Debbie Millman's story is one of extraordinary resilience in the face of trauma and the redemptive power of love and strength found in the unlikeliest of places. (Warning: this episode contains explicit information about sexual abuse.)
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Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Please be advised this episode contains explicit descriptions of sexual abuse. Listener discretion is advised. I've been thinking a lot lately about the people who save us, who shine a light and help us see away forward, even when our lives seem hopeless and bleak. These people aren't necessarily our parents or grand parents, or aunts or uncles. They don't have to be related to us by blood or live under the same roof. When we encounter them as children, as teenagers, or even later in life, we don't always recognize them as our guardian angels. But this is what they are. My guest today is Debbie Millman, and this episode is about the possibility of extraordinary resilience in the face of violence and trauma, and the redemptive power of love and strength found in the unlikeliest of places. I mean, I think that the best advice that I could give anybody who's had this experience or is having this experience, is seek help. Seek help. There was once, and I don't know if it still exists. It probably does in some parts of the world, in some parts of the United States, or even seeking help is a statement of weakness, and that's not the case. It's the biggest possible strength that a person could have is to say I need help. I need help. Debbie is a force of nature, designer, author, artist, illustrator, branding genius and co founder of the world's first master's program in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She's also one of the most luminous, soulful people I know. It's an honor to share her story. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, secrets that are kept from us, secrets we keep from others, and secrets we keep from ourselves. So I would like to begin by asking you about the landscape of your childhood, your family, the town you grew up in. Um, can you just talk to me a little bit about little Debbie Sure? Um? Well, I was. I'm a native New Yorker. I was born in Brooklyn in one and we lived there, my mother and my father and me for two years, and then they moved me to Howard Beach, Queens and I lived in Howard Beach until the middle of third grade. And by that time they had had another child, my younger brother who's two and a half years younger than I am, and in the inutile of third grade, my dad bought his own pharmacy. He was a pharmacist and had worked in Manhattan at a pharmacy that no longer exists, a mom and pop type shop called City Drug and that was across the street from the Carnegie Delhi and I remember him telling me as I was growing up that Bernadette Peters used to come into the pharmacy quite a lot, and he thought she was rather spectacular um. And so we moved to Staten Island in the middle of third grade and lived there until the end of fifth grade. In that time, my parents ended up getting divorced and at the end of fifth grade. By the end of fifth grade, my mom was getting remarried and moved my brother, me, and her new husband, who had two daughters of his own, to Long Island. And I lived on Long Island from sixth grade until the end of twelfth grade, and then immediate high tailed it to college and never went back to Long Island to live. Debbie falls out of touch with her father for several years after her parents divorce, and only reconnects with him when she's twelve or thirteen years old. Her most positive memories of that time are very connected to one particular person, a woman named Betty who was in a long relationship with Debbie's dad. Betty lived on two Street in Chelsea, and she was, um, I guess what you'd call a career girl. You know, she was Uh. She lived by herself in a studio apartment on the third floor of a brownstone. She was a typist, that's what she did. But she was fiercely independent and really celebrated and relished in her independence. I thought she was very beautiful. She did everything effortlessly well, and she was kind to me, and she was one of the first consistently kind people to me in my life. And I think it was watching the way she moved through the world, her independence, her strong mindedness about what was just, her efforts to protect me when my father had um anger episodes. Those were things that I think embedded her deeply in me. And as an impressionable young girl, she was the first role model I think I actually encountered somebody that I could see living their own life on their own terms, supporting themselves. And I think that's really what ultimately influenced me. I wanted to dress like her, I wanted to live like her, Um, I wanted to be her. Kindness was in short order in the homes Debbie grew up in. She has described her father as both brilliant and turbulent. My dad was very charismatic, and he had a wonderful oratory talent that he used quite well, so he was able to express himself with a lot of conviction. He was very tall, he was very handsome, he was fast on his feet, very witty. But he also had, and it was quite hidden most of the time, UM, a really intense temper. And that temper could be triggered by just about anything. You never really knew when it was going to emerge and what would trigger it. And so I don't really ever remember a time in my life when I wasn't afraid of him, because I was terrified that something that I did and inadvertently would cause him to blow up. And so I was always very scared around him, inasmuch as I was also and this is sort of where it gets complicated, really trying to get his approval and really wanting very badly for him to be proud of me and to love me. And there was no question in my mind that he did love me. It was just really really hard for him to express well. And what you're describing to that hair trigger living in a situation where you don't know what's going to set it off exactly exactly, and so good times could immediately become horrific because somebody would say something or do something, or he would get angry about something, and then suddenly everybody was on on watch. Debbie's father doesn't but come physically violent until she's a bit older. The first episode she remembers involves Betty Thanksgiving and a turkey we were eating, and I remember there was a football game on and he was watching it, and he ended up getting very angry with all of us for not being appreciative enough and happy enough. He always wanted us to be happy. He threw the turkey across the room and started to chase Betty around the room, and then she tried to get away from him by running outside, and then he ran outside after her and picked up a shovel and was chasing her through the woods um and then came back alone. We were not allowed to go outside to help her. He didn't hit her, but he locked her out and kept her locked out all night, and she ended up sleeping in the unlocked car thankfully that was open and um, that memory is just seared into my brain and I'll never forget that. While her dad is chasing Betty around the yard, Debbie and her brother hide in the bathroom and locked the door. Eventually things calmed down and her father becomes contrite. Tries to pave over his behavior with extravagant gifts and gestures, but the pockets of peace never last very long. That was the first time I witnessed any violence. But then later he'd be throwing things. I don't know that he ever ever hit any of the women he was with with his hands. That I'd never witnessed, but I did witness a lot of throwing things, rocks, furniture, lamps, um, some which would would hit hit us or hit her. And that was that was really hard, really hard, yeah, really really hard to have a parent with such a terrible and unpredictable temper. But the incident with the turkey and Betty, that's nothing compared with what comes next. We're going to pause for a moment. Debbie's newly divorced mom attends a meeting of parents without partners. Imagine match dot Com for divorced or widowed people, except in real life unfolding chairs, probably in a church basement, And there Debbie's mom meets and marries her next Mr. Wrong. She married a man who, um was brutal. You know, whatever anger issues my dad had at that point, you know, we had never ever beaten me or my mother. Um he had. He had a temper, and I was terrified of that temper as far back as I can remember. But I had never witnessed anybody actually hitting anybody until he came into our lives and he hit all of us. He hit my brother repeatedly. He beat me. He beat his own daughter once so badly she couldn't go to school. He would beat me and my brother every time we did come back from my dad from a weekend with my dad. At that point, I have to say it was my choice to say I'm not going to see him anymore because I couldn't bear being beaten. Now, my dad didn't protest it. He didn't go to court to try to continue to see us. The he did stop paying his child supports and my mom had to take him to court. Okay, I just want to be sure you're hearing what's happening here. Debbie is put in the insanely impossible, heartbreaking position of either a seeing her dad and being beaten for that offense by her stepdad, or be not seeing her dad. I remember going with her to court, and I remember getting all dressed up that morning because I wanted to look pretty so that maybe when he saw me he tried to rescue me. But he didn't show up. I was wearing a dress that my mother had made me. She was a seamstress and made all my clothes pretty much, um. And it was a orange and pink and white, tiny little flowers pattern all over the fabric, and it had put sleeves, and I was wearing a pair of white boots. And I thought I looked really, really good, um, and thought he would think that too, but he never showed up. Debbie has another memory of being on the front porch of her house. Her father has come by to give her a birthday present, and her mother and stepfather won't let him in the house, so Debbie has to go out on the porch, and Debbie's father wants her to tell him that she wants the present, that she really really wants the present, and she does. She really wants it. She feels guilty for wanting it because her mother and stepfather have told her that her dad is a bad guy, but finally she admits that she wants it. And at that point, I guess my mother and stepfather were so worried about what he would say or do um that he turned on the intercom in an effort to listen to what was happening. But they pressed their wrong button and music went on the microphone. And so I stood there and I think we were all It was all this sense of humiliation and shame and fear and longing. I want to talk about shame. It's almost redundant to say that shame is a taboo subject. I mean, it's practically synonymous with taboo. But over and over again, what I see in my life as a writer, as a teacher of writing, and as host of this podcast is that so many of us walk around feeling consumed by shame, and that feeling is one of being very very much alone. And the only cure, the only way to blast our way out of that horrible isolation chamber of shame, is to speak to its source, to tell the truth, because I can promise you this. Whatever we feel the most ashamed of is also what makes us most beautifully, imperfectly, profoundly human. Things go from very bad to very much worse. Debbie stepfather, the one who Mom met in the Parents without Partners meeting, is not only beating Debbie. That's not all. The real dark, dark dark years were between nineteen seventy two and in nineteen seventy five, the right after they got divorced and right before I was reunited with my dad. Seventy two, seventy three, seventy seventy five were the dark years of my life because this man who my mother married UM was not only physically violent and not only emotionally violent, he was also sexually violent and was a um and and and raped me repeatedly from the time I was UM maybe ten and a half eleven, twelve thirteen. In those years until until he finally until my mother finally divorced him um I. It was a very different time than it is now, and at that time in my life, Danny I didn't know that something like this could happen to anyone like it. This was something that didn't seem conceivable to even happen, and I thought I was the only person in the world this was happening too. He was very strong, he had been a professional boxer in Germany. He was German, and told me that if I ever told anyone that he would kill my brother, and I believed him. He beat my brother repeatedly and treated him terribly while we were all together, but I and I really thought that he would and could, and he said he had it all figured out, and so I didn't tell anybody. I didn't tell anybody. I actually didn't know that it ever happened to anybody else until I read a letter in newsday I was. I loved getting the newspaper my parents. My mother got the newspaper, got it every day, and I'd read the comics and do the cryptograms. And there was a letter to Anne Lander's about somebody who was writing to her about being abused, and she urged that person to tell someone. And I cut the letter out and put it onto my mattress because I suddenly realized I wasn't alone. But for years and years I was too afraid to tell anybody because I was really convinced. I was ten eleven, twelve thirteen years old that I would be responsible for my brother's death, and so I didn't tell anyone, no one. Imagine a little girl who cuts the letter out of a newspaper and keeps it under her bed to remind herself that she is not alone to give words to what's happening to her, even if she is unable to speak these words for many years. This conversation between Debbie and me took place during the few days following the courageous testimony of Dr Christine blass Ford a neat response of Brett Kavanaugh to her testimony. The idea being there was no corroboration, the idea of being why didn't she say something at the time, The idea being it's her word against his. The sense of the loneness that you must have felt, and not having the language for it right, not even having the neural pathways to understand what was happening. I had no idea, no idea. At some point, when she's twelve or thirteen, Debbie gets her period, and then she doesn't get her period. She becomes petrified that she's pregnant. She doesn't speak the truth to a single soul. Instead, she makes up a story because what else can she do? Who can she turn to? I ended up concocting a story, and I told my mother that I had been assaulted at school, and she took me to a doctor. She also informed the school, and and then I had all the added guilt of lying, and she took me to a doctor and the doctor examined me, and the doctor told my mother that it was not possible that this was a one off situation because of this scar tissue that I had, and told her instead that I must be lying because I must have had a boyfriend because of what he saw as repetitive activity. A twelve year old girl, a sixth grader must have a boyfriend, Yeah, that must be it. So I wasn't believed, and I just had to continue on. My mother never confronted me about it. She didn't accuse me of lying. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be back in a moment, So let's fast forward more than forty years. Debbie tells me that during Dr Christine Blassie Ford and Brett Kavanaugh's testimony just a couple of days earlier, while she's glued to the television along with so many women in America, her mother texts her and asks how she's doing. I wrote her back and said, you know, it's been a difficult, in challenging a couple of days, and we then got into a back and forth text conversation and I once again asked her how it was possible during the time that it was happening to me, because it all happened in the house where we all lived, in the one bathroom that that we had in that house, with the door locked, How she could not know? How could she not know that this was happening to me? And she insist that she didn't, And at this point I really do believe her, because I don't think that she would have been able to live with herself if she did believe that it was happening. Nevertheless, um she told me something that I didn't know before, which was that after she told my stepfather what had happened to me in school, that he responded with such indifference that it was leave then that she knew what had happened. And that makes a lot of sense now because she never berated me for lying, she never accused me of having a boyfriend, and then very shortly after that experience, she did divorce him. It's amazing the way of family secret can continue to reveal itself and reveal itself over the course of a lifetime, like this other layer that you in your mid fifties discover. Yes, Yes, because if somebody had said, well, what why did your mother ultimately leave your stepfather, I would have said, I actually don't know. I just assumed it was because he was, you know, a heinous person um. And now I know. Remember how I said, this is a story of resilience. Well, that's feeling a little bit too easy to me. We bat around the world resilience a lot. It falls into a basket of words like authenticity, vulnerability, ideas that many of us, like a lot, see value in, but aren't sure exactly how to achieve. This next part is what most inspires me, not the horrific story of abuse you've just heard, but the story of a spirit that was greater than the violence perpetrated on it. This, my friends, is about the deepest kind of triumph. You know, your brain can only only except what it thinks it can tolerate. And I wish that I had the memory of every single assault that was perpetrated on me. I wish that I remembered every single time so that I could figure out a way to erase it somehow. I mean, I wish I remember the first time. I remember specific times, but I don't remember every time. But I do remember walking one day on the sidewalk of my neighborhood in on Long Island, thinking, if only this wasn't happening to me, I would be the happiest person alive. Just think about what it takes to formulate that thought. If only this wasn't happening to me, I would be the happiest person alive. I am only now thirty years into analysis and therapy, really trying to understand how did I actually managed through event? And I always wanted a better life. I started therapy two years out of college, So I did six years of therapy with one UH with one counselor, and then went into like a real analysis that began in and I've been working with the same doctor ever since. And so she saved my life. She has given me a way out of that horror I was. I was functional, and I'm very fortunate that I was never addicted to drugs and I was never self destructive. But I think that wanting so much more, and also being creative and seeing that I could make things allowed me to essentially escape and otherwise really dismal, dismal experience. Yeah, let's talk about that, because I feel like so much of your story and mine in this regard, has to do with being saved in a way by creativity, by art. Do you know the term narrative medicine? No? Yeah, I love it. Interesting, I thought you would. It's it's a it's a it's a relatively new literary field. And I remember the first time I heard it, um, and I heard it in relation to my own work, to my memoirs, that you know that what I have been doing all these years without having the term for it is narrative medicine in some way. And I kind of recoiled against it because it felt a little bit too self helpy to me, or too much like writing a therapy or journal ing. Um. But I've come to understand what it means to share a story, to shape a story, to craft, to craft art out of the chaos of a life. Well, because I thought about this so much, I've come to the conclusion that my longing for a better life was bigger than my shame about my existing life, and so that is what propelled me forward. I also, the older I've gotten, the less secretive I've been, and I kept the my abuse and violation and even even the fundamental um dysfunction in my relationship with my dad pretty much secret. Until the last five years. I was really ashamed of of what happened to me. I felt that I would be seen as damaged or inferior, and told my closest friends and and partners, but was not in any way a spokesperson for overcoming trauma or abuse. And initially it was more motivated by a sense of not letting those bad experiences sort of win or overtake the theme of my life. And I would always tell people, I, you know, I'm not going to give in to that. I'm not going to let that thought me And in fact, you you you don't have the capacity to let it stop you or not. It will impact you if you don't deal with it. It will catch up to you and overtake you if you don't. It's only really in the last couple of years that I've become very transparent about these experiences with my close friends and partners and colleagues. Um, this is the most substantial conversation I've ever had about it in any kind of public forum. Debbie did briefly touch on her history of abuse when she was a guest on the Tim Ferris Show a couple of years back. Tim, who is as prepared as he is intuitive as a host, asked Debbie about her work as a board member for the Joyful Heart Foundation, an organization dedicated to eradicating sexual violence. On their website. Tim had noticed a comment of Debbie's about her work for Joyful Heart. She said that it made her entire life makes sense, and Tim wondered, what does she mean by that? Do I tell the truth? This is this? I mean at that point it wasn't a secret, but it was very private, really private. This is my personal trauma. I'm now going to talk to one of the most popular podcast hosts in the world about this very personal, very tender trauma. And I just took that, as you put it, Danny so well, that step into courage and I told my story. I told it for the first time, and life has not been the same since. You know, Tim, the show is a really popular show. I get emails every single week, sometimes every day, and that podcast was done several years ago with people sharing and disclosing and needing help or wanting resources. And UM, and now I'm having this conversation with you because I did talk to some degree to Tim about it, but not not to this degree, not to this degree, because I'm wondering how it has felt for you as this has stopped being a secret, because what our secrets, secrets are built on shame. If we keep a secret, it's because we feel afraid, guilty, most often a shame that somehow alone, you know that, somehow this is not an okay way to be, It's not an okay way to feel. And when we actually um explode that, there's something on the other side of that. Can you talk about that at all? Absolutely? Um. You know you said something to me after I interviewed you on our podcast that I've repeated it probably thousands of times. At this point, you and I were having I don't know if you remember this, but we're having a conversation about confidence. At that point in time, like three or four books on confidence had come out, and somehow it came up in our conversation and you, very very um clearly, he said, Oh, I think confidence is overrated. And I stopped and was like, what, because this is something I've been searching for my entire life. Confidence and you said, oh, I think it's overrated. I think that, you know, overly confident people are mostly obnoxious. And I said, well, then, what how do you how do you exist in the world? And you said, I think what is more important than confidence is courage. Courage, courage to take that first step. And then my life was changed because okay, courage, courage is what you need. Tearing allowed for a certain camaraderie from others that were also abused that suddenly we could look at each other and say me too, in a really profound way. There's also parts of me now and looking back on it, you know, why didn't I tell anybody? Okay, I know you tell my brother, But why didn't I run away? And I'm thinking about it now, is the adult that I am not as a little girl that had no place to run or was afraid that her brother would be killed, or was powerless to a much larger, stronger person who was supposed to take care of me. Um and and trying to make sense of all of that is likely going to be a lifetime. Take me a lifetime. But I don't hate myself as much as I did for it had thing happened at all. And I still really grapple. You know, there is not a pat ending to this story or this experience. I grapple a lot. It's all an evolution. And I can look back and at my twenties and my thirties and my forties and now in my fifties, and what I can sincerely tell you is that every decade has gotten better, and every year has gotten better, despite mishaps or you know, bad experiences or sad experiences or heartbreak. What I can tell you that there's not a year that's gone by in my continuing to try to understand and it makes sense of it and make sense of who I am and my place in the world. That I can tell you has not gotten better and has not gotten clearer. And I just hope that that will continue over the rest of my life. This really rough story has a really lovely PostScript. Remember Betty her single working girl apartment on West Street in Manhattan. That's signified for Debbie the possibility of independence, security, glamour, and success, the one happy home experience she had ever known as a kid. Well, guess where Debbie lives now, because she lived on two Street and that was my one sort of memory of having a happy home experience. Whenever I would go to restaurants in Chelsea or the high Line, I'd always cut across twenty four Street and touch the numbers for for nine whereas, which is where she lived, on the gate, on the outside gate of the house. And then I, ultimately, because of that, was able to buy a place on street that I saw was for sale, and I live at four four nine, but I live really close by and and see it all the time. But I told Betty she sent me photos that she had of the block um that that she had had from from back in the seventies, and she was just so touched and thrilled. And where we still keep in touch, so he knows where I am and what I'm doing. I'd like to thank my dear friend Debbie Millman for appearing on Family Secrets and sharing her story of courage and resilience. You can find out more about Debbie's work on Debbie Millman dot com, and I urge you to listen to her fantastic podcast, Design Matters. I also encourage you to learn more about the Joyful Heart Foundation, which carries out its mission through an integrated program portfolio of healing, education, and advocacy for survivors of sexual assault. That's Joyful Heart Foundation dot org. Family Secrets is an I Heeart media production. Dylan Fagan is the supervising producer, Andrew Howard and Tristan McNeil are the audio engineers, and Julie Douglas is the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd like to share, you can get in touch with us at listener mail at Family Secrets Podcast dot com, and you can also find us on Instagram at Danny Writer, and Facebook at Family Secrets Pod and Twitter at fam Secrets Pod. That's fam Secrets Pod. For more about my book, Inheritance, visit Danny Shapiro dot com