I think it got too difficult really for me to pretend to be normal. I just couldn't do it anymore. Part of me, which as I could have just pretended like everything was okay and I could be the high performing Badass that everyone thought I was, and I just could not. And once I admitted that to myself and said, you know, I might not be that person, but here's who I am instead, that's when life got a lot easier, more comfortable. And yet that's when my tribe came along and everyone was like Oh, US too, and proved that there is a different way to to live this life that is just as valuable and just as viable. This is here after and I'm your host, Megan Divine, author of the best selling book it's okay that you're not okay. Each week I bring you conversations with authors and Divis and other really cool people, all exploring what it means to be a fully feeling human in an often difficult world. Now, if you've lived through horrific trauma or abuse, is it really fair of us to say that the ways you've learned to cope with that trauma or abuse are bad, like bad in air? Quotes here or, to use clinical speak, to call your coping skills maladaptive. This week on Hereafter Stephanie Foot, author of what my bones know, she joins me to talk about complex ptsd and the ways we pathologize human responses to trauma. You'll also hear how claiming your own messy, complex coping mechanisms can help you build a community that sees you and loves you. All of that and more coming up after this first break. Before we get started, one quick note. While we cover a lot of emotional relational territory in each and every episode, this show is not a substitute for skilled support with a licensed mental health provider or professional supervision related to your work. Hey friends, now, as a survivor of trauma myself, I am really sensitive about asking my guests to summarize the things they lived through. I've been on that media circuit where you just talk about some of the worst moments of your life over and over and over again, like answering these deeply personal questions about horrendous, difficult things over and over. It's just it's weird. So whenever I can, I try to shift the burden of telling the horrendous story off of my guest and frontloaded here into my introduction to the show, and that's what I've done today. Stephanie Foud grew up in San Jose, California, surrounded by manicured landscapes and high achieving immigrant families. From the outside, her family looked like that coveted American dream scenario, but on the inside it was very much a nightmare. Stephanie's parents regularly beat her and emotionally abused her before eventually abandoning her when she was sixteen. In two thousand eighteen, Stephanie was diagnosed with complex PTSD, a little understood and little studied form of post traumatic stress disorder that can occur from repeated, long term trauma. Stephanie's Best Selling Book What my bones note tells the story of that intense childhood abuse and the coping patterns that helped her survive what she had to survive. The book is also a story of intergenerational trauma, immigration and understanding the roots of violence, while not excusing the violence itself. Just that last bit is such a super important point and I'm really glad that we got to talk about it a little bit in this conversation. Now, books on complex PTSD, like many other diagnoses or or can additions that we have books on complex PTSD can be really dry and, honestly, kind of clueless and cruel in their descriptions about people who carry long term behaviors or patterns of behavior due to the trauma and abuse they survived. So you'll hear it in our conversation today, but Stephanie really wants you all to know that her book is written by a trauma survivor for other trauma survivors, not just child aboost but war and other kind of repeated, horrible experiences. She wants you to know that the book focuses on healing, but the kind of healing that can only come when you respect the ways that each person managed to survive what they went through. I promise you that's going to make more sense as you listen to the show. But if you're haunted by any type of trauma or you know someone who is, this conversation with Stephanie Foo is a great introduction to complex PTSD and the work of survivorship. So let's get into it. Content notes everybody. This episode contains non graphic reference to abuse and trauma and it includes a small amount of swearing. Well, hi, hello, thank you for having me. Absolutely I sat down and read your book like cover to cover, over the course of eight hours on Sunday fast. So one of the things that I would really love to talk about. Throwing it out there, it's like you write a lot about how we pathologize responses to trauma, no matter what happens to you. Like the healthy responses to be completely unaffected, rise above and always present as really chill. There's Um, there's a section I particularly liked in your book when you talk about meeting Joey for the first time and you're like, I am pretending to be completely non anxious and chill and all of these things, and he's like okay, but tell me what's actually happening. So can we talk about that like that, the ways that we pathologize responses to trauma? Yeah, so I think you know, just the word trauma itself, I think, is pathologized. I think there's this understanding that trauma itself, experiencing it, makes you broken. I remember reading this Fox article where they were saying, you know, be careful about how you use the word trauma, because if you describe yourself as traumatized that is saying like that you are broken and helpless and like you're robbing yourself resiliency, because you're basically admitting that you know there's no hope for yourself and your giving up. Oh my God. And I was like wait, what, like, why would you define I mean, yeah, I mean I guess it's a problem to say that you are traumatized if that's how you're going to define trauma, but I don't think trauma needs to be defined in that way. I think the fact of the matter is that we all experience some form of trauma, and trauma is scientific adaptation to keep us alive. Like if you're bitten by a snake, you're going to be afraid of snakes. If you touch a hot stove, you're going to be really careful around a hot stove, like it's basically your brain wiring threat and saying like hey, this is something that's really dangerous that could kill you, so be vigilant around the thing that could kill you. And you know, for some of US those triggers, like being afraid of snakes, are maybe more sensible than others, not sensible but more like manageable than others, like being afraid of anyone who's using a loud voice, you know, being afraid of someone who's yelling. You're gonna encounter that much more in life. That's harder to avoid, right than snakes. I think it's really interesting that, like the self deaf mission of trauma right, that we have this idea that it's not the incident of trauma that's the problem, it's allowing yourself to identify as traumatized. I think we have that that as like, Oh, you're being a victim and you're never going to be able to get out of this, like it's such a weird like, it's so weird. It's so weird like that that whole nothing bad should happen to you. If it does, your your prime directive is to be resilient and unaffected and don't even name it as a bad thing, because that's almost like invoking badness if you call the bad thing bad. Exactly, I think it's completely missing the fact that trauma can be an adaptation. There's lots of fears and responses to trauma that actually can be healthy, that actually can make us sort of extremely useful in a variety of different situations, and it's also just not a very empathetic or kind place to come from, considering that all of us have some form of trauma. If you're going to judge everyone for their trauma response instead of stepping in and saying like Hey, are you having a trauma response? Do you need a minute? What do you need? How can I help you? How can I support you in this, there's gonna be a lot more conflict, judgment and refusal to make space, and I think it's very ablest and like, what is this perfect, untouched population of people anyway, honestly, that I've never gone through anything hard. Yeah, I mean I think it's like that common default that everybody is pretending to be okay when we're not okay, which is basically like the entire reason for my work and this show is to start talking about how hard it is to be human and the stuff we go through and that we adapt to the things that we go through, and that's not the same as resilience or overcoming but it's more like ship happens to you and some of the ways that you survived that and deal with that are awesome in the right context, and some of those ways are really difficult, but they're not wrong. Yeah, yeah, it's the judgment of that that makes it impossible to live with, not the challenge itself. Right, Stephanie, can you give us a description of complex PTSD and how that's different than, I don't like, the post traumatic stress disorder that people might know? Yeah, so PTSD, you can get, quote unquote, traditional PTSD from a singular traumatic event. So let's say you're hit by a car. That can give you PTSD. COMPLEX PTSD is kind of like if you were hit by that car every week for three years. It's when the trauma happens over and over and over and unless you are like a tremendously unlucky individual, the only way that you're probably getting complex PTSD is from a difficult relationship with other people. So having an abuser, suffering from child abuse, domestic violence or living in a war zone. So complex PTSD in particular, it tends to really erode people's trust of other human beings and make relationships a little bit different. Yeah, when that is what you absorb, right, our relationships tell us about the world and when your relationships tell you that the world is an unsafe place, then the world is an unsafe place and we learned lots of different ways to survive that place. When I am having a conversation with an author who has a book out, like I don't want to give the book away because I really, really want people to read the book. We were talking earlier that, like my my perfectionist overwork tendencies, I'm like, I'm basically going to develop a book report on your book for everybody, but like, no, stop it right. A book is a sort of a one way come versation and the sparks that we gather from that, like that's that's where that's really interesting to me. There was actually a tweet that you had out about what my bones. No, is now going into its six printing in five months. Thank you to the therapists and teachers who have been assigning it, the caretakers who have been studying it and, most of all, the survivors for opening your hearts to it. MM HMM. This is like the dream, right, the dream here of taking something deeply personal, deeply painful. It's not easy to write about these really intense personal experiences and put them out into the world for public display, into section and that, knowing that doing that means something to people, right can we talk about that a little bit. That that that interesting zone of here's this really intimate personal stuff that was probably not very easy to write either. Certainly wasn't easy to live and putting it out in the world and seeing the impact of that. What's that been like for you to see the impact of your story in the world? It's been tremendously meaningful because, well, when I was first diagnosed, there was nothing like my book out there. Everything that I read was very clinical. Most of it was not meant for people like me to read. It was clear that it wasn't. A lot of it was not made for people actually with complex ptsd to read, because they would talk about us. They'd be like complex people with complex PTSD are so difficult to treat, they are, you know, they are burdens, they are pain in the ass, they are whatever. They would say all of these things and I was like, did you think that I'd be too stupid to read this? Like what? I don't understand a lot of it. It was very pathologizing. A lot of it was very dry, just just not very fund yeah, and you know, I was a person who was coming from a storytelling background. Obviously it told stories for ten years first person stories, other people's first person stories, and I realized the impact that had for empathy, for a narrative, for feeling less alone. You know, I had helped so many other groups feel less alone by showcasing these important stories, but never really my own. And so when I was reading all of these books and recognizing that, you know, that first person story just did not exist and it made me feel so isolated and freakish and damaged, I guess and I knew that if I healed from this in any kind of way, I would I would need to write about it, because that story was just needed. I didn't want anybody else to feel as completely isolated as I did after diagnosis. And I always told myself in this process that, like my story did not represent everyone with complex PTSD. I mean it's obviously a spectrum. We all have different symptoms and experiences, is and I told myself that if one person would benefited from the book, then the four years of creating it would be worth it would be okay. So to have the response be so overwhelmingly positive, to get like dozens of messages every day saying like you got it, that's exactly what it's like. It's been really wonderful and it's made me realize how truly needed this was and to be able to give words to people for this. Yeah, I mean I think it's been great on a couple of different levels. I think first of all, it's made me feel less alone, because I didn't really have many people in my life with complex PTSD, and now I see people with all different backgrounds and careers, from herbalists, two doctors to like, you know, farmers, all messaging me saying like, your experiences, my experience. Certainly it makes me feel a lot less freakish myself and apparently have helped other people do that. And Yeah, it also give some sort of meaning and power to, like the true anguish that I've had to experience, and it gives some affirmation to that self loathing that I've suffered from for so long, that I don't deserve to be here, you know that I'm too broken to be here, that I don't fit in with everyone else. I guess those feelings and, more importantly, learning how to corral those feelings, has actually made me sort of able to shine a light for those who come behind me and has shown me that I really do have a place of importance here, that we all have a place of importance of being the healers who can lead the way. It's so counterintuitive or counter to the ways that we talk about, quote unquote, mental health in this culture right that if you say or if you're feeling alone and something or you're feeling like a freak, you're feeling like the only one who's experiencing these things like, then you're called to perform harder, right, perform like everyone else, a little bit harder, to fit in. If you're feeling lonely, you have to be more like everybody else, and the reverse of that is actually what's accurate, the willingness to tell the truth about who you are and where you are and what you're feeling and what you're experiencing like that, stripped down, not bright shiny package. Truth like that is how not only you feel less alone, but others feel les alone. It's like how we find each other. Yeah, welcome back, everybody. I'm Megan divine and this is hereafter let's rejoin my conversation with Stephanie Foo, author of what my bones know. There's a site called glow in the woods that was started by I'm going to space on her last name of her first name is Kate, and one of the descriptions it's a it's a like a crowdsourced blog, community platform for people who have experienced baby death. And she says I envisioned a glow in the woods, a place where all of the Medusa's could come and take their hats off, this place where nobody's afraid of your snakes because they have their own. Yeah, and I really see that power of storytelling, and not just the power of storytelling, but the power of telling the truth. Mm Hmmm, I think it got too difficult really for me to pretend to be normal. I just couldn't do it anymore. Part of me, which is I could have just pretended like everything was okay and I could be the high performing Badass that everyone thought I was, and I just could not. And once I did that to myself and said, you know, I might not be that person, but here's who I am instead, that's when life got a lot easier, more comfortable. And yet that's when my tribe came along and everyone was like, oh, US too, and prove that there is a different way to to live this life. That is just as valuable and just as viable, and how much easier it gets when you stop pretending to be something you're not feeling and also understanding that it has to be safe enough to do that right. Like, I think there's a lot of throat, like what's the pop psychology headline version of that is like speak your truth, claim your power. Well, it's not always safe to do that. Yeah, I mean I had to burn down my whole life to be able to do it. Basically, I lost everything and I was like, well, I have nothing left to lose, so I might as well do this. People are always like, yeah, the bravery thing. People are like, Oh, you're so brave to have like shared your story, and I was like there was nothing to lose anymore, so there was nothing brave about it. I have literally tried everything else possible and now there is nothing and this is the only option left for me. Yeah, yeah, this whole like like let's turn it into a hero story. Well, no, no, and I think also like, as somebody who was also put a deeply terrible personal story out into the world, wrote a book that I needed when that happened that didn't exist at that time. It's like, look, at all the good you've done in the world and this this conflation with yes, sorry, all of that happened to you, but you were so brave and now you've done something, so much good in the world, and in a way I'm really glad that happened to you. Right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Has that horrendous narrative shown up on your doorstep? Honestly, not too much, but I did hear it the other day. I heard somebody else say to someone with PTSD like that's what forged, like you're forged in fire, you know, like now you really needed a great writer. I was like no, yeah, within a couple of days of my partner drowning, I was a psychotherapist before that happened, and people were literally coming up to me being you're going to be such a great therapist after this, you're going to help people, and I'm like, okay, one you're actually saying that I wasn't a good therapist before and I actually needed a person to die in order to get better at it and that his life is a fair trade for any people I might help later. And I just like, we have such a weird response to human pain and suffering that we really want it to be tidy. If we can't pretend it didn't happen, then we need there to be a night and shining armor, heroic moment where somebody is all healed and they've been of service to others in the world. And it's almost no wonder that people are has an to tell the truth about their own lives. Right, we're confused about what trauma means, what surviving and living with trauma or traumatic events means, and we're confused about the role of hardship and becoming sort of like better versions of ourselves. Like why there needs to be a quick transformation into positivity, Yep, when it's like no, this is fucked up and sad and like yeah, I mean it is a great thing that I've done this and I can and I can help people and I'm proud of myself. But if, like, a magic fairy could show up tomorrow and actually I could have had a great childhood and not had any of this, like I would trade it all in a second. I would take the Magic Yep, I would take the magic fairy. Right, it's like, well, you wouldn't have all of these beautiful things in your life. But like what beautiful things would I have instead, right, like stop reducing this stuff to like your little formula to make everything work out okay. And one of the things that I really love about the way that you consistently show up, in all of the ways that I've seen you show up, is like you're not healed right, like you are not without coping mechanisms or not right. But there's there's this. I think we've got the folks who read your words and read your story and see themselves and get it that finding ways to live alongside this, in ways that reduce the friction in your heart, in your mind and relationships, are like. Yes, and other folks who maybe don't see themselves or haven't yet seen themselves reflected in that story, they're like, but you're all better now, right. Yeah, I don't know if anyone is like you're all better now. Anyone who knows me certainly isn't Um. But yeah, I try to be very clear in the especially in the last pages of the book, like it's a happy ending, like I've learned to live with this in a way where I can feel all joy and be glad that I'm alive. And I there's ways that I can use what I've gotten out of this in productive like ways to help people. But every day there's and still at least one thing that really sucks about having complex PTSD. So I don't know, what are you gonna do? And there's still days where, you know, I mean I have, I have like written in this book all of these great coping mechanisms, but doesn't mean that I use the coping mechanisms every day. Like sure, I like like I'm much better and I know they're there and like knowing that they're there gives me hope. And still there's days when I just yell at myself like stop being crazy, you're being crazy, stop it, and that super healthy. It is so healthy, as I said in the beginning, when we were when we were talking, like I noticed recognize what I was doing, when I was preparing for our conversation and literally yelling at myself. Stopped being fucking crazy. The and you know those, those days, those days are what happens. It's not that you suddenly reach this finish line and you find a purpose for your story and your words and then everything is fine, like Nope, still still in the trenches over here, is still in the trenches with everybody else. But also what kind of like psychopath? Yeah, what kind of psychopath is just happy all the time? You're definitely not. If that is the case, I love like, like, let's do the Midrash on the redefinition of what health means. Like, health to me means when you were having a ship day, you were having a ship day and you don't have to pretend to be doing anything else. That performative positivity is pathology, which should totally be a bumper sticker if that was not an ecological terror to make bumper stickers. Yeah, I mean, like, I think it's like a diet, right, you need a little bit of fat and sugar and carbs and meat and veggies. If you're only eating like one thing, you die. So I think that's kind of how I see mental health is, like you have to make sure that you have a lot of your experiencing the full range of human emotion. Yeah, you know, if your anger is so big that it's blocking out the joy, then yeah, you should get that in check. If your if your joy is so big that it's blocking out the ability to feel sad, also a problem. Yeah, it's the timeshare of the emotional psyche, right, like we want all of the circuits able to fire and that one doesn't cancel the other out. I think we do that weird math of like you can't be grateful and sad at the same time. Yeah, yeah, humans are weird. Humans are weird. I mean that's the that's we're terrified of emotion, right, like we are a culture that is terrified of big emotion and so like, of course we have all of these weird little rituals to make or that happiness is the only thing that people see and it's just it's not helping anything. And I think one of the big three lines I see, not just in your book, but like you're writing and writing on journalism and racism and climate emergency, is like all of these really difficult things. The through line that I see and all of that stuff is the power of acknowledgment, for just being able to tell the truth about the situation at hand and not even necessarily having a solution, but that that acknowledgement of the truth in all of these really deep, complex difficult things like that is not nothing. I would agree with you, but I would say that, like the through line with all of these things actually is agency, I think with the climate stuff, with the racism stuff, with the mental health stuff, with everything, and it stems from my ptsd honestly, because, you know, growing up I always needed to have some sort of troll over the situation, like the situation could very easily get out of control and endanger my life and the lives around me. So I always needed to like be the mom and keep everything peaceful and keep everything unlock. But I also think it's a deeply human desire that like having some form of agency gives us so much peace and a feeling of control and a feeling of well well being, and I think it's really difficult to have those when you know the world is falling apart and looking at the news or looking at the climate, and so I try to find small ways in which people can claim that agency for themselves to help themselves and the people around them, and I think that that isn't a really significant way to feel those that broad spectrum of emotions and go from feeling just anger to feeling anger and joy, or just fear to fear and satisfaction and grief. You know. Yeah, Um, I'm pausing because, like I am such a big fan of agency and sovereignty. I feel like that's that's something that I bring up all the time, that people have the right to be who they are and feel how they feel and need what they need and to be able to have some say in how their own lives unfold, and that loss of agency, that loss of sovereignty, is a source of so much suffering dehumanization, and I think agency is the heart of hope, right once you feel like you have some element of control, it allows you to feel that things can get better, it keeps you energized and it is the antidote to despair. So that's I love that. Okay, so that's a robin waltkimer quote. That's not me. Her book is actually propping up my laptop. So I love that you went there, because season two of the show for me, is actually like where are people finding hope, because I am definitely having some moments of like we are screwed, or I'm screwed, because I'm not able to find any like hope or agency in anything, and so I love that this like naturally this is where you go. Like we didn't get into it in our conversation and I can I'll leave that for folks to read in the book. But you you wrote into your parents histories and your family's histories and that whole history of violence and oppression and colonialism and war and what that does to a family system and how that trauma and pain and violence gets passed down. And you've also written about racism and racism and journalism and how people of Color experience a lot more saturation of violence than white folks. Right and this knowledge of violence upon violence upon violence. It's like, once you start to look for it, it's easy to see it everywhere. It's easy to see the tendrils of historical, intergenerational, cultural violence showing up in so many places. You do this so beautifully and so skillfully in your book, like you look at what made your parents behave an act in the way that they did. You look at that without collapsing into Oh, I get it now, and so the sort of like sentimental music, swelling absolution. You don't even talk like I was. I literally cheered when I read that part of your book. So thank you. I think two things here. One, understanding why something, a person, a family, system of culture, an organization whatever. Understanding why they are the violent oppressive creatures they are does not absolve them of the responsibility to not act out of their histories in the violent ways that they're doing. Right, we can. We can hold both things at the same time. I think that we get caught in this like, oh, I understand them, so I have to excuse them, like I'm just gonna Roll over MP myself. No, hello, you can understand what created a person and still hold them accountable for their actions. I think that's a really tricky point that not a lot of people pick up. And the other thing, coming back to what you just described about where you find hope. It's like when you start looking for the roots of violence, like there's no end to that. You start seeing it everywhere, and that can be really, really overwhelming and pressing. There's no end to goodness either. Yes, for it. Yea, that is true. It's no end to kindness and love if you're looking for it, and like healing and like if you look at the long arc of history, I mean it's generally been getting a lot better than it wasn't like there's got to say so, you know, whereas that's true. I mean all I have to do is like look at the zoomers, honestly, and the empathy and like the respect that they have for their feelings and like the respect that they have for others who are different from them. And I'm like, you know, things are getting better, I think. And Yeah, I feel angry at boomers a whole lot. But you know, history isn't over, history is not done. Culture is not done. Culture isn't static. It's constantly changing and evolving and I think there will always be violence. Look, I'm not, like naive enough to think that there is not going to be violence, that there's not going to be grief and death and loss, but I certainly think that I can support others in their quest for happiness and be supported better. And, yeah, trying to end the cycles as best as we can. Yeah, that sounds hopeful, hopeful, hopeful, but not pollyanna. We're not naive. I guess it is the word that you use. There's a lot to be helpful about, honestly, like I think there is that, you know, the zoo, the zoomers, they have this thing, you know, okay boomer, they have okay doomer, like, okay, doomer, like you're gonna say that, like the world is on fire and everything's dying and whatever, like the whole world is going to end. Well, fuck you, because you know they're fifteen and they have the right to a full and thriving life. And so, yeah, it's kind of Shitty for us to be like, yeah, the world's on fire, everything is going to die within thirty years, without giving them an out or another option. Yeah, so I feel like this is a good like I can keep talking about hope and despair, an agency and action forever and ever and ever and ever, but I feel like this is probably a good place to wrap us up. Do you want to tell the people where they can find you and anything else you want them to know about you or about trees? Sure, I am on Instagram at Fu Fu Fu. I'm on twitter, I'm on the radio, my book is wherever fine books are sold, called my bones, no, and com during the community, where like it is safe to have complex PTSD and in this world that I am envisioning and Dreaming Up and I'm hopeful for, we can learn to take care of each other and be more accepting of our TRAUMAS and learn how to repair really thoughtfully when we have ruptures that come from this violence I don't know if that was the best, like most meaningful, profound thing to end on. That's all, I think that came to mind. I think that's a beautiful thing to end on. Right. We didn't get a chance to talk about repair and rupture, that all of that stuff is in your book. If we treated complex PTSD like a disability, this would mean advocating for the things that we need, learning how to do repair after a rupture. I think those are actually good cliff hangers for us, because those are all in the book and your vision of a kinder, more honest, more hopeful world is a really clear and beautiful and powerful storytelling place to end and I appreciate it and I'm sure other folks will too. So well, thank you so much. This has been a really optimistic, pleasant little ROMP. It's so nice to exit a conversation about trauma not failing like you just had to go through and recall all the crappy things about your life and instead be like flowers, flowers, trees, agency and hope for everyone. Yes, yeah, I know, you already wrote the whole book. You don't need to relive it every time you talk to somebody. Yeah, that's what's reading is for. All Right, I'm going to sign us off, folks. We will be right back after this break back in a second. Each week I leave you with some questions to carry with you until we meet again. This season is all about hope, real, like functional hope, rooted in what are honestly, some pretty difficult things. Now you'll notice that Stephanie and I reference trees and flowers as we wrapped up our conversation on complex PTSD and on hope. We had this whole side conversation on how she manages her own climate despair, how she finds hope inside daily action in the service of trees. It was a really awesome conversation, but it didn't quite fit with the things that we've been talking about previously. So that whole bonus conversation is going to come out later this week. It is really sweet and has its own hope inside it, so watch for that one, although, better yet, just follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts. That way you will not miss and thing. Now, what I am personally taking with me from this week's episode is a bit more kindness to myself about the ways I've learned to survive the difficult things in my own life and it's so easy to be annoyed, especially as a therapist and like obsessively self reflective person like it's so easy to be annoyed with the weird ways I act sometimes, are the weird ways I think sometimes, and I'm like Ah, after all this time, like you still are using those old coping skills that that really aren't applicable. I mean I have great coping skills, I just don't use them all the time and I think I think I can be a little bit kinder to myself on those days that I'm not exactly using the very best tools in my collection. That's what I'm going to take from this conversation today. What parts of the conversation stuck with you today? What parts made you think about something in a new way or see something differently in your life or in somebody else's? Were there parts of Stephanie's story, especially those parts about letting herself be seen? Were there parts of that story that helped you feel seen? Everybody's going to take something different from today's show, but I do hope you find something to hold onto. I'd love to hear what you've taken from this episode, what insights you might have had, what curiosity got piqued, I don't know. I just really like to hear from you. Check out refuge in grief on instagram or here after pod on Tiktok to see clips from the show and leave us your thoughts and your comments on those posts. Really, on any of the social platforms, refuge in grief and Hereafter pod, and be sure to tag us on your own social accounts when you do share the show. Use the Hashtag here after pod on any platform so we can find you. The whole team really loves to see where this show takes you. If you want to tell us how today's show felt for you, or you have a request or a question for upcoming explorer, it shouldn't so difficult. Things give us a call at three to three, six, four, three, three, seven, six eight and leave a voicemail. If you missed it, you can find the number in the show notes or visit Megan divine dot C o. If you'd rather send an email, you can do that too. Write on the Website Megan divine dot CEO. We want to hear from you. I want to hear from you. This show, this world needs your voice. Together we can make things better, even when they can't be made right. You know how most people are going to scan through their podcast APP looking for a new thing to listen to. They're going to see the show description for here after and think, I don't want to listen to difficult things, even if super cool people are talking about them. Well, that's where you come in. Your reviews of the show. Let people know it really isn't all that bad in here. 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I think it got too difficult really for me to pretend to be normal. I just couldn't do it anymore. Part of me, which as I could have just pretended like everything was okay and I could be the high performing Badass that everyone thought I was, and I just could not. And once I admitted that to myself and said, you know, I might not be that person, but here's who I am instead, that's when life got a lot easier, more comfortable. And yet that's when my tribe came along and everyone was like Oh, US too, and proved that there is a different way to to live this life that is just as valuable and just as viable. This is here after and I'm your host, Megan Divine, author of the best selling book it's okay that you're not okay. Each week I bring you conversations with authors and Divis and other really cool people, all exploring what it means to be a fully feeling human in an often difficult world. Now, if you've lived through horrific trauma or abuse, is it really fair of us to say that the ways you've learned to cope with that trauma or abuse are bad, like bad in air? Quotes here or, to use clinical speak, to call your coping skills maladaptive. This week on Hereafter Stephanie Foot, author of what my bones know, she joins me to talk about complex ptsd and the ways we pathologize human responses to trauma. You'll also hear how claiming your own messy, complex coping mechanisms can help you build a community that sees you and loves you. All of that and more coming up after this first break. Before we get started, one quick note. While we cover a lot of emotional relational territory in each and every episode, this show is not a substitute for skilled support with a licensed mental health provider or professional supervision related to your work. Hey friends, now, as a survivor of trauma myself, I am really sensitive about asking my guests to summarize the things they lived through. I've been on that media circuit where you just talk about some of the worst moments of your life over and over and over again, like answering these deeply personal questions about horrendous, difficult things over and over. It's just it's weird. So whenever I can, I try to shift the burden of telling the horrendous story off of my guest and frontloaded here into my introduction to the show, and that's what I've done today. Stephanie Foud grew up in San Jose, California, surrounded by manicured landscapes and high achieving immigrant families. From the outside, her family looked like that coveted American dream scenario, but on the inside it was very much a nightmare. Stephanie's parents regularly beat her and emotionally abused her before eventually abandoning her when she was sixteen. In two thousand eighteen, Stephanie was diagnosed with complex PTSD, a little understood and little studied form of post traumatic stress disorder that can occur from repeated, long term trauma. Stephanie's Best Selling Book What my bones note tells the story of that intense childhood abuse and the coping patterns that helped her survive what she had to survive. The book is also a story of intergenerational trauma, immigration and understanding the roots of violence, while not excusing the violence itself. Just that last bit is such a super important point and I'm really glad that we got to talk about it a little bit in this conversation. Now, books on complex PTSD, like many other diagnoses or or can additions that we have books on complex PTSD can be really dry and, honestly, kind of clueless and cruel in their descriptions about people who carry long term behaviors or patterns of behavior due to the trauma and abuse they survived. So you'll hear it in our conversation today, but Stephanie really wants you all to know that her book is written by a trauma survivor for other trauma survivors, not just child aboost but war and other kind of repeated, horrible experiences. She wants you to know that the book focuses on healing, but the kind of healing that can only come when you respect the ways that each person managed to survive what they went through. I promise you that's going to make more sense as you listen to the show. But if you're haunted by any type of trauma or you know someone who is, this conversation with Stephanie Foo is a great introduction to complex PTSD and the work of survivorship. So let's get into it. Content notes everybody. This episode contains non graphic reference to abuse and trauma and it includes a small amount of swearing. Well, hi, hello, thank you for having me. Absolutely I sat down and read your book like cover to cover, over the course of eight hours on Sunday fast. So one of the things that I would really love to talk about. Throwing it out there, it's like you write a lot about how we pathologize responses to trauma, no matter what happens to you. Like the healthy responses to be completely unaffected, rise above and always present as really chill. There's Um, there's a section I particularly liked in your book when you talk about meeting Joey for the first time and you're like, I am pretending to be completely non anxious and chill and all of these things, and he's like okay, but tell me what's actually happening. So can we talk about that like that, the ways that we pathologize responses to trauma? Yeah, so I think you know, just the word trauma itself, I think, is pathologized. I think there's this understanding that trauma itself, experiencing it, makes you broken. I remember reading this Fox article where they were saying, you know, be careful about how you use the word trauma, because if you describe yourself as traumatized that is saying like that you are broken and helpless and like you're robbing yourself resiliency, because you're basically admitting that you know there's no hope for yourself and your giving up. Oh my God. And I was like wait, what, like, why would you define I mean, yeah, I mean I guess it's a problem to say that you are traumatized if that's how you're going to define trauma, but I don't think trauma needs to be defined in that way. I think the fact of the matter is that we all experience some form of trauma, and trauma is scientific adaptation to keep us alive. Like if you're bitten by a snake, you're going to be afraid of snakes. If you touch a hot stove, you're going to be really careful around a hot stove, like it's basically your brain wiring threat and saying like hey, this is something that's really dangerous that could kill you, so be vigilant around the thing that could kill you. And you know, for some of US those triggers, like being afraid of snakes, are maybe more sensible than others, not sensible but more like manageable than others, like being afraid of anyone who's using a loud voice, you know, being afraid of someone who's yelling. You're gonna encounter that much more in life. That's harder to avoid, right than snakes. I think it's really interesting that, like the self deaf mission of trauma right, that we have this idea that it's not the incident of trauma that's the problem, it's allowing yourself to identify as traumatized. I think we have that that as like, Oh, you're being a victim and you're never going to be able to get out of this, like it's such a weird like, it's so weird. It's so weird like that that whole nothing bad should happen to you. If it does, your your prime directive is to be resilient and unaffected and don't even name it as a bad thing, because that's almost like invoking badness if you call the bad thing bad. Exactly, I think it's completely missing the fact that trauma can be an adaptation. There's lots of fears and responses to trauma that actually can be healthy, that actually can make us sort of extremely useful in a variety of different situations, and it's also just not a very empathetic or kind place to come from, considering that all of us have some form of trauma. If you're going to judge everyone for their trauma response instead of stepping in and saying like Hey, are you having a trauma response? Do you need a minute? What do you need? How can I help you? How can I support you in this, there's gonna be a lot more conflict, judgment and refusal to make space, and I think it's very ablest and like, what is this perfect, untouched population of people anyway, honestly, that I've never gone through anything hard. Yeah, I mean I think it's like that common default that everybody is pretending to be okay when we're not okay, which is basically like the entire reason for my work and this show is to start talking about how hard it is to be human and the stuff we go through and that we adapt to the things that we go through, and that's not the same as resilience or overcoming but it's more like ship happens to you and some of the ways that you survived that and deal with that are awesome in the right context, and some of those ways are really difficult, but they're not wrong. Yeah, yeah, it's the judgment of that that makes it impossible to live with, not the challenge itself. Right, Stephanie, can you give us a description of complex PTSD and how that's different than, I don't like, the post traumatic stress disorder that people might know? Yeah, so PTSD, you can get, quote unquote, traditional PTSD from a singular traumatic event. So let's say you're hit by a car. That can give you PTSD. COMPLEX PTSD is kind of like if you were hit by that car every week for three years. It's when the trauma happens over and over and over and unless you are like a tremendously unlucky individual, the only way that you're probably getting complex PTSD is from a difficult relationship with other people. So having an abuser, suffering from child abuse, domestic violence or living in a war zone. So complex PTSD in particular, it tends to really erode people's trust of other human beings and make relationships a little bit different. Yeah, when that is what you absorb, right, our relationships tell us about the world and when your relationships tell you that the world is an unsafe place, then the world is an unsafe place and we learned lots of different ways to survive that place. When I am having a conversation with an author who has a book out, like I don't want to give the book away because I really, really want people to read the book. We were talking earlier that, like my my perfectionist overwork tendencies, I'm like, I'm basically going to develop a book report on your book for everybody, but like, no, stop it right. A book is a sort of a one way come versation and the sparks that we gather from that, like that's that's where that's really interesting to me. There was actually a tweet that you had out about what my bones. No, is now going into its six printing in five months. Thank you to the therapists and teachers who have been assigning it, the caretakers who have been studying it and, most of all, the survivors for opening your hearts to it. MM HMM. This is like the dream, right, the dream here of taking something deeply personal, deeply painful. It's not easy to write about these really intense personal experiences and put them out into the world for public display, into section and that, knowing that doing that means something to people, right can we talk about that a little bit. That that that interesting zone of here's this really intimate personal stuff that was probably not very easy to write either. Certainly wasn't easy to live and putting it out in the world and seeing the impact of that. What's that been like for you to see the impact of your story in the world? It's been tremendously meaningful because, well, when I was first diagnosed, there was nothing like my book out there. Everything that I read was very clinical. Most of it was not meant for people like me to read. It was clear that it wasn't. A lot of it was not made for people actually with complex ptsd to read, because they would talk about us. They'd be like complex people with complex PTSD are so difficult to treat, they are, you know, they are burdens, they are pain in the ass, they are whatever. They would say all of these things and I was like, did you think that I'd be too stupid to read this? Like what? I don't understand a lot of it. It was very pathologizing. A lot of it was very dry, just just not very fund yeah, and you know, I was a person who was coming from a storytelling background. Obviously it told stories for ten years first person stories, other people's first person stories, and I realized the impact that had for empathy, for a narrative, for feeling less alone. You know, I had helped so many other groups feel less alone by showcasing these important stories, but never really my own. And so when I was reading all of these books and recognizing that, you know, that first person story just did not exist and it made me feel so isolated and freakish and damaged, I guess and I knew that if I healed from this in any kind of way, I would I would need to write about it, because that story was just needed. I didn't want anybody else to feel as completely isolated as I did after diagnosis. And I always told myself in this process that, like my story did not represent everyone with complex PTSD. I mean it's obviously a spectrum. We all have different symptoms and experiences, is and I told myself that if one person would benefited from the book, then the four years of creating it would be worth it would be okay. So to have the response be so overwhelmingly positive, to get like dozens of messages every day saying like you got it, that's exactly what it's like. It's been really wonderful and it's made me realize how truly needed this was and to be able to give words to people for this. Yeah, I mean I think it's been great on a couple of different levels. I think first of all, it's made me feel less alone, because I didn't really have many people in my life with complex PTSD, and now I see people with all different backgrounds and careers, from herbalists, two doctors to like, you know, farmers, all messaging me saying like, your experiences, my experience. Certainly it makes me feel a lot less freakish myself and apparently have helped other people do that. And Yeah, it also give some sort of meaning and power to, like the true anguish that I've had to experience, and it gives some affirmation to that self loathing that I've suffered from for so long, that I don't deserve to be here, you know that I'm too broken to be here, that I don't fit in with everyone else. I guess those feelings and, more importantly, learning how to corral those feelings, has actually made me sort of able to shine a light for those who come behind me and has shown me that I really do have a place of importance here, that we all have a place of importance of being the healers who can lead the way. It's so counterintuitive or counter to the ways that we talk about, quote unquote, mental health in this culture right that if you say or if you're feeling alone and something or you're feeling like a freak, you're feeling like the only one who's experiencing these things like, then you're called to perform harder, right, perform like everyone else, a little bit harder, to fit in. If you're feeling lonely, you have to be more like everybody else, and the reverse of that is actually what's accurate, the willingness to tell the truth about who you are and where you are and what you're feeling and what you're experiencing like that, stripped down, not bright shiny package. Truth like that is how not only you feel less alone, but others feel les alone. It's like how we find each other. Yeah, welcome back, everybody. I'm Megan divine and this is hereafter let's rejoin my conversation with Stephanie Foo, author of what my bones know. There's a site called glow in the woods that was started by I'm going to space on her last name of her first name is Kate, and one of the descriptions it's a it's a like a crowdsourced blog, community platform for people who have experienced baby death. And she says I envisioned a glow in the woods, a place where all of the Medusa's could come and take their hats off, this place where nobody's afraid of your snakes because they have their own. Yeah, and I really see that power of storytelling, and not just the power of storytelling, but the power of telling the truth. Mm Hmmm, I think it got too difficult really for me to pretend to be normal. I just couldn't do it anymore. Part of me, which is I could have just pretended like everything was okay and I could be the high performing Badass that everyone thought I was, and I just could not. And once I did that to myself and said, you know, I might not be that person, but here's who I am instead, that's when life got a lot easier, more comfortable. And yet that's when my tribe came along and everyone was like, oh, US too, and prove that there is a different way to to live this life. That is just as valuable and just as viable, and how much easier it gets when you stop pretending to be something you're not feeling and also understanding that it has to be safe enough to do that right. Like, I think there's a lot of throat, like what's the pop psychology headline version of that is like speak your truth, claim your power. Well, it's not always safe to do that. Yeah, I mean I had to burn down my whole life to be able to do it. Basically, I lost everything and I was like, well, I have nothing left to lose, so I might as well do this. People are always like, yeah, the bravery thing. People are like, Oh, you're so brave to have like shared your story, and I was like there was nothing to lose anymore, so there was nothing brave about it. I have literally tried everything else possible and now there is nothing and this is the only option left for me. Yeah, yeah, this whole like like let's turn it into a hero story. Well, no, no, and I think also like, as somebody who was also put a deeply terrible personal story out into the world, wrote a book that I needed when that happened that didn't exist at that time. It's like, look, at all the good you've done in the world and this this conflation with yes, sorry, all of that happened to you, but you were so brave and now you've done something, so much good in the world, and in a way I'm really glad that happened to you. Right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Has that horrendous narrative shown up on your doorstep? Honestly, not too much, but I did hear it the other day. I heard somebody else say to someone with PTSD like that's what forged, like you're forged in fire, you know, like now you really needed a great writer. I was like no, yeah, within a couple of days of my partner drowning, I was a psychotherapist before that happened, and people were literally coming up to me being you're going to be such a great therapist after this, you're going to help people, and I'm like, okay, one you're actually saying that I wasn't a good therapist before and I actually needed a person to die in order to get better at it and that his life is a fair trade for any people I might help later. And I just like, we have such a weird response to human pain and suffering that we really want it to be tidy. If we can't pretend it didn't happen, then we need there to be a night and shining armor, heroic moment where somebody is all healed and they've been of service to others in the world. And it's almost no wonder that people are has an to tell the truth about their own lives. Right, we're confused about what trauma means, what surviving and living with trauma or traumatic events means, and we're confused about the role of hardship and becoming sort of like better versions of ourselves. Like why there needs to be a quick transformation into positivity, Yep, when it's like no, this is fucked up and sad and like yeah, I mean it is a great thing that I've done this and I can and I can help people and I'm proud of myself. But if, like, a magic fairy could show up tomorrow and actually I could have had a great childhood and not had any of this, like I would trade it all in a second. I would take the Magic Yep, I would take the magic fairy. Right, it's like, well, you wouldn't have all of these beautiful things in your life. But like what beautiful things would I have instead, right, like stop reducing this stuff to like your little formula to make everything work out okay. And one of the things that I really love about the way that you consistently show up, in all of the ways that I've seen you show up, is like you're not healed right, like you are not without coping mechanisms or not right. But there's there's this. I think we've got the folks who read your words and read your story and see themselves and get it that finding ways to live alongside this, in ways that reduce the friction in your heart, in your mind and relationships, are like. Yes, and other folks who maybe don't see themselves or haven't yet seen themselves reflected in that story, they're like, but you're all better now, right. Yeah, I don't know if anyone is like you're all better now. Anyone who knows me certainly isn't Um. But yeah, I try to be very clear in the especially in the last pages of the book, like it's a happy ending, like I've learned to live with this in a way where I can feel all joy and be glad that I'm alive. And I there's ways that I can use what I've gotten out of this in productive like ways to help people. But every day there's and still at least one thing that really sucks about having complex PTSD. So I don't know, what are you gonna do? And there's still days where, you know, I mean I have, I have like written in this book all of these great coping mechanisms, but doesn't mean that I use the coping mechanisms every day. Like sure, I like like I'm much better and I know they're there and like knowing that they're there gives me hope. And still there's days when I just yell at myself like stop being crazy, you're being crazy, stop it, and that super healthy. It is so healthy, as I said in the beginning, when we were when we were talking, like I noticed recognize what I was doing, when I was preparing for our conversation and literally yelling at myself. Stopped being fucking crazy. The and you know those, those days, those days are what happens. It's not that you suddenly reach this finish line and you find a purpose for your story and your words and then everything is fine, like Nope, still still in the trenches over here, is still in the trenches with everybody else. But also what kind of like psychopath? Yeah, what kind of psychopath is just happy all the time? You're definitely not. If that is the case, I love like, like, let's do the Midrash on the redefinition of what health means. Like, health to me means when you were having a ship day, you were having a ship day and you don't have to pretend to be doing anything else. That performative positivity is pathology, which should totally be a bumper sticker if that was not an ecological terror to make bumper stickers. Yeah, I mean, like, I think it's like a diet, right, you need a little bit of fat and sugar and carbs and meat and veggies. If you're only eating like one thing, you die. So I think that's kind of how I see mental health is, like you have to make sure that you have a lot of your experiencing the full range of human emotion. Yeah, you know, if your anger is so big that it's blocking out the joy, then yeah, you should get that in check. If your if your joy is so big that it's blocking out the ability to feel sad, also a problem. Yeah, it's the timeshare of the emotional psyche, right, like we want all of the circuits able to fire and that one doesn't cancel the other out. I think we do that weird math of like you can't be grateful and sad at the same time. Yeah, yeah, humans are weird. Humans are weird. I mean that's the that's we're terrified of emotion, right, like we are a culture that is terrified of big emotion and so like, of course we have all of these weird little rituals to make or that happiness is the only thing that people see and it's just it's not helping anything. And I think one of the big three lines I see, not just in your book, but like you're writing and writing on journalism and racism and climate emergency, is like all of these really difficult things. The through line that I see and all of that stuff is the power of acknowledgment, for just being able to tell the truth about the situation at hand and not even necessarily having a solution, but that that acknowledgement of the truth in all of these really deep, complex difficult things like that is not nothing. I would agree with you, but I would say that, like the through line with all of these things actually is agency, I think with the climate stuff, with the racism stuff, with the mental health stuff, with everything, and it stems from my ptsd honestly, because, you know, growing up I always needed to have some sort of troll over the situation, like the situation could very easily get out of control and endanger my life and the lives around me. So I always needed to like be the mom and keep everything peaceful and keep everything unlock. But I also think it's a deeply human desire that like having some form of agency gives us so much peace and a feeling of control and a feeling of well well being, and I think it's really difficult to have those when you know the world is falling apart and looking at the news or looking at the climate, and so I try to find small ways in which people can claim that agency for themselves to help themselves and the people around them, and I think that that isn't a really significant way to feel those that broad spectrum of emotions and go from feeling just anger to feeling anger and joy, or just fear to fear and satisfaction and grief. You know. Yeah, Um, I'm pausing because, like I am such a big fan of agency and sovereignty. I feel like that's that's something that I bring up all the time, that people have the right to be who they are and feel how they feel and need what they need and to be able to have some say in how their own lives unfold, and that loss of agency, that loss of sovereignty, is a source of so much suffering dehumanization, and I think agency is the heart of hope, right once you feel like you have some element of control, it allows you to feel that things can get better, it keeps you energized and it is the antidote to despair. So that's I love that. Okay, so that's a robin waltkimer quote. That's not me. Her book is actually propping up my laptop. So I love that you went there, because season two of the show for me, is actually like where are people finding hope, because I am definitely having some moments of like we are screwed, or I'm screwed, because I'm not able to find any like hope or agency in anything, and so I love that this like naturally this is where you go. Like we didn't get into it in our conversation and I can I'll leave that for folks to read in the book. But you you wrote into your parents histories and your family's histories and that whole history of violence and oppression and colonialism and war and what that does to a family system and how that trauma and pain and violence gets passed down. And you've also written about racism and racism and journalism and how people of Color experience a lot more saturation of violence than white folks. Right and this knowledge of violence upon violence upon violence. It's like, once you start to look for it, it's easy to see it everywhere. It's easy to see the tendrils of historical, intergenerational, cultural violence showing up in so many places. You do this so beautifully and so skillfully in your book, like you look at what made your parents behave an act in the way that they did. You look at that without collapsing into Oh, I get it now, and so the sort of like sentimental music, swelling absolution. You don't even talk like I was. I literally cheered when I read that part of your book. So thank you. I think two things here. One, understanding why something, a person, a family, system of culture, an organization whatever. Understanding why they are the violent oppressive creatures they are does not absolve them of the responsibility to not act out of their histories in the violent ways that they're doing. Right, we can. We can hold both things at the same time. I think that we get caught in this like, oh, I understand them, so I have to excuse them, like I'm just gonna Roll over MP myself. No, hello, you can understand what created a person and still hold them accountable for their actions. I think that's a really tricky point that not a lot of people pick up. And the other thing, coming back to what you just described about where you find hope. It's like when you start looking for the roots of violence, like there's no end to that. You start seeing it everywhere, and that can be really, really overwhelming and pressing. There's no end to goodness either. Yes, for it. Yea, that is true. It's no end to kindness and love if you're looking for it, and like healing and like if you look at the long arc of history, I mean it's generally been getting a lot better than it wasn't like there's got to say so, you know, whereas that's true. I mean all I have to do is like look at the zoomers, honestly, and the empathy and like the respect that they have for their feelings and like the respect that they have for others who are different from them. And I'm like, you know, things are getting better, I think. And Yeah, I feel angry at boomers a whole lot. But you know, history isn't over, history is not done. Culture is not done. Culture isn't static. It's constantly changing and evolving and I think there will always be violence. Look, I'm not, like naive enough to think that there is not going to be violence, that there's not going to be grief and death and loss, but I certainly think that I can support others in their quest for happiness and be supported better. And, yeah, trying to end the cycles as best as we can. Yeah, that sounds hopeful, hopeful, hopeful, but not pollyanna. We're not naive. I guess it is the word that you use. There's a lot to be helpful about, honestly, like I think there is that, you know, the zoo, the zoomers, they have this thing, you know, okay boomer, they have okay doomer, like, okay, doomer, like you're gonna say that, like the world is on fire and everything's dying and whatever, like the whole world is going to end. Well, fuck you, because you know they're fifteen and they have the right to a full and thriving life. And so, yeah, it's kind of Shitty for us to be like, yeah, the world's on fire, everything is going to die within thirty years, without giving them an out or another option. Yeah, so I feel like this is a good like I can keep talking about hope and despair, an agency and action forever and ever and ever and ever, but I feel like this is probably a good place to wrap us up. Do you want to tell the people where they can find you and anything else you want them to know about you or about trees? Sure, I am on Instagram at Fu Fu Fu. I'm on twitter, I'm on the radio, my book is wherever fine books are sold, called my bones, no, and com during the community, where like it is safe to have complex PTSD and in this world that I am envisioning and Dreaming Up and I'm hopeful for, we can learn to take care of each other and be more accepting of our TRAUMAS and learn how to repair really thoughtfully when we have ruptures that come from this violence I don't know if that was the best, like most meaningful, profound thing to end on. That's all, I think that came to mind. I think that's a beautiful thing to end on. Right. We didn't get a chance to talk about repair and rupture, that all of that stuff is in your book. If we treated complex PTSD like a disability, this would mean advocating for the things that we need, learning how to do repair after a rupture. I think those are actually good cliff hangers for us, because those are all in the book and your vision of a kinder, more honest, more hopeful world is a really clear and beautiful and powerful storytelling place to end and I appreciate it and I'm sure other folks will too. So well, thank you so much. This has been a really optimistic, pleasant little ROMP. It's so nice to exit a conversation about trauma not failing like you just had to go through and recall all the crappy things about your life and instead be like flowers, flowers, trees, agency and hope for everyone. Yes, yeah, I know, you already wrote the whole book. You don't need to relive it every time you talk to somebody. Yeah, that's what's reading is for. All Right, I'm going to sign us off, folks. We will be right back after this break back in a second. Each week I leave you with some questions to carry with you until we meet again. This season is all about hope, real, like functional hope, rooted in what are honestly, some pretty difficult things. Now you'll notice that Stephanie and I reference trees and flowers as we wrapped up our conversation on complex PTSD and on hope. We had this whole side conversation on how she manages her own climate despair, how she finds hope inside daily action in the service of trees. It was a really awesome conversation, but it didn't quite fit with the things that we've been talking about previously. So that whole bonus conversation is going to come out later this week. It is really sweet and has its own hope inside it, so watch for that one, although, better yet, just follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts. That way you will not miss and thing. Now, what I am personally taking with me from this week's episode is a bit more kindness to myself about the ways I've learned to survive the difficult things in my own life and it's so easy to be annoyed, especially as a therapist and like obsessively self reflective person like it's so easy to be annoyed with the weird ways I act sometimes, are the weird ways I think sometimes, and I'm like Ah, after all this time, like you still are using those old coping skills that that really aren't applicable. I mean I have great coping skills, I just don't use them all the time and I think I think I can be a little bit kinder to myself on those days that I'm not exactly using the very best tools in my collection. That's what I'm going to take from this conversation today. What parts of the conversation stuck with you today? What parts made you think about something in a new way or see something differently in your life or in somebody else's? Were there parts of Stephanie's story, especially those parts about letting herself be seen? Were there parts of that story that helped you feel seen? Everybody's going to take something different from today's show, but I do hope you find something to hold onto. I'd love to hear what you've taken from this episode, what insights you might have had, what curiosity got piqued, I don't know. I just really like to hear from you. Check out refuge in grief on instagram or here after pod on Tiktok to see clips from the show and leave us your thoughts and your comments on those posts. Really, on any of the social platforms, refuge in grief and Hereafter pod, and be sure to tag us on your own social accounts when you do share the show. Use the Hashtag here after pod on any platform so we can find you. The whole team really loves to see where this show takes you. If you want to tell us how today's show felt for you, or you have a request or a question for upcoming explorer, it shouldn't so difficult. Things give us a call at three to three, six, four, three, three, seven, six eight and leave a voicemail. If you missed it, you can find the number in the show notes or visit Megan divine dot C o. If you'd rather send an email, you can do that too. Write on the Website Megan divine dot CEO. We want to hear from you. I want to hear from you. This show, this world needs your voice. Together we can make things better, even when they can't be made right. You know how most people are going to scan through their podcast APP looking for a new thing to listen to. They're going to see the show description for here after and think, I don't want to listen to difficult things, even if super cool people are talking about them. Well, that's where you come in. Your reviews of the show. Let people know it really isn't all that bad in here. We talk about heavy stuff, yes, but it's in the service of making things better for everyone. So everyone needs to listen. Spread the word in your friend groups, your professional circles on social media and Click through to leave a review, subscribe to the show, download episodes and keep on listening. Friends want more hereafter. Grief Education doesn't just belong to end of life issues. As my dad says, daily life is full of everyday grief that we don't call grief, from daily disappointments right up through those losses that rearrange the world. Grief is everywhere. Learning how to talk about all that without cliches or platitudes or dismissive, accidentally on purpose rude statements. Well, that's an important skill for everybody. find tip sheets, trainings, professional resources and my best selling book, it's okay that you're not okay. Plus the Guided Journal for Grief at Megan Divine Dot c o Hereafter with Megan divine is written and produced by me. You guessed it, Megan divine. Acuative producer is Amy Brown, Co produced by Elizabeth Fossio, logistical and social media support from Micah and edited by Houston Tilly. Music provided by wave crush and occasional background noise from the air conditioning that I almost always forget to turn off.