this 00:29:50.430 --> 00:29:55.756 point, did your youngest son know that was his father, and Yes, 00:29:55.789 --> 00:30:02.035 Christopher, Christopher had to then reconnect while I was pregnant in 00:30:02.068 --> 00:30:07.476 front of him with a father he had never known, while he was disconnecting 00:30:07.509 --> 00:30:11.321 from me, it was Turmoil in a house that should have been able to come 00:30:11.354 --> 00:30:15.482 together, but it was not. It was Christopher running away to college and 00:30:15.515 --> 00:30:20.680 me mad at him. He didn't understand what I was doing. He felt like I had 00:30:20.713 --> 00:30:24.601 cheated him out of the opportunity for him to move off to Hollywood and 00:30:24.634 --> 00:30:29.986 get to know his father alone. Instead, the father came here. And he felt 00:30:30.019 --> 00:30:35.266 like it was about his father and I, not about them, and he wanted it. He 00:30:35.299 --> 00:30:39.026 was going into this relationship thinking it was about them and it was 00:30:39.059 --> 00:30:44.295 about the father and I. So he was mad at me for the first time in his life 00:30:44.328 --> 00:30:47.906 and deserted me. My son Christopher, for the first time, we were 00:30:47.939 --> 00:30:51.746 inseparable. It's always just the two of us. Even when I was married, it 00:30:51.779 --> 00:30:55.706 felt like it was just Christopher and I, and we were married. We were 00:30:55.739 --> 00:30:59.877 pawns in a marriage. Pretty much we were there for in church purposes and 00:30:59.910 --> 00:31:07.910 to look good. And so this was rough. This was really, really rough, so. I 00:31:08.420 --> 00:31:11.736 decided when I was pregnant. 00:31:11.769 --> 00:31:15.476 I wasn't gonna be able to keep this child. I don't know what I was 00:31:15.509 --> 00:31:19.996 thinking, but I totally said I can't keep this child. There's just no way. 00:31:20.029 --> 00:31:27.325 There have to be people better than us to raise a child. We are not. 00:31:27.358 --> 00:31:31.446 We're not in a relationship. This is not a marriage. I'm still, you know, 00:31:31.479 --> 00:31:36.847 I'm still technically married to somebody else at this point. This is not 00:31:36.880 --> 00:31:40.206 a good situation for a child to be raised in. And me raising a child as a 00:31:40.239 --> 00:31:44.496 single mother a second time, probably is not the right psychological 00:31:44.529 --> 00:31:52.335 situation for a child. So. I went through the desperate search of finding 00:31:52.368 --> 00:31:58.647 the perfect people to adopt my child while I'm living here with the father 00:31:58.680 --> 00:32:02.976 who's willing to do this for me because I've already raised one of our 00:32:03.009 --> 00:32:06.055 kids, so he doesn't have a whole lot of cards to play in the whole game 00:32:06.088 --> 00:32:10.295 here. He he better just be supportive and he was, but he really, I could 00:32:10.328 --> 00:32:15.085 tell, wanted to keep the baby, but I I did not know if that would be a 00:32:15.118 --> 00:32:18.766 good idea, because he did not raise his first two children either, or the 00:32:18.799 --> 00:32:26.799 child he had with me. So I began a search. I found a couple. I thought 00:32:27.410 --> 00:32:32.565 they were wonderful. They came and visit us. We met with them. We had 00:32:32.598 --> 00:32:37.107 lunch. I met their child. I conversed back and forth with them. We moved 00:32:37.140 --> 00:32:42.196 ahead with details. And then my gut told me something wasn't right. 00:32:42.229 --> 00:32:47.585 Something wasn't right about the situation. We're only maybe 3 weeks from 00:32:47.618 --> 00:32:52.676 delivery date and something besides the baby inside of me is saying 00:32:52.709 --> 00:32:58.956 something's not entirely right, and I'm not getting the answers I need 00:32:58.989 --> 00:33:04.516 from the adoption agency about the adoptive couple, and I am questioning 00:33:04.549 --> 00:33:10.906 things and I'm feeling things. And I'm I'm a prayer. I'm praying to God, 00:33:10.939 --> 00:33:15.627 show me the way. I'm screaming in my backyard, Help me, help me, help me, 00:33:15.660 --> 00:33:22.717 show me what it is. And I find out maybe 2 weeks before now or 2 weeks 00:33:22.750 --> 00:33:28.285 before the babies. You know, it was scheduled to be born. Not that this is 00:33:28.318 --> 00:33:33.486 a problem, but maybe for me it is that this family has had some problems. 00:33:33.519 --> 00:33:38.526 The father's been in federal prison for embezzling maybe $2 million from 00:33:38.559 --> 00:33:42.206 one of his clients. It was the secretary's fault. There was a big story. 00:33:42.239 --> 00:33:48.166 In any case, this, I did not want my child raised in a family where money 00:33:48.199 --> 00:33:52.166 was an ongoing issue because I've already heard these arguments in my past. 00:33:52.199 --> 00:33:57.575 I've heard this as my childhood. This is part of my. Verbal memory, and I 00:33:57.608 --> 00:34:02.055 think they're lying to me. They got a lot of skeletons in their closet. 00:34:02.088 --> 00:34:06.776 I'm sure they're nice people. I'm sure time served, everybody's nice 00:34:06.809 --> 00:34:11.606 people, but I didn't feel good. So I immediately discontinued my 00:34:11.639 --> 00:34:19.639 relationship with them. And I can I consulted another adoption 00:34:20.548 --> 00:34:25.414 representative immediately who put me in touch with the most amazing 00:34:25.447 --> 00:34:32.385 family ever, professors at a university, a couple, both professors. One's 00:34:32.418 --> 00:34:36.827 the head of a law department, the other's the head of another department. 00:34:36.860 --> 00:34:40.905 They're magical. They're perfect, they're perfect, except they're on 00:34:40.938 --> 00:34:48.938 their way to Brazil to do a little research. So I tell them, OK. I can do 00:34:48.969 --> 00:34:56.115 this. I can do this by myself. I can birth this baby by myself. I can wait 00:34:56.148 --> 00:35:02.356 until you come back to Brazil, and then I'll give you the baby. I think I 00:35:02.389 --> 00:35:07.276 can do this because I think I'm really generous. I think I'm so generous 00:35:07.309 --> 00:35:13.436 and so wanting to do the right thing for my child. 00:35:13.469 --> 00:35:17.557 For his future that I, I can live through whatever this pain is. I can, I 00:35:17.590 --> 00:35:25.077 can live through this. This is OK. So The family is off in Brazil, and I'm 00:35:25.110 --> 00:35:28.876 preparing for the baby to be born, and my oldest son is living here in the 00:35:28.909 --> 00:35:34.836 house with me and his father. And I'm not a happy woman at all. I've 00:35:34.869 --> 00:35:41.046 gained a lot of weight. I've been in hiding now for months. I haven't told 00:35:41.079 --> 00:35:46.217 anyone I'm having a baby. I've also begged my best friend from high school 00:35:46.250 --> 00:35:52.537 to take the child. She's had no children of her own and is very loving, 00:35:52.570 --> 00:35:57.537 maternal, financially comfortable woman. I begged her. She said she could 00:35:57.570 --> 00:36:02.296 not do this, but would be there for me in any way. I begged my other best 00:36:02.329 --> 00:36:06.095 friends. They came from Chicago. They had no children. They'd always 00:36:06.128 --> 00:36:10.787 wanted to have a child. I begged them to take the child. She went to 00:36:10.820 --> 00:36:15.646 Europe and got pregnant. They could not take the child. Before I knew it, 00:36:15.679 --> 00:36:21.445 I was in. I was in the neighborhood hospital. I did not bother having 00:36:21.478 --> 00:36:27.037 birthing classes. There was no nursery prepared in the house. There was no 00:36:27.070 --> 00:36:32.916 diaper. There was no plan for a child to come home and be with me. I had 00:36:32.949 --> 00:36:40.115 no. I was literally psychologically thinking, I'm doing the right thing 00:36:40.148 --> 00:36:43.405 and I'll get through this. It's going to take some counseling. I'm going 00:36:43.438 --> 00:36:47.646 to get through this, but I'm going to have done the right thing, the right 00:36:47.679 --> 00:36:50.586 thing for someone. 00:36:50.619 --> 00:36:55.155 So we go to the hospital. Mind you, I feel that I can have a baby by 00:36:55.188 --> 00:37:01.566 myself, so I don't go until 20 minutes before the baby's going to be born. 00:37:01.599 --> 00:37:06.845 And I don't want to, I'm very frugal because I'm paying for all of this 00:37:06.878 --> 00:37:11.365 on my own. I have no health insurance, so I wouldn't even go into a 00:37:11.398 --> 00:37:14.566 delivery room. I stayed at home and sat in my bedroom, and I remember I 00:37:14.599 --> 00:37:20.146 was watching this movie called The Other Bolin Girl. It's about Henry 00:37:20.179 --> 00:37:25.956 Henry the 8th's mistresses and their various children and and a child is 00:37:25.989 --> 00:37:33.026 birthed in the movie and I remember watching this thinking. 00:37:33.059 --> 00:37:37.506 This is the moment. This is the universe's moment, at least with me having 00:37:37.539 --> 00:37:41.945 a baby here. At least there's a feeling that I'm a bigger part of 00:37:41.978 --> 00:37:44.486 something and there's something here for me, even if it's not a friend 00:37:44.519 --> 00:37:47.706 holding my hand and certainly isn't going to be a family member or 00:37:47.739 --> 00:37:53.095 anything like that. I'm OK. I'm OK. And we went to the hospital. We 00:37:53.128 --> 00:37:57.017 skipped all that walking, all that, you know, anything, ice chips, 00:37:57.050 --> 00:38:00.217 anything anybody else ever talked about in their birthing story wasn't a 00:38:00.250 --> 00:38:02.655 part of it. We just went into the room. I said, it's time to have the baby 00:38:02.688 --> 00:38:08.396 , because I was ready to be done now. And my son, I didn't know the sex of 00:38:08.429 --> 00:38:12.756 either of my children. I like to have. I felt the surprise was just. You 00:38:12.789 --> 00:38:17.695 know, part of the part of birth is the surprise. And since there was no 00:38:17.728 --> 00:38:23.836 plan for me to swaddle a child in blue clothes, I certainly wasn't 00:38:23.869 --> 00:38:27.115 planning what the sex was. It didn't matter to me one way or the other. I 00:38:27.148 --> 00:38:32.675 just want a real nice, beautiful, happy, healthy baby. It was an easy, 00:38:32.708 --> 00:38:39.557 easy, easy, easy delivery. I remember even thinking ahead, I'm going to be 00:38:39.590 --> 00:38:45.526 getting up on my feet. And squatting, I could be I cuz I used to say to 00:38:45.559 --> 00:38:51.115 people. I literally could deliver in the field, pick up the child and move 00:38:51.148 --> 00:38:56.155 on and work, because I was just such a worker, such a Midwestern girl. I'd 00:38:56.188 --> 00:38:59.916 ridden a bike while Christopher was when I was still pregnant with 00:38:59.949 --> 00:39:03.717 Christopher during my first pregnancy, I literally rode a bicycle to my 00:39:03.750 --> 00:39:06.997 last appointment at Georgetown because I had no transportation and no 00:39:07.030 --> 00:39:11.425 money. And the only way to get there was to ride a bike. So for me, the 00:39:11.458 --> 00:39:14.626 thought of having my second child and just having the baby and going home 00:39:14.659 --> 00:39:18.396 the next day and going back to work was exactly what I did, and I 00:39:18.429 --> 00:39:23.077 literally went back home with the baby the next day and thought, I'm 00:39:23.110 --> 00:39:27.477 waiting for somebody to come back from Brazil to get their child. And I 00:39:27.510 --> 00:39:34.166 came home and I started nursing the baby, and you know how. Even if you 00:39:34.199 --> 00:39:38.327 don't think you're bonding with a child, you are bonding with a child, 00:39:38.360 --> 00:39:42.405 even if you don't think you are. 00:39:42.438 --> 00:39:46.267 You are still in these. 00:39:46.300 --> 00:39:51.816 Moments that. Might not. 00:39:51.849 --> 00:39:55.615 You might not be looking at your child and thinking, oh, they have their 00:39:55.648 --> 00:39:59.376 father's eyes, or they have a nose like their grandfathers. Those weren't 00:39:59.409 --> 00:40:03.135 the thoughts. I think it's the unverbal moments. It's the back and forth 00:40:03.168 --> 00:40:08.467 symbiotic energy between you and your child and And here I am with the for 00:40:08.500 --> 00:40:12.827 the first time now with the father of my child in the home. 00:40:12.860 --> 00:40:19.077 And this is where it changes. I see the father now with this child in his 00:40:19.110 --> 00:40:26.876 arms, and he's more into the child than I am. I'm, I'm into my son, who at 00:40:26.909 --> 00:40:33.905 this point we haven't quite named. We've only haven't selected a name. 00:40:33.938 --> 00:40:39.967 I didn't feel like I should be doing that. But I see this baby with his 00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:47.066 father and the way he holds him. And I think, oh, this is what this older 00:40:47.099 --> 00:40:51.997 father now, this father now is 51 years old, who's never raised any of his 00:40:52.030 --> 00:40:57.236 kids. He has 4 other children he's never raised. Here he is in front of me 00:40:57.269 --> 00:41:05.269 , and I am seeing him for the first time. In this loving parental role 00:41:05.329 --> 00:41:10.537 where he cannot get enough of taking care of the baby. It's all about him 00:41:10.570 --> 00:41:17.506 and I think. This is his child. I'm letting him bond with this child. 00:41:17.539 --> 00:41:20.706 Maybe I'm letting him bond with this child because I don't want him to 00:41:20.739 --> 00:41:25.836 leave. You know, I want him so connected, and I remember having these 00:41:25.869 --> 00:41:30.675 thoughts. I want him connected to this child so he won't leave the child. 00:41:30.708 --> 00:41:36.767 He needs to be with this child. And so for about the next week. Although I 00:41:36.800 --> 00:41:43.115 was nursing the baby, I knew I was psychologically stepping back, and I 00:41:43.148 --> 00:41:47.845 was letting him take the lead role, whereas often it might be a mother 00:41:47.878 --> 00:41:53.175 who's all involved or a doula or some combination maybe of a mother, 00:41:53.208 --> 00:41:58.905 father, and somebody's mother coming. This was really more about him 00:41:58.938 --> 00:42:06.095 having this time, and I saw him for the first time in this really, really 00:42:06.128 --> 00:42:13.456 Gentle, loving, compassionate way, and I start to realize. This baby is 00:42:13.489 --> 00:42:19.615 not leaving us. The baby is not going anywhere. And now I'm in another 00:42:19.648 --> 00:42:25.256 whole realm of turmoil. I'm in another realm of Dante's hell where I'm, oh 00:42:25.289 --> 00:42:31.195 my God, I've just had this baby. I'm still married. I had this man living 00:42:31.228 --> 00:42:35.095 in my house that I'm not really in love with. I was in lust with for sure 00:42:35.128 --> 00:42:41.095 , but not necessarily in love. That's a whole other longer love in a big 00:42:41.128 --> 00:42:47.537 way, but love on a daily day in and out. I'm not sure about that. Um, you 00:42:47.570 --> 00:42:51.477 know, because I'm just having an affair with somebody that I've had an 00:42:51.510 --> 00:42:56.646 affair with when I was in college. So 00:42:56.679 --> 00:43:00.916 I started to feel that things were changing, things were changing, and the 00:43:00.949 --> 00:43:07.017 family came back. I had written them some beautiful emails. 00:43:07.050 --> 00:43:13.736 And we had to take the baby. I remember the adoption. Person came to us 00:43:13.769 --> 00:43:19.276 here. And we wrote down a name. I didn't choose the name. The baby's 00:43:19.309 --> 00:43:23.807 father chose his name, Ansel Jackson. She was sort of interesting because 00:43:23.840 --> 00:43:30.756 . I remember he'd seen a number of Ansel Adams PBS documentaries. I think 00:43:30.789 --> 00:43:33.925 the name was in his mind, but it also connected to my work as an artist 00:43:33.958 --> 00:43:41.958 and doing. Large landscapes that were very um inspired maybe. Not me 00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:45.445 personally looking at Ansel Adam's work, but people looking at my work and 00:43:45.478 --> 00:43:51.037 seeing realism and black and white vintage photography in in my paintings 00:43:51.070 --> 00:43:58.796 , my drawings, there was a visual connection. So he chose the name and he 00:43:58.829 --> 00:44:03.396 went along with the idea that we were going to still adopt this baby, but 00:44:03.429 --> 00:44:06.436 somewhere in my mind I thought, I don't know if we're really, really doing 00:44:06.469 --> 00:44:13.747 this, but we did get in the car. And we did go, we did go to the family's 00:44:13.780 --> 00:44:20.526 home. And we left that baby for a night. We drove back home without the 00:44:20.559 --> 00:44:22.595 baby. 00:44:22.628 --> 00:44:28.807 The baby was about 2 hours away from me for a night. And I got up the next 00:44:28.840 --> 00:44:35.967 morning and I walked in my backyard and I screamed, What have I done? What 00:44:36.000 --> 00:44:41.175 have I done? What have I done? 00:44:41.208 --> 00:44:44.206 And so, 00:44:44.239 --> 00:44:50.445 I called the the. The woman I called the new mother. 00:44:50.478 --> 00:44:58.037 And I begged for my child back, and I cried and I begged, and I begged and 00:44:58.070 --> 00:45:04.236 I cried and I didn't have a leg to stand on, and I begged and I cried like 00:45:04.269 --> 00:45:11.110 I could will this child back into my life or control the situation somehow. 00:45:11.978 --> 00:45:13.978 And they politely argued with me, very politely, very kind, very, very 00:45:22.070 --> 00:45:27.077 kind, and said, we don't have to do this. And I said, Of course I know you 00:45:27.110 --> 00:45:32.566 don't have to. I know you don't have to do this for me. And they agreed to 00:45:32.599 --> 00:45:39.747 let me come and get and get my son. So we drive. 00:45:39.780 --> 00:45:43.586 My karma, I'm spending a lot of time now in my life. Now in the last 7 00:45:43.619 --> 00:45:49.077 years trying to. Make everything OK with people, so I drive and I pick up 00:45:49.110 --> 00:45:55.517 this child and I pull this child from this woman's arms. She's weeping. 00:45:55.550 --> 00:46:02.236 I'm weeping. Everyone's crying. No one's happy. No one's happy. I'm happy 00:46:02.269 --> 00:46:07.997 , but I'm not happy. There's nothing happy about it, and we take the baby 00:46:08.030 --> 00:46:14.557 home, and I'm not happy. The baby's with us, but I'm not happy. And I know 00:46:14.590 --> 00:46:20.577 I have broken. Hearts. I have broken a family. I look at a grandmother 00:46:20.610 --> 00:46:25.467 there visiting, and she tells me, you've broken hearts, and I know I've 00:46:25.500 --> 00:46:31.666 broken hearts. I know everyone hates me. I'm in turmoil and pain, and I 00:46:31.699 --> 00:46:37.436 remember driving to the Walmart and thinking. What am I doing? What am I 00:46:37.469 --> 00:46:43.445 doing? What am I doing? Now I have a baby living with me. In my adult life 00:46:43.478 --> 00:46:51.478 , my very, very manicured perfect adult life. There's nowhere in my house 00:46:54.519 --> 00:47:00.247 have I thought about a child coming or what's going to happen. But I'm I'm 00:47:00.280 --> 00:47:05.566 in a situation light years different than I was 20 years before when I had 00:47:05.599 --> 00:47:11.287 my first child, and yet I wasn't prepared at all, but I was told I, I knew 00:47:11.320 --> 00:47:16.477 you don't really need. You don't need color schemes in a bedroom and a 00:47:16.510 --> 00:47:21.296 mural painted. None of that is necessary. You need some diapers. And so I 00:47:21.329 --> 00:47:24.206 went to Walmart and got diapers and thought, I can't believe this is 00:47:24.239 --> 00:47:28.356 happening and we're moving forward with this, but this is what we're doing. 00:47:28.389 --> 00:47:36.389 And it really became a one day at a time, really, really, really slowly 00:47:36.929 --> 00:47:42.945 because I'd never felt like a woman who had embraced being pregnant. I'd 00:47:42.978 --> 00:47:48.635 never worn maternity clothes. There was no baby shower, there was no 00:47:48.668 --> 00:47:53.467 Excitement of a family. There were no phone calls. There were no flowers. 00:47:53.500 --> 00:48:01.195 There was nothing that said. This is cherished experience. Instead. It 00:48:01.228 --> 00:48:08.626 was this beautiful child. That came to a broken home. Uh parents that 00:48:08.659 --> 00:48:13.477 weren't together and siblings that didn't know each other. But the thing 00:48:13.510 --> 00:48:19.896 that became magical about this child. Is that Jack Ansel Jackson, has 00:48:19.929 --> 00:48:25.695 always been known as Jack, began the beginning of a family. There were 00:48:25.728 --> 00:48:30.626 remnants of of his family everywhere when he was born. There was a 30 year 00:48:30.659 --> 00:48:35.986 old brother in Los Angeles, and now his other brother, who at that time 00:48:36.019 --> 00:48:41.635 was 20, when he was born, was 20, then moved off to Los Angeles, and all 00:48:41.668 --> 00:48:45.706 of these siblings started to meet each other. The two brothers in Los 00:48:45.739 --> 00:48:52.146 Angeles met for the first time and became very close, adore each other. 00:48:52.179 --> 00:48:56.396 And a family started to come together that had never been a family. 00:48:56.429 --> 00:49:01.577 Suddenly Jack had two parents he was growing up with, and Christopher had 00:49:01.610 --> 00:49:06.195 2 parents living in a house for the first time that knew each other, and 00:49:06.228 --> 00:49:10.577 he had the older brother that he had always prayed for but never knew that 00:49:10.610 --> 00:49:13.856 he had, that he's very, very close with as an adult, and he had the 00:49:13.889 --> 00:49:18.327 younger brother that he always wanted and this family that had no 00:49:18.360 --> 00:49:26.360 connection throughout its seeming life suddenly now is Coalescing around 00:49:27.199 --> 00:49:34.126 this baby like he's the fire. He's the fire that holds us all together and 00:49:34.159 --> 00:49:40.195 we all couldn't get close enough to him. 00:49:40.228 --> 00:49:47.767 And so I would, I would say that my pregnancy now in, in retrospect, now 00:49:47.800 --> 00:49:53.557 seems kind of happy and joyful. It had moments of excitement. 00:49:53.590 --> 00:50:00.115 I remember that no one knew I had a baby and I hadn't told anybody I'd had 00:50:00.148 --> 00:50:06.876 a baby, and I whittled myself back down to my pre-baby weight, like in a 00:50:06.909 --> 00:50:11.566 blink of an eye, like Hollywood stars try to do to be on People magazine 00:50:11.599 --> 00:50:15.916 because I wanted to be that girl that I still wanted to get back to who I 00:50:15.949 --> 00:50:18.717 thought I was. I was always trying to get back to who I thought I was and 00:50:18.750 --> 00:50:23.717 missed out on. So I just, I was really back to who I was. You could never 00:50:23.750 --> 00:50:28.456 tell I'd had a baby. So about, remember, it was 6 months after Jack was 00:50:28.489 --> 00:50:33.856 born, I had a show at a gallery. No one knew I'd had this child. I'd 00:50:33.889 --> 00:50:36.695 already committed to have this show in a gallery, and I worked every 00:50:36.728 --> 00:50:41.356 single day. Take that. Marissa Yahoo takes off for 2 weeks. I didn't take 00:50:41.389 --> 00:50:45.057 off 2 hours. I came home the next day and started working again. Literally 00:50:45.090 --> 00:50:50.026 started working, painting, painting, painting. The gallery owner convinces 00:50:50.059 --> 00:50:55.146 me to show up with the baby at the gallery opening and do it all in one 00:50:55.179 --> 00:51:00.267 night because the gossip, she said, why, why piddle it out for 4 months? 00:51:00.300 --> 00:51:03.827 Do it one night and let everybody talk about you for 2 weeks and it'll be 00:51:03.860 --> 00:51:09.845 over and they'll be on to the next person, so. I summoned up my courage, 00:51:09.878 --> 00:51:14.526 took my baby to my gallery opening, and held him the whole night while 00:51:14.559 --> 00:51:18.506 people said, When did you have a baby? How could you have a baby? And of 00:51:18.539 --> 00:51:21.566 course, people, I could see them doing like sort of weird math in their 00:51:21.599 --> 00:51:27.405 head. I could see it. I could tell. And I just sort of thought, let them 00:51:27.438 --> 00:51:31.845 figure it out. I've just lived through the weirdest, most bizarre public 00:51:31.878 --> 00:51:38.006 celibate marriage. I have been through. A bizarre trajectory with more 00:51:38.039 --> 00:51:43.307 strange men in my life and disassociation with people. If I can't live in 00:51:43.340 --> 00:51:47.986 the shame of what I've done and the blessing of my two children, well, you 00:51:48.019 --> 00:51:52.126 know, everybody's everybody's got things. So here it is. This is what I've 00:51:52.159 --> 00:51:57.327 done. And people talked about it for about 2 weeks. It was very juicy and 00:51:57.360 --> 00:52:00.967 exciting, and they really knew all the details. It would have been at 00:52:01.000 --> 00:52:04.256 least a 2 month story, but 00:52:04.289 --> 00:52:11.517 So was your man at the opening? Yes. So you introduced your 6 month baby 00:52:11.550 --> 00:52:15.767 and the new man in your life to these people who had known you as this 00:52:15.800 --> 00:52:22.155 power couple. Yes, absolutely. They were stunned. They were stunned, 00:52:22.188 --> 00:52:26.845 stunned, stunned. Of course I was at that moment, I was pretty much you 00:52:26.878 --> 00:52:32.365 know persona non grata from the A crowd of museum events, but that's OK. 00:52:32.398 --> 00:52:38.416 Life is a little more important than Chardonnay the Chardonnay tour. So I 00:52:38.449 --> 00:52:43.135 just, it became a whole different life then. It just, it really, it became 00:52:43.168 --> 00:52:47.776 like being in some ways a parent for the first time. You have all the 00:52:47.809 --> 00:52:51.997 Knowledge, but in some ways you're still the first time parent because 00:52:52.030 --> 00:52:57.077 you're doing it 20 years separate and everything is different. Everything 00:52:57.110 --> 00:53:01.876 is different. The return back to your body isn't the same. I'd return back 00:53:01.909 --> 00:53:07.756 to who I was, but that was a force of will. That was because I had so many 00:53:07.789 --> 00:53:13.635 issues in my head about who I was as a woman physically, and I was really 00:53:13.668 --> 00:53:19.247 wanting to Look like a girl that didn't have a baby. I want to look like a 00:53:19.280 --> 00:53:23.086 woman who had not had a baby. I wanted to be a size 6 again as fast as I 00:53:23.119 --> 00:53:26.316 could. 00:53:26.349 --> 00:53:32.876 I know. It's body image has been one of those topics that we've really 00:53:32.909 --> 00:53:36.396 been excited for women to talk about because they don't. I mean, we had 00:53:36.429 --> 00:53:41.236 women that said, I didn't want to get fat when I was pregnant. I let 00:53:41.269 --> 00:53:46.747 myself get fat both times. I was totally like, this is it. I have been I 00:53:46.780 --> 00:53:51.175 have lots of weight issues. I'm a yo yo. I go up and I go down. I control 00:53:51.208 --> 00:53:55.066 myself with my weight. I can lose a lot of weight and be way for, wafer 00:53:55.099 --> 00:53:59.787 thin. I lost so much weight before I got pregnant to get my husband's 00:53:59.820 --> 00:54:05.436 attention. I carved off every ounce I physically could. So I would hope he 00:54:05.469 --> 00:54:09.316 would see that something was wrong with me. I wanted him to look at me. I 00:54:09.349 --> 00:54:12.675 remember screaming at him, Look at me, I'm disappearing physically in 00:54:12.708 --> 00:54:15.997 front of you to get your attention. Aren't you getting it? You don't see 00:54:16.030 --> 00:54:20.756 how thin I am. You don't see that I that I'm down to like 107 pounds. 00:54:20.789 --> 00:54:24.570 That's pretty thin on me. That is really. thin on me. You know, I'm 00:54:24.603 --> 00:54:29.171 avoiding I willpower. I can kick myself into, don't eat, don't eat, don't 00:54:29.204 --> 00:54:32.452 eat, don't eat to get your attention, which is a pretty weird thing to be 00:54:32.485 --> 00:54:36.611 doing already still in your 40s, but trying to get my husband's attention 00:54:36.644 --> 00:54:42.206 , who wanted nothing physically to do with me as a woman. I thought it was 00:54:42.239 --> 00:54:47.445 probably because I was too fat, I wasn't attractive enough, I wasn't sexy 00:54:47.478 --> 00:54:53.606 enough. So I was trying to get this puritanical stuffy guy's attention. So 00:54:53.639 --> 00:54:56.967 I took off all the weight I could. It was the last thing I could find 00:54:57.000 --> 00:55:01.845 wrong with me. My house was clean. I had money in the bank, my career was 00:55:01.878 --> 00:55:06.425 pretty good. My child was raised. Give it everything away that was clutter 00:55:06.458 --> 00:55:09.695 in my house. How about the clutter on my body? I'll give that away too. So 00:55:09.728 --> 00:55:15.526 I just kept I eliminated it so that I could figure out it wasn't me he 00:55:15.559 --> 00:55:21.376 wasn't having sex with. It was he wasn't having sex. It wasn't. I had to 00:55:21.409 --> 00:55:27.365 be able to get to. It wasn't me. And so once I figured out I'd lost all 00:55:27.398 --> 00:55:31.287 this weight, he's not having sex with me. Well, I know who will have sex 00:55:31.320 --> 00:55:34.885 with me. The father of my child, the one man and the last man I had sex 00:55:34.918 --> 00:55:42.675 with. 18 years ago, who has had sex with everyone will not turn me down. I 00:55:42.708 --> 00:55:47.717 mean that was kind of desperate when you think about it, and yet I loved 00:55:47.750 --> 00:55:54.405 him and there was so much sexual chemistry. I did not. I felt at that time. 00:55:54.438 --> 00:55:58.577 That I did not have time to have an appropriate affair with a nice man to 00:55:58.610 --> 00:56:01.936 get divorced and meet a nice man. I didn't have time for that, and I 00:56:01.969 --> 00:56:07.445 wasn't because I was 42 when I wanted to have a child. I had no biological 00:56:07.478 --> 00:56:13.416 clock ticking sort of. Um, thoughts going through my mind. I was thinking 00:56:13.449 --> 00:56:18.767 , I am finally free, finally free as an adult because I was the only 00:56:18.800 --> 00:56:24.247 person taking care of my child. Even when I was married, it wasn't a 00:56:24.280 --> 00:56:30.095 family where the father was taking care of his stepchild. It was still my 00:56:30.128 --> 00:56:38.037 child. I just didn't have time to meet a nice guy. I just wanted to Be Who 00:56:38.070 --> 00:56:43.506 I thought I should have been at another time in my life. And here was this 00:56:43.539 --> 00:56:49.327 man that I'd had so much sexual chemistry with who seemed to be able 00:56:49.360 --> 00:56:54.546 literally to have any woman he wanted. He could have any woman he wanted 00:56:54.579 --> 00:56:59.106 and I just wanted to be wanted by any man. I mean how weird is that? I 00:56:59.139 --> 00:57:03.470 wanted to be wanted by. Any man, he could have any woman, and he wanted 00:57:03.503 --> 00:57:09.831 you. Yeah, really, that would have been great if he wanted me, and he was 00:57:09.864 --> 00:57:14.510 more than happy to see me again. I was the best version of myself that I'd 00:57:14.543 --> 00:57:18.311 ever been. I mean, who doesn't want that for a time in your life where you 00:57:18.344 --> 00:57:22.845 actually Think about the best version of yourself and feel that you're 00:57:22.878 --> 00:57:27.967 hitting that time in your life. Maybe it is your prime. Maybe I was, I've 00:57:28.000 --> 00:57:33.845 said to people, I was probably so outrageously fertile by then. I was so 00:57:33.878 --> 00:57:40.997 fertile and just dying to have sex. I was so dying to have sex. I remember 00:57:41.030 --> 00:57:45.557 feeling it was like girls who think about their wedding night. It really 00:57:45.590 --> 00:57:51.077 felt more like my wedding night the night I had an affair than the night 00:57:51.110 --> 00:57:57.396 of my wedding night. My wedding night. I remember we did not have a hotel 00:57:57.429 --> 00:58:01.436 room. We were just going to come back to be in the house that we own. Why 00:58:01.469 --> 00:58:05.345 would we rent a hotel room to have sex in? We weren't going to be having 00:58:05.378 --> 00:58:10.796 sex. So there would be no there would be no room as none of that would be 00:58:10.829 --> 00:58:15.717 happening. And some of my close friends felt that seemed a little unusual 00:58:15.750 --> 00:58:20.195 and decided to get a hotel room as a gift for us to set the stage. That 00:58:20.228 --> 00:58:25.736 helped. I also remember on my wedding night. 00:58:25.769 --> 00:58:31.727 Running alone in my wedding dress barefoot through the dewy grass so I 00:58:31.760 --> 00:58:37.836 could find some matches so I could light that joint cause I knew I was 00:58:37.869 --> 00:58:42.436 alone that night alone in my wedding dress. I knew I would be. There was 00:58:42.469 --> 00:58:48.486 my groom asleep. No big surprise. Someone had brought me a, you know, a 00:58:48.519 --> 00:58:53.445 joint, and there I was alone with my thoughts and my memories, and I sat 00:58:53.478 --> 00:58:59.686 there alone thinking as soon as I take off this dress, the magic will be 00:58:59.719 --> 00:59:06.467 over. And you know, it was, it was, there was no. There was just no 00:59:06.500 --> 00:59:13.706 planning in my marriage that, you know, I remember my husband said to me. 00:59:13.739 --> 00:59:17.276 Well, you knew when we got married, we weren't having sex. And I thought 00:59:17.309 --> 00:59:21.236 , well, I kind of thought in the comforts, I mean, I hate to seem so 00:59:21.269 --> 00:59:26.316 Pollyanna, but I thought in your up your uptightness way, maybe in the 00:59:26.349 --> 00:59:33.461 bonds of marriage, you would feel. comfortable and it would be OK, and we 00:59:33.494 --> 00:59:41.494 would work to this, having sex and being a patient, really patient, 00:59:41.934 --> 00:59:49.061 considerate, I would be able to help you work beyond maybe even the most 00:59:49.094 --> 00:59:53.977 basic. You know, missionary. Maybe we could just get to a missionary 00:59:54.010 --> 00:59:59.017 position, but that never happened. So by the time I'm 42, I haven't had 00:59:59.050 --> 01:00:07.050 sex in like 18 years. I'm just, I'm curious. I'm I'm I'm curious. I'm more 01:00:07.860 --> 01:00:12.986 than curious. I'm just wanting to have sex. So I plan to have an affair, 01:00:13.019 --> 01:00:17.425 which is a strange thing to do when you're a married woman, but It was 01:00:17.458 --> 01:00:21.865 deeper. I thought I knew it wasn't physical. Even when I was planning to 01:00:21.898 --> 01:00:24.756 have an affair, it wasn't about physically having an affair so you could 01:00:24.789 --> 01:00:29.967 have sex. I wanted to know something about myself as a woman. Was I a 01:00:30.000 --> 01:00:35.925 sexually desirable woman? Was I desirable to somebody else? What was wrong 01:00:35.958 --> 01:00:39.967 with me? All of these problems I'd had as a young woman trying to figure 01:00:40.000 --> 01:00:44.925 out my own sexuality. I was promiscuous as all get out as a Catholic high 01:00:44.958 --> 01:00:49.166 school girl in the back of a car. I was entirely promiscuous. And so I was 01:00:49.199 --> 01:00:52.396 really looking for 01:00:52.429 --> 01:00:56.796 I was probably acting this out again as an adult. I was just repeating the 01:00:56.829 --> 01:01:01.635 same patterns because the questions hadn't been answered. I hadn't gone 01:01:01.668 --> 01:01:08.767 through these natural transitions. A person should, as they move along. 01:01:08.800 --> 01:01:13.977 Their sexual evolution. I hadn't answered these questions. They'd always 01:01:14.010 --> 01:01:19.497 seemed to be snuffed out. I would get close to the answer of finding out 01:01:19.530 --> 01:01:23.376 something about myself, and then the door was closed and I'd go on with 01:01:23.409 --> 01:01:27.077 life and I would have to just deal with things. But the questions would 01:01:27.110 --> 01:01:32.675 still be there. So I think by the time I'd had an affair, it was, it was, 01:01:32.708 --> 01:01:36.606 I'm not emotionally married to this man. I'm not sexually married to this 01:01:36.639 --> 01:01:39.477 man. I'm certainly not spiritually married to this man. I'm married to 01:01:39.510 --> 01:01:45.876 this man for for him for social reasons, which I always thought I always 01:01:45.909 --> 01:01:50.626 knew was I always knew was the point, even when I got married because I'd 01:01:50.659 --> 01:01:55.615 read this book in art school about the evolution of a woman's. Personal 01:01:55.648 --> 01:01:59.175 life and the writer's name, the sociologist, I'm so embarrassed, I'm going 01:01:59.208 --> 01:02:02.416 to forget her name. Is it not Margaret Bourke White, she was a 01:02:02.449 --> 01:02:06.517 photographer. She wrote about these five different stages in a woman's 01:02:06.550 --> 01:02:11.365 life and how, how You might or it was about marriage and evolution. You 01:02:11.398 --> 01:02:13.967 might get married when you're young for certain reasons. You might get 01:02:14.000 --> 01:02:16.925 married for love and lust because you married somebody that when you were 01:02:16.958 --> 01:02:20.086 22 because you met in high school or college and you got married. But if 01:02:20.119 --> 01:02:23.327 you got married probably maybe a little later in your life, you might get 01:02:23.360 --> 01:02:27.686 married for career reasons. My marriage was for career reasons. My husband 01:02:27.719 --> 01:02:32.126 married. Entirely because it looked good. He looked good on his career. I 01:02:32.159 --> 01:02:37.566 looked good for his career. I paid all the bills. We lived on my income. 01:02:37.599 --> 01:02:40.686 And so who could go wrong? I made lunch and coffee and iron and made the 01:02:40.719 --> 01:02:46.756 bed. What was wrong with this situation, except that my heart wasn't being 01:02:46.789 --> 01:02:53.095 filled. And I, and I thought, huh. I think that if I would have married 01:02:53.128 --> 01:02:57.296 now later in my life, now that I'm 50 and I'm not married, but I've been 01:02:57.329 --> 01:03:02.456 now with the father of our two children from 7 years, I would marry for 01:03:02.489 --> 01:03:07.936 companionship because you marry later in your life, maybe it's your second 01:03:07.969 --> 01:03:11.537 marriage, maybe it's your 3rd, maybe you're gay now and you're a lesbian 01:03:11.570 --> 01:03:14.287 and you're marrying the person you really want to be with. You choose 01:03:14.320 --> 01:03:20.135 people. I swear you choose somebody not who who makes your bottom line 01:03:20.168 --> 01:03:24.017 look good. You think, Yeah, who'll hold my hair when I'm vomiting in a 01:03:24.050 --> 01:03:29.827 toilet after chemotherapy? Who who'll go and get me Depends diapers when 01:03:29.860 --> 01:03:34.655 I'm incontinent, but still knows how much I care about how good I look 01:03:34.688 --> 01:03:39.977 when I go out? Who who will be the person who I could tell my deepest 01:03:40.010 --> 01:03:45.646 really dirty secrets to and still feel OK about? And in the end, for me, 01:03:45.679 --> 01:03:51.717 it's been this one consistent man that I met when I was 22. He's the guy. 01:03:51.750 --> 01:03:57.736 He's the guy. He is. He's the companion man. He actually is the man who 01:03:57.769 --> 01:04:03.586 answers all of those, all of, all of those reasons that you would choose 01:04:03.619 --> 01:04:08.006 to maybe get married. I would have probably married him each time now in 01:04:08.039 --> 01:04:12.706 my life. And I've never seemed to have chosen him, but he's always been 01:04:12.739 --> 01:04:16.945 there. And in some ways, the circumstances I have always managed to bring 01:04:16.978 --> 01:04:21.307 him. He's the one who says to me, You're right where you're supposed to be 01:04:21.340 --> 01:04:25.057 when I'm complaining and, no, you're right where you're supposed to be. 01:04:25.090 --> 01:04:29.267 Timing is perfect, timing is divine. It's taken us many years to get to 01:04:29.300 --> 01:04:36.066 this. My husband is an older father and 01:04:36.099 --> 01:04:39.776 he was 50, I think when August was born or something like that. You get it 01:04:39.809 --> 01:04:44.416 that older but he's never been married, never had a kid, and he said, I 01:04:44.449 --> 01:04:49.905 was never ready to be a father until today, until now. It took me 50. 01:04:49.938 --> 01:04:56.905 Jack's father took him until he was 50 to be a father, a dedicated father. 01:04:56.938 --> 01:05:03.106 Yeah. To the point that Jack is 7 in his 2nd grade and he still shares a 01:05:03.139 --> 01:05:07.256 bed with his father. They still sleep together and we sleep in separate 01:05:07.289 --> 01:05:12.267 rooms. Sleep's important. I love my sleep. It has nothing to do with sex 01:05:12.300 --> 01:05:16.635 with sleep. No sex, sleep and sex and bedrooms are different things. 01:05:16.668 --> 01:05:20.986 People should sleep in adjoining bedrooms and have sleep. Absolutely. 01:05:21.019 --> 01:05:24.356 You've got all kinds of rooms to have sex. You can have sex all kinds of 01:05:24.389 --> 01:05:28.186 much better places in the bed you sleep. I don't get it. I don't 01:05:28.219 --> 01:05:30.816 understand that. 01:05:30.849 --> 01:05:34.506 But it's older fathers can commit. If he had had a baby previously, he 01:05:34.539 --> 01:05:38.345 said, I would have failed as a father. I've been in circumstances where 01:05:38.378 --> 01:05:43.425 women wanted to get married and make babies with me in my 30s, and I knew 01:05:43.458 --> 01:05:47.217 I wasn't going to be Jack's father had 2 children when he was in his late 01:05:47.250 --> 01:05:54.486 20s, and I knew who those children were and he He had no intention, I 01:05:54.519 --> 01:05:57.635 think, of so much being married and having children, but he had 2 children 01:05:57.668 --> 01:06:02.936 born and he married the mother of his two kids. And it really didn't suit 01:06:02.969 --> 01:06:08.267 who he was as a person in any way at all, and he just fled and he's a very 01:06:08.300 --> 01:06:15.827 , very, very lucky man. He's a lucky man that I knew when I was raising 01:06:15.860 --> 01:06:21.445 Christopher. I was really careful. Someone had told me, or maybe I heard 01:06:21.478 --> 01:06:27.767 it on Oprah, Don't say mean things about a parent that's not there. Do not 01:06:27.800 --> 01:06:32.166 do it, because it's not about the parent that's not there. It's what 01:06:32.199 --> 01:06:37.807 you're imprinting on the child. It's what you're saying to the child about 01:06:37.840 --> 01:06:41.845 part of them or the parent that's not there is somebody they connect to. 01:06:41.878 --> 01:06:48.865 So don't start creating a negative narrative. That's going to infect, and 01:06:48.898 --> 01:06:53.267 I mean infect that child for the rest of their life. So we didn't talk 01:06:53.300 --> 01:06:58.106 about a missing father. There was never a mean word said. We didn't talk 01:06:58.139 --> 01:07:02.037 about him not being there. There were a lot of really nice male role 01:07:02.070 --> 01:07:04.905 models that were college friends of mine that would come around and a 01:07:04.938 --> 01:07:08.345 friend who came and read to Christopher and he was growing up, but we 01:07:08.378 --> 01:07:14.456 never said a word about His missing father or even refer to it. So when he 01:07:14.489 --> 01:07:21.247 as an adult met him, he didn't come with a whole trainload of luggage. You 01:07:21.280 --> 01:07:27.615 know his baggage wasn't years of my attitude. It just wasn't there. Well, 01:07:27.648 --> 01:07:32.925 I hope he did. I pointed it out a few times like the reason. You have such 01:07:32.958 --> 01:07:40.958 a free flowing amazing relationship with your son is because I never said 01:07:41.000 --> 01:07:45.006 if I did one, I did a lot of bad things. I pulled a child away from a 01:07:45.039 --> 01:07:47.885 mother. I've done a lot of bad things, but one of the good things in my 01:07:47.918 --> 01:07:54.727 pro column is I really knew. I knew during the 18 years of. Raising my son 01:07:54.760 --> 01:07:59.896 , even during the poverty and the bad days and not having food and being 01:07:59.929 --> 01:08:05.595 really super poor, and I didn't have a car for 3 years. I did not say. Bad 01:08:05.628 --> 01:08:10.037 things. I didn't blame someone who wasn't there, never a word. So this 01:08:10.070 --> 01:08:15.077 adult could have a really great adult relationship. They didn't have to 01:08:15.110 --> 01:08:21.397 work through years of what was not really even there. Um, you know, I 01:08:21.430 --> 01:08:27.467 really feel for that family, but I can't help but think what I've gone 01:08:27.500 --> 01:08:35.500 through Brazil. Well, you know. I chose a family that had big projects in 01:08:36.369 --> 01:08:43.336 their future. They were very creative, interesting projects, right? And I 01:08:43.369 --> 01:08:47.777 , I spent some time with I spent some time with a variety of therapists 01:08:47.810 --> 01:08:50.857 after all of this in my life, you know, because a lot of friends of mine 01:08:50.890 --> 01:08:54.256 said to me, I think you should give that baby away and just sort of try to 01:08:54.289 --> 01:08:57.777 hold the pendulum steady here only because you are making some radical 01:08:57.810 --> 01:09:04.585 swings. You are going back and forth. And what I realized was I did this 01:09:04.618 --> 01:09:09.987 very hurtful thing. And I was going to have to do a lot of soul searching 01:09:10.020 --> 01:09:17.305 and do a lot of things to try and make things better. In my family's life 01:09:17.338 --> 01:09:24.166 and hopefully. A ripple effect would eventually quell what I had done to 01:09:24.199 --> 01:09:27.286 this family two hours away from me, what they had been through, and I've 01:09:27.319 --> 01:09:31.446 thought about them and I have been in the community where they have lived 01:09:31.479 --> 01:09:36.706 and done things there and thought. I wonder if they remember my name, and 01:09:36.739 --> 01:09:42.626 I remember, I remember them. This mother was so good. She looked at her 01:09:42.659 --> 01:09:47.425 daughter, her 5 year old at the time and said, Well, let's just think of 01:09:47.458 --> 01:09:51.946 it as we took care of the baby for a night and that he was our baby for a 01:09:51.979 --> 01:09:58.546 night and that was good enough for us. And I thought Man, that's a good 01:09:58.579 --> 01:10:05.135 mother. If I could even be. Maybe 10% of what this mother was gonna be, 01:10:05.168 --> 01:10:10.015 I'd be a pretty good mom to my child cause this one, I could tell she was 01:10:10.048 --> 01:10:14.446 gonna have to explain this to her daughter a couple of different times and 01:10:14.479 --> 01:10:22.479 she would cry over this. And maybe, maybe if this were the best thing. 01:10:22.640 --> 01:10:30.640 Maybe per. And what I was doing in her life. was I was placed in her path. 01:10:33.750 --> 01:10:37.107 If this were a good, I, you know, if you, if you could like make it look 01:10:37.140 --> 01:10:40.706 good for yourself, to maybe to make myself better, feel a little better, 01:10:40.739 --> 01:10:45.756 maybe I was placed in her life's path. Because she wanted to have another 01:10:45.789 --> 01:10:49.366 baby, she told me, and she had tried to, and it wasn't happening, and she 01:10:49.399 --> 01:10:55.836 had a very high power career. Maybe she wasn't meant to have a baby. Maybe 01:10:55.869 --> 01:11:01.717 , you know, and maybe I was pushed through in her life, in my painful way 01:11:01.750 --> 01:11:04.836 to help her to understand. Maybe you weren't going to have a baby because 01:11:04.869 --> 01:11:07.996 you had the child you were anticipated to have. Maybe she had a child 01:11:08.029 --> 01:11:14.237 after. I have no idea. I chose not to keep in touch because I did not want 01:11:14.270 --> 01:11:17.836 to drag. I thought about keeping in touch with them and there was an offer 01:11:17.869 --> 01:11:22.857 , but I thought, I can't put these people through more pain. I can't go 01:11:22.890 --> 01:11:26.777 back to them in a year if I'm still in pain over this and offer, I can't 01:11:26.810 --> 01:11:31.885 do it. So I disconnected entirely and didn't keep in touch because I 01:11:31.918 --> 01:11:37.876 thought dragging people through my soap opera just is not going to happen. 01:11:37.909 --> 01:11:40.116 So I 01:11:40.149 --> 01:11:44.397 some women you talked to, um, I felt are very connected with the universe 01:11:44.430 --> 01:11:51.397 , but with you it's like shocking. It's all that it's big. Well then. I 01:11:51.430 --> 01:11:56.796 found out, well, it seems like this was about a year ago, about a year ago 01:11:56.829 --> 01:12:00.156 I met some, I met this woman, friend of a friend. It was a new friend in 01:12:00.189 --> 01:12:04.916 my life. A new friend comes into my life that has no connection to my 01:12:04.949 --> 01:12:09.675 marriage or my past, and that's exactly what I needed. Somebody didn't 01:12:09.708 --> 01:12:14.107 know anything about me and didn't care. So this new friend comes into my 01:12:14.140 --> 01:12:21.925 life, Bob, and It was so interesting, he was. He was so much of my 01:12:21.958 --> 01:12:25.357 ex-husband, all the good things about my ex-husband that I wanted to hang 01:12:25.390 --> 01:12:30.467 out without having to hang all the good without the bad aftertaste. So Bob 01:12:30.500 --> 01:12:36.116 introduces me to this really interesting woman and her profession is, 01:12:36.149 --> 01:12:42.357 she's a medium. She says, I talk to dead people. And I did not want to 01:12:42.390 --> 01:12:49.187 meet her as a medium because. I just wanted to sit back and I didn't want 01:12:49.220 --> 01:12:53.226 to be aggressively excited about her mission. I was, I was maybe a little 01:12:53.259 --> 01:12:58.305 skeptical. And so he introduces me and I think I'm meeting this lovely 01:12:58.338 --> 01:13:01.467 woman, Mariah is a friend and my friend Bob and how wonderful this is, and 01:13:01.500 --> 01:13:04.987 she's this really interesting woman. And we go out and she's going to be a 01:13:05.020 --> 01:13:10.265 nice new friend to me, and we go out and have dinner, very casual. 01:13:10.298 --> 01:13:15.126 I'm not even into the first glass of wine being ordered, and she starts 01:13:15.159 --> 01:13:21.206 telling me things about stuff she could never know about my life. She just 01:13:21.239 --> 01:13:24.885 starts saying things across the table about me, and it's specific. I'm 01:13:24.918 --> 01:13:30.956 bringing it up because it has to do with my pregnancy. She says to me 01:13:30.989 --> 01:13:34.616 I'm here. There's someone here that wants to speak with you. And she 01:13:34.649 --> 01:13:38.376 starts describing somebody, and I say to her, That's my grandma Olga. I 01:13:38.409 --> 01:13:43.147 know it's my grandma Olga. She gives me details that no one could know 01:13:43.180 --> 01:13:49.095 about these three gold rim plates, that one that I'd taken off of my 01:13:49.128 --> 01:13:53.036 grandma's wall that I use as my drawing palettes, and they have the 01:13:53.069 --> 01:13:56.376 Kennedys on them and the plate broke and how sad this was to me because it 01:13:56.409 --> 01:14:00.546 felt so sad about my grandma and how I keep trying to rebuy the plate. And 01:14:00.579 --> 01:14:04.476 she says to me to prove to me that this is my grandma, you're speaking to 01:14:04.509 --> 01:14:08.156 me. Don't worry about the gold plates you keep breaking. Clearly a detail 01:14:08.189 --> 01:14:12.277 no one would know because it's only about my grandma and I. So she goes on 01:14:12.310 --> 01:14:17.345 to tell me in the course of a 5 hour dinner that the reason, the reason 01:14:17.378 --> 01:14:22.836 that I was not able to have an abortion with my first child, Christopher, 01:14:22.869 --> 01:14:27.876 the first or second appointment, which I have always wondered what. Could 01:14:27.909 --> 01:14:30.237 have happened. The two doctors don't show up. I mean, what are the 01:14:30.270 --> 01:14:36.675 coincidences in this? She says to me, your grandma passed just before you 01:14:36.708 --> 01:14:41.397 were pregnant, and she, I swear this is true, exchanged a lot of life 01:14:41.430 --> 01:14:46.675 force energy and cannot explain to you in words what she went through to 01:14:46.708 --> 01:14:52.756 make happen this child to save your life. And I'm sitting here looking at 01:14:52.789 --> 01:14:57.696 this woman who's telling me these crazy details. Again, nothing that could 01:14:57.729 --> 01:15:04.326 be Googled. I've never met her. She doesn't know me, but she tells me all 01:15:04.359 --> 01:15:10.326 of the previous details about when I was pregnant back in Washington DC in 01:15:10.359 --> 01:15:17.326 1987 and the why of this and the why of that. And she knows this because 01:15:17.359 --> 01:15:22.336 she feels. This presence is telling her all these things I need to know 01:15:22.369 --> 01:15:30.217 about my life. Why I what my sadness with my mother was. The bad 01:15:30.250 --> 01:15:35.256 relationship with my father, the running away from being with my family, 01:15:35.289 --> 01:15:40.647 why I always feel so bad about myself. She explains all of these things 01:15:40.680 --> 01:15:46.696 via of this energy that she feels that is standing with her as my grandma 01:15:46.729 --> 01:15:53.607 and explaining my life to me. It was the most cathartic experience then. 01:15:53.640 --> 01:15:57.796 This summer, now in this relationship, this this conversation I had with 01:15:57.829 --> 01:16:02.956 Mariah over a year, which happens about every 3 months, usually with the 01:16:02.989 --> 01:16:07.196 presence of my grandma telling me more details, including going back into 01:16:07.229 --> 01:16:11.876 my grandmother's home on the farm in Iowa, the only place the woman ever 01:16:11.909 --> 01:16:16.156 lived. It was amazing. Nothing had changed in the house. The wallpaper 01:16:16.189 --> 01:16:19.836 from 1932 was still on the walls. It was insane. I felt the presence of 01:16:19.869 --> 01:16:24.237 the woman. The people who owned the farm were the neighbors who knew my 01:16:24.270 --> 01:16:28.687 grandmother and said, People feel the presence when you walk in the house 01:16:28.720 --> 01:16:31.567 we just want you to know and I said, I know that's what I've come for. 01:16:31.600 --> 01:16:36.726 I've come to feel my grandmother and have this this just happened in April 01:16:36.759 --> 01:16:40.647 this past April. I feel like I've had this full circle event and it is 01:16:40.680 --> 01:16:44.326 really because in some ways that I had to answer these questions of my 01:16:44.359 --> 01:16:50.046 children, who I am, where I've come from. I feel this connection to this 01:16:50.079 --> 01:16:56.006 farm in Iowa which previous to living in Arizona, all of my work was about. 01:16:56.039 --> 01:17:00.086 Landscape and the family and the farm and where I've come from and who I 01:17:00.119 --> 01:17:04.366 am, even though I'm totally disconnected. 01:17:04.399 --> 01:17:09.107 To my immediate family. I have no connection whatsoever. I feel this 01:17:09.140 --> 01:17:15.296 intense connection to my grandmother on my father's side, and because of 01:17:15.329 --> 01:17:18.777 the farm and the family and the multitude of generations that have all 01:17:18.810 --> 01:17:23.006 lived in this one farmhouse. It was a log cabin at one time. So I went 01:17:23.039 --> 01:17:28.256 back just in April to feel the full circle feel the full circle thing of 01:17:28.289 --> 01:17:34.555 it and at that time I realized as I was standing there. This is where my 01:17:34.588 --> 01:17:39.156 father, who I have had the worst relationship with all of my life, I was 01:17:39.189 --> 01:17:44.357 never a child who sat on her father's knee, was never loved by my father, 01:17:44.390 --> 01:17:48.107 I never felt that daddy's. I never, I did not have my father walk me down 01:17:48.140 --> 01:17:52.345 the aisle at my wedding, none of those kind of experiences. None of those 01:17:52.378 --> 01:17:59.357 experiences happened for me. But while I'm in that house. You know, I'm 01:17:59.390 --> 01:18:06.036 feeling the years and and the smells and just the. The years of lives that 01:18:06.069 --> 01:18:12.456 have been in this house and and my my father. I convinced myself then I 01:18:12.489 --> 01:18:16.826 can forgive him for everything that has happened and released from this. 01:18:16.859 --> 01:18:21.107 So in June I write this long, well, no, it wasn't even long, it was just 01:18:21.140 --> 01:18:24.826 it was very short. It was a long thought to get to it. It was a very short 01:18:24.859 --> 01:18:30.656 letter that said, I forgive you. I for because I feel that my grandmother 01:18:30.689 --> 01:18:37.406 has told me. Your father will die soon, and for you and your soul, you 01:18:37.439 --> 01:18:41.675 need to forgive this man and for your children, and so that you can always 01:18:41.708 --> 01:18:45.326 feel that you did the right thing. You need to get over because you've 01:18:45.359 --> 01:18:49.527 gotten over it. You need to tell him you got over it. So I wrote him this 01:18:49.560 --> 01:18:55.256 letter and said, I'm over the sadness, I'm over the hurt. I'm over this 01:18:55.289 --> 01:19:00.456 weird relationship I had with you and your best friend and the bizarre 01:19:00.489 --> 01:19:06.717 sort of name-calling that scarred me for life. I told him in the letter. 01:19:06.750 --> 01:19:11.555 Every relationship I had with every single man was tainted by my 01:19:11.588 --> 01:19:16.595 childhood relationship with you and the name calling. Wasn't a sexual 01:19:16.628 --> 01:19:20.555 abuse relationship. And that's the saddest part. Everybody was sure I was 01:19:20.588 --> 01:19:24.116 sexually abused. Everyone I knew, oh, it must be because you were sexually 01:19:24.149 --> 01:19:30.376 abused. It wasn't. To me, it was worse. It went worse. And sexual abuse. 01:19:30.409 --> 01:19:34.006 To me, have sex, I could be done with that and forget about that. If I had 01:19:34.039 --> 01:19:40.416 to, I could compartmentalize that to a bad experience. It was the everyday 01:19:40.449 --> 01:19:47.897 psychological eroding of my ego down to nothingness, to the point that I 01:19:47.930 --> 01:19:54.116 would marry a man full willingly knowing I would never be having. A full 01:19:54.149 --> 01:19:57.555 relationship with him because I'm not worth it anyway. I'm not worth 01:19:57.588 --> 01:20:02.076 having that, and I've been told this all my life. So it takes me my whole 01:20:02.109 --> 01:20:09.467 life and working it out through having Just really dramatic, over dramatic 01:20:09.500 --> 01:20:12.786 sexualized relationships with people like my high school boyfriends, 01:20:12.819 --> 01:20:19.467 whoever it was, it was really, really intense. And I always knew it went 01:20:19.500 --> 01:20:27.500 right back to feeling like my father did not protect me. When I was 4 or 5 01:20:28.079 --> 01:20:32.836 years old and this started, the name calling, he let it go on, and I knew 01:20:32.869 --> 01:20:37.487 it was wrong as a child and my mother let it go on, and all the adults 01:20:37.520 --> 01:20:42.086 around me let it go on, and I knew it was wrong. And if I said something 01:20:42.119 --> 01:20:47.805 back, I was punished for it. You know, I couldn't say mean things back to 01:20:47.838 --> 01:20:50.967 the mean man who called me double ugly. I couldn't say any of these things. 01:20:51.000 --> 01:20:54.086 I was always being punished. I was this bad little girl trying really 01:20:54.119 --> 01:20:58.925 hard to be a good girl. I lived multiple personalities as a child, and I 01:20:58.958 --> 01:21:06.958 knew I was developing. Multiple Ellens there was. Ellen The high school 01:21:07.798 --> 01:21:12.326 standout, who had to be the president of everything, the president of the 01:21:12.359 --> 01:21:18.166 student council, and the best at everything and the best grades. I created 01:21:18.199 --> 01:21:24.805 this persona of who I was for my parents, and so I wouldn't get in trouble 01:21:24.838 --> 01:21:30.906 and other adults and people would like me, but deep down. I was this whole 01:21:30.939 --> 01:21:38.939 other person inside who was Sad and lonely and always desperately trying 01:21:40.338 --> 01:21:45.956 to overcompensate, over achieve, desperately a young woman trying to 01:21:45.989 --> 01:21:53.989 overachieve because I was so eroded as a person. I just had no self-esteem 01:21:55.128 --> 01:22:00.496 as a young woman. I had none. And yet I created this persona that I had a 01:22:00.529 --> 01:22:05.777 lot of self-esteem and you could get up and speak in front of thousands of 01:22:05.810 --> 01:22:11.217 people in 4H and I could get up and perform in musical performances and 01:22:11.250 --> 01:22:17.616 theater and band, and it looked like one person was going on and deep down. 01:22:17.649 --> 01:22:21.876 I'd had my first abortion when I was a senior, no, I was a junior in high 01:22:21.909 --> 01:22:27.527 school alone, alone by myself, having sex because I couldn't tell my 01:22:27.560 --> 01:22:32.126 parents. My high school boyfriend was raping me. I couldn't tell my 01:22:32.159 --> 01:22:37.166 parents this thing, and this is why I remember my mother said to me, What 01:22:37.199 --> 01:22:41.006 if when my mother found out I was having sex in high school, she said to 01:22:41.039 --> 01:22:47.027 me, What if your father found out? And I looked at her and said, Well, he 01:22:47.060 --> 01:22:52.406 certainly didn't tell so and so to quit calling me double ugly as a child. 01:22:52.439 --> 01:22:56.567 Why would he stop so and so from raping me as a high school girl and 01:22:56.600 --> 01:23:00.086 having sex with me, and I couldn't get away from him. I couldn't get away 01:23:00.119 --> 01:23:03.916 from me. He was an older boy. I'd never had a boyfriend. I couldn't break 01:23:03.949 --> 01:23:07.326 up with him. He threatened me all the time. He threatened me verbally, 01:23:07.359 --> 01:23:13.246 physically, a lot of stuff, and I didn't have someone to say it to because 01:23:13.279 --> 01:23:16.967 my mother is just going to punish me. I'm going to get grounded for more 01:23:17.000 --> 01:23:20.925 stuff. I'm going to get locked in a I'm not locker room, I'm going to lock 01:23:20.958 --> 01:23:26.567 myself in a room. I can't I can't get away from any of this, so I'm one 01:23:26.600 --> 01:23:33.256 person in front of people. And I'm another person. In my secret life, my 01:23:33.289 --> 01:23:36.687 secret high school life that's going on, and I'm, I'm living these two 01:23:36.720 --> 01:23:43.996 dual lives. So the fact that these two dual lives becomes my My modus 01:23:44.029 --> 01:23:47.717 operandum as I move through life isn't really very surprising when you 01:23:47.750 --> 01:23:52.836 really think about it. I get to college and I'm, I'm living as a college 01:23:52.869 --> 01:23:58.116 student by day and I'm working as a cocktail waitress by night, or I'm 01:23:58.149 --> 01:24:02.796 living as a, as a college student by day and I'm an artist model at night 01:24:02.829 --> 01:24:07.467 , you know, and I'm or I'm pregnant, or I'm again as an adult, I'm living 01:24:07.500 --> 01:24:13.937 one dual life as, as, as a well-known, you know, power art couple. But I'm 01:24:13.970 --> 01:24:18.626 living an entirely different life. I used to tell people when we would 01:24:18.659 --> 01:24:23.546 come home when I was married when we would come home from big parties 01:24:23.579 --> 01:24:28.147 looking like celebrities, you know, we were like the Brangelina. When we 01:24:28.180 --> 01:24:32.506 would come home, we would walk in from the garage and I would just start 01:24:32.539 --> 01:24:36.987 taking the facade off. It was like, take the clothes off. We don't have to 01:24:37.020 --> 01:24:41.237 fake to being the fabulous power couple anymore because we're not. And my 01:24:41.270 --> 01:24:45.487 husband would go to the bathroom and shut the door and lock it. And that 01:24:45.520 --> 01:24:48.206 would be it. That would the night would be over, and I would never, I 01:24:48.239 --> 01:24:51.446 never once saw him without his clothes on. Never once. Isn't that amazing 01:24:51.479 --> 01:24:54.726 ? Sometimes I'd go to the bathroom door on fun nights when he'd had too 01:24:54.759 --> 01:24:57.086 much Chardonnay and I would rattle the door and kid him while he was 01:24:57.119 --> 01:25:00.166 brushing his teeth. I'd rattle the door and say, I'm coming in. I'm gonna 01:25:00.199 --> 01:25:05.135 see you. So at this point, I mean, you must have come to the conclusion 01:25:05.168 --> 01:25:07.675 that 01:25:07.708 --> 01:25:13.366 that all of that was on him psychologically. Well, I kind of started to 01:25:13.399 --> 01:25:20.586 realize right at the end, this is not all me. This cannot possibly be all 01:25:20.619 --> 01:25:28.425 me. There's just no way because I'm kind of a flirty girl. And I don't 01:25:28.458 --> 01:25:33.616 have problems thinking I can speak with you and enjoy flirtation by 01:25:33.649 --> 01:25:37.336 bringing out the best Maa. Maybe you're standing with an older gentleman 01:25:37.369 --> 01:25:40.536 and you let him flirt with you when it's not sexual flirting. It's just 01:25:40.569 --> 01:25:44.376 social and fun. That's just bringing out your personality. I enjoyed that 01:25:44.409 --> 01:25:49.696 and I knew the gentleman responded to me because I was a fun flirty girl 01:25:49.729 --> 01:25:53.456 standing there chatting it up with him. 01:25:53.489 --> 01:25:57.647 But I also knew, wow, my husband just doesn't see past this, but it took 01:25:57.680 --> 01:26:03.976 me a long time to realize, this is when I realized it's all on you. When 01:26:04.009 --> 01:26:10.946 after my son was born, Jack, my second son was born. And I was in the 01:26:10.979 --> 01:26:16.187 midst of the nastiest by now, messiest divorce because I'm starting to 01:26:16.220 --> 01:26:19.885 figure things out. I'm starting to like revelations or hit me right and 01:26:19.918 --> 01:26:24.586 left, and I'm starting to go. I think you're a big cheater. I think my 01:26:24.619 --> 01:26:29.906 being celibate and holding on and being honest with you was allowing you 01:26:29.939 --> 01:26:34.187 just to live out whatever you wanted to do, and I don't know what he did 01:26:34.220 --> 01:26:39.046 when he traveled, but I do remember having a conversation with a woman who 01:26:39.079 --> 01:26:43.126 was a girlfriend of mine when I first moved here, and I felt a vibe with 01:26:43.159 --> 01:26:49.467 her about him, and I questioned her and I questioned her and said, So did 01:26:49.500 --> 01:26:54.656 you have some sort of weird coitus with my husband, and she said, and this 01:26:54.689 --> 01:26:58.897 helped me feel better, you know, Ellen, I did have sex with him, but it 01:26:58.930 --> 01:27:04.296 was so weird. I'm not sure if it was actually sex or not, and I said to 01:27:04.329 --> 01:27:10.006 her, I know exactly what you're saying because he's not a man comfortable 01:27:10.039 --> 01:27:18.039 with having sex because He is a man who never figured out how to be 01:27:19.239 --> 01:27:26.246 comfortable with himself and his size, and size doesn't matter. Hey, you 01:27:26.279 --> 01:27:32.166 can do all kinds of stuff, but this man, size mattered, and he just was 01:27:32.199 --> 01:27:37.576 desperate. This is the weirdest thing. He was desperate to have sex with a 01:27:37.609 --> 01:27:41.416 certain kind of woman that he thought was really sexually appealing 01:27:41.449 --> 01:27:46.456 because this other woman looked a lot like me. She had a similar kind of 01:27:46.489 --> 01:27:50.496 thing going on, and I thought she was quite attractive when I first met 01:27:50.529 --> 01:27:53.737 her and even said to him, Why aren't you dating her? I had clearly already 01:27:53.770 --> 01:27:57.487 felt the vibe the first night I met the woman. That he had tried to have 01:27:57.520 --> 01:28:01.126 sex with her in some weird sort of way, because I think he was always 01:28:01.159 --> 01:28:05.876 trying to find the perfect girl to have sex with, and I was the perfect 01:28:05.909 --> 01:28:09.717 girl just to have a marriage with because it looked pretty good to his 01:28:09.750 --> 01:28:16.425 mother and society and his social group, and my bank account and all of 01:28:16.458 --> 01:28:21.527 the things looked desirable to him except me, which was so sad because I 01:28:21.560 --> 01:28:26.777 was working really hard to be I was trying to overcome still this high 01:28:26.810 --> 01:28:31.006 school thing of being a really desirable girl. I was still doing it in my 01:28:31.039 --> 01:28:35.786 late 30s by then. I'm still desperately searching for it. But in the end, 01:28:35.819 --> 01:28:40.937 I mean, you do realize it had nothing to do with your looks. I had to have 01:28:40.970 --> 01:28:45.206 an affair to figure that out. I totally had to. I had to have an affair to 01:28:45.239 --> 01:28:49.777 figure out a man who could have sex with any woman if he would. I know 01:28:49.810 --> 01:28:56.246 that's totally twisted. No, I believed if he'd, I just It worked for me. 01:28:56.279 --> 01:29:00.607 For some reason, the fact that he that there was a sexual, and we had a 01:29:00.640 --> 01:29:06.857 lot of sexual chemistry and it was just really It was the experience I was 01:29:06.890 --> 01:29:10.817 looking for. And so I went back and kept having this affair over and over 01:29:10.850 --> 01:29:15.506 and over. It wasn't just then clearly, I did not just have to have the act 01:29:15.539 --> 01:29:19.976 of having sex at a great resort. And having a couple of drinks. It wasn't 01:29:20.009 --> 01:29:25.015 that. It was I didn't even have sex the first night I was with him at this 01:29:25.048 --> 01:29:31.135 resort. It was more about the intimacy. It was intimacy. That's the clear 01:29:31.168 --> 01:29:35.456 word is intimacy. I didn't have intimacy with my husband at all. We only 01:29:35.489 --> 01:29:40.416 talked about what we would do in 5 to 7 years regarding our career track, 01:29:40.449 --> 01:29:43.437 his career track, I mean, not mine. That didn't matter. I was a support 01:29:43.470 --> 01:29:50.126 network. His career track. We never talked about Goals or what your spirit 01:29:50.159 --> 01:29:55.595 life was or what your where your faith life might take you. Clearly we 01:29:55.628 --> 01:29:59.726 couldn't sit and talk to each other about sex. 01:29:59.759 --> 01:30:05.687 You've experienced truly like two The 2 out of the 3 most important men in 01:30:05.720 --> 01:30:10.046 your life were totally psychologically abusive to you. Totally. I didn't 01:30:10.079 --> 01:30:16.647 even get it in different ways, but I believed, I absolutely believed in my 01:30:16.680 --> 01:30:22.246 heart that I had attracted my husband because he was so different from my 01:30:22.279 --> 01:30:29.076 father. He was very, he was an academic, he was brilliant. He was smart. 01:30:29.109 --> 01:30:34.595 He was the kind of guy that society looked at and said, winner, my father 01:30:34.628 --> 01:30:41.476 was a car dealer who was a wise cracker who played poker, right? Oh, they 01:30:41.509 --> 01:30:48.476 still and they both dismissed me in every way possible. And yet I really 01:30:48.509 --> 01:30:52.027 believe. I totally believed her. I drew my husband to him and me and I was 01:30:52.060 --> 01:30:56.147 going to marry my husband because he was so different. I would not have 01:30:56.180 --> 01:31:00.666 the marriage my mother had. No, he would be a good man and I wouldn't 01:31:00.699 --> 01:31:05.265 bicker with him and we'd have this nice life. No, he just didn't fuck me. 01:31:05.298 --> 01:31:09.737 Yeah, that will fuck you up more. I said to people, we slept in this 01:31:09.770 --> 01:31:13.265 little bed, this little antique bed that I had that I picked out of my 01:31:13.298 --> 01:31:16.416 grandmother's house. And I said to people, you know how sometimes when 01:31:16.449 --> 01:31:19.777 you're in college, you spoon or you sleep like a double helix and you're 01:31:19.810 --> 01:31:22.656 all wrapped around each other. It's very intimate when you sleep together. 01:31:22.689 --> 01:31:26.175 It's like a sexual experience. My husband and I slept next to each other 01:31:26.208 --> 01:31:30.777 like knives. Don't touch each other. Sleep straight like this. Don't touch. 01:31:30.810 --> 01:31:33.416 And we both got excited when the other one would travel so we could 01:31:33.449 --> 01:31:37.777 bisect the bed and you could sleep how you wanted to, but we never touched 01:31:37.810 --> 01:31:44.277 each other. Never touched. And when he ran away with his assistant, a much 01:31:44.310 --> 01:31:48.916 younger, plausible, she looked like me. She could have almost been me. I 01:31:48.949 --> 01:31:53.796 mean, he was like he was trying to, your affair didn't break up the 01:31:53.829 --> 01:31:59.726 marriage. Well, this is this is what broke up the marriage. He left. He 01:31:59.759 --> 01:32:04.885 left and thought I would follow along behind him. The plan was he left and 01:32:04.918 --> 01:32:08.996 I was going to pack up the house and move again and start my career 01:32:09.029 --> 01:32:12.357 somewhere else, even though every time like when I moved here, he told me 01:32:12.390 --> 01:32:16.357 , you can't tell anybody you're an artist, that'll affect my career. You 01:32:16.390 --> 01:32:20.237 can't show your work in this town. That'll affect my career. Like I was a 01:32:20.270 --> 01:32:23.562 coco or something. I couldn't talk about myself. I was only supposed to. 01:32:23.595 --> 01:32:28.312 To just be there and say nice things. I went along with this for a long 01:32:28.345 --> 01:32:33.351 time. I really did. I totally did. putting you in connection with that 01:32:33.384 --> 01:32:38.152 with your previous man and having that same sexual sexual tension was 01:32:38.185 --> 01:32:42.112 really like what did it. I think that's probably what did it, and he was 01:32:42.145 --> 01:32:47.711 gone by then. He'd been gone for about 4 months. He was living in another 01:32:47.744 --> 01:32:51.312 state in another city, and I was intending to move, but something in my 01:32:51.345 --> 01:32:55.467 head said. If you move to that next city where I really didn't want to 01:32:55.500 --> 01:33:00.487 move. It's like reaffirming 01:33:00.520 --> 01:33:05.967 the nonverbal contract that you have with your husband. It's like saying, 01:33:06.000 --> 01:33:11.425 I'm all good with this. I'll start again. I'll pack up everything. I'll 01:33:11.458 --> 01:33:17.246 move along with this celibate relationship. We'll do it your way. And part 01:33:17.279 --> 01:33:24.187 of me said. I don't think so. We are separating these stories into themes 01:33:24.220 --> 01:33:28.635 , and one of the themes is connected connection connections, and I think 01:33:28.668 --> 01:33:35.586 yours is perfect. It comes back to connectedness it so many times, 01:33:35.619 --> 01:33:40.067 I really do imagine this when you mentioned the Big Bang too, but I also, 01:33:40.100 --> 01:33:44.385 it is this image of like Some like planets separating and then coming back 01:33:44.418 --> 01:33:51.265 together. It's like we now this family, well, I think it was, um, we've 01:33:51.298 --> 01:33:55.876 had several Christmases and I'm like I was never one of those persons that 01:33:55.909 --> 01:33:59.147 ever, I'd never have a Christmas tree or celebrate a holiday, just not me 01:33:59.180 --> 01:34:03.666 , but I found that now I kind of have this family that expects these kind 01:34:03.699 --> 01:34:10.166 of things and I've taken Danny's oldest son. 01:34:10.199 --> 01:34:14.385 I've taken Danny's oldest son as if he's mine, and I, and he sees me there. 01:34:14.418 --> 01:34:20.406 I swear he sees me as, oh, that's my father's. Nonwhite, but you know, or 01:34:20.439 --> 01:34:25.206 like she's my mother. I feel like he is also my son, you know, and it's 01:34:25.239 --> 01:34:30.687 become this really, really nice family. And the family that I had with my 01:34:30.720 --> 01:34:38.317 ex-husband. I Because I hated my family. I did not like my family. My 01:34:38.350 --> 01:34:42.956 nuclear little family was a facade. It was, we look like this on the 01:34:42.989 --> 01:34:45.635 outside. I learned how to do this when I was a child. Looked like this on 01:34:45.668 --> 01:34:49.796 the outside. Something else is going on on the inside of your house, and 01:34:49.829 --> 01:34:53.796 it was, it was a totally, it was the most disconnected family and my 01:34:53.829 --> 01:34:57.027 mother worked really hard to make it look like we were really something 01:34:57.060 --> 01:35:01.696 and we weren't. And so when I disconnected. 01:35:01.729 --> 01:35:06.277 It was not good. It did not. There was a lot of yelling and screaming, and 01:35:06.310 --> 01:35:11.147 I think they're still waiting. It's been years. And I'm like, No, no, no. 01:35:11.180 --> 01:35:14.826 Just because, just because we had years of hating each other doesn't mean 01:35:14.859 --> 01:35:18.546 we need years of hating each other. We really, really, really, really 01:35:18.579 --> 01:35:22.385 don't. We can, we can all move on and have different families and still be 01:35:22.418 --> 01:35:27.487 happy about it. And you can love your family there and I can love my 01:35:27.520 --> 01:35:31.126 family. And I told my father in my brief letter to him, I have a nice 01:35:31.159 --> 01:35:35.666 family. I just, I have a nice family. 01:35:35.699 --> 01:35:40.406 And I said to him, things are forgiven. All is forgiven. So did he respond 01:35:40.439 --> 01:35:46.456 ? Well, I wrote also in the letter, you do not need to respond. I don't 01:35:46.489 --> 01:35:50.256 anticipate a letter back and don't want you to. I didn't think I'd get a 01:35:50.289 --> 01:35:55.217 letter back, and I also believe he did not get the letter. I emailed the 01:35:55.250 --> 01:35:59.027 letter to my high school art teacher who offered to go and read the letter 01:35:59.060 --> 01:36:02.897 because I knew if I mailed the letter to my family's home address, my 01:36:02.930 --> 01:36:06.737 mother would get the letter. Read the letter and dispose of it immediately 01:36:06.770 --> 01:36:12.036 , and it would never happen. So I sent someone over who had a friendship 01:36:12.069 --> 01:36:15.366 and would sit and read the letter, but my father's health had been 01:36:15.399 --> 01:36:19.437 deteriorating, which was what I felt was happening. Man never did not 01:36:19.470 --> 01:36:23.277 smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. So, you know, I felt it was time to 01:36:23.310 --> 01:36:28.555 write something for myself, and I realized, I don't know if he even heard 01:36:28.588 --> 01:36:31.796 the letter. She might have the letter ended up being mailed to their home 01:36:31.829 --> 01:36:36.456 , and I'm guessing my mother picked up the letter and Probably pen to 01:36:36.489 --> 01:36:41.015 paper. It was enough for me. I felt fine. I felt fine. She won't be 01:36:41.048 --> 01:36:44.296 getting one that says, I'm sorry for all the sadness. I'm sorry for 01:36:44.329 --> 01:36:47.036 everything that ever happened. My mother and I had the worst doesn't give 01:36:47.069 --> 01:36:52.126 you the right. No, no, I lived through nastiness, so I've moved on from 01:36:52.159 --> 01:36:56.175 that. So, the idea of a family is so much more of the who gave birth to 01:36:56.208 --> 01:37:02.046 who. It is. It is now also in our family, um. 01:37:02.079 --> 01:37:05.765 My kid's father's grandmother who lives in Miami has come to stay with us 01:37:05.798 --> 01:37:08.925 a couple of times. I had her come for 6 months. I'd never met the woman 01:37:08.958 --> 01:37:13.246 once and she lived with me, and I'm like, this is great. There are cousins 01:37:13.279 --> 01:37:18.487 down the street and, well, what I meant to say about family was I had 01:37:18.520 --> 01:37:23.706 disconnected from my nuclear family and when I got married. I was 01:37:23.739 --> 01:37:28.226 desperate to be in a good family. Do you know what I mean? Like a really 01:37:28.259 --> 01:37:32.385 good family. Even in high school, I was always sort of adopting myself 01:37:32.418 --> 01:37:36.265 into my best friend's families who had had nice families where the kids 01:37:36.298 --> 01:37:39.906 would all go to college and they all supported each other and they, they 01:37:39.939 --> 01:37:42.467 would kind of kid each other and rib each other, but they're all there for 01:37:42.500 --> 01:37:47.326 each other. I wanted to be in that kind of family. So when I got married, 01:37:47.359 --> 01:37:52.826 my husband had a very small family. It was just his mother and his sister. 01:37:52.859 --> 01:37:57.385 His father had already passed away. And so I absorbed myself into that 01:37:57.418 --> 01:38:03.246 family. And when I was divorced, they never said a word to me ever again. 01:38:03.279 --> 01:38:09.586 No one ever called me once. It was like I never existed. The girl who went 01:38:09.619 --> 01:38:14.845 on every family vacation, you know, and lit every campfire for the family 01:38:14.878 --> 01:38:20.046 , the cab and and organized the the the the saltbox regatta, you know, and 01:38:20.079 --> 01:38:23.086 all of these different things. They acted like I never existed. No one 01:38:23.119 --> 01:38:29.987 ever said my name again and I was Like like write her name, never say her 01:38:30.020 --> 01:38:34.866 name again. It's done. Never. And my ex-husband and I have never said 01:38:34.899 --> 01:38:42.626 another word again to each other. And why would we? Why would we? 01:38:42.659 --> 01:38:45.289 I think we're good.