The Dr. John Delony Show - Pressing Charges Against an Old Abuser & Trying Again After Miscarriages

Episode Date: April 19, 2021

The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that offers real people a chance to be heard as they struggle with relationship issues and mental health challenges. John will give you practical advice on how to connect with people, how to take the next right step when you feel frozen, and how to cut through the depression and anxiety that can feel so overwhelming. You are not alone in this battle. You are worth being well—and it starts by focusing on what you can control. Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show. We want to talk to YOU!   Show Notes for this Episode   My 11-year-old stepson doesn’t respect me. We fight a lot. His father died before he was born. How can we have a better relationship? Our first son was stillborn, then we had a healthy daughter, then a son that died after birth. My wife wants to try again but I am hesitant. It is causing a lot of tension in our marriage. How do we get through this? I recently pressed charges against family member that abused me 30 years ago. How do I move on? Lyrics of the Day: "Bad Luck" - Social Distortion   As heard on this episode: BetterHelp   tags: parenting, kids, family, grief   These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately.

Hey, on today's show we talk about a lot of light and a lot of dark. We talk about fractured marriages and parenting. We talk about healing from grief after a loss of a child. And we talk about healing after sexual abuse. It's a heavy show, but a good? I'm John. This is the Dr. John Deloney Show. Thank you for hanging out. Thanks for showing up. Thanks for putting your earbuds in while you're mowing the lawn or vacuuming or driving or painting the house. I don't know whatever it is you're doing, but I'm so glad you're here.

We talk about relationships, mental health, dating, marriage, dating marriage things falling apart people passing away all of it whatever's going on your heart mind give us a shout 1-844-693-3291 hey that's one yo 844-693-3291 what's up i have a uh an apology to ask of you and apparently of our listeners you have an apology to ask of me or tell me no okay let's walk it back i'm not i'm not asking for your forgiveness but when you when i made the comment when i made the comment about you making horse noises um i jokingly was like oh people are probably gonna say we love that well it wasn't a joke kelly told me today that we have gotten loads of emails of people saying, hey, leave him alone.

We like the horse noises. So, of course, that would happen. So, I'm not going to stop you anymore. It's equine theory, brother. It's awesome. You neigh as much as you want to, and I won't stop you anymore. And there's a strong... You neigh.

Is it the neigh neigh? Is that the dance? I just made that weird. I'm sorry. Thank you for the... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Watch me whip.

Watch me nay nay. See? I will not do that, I can assure America. I'm pretty sure that it was my mom sending those... It just flooded Kelly's inbox. She had opened a new Gmail account and then a Yahoo account. But James, I won't accept your apology because you didn't give one. I should have done a listener survey before i i i was chomping at the bit to get you to see what i did oh my gosh what a dad that's the most that's the ah that's the worst

hey um for those of you who are still with us after that terrible terrible dad joke i apologize please write in to the show um you can go to johndeloney.com slash show and write in how offended you were by that terrible dad joke from James Child. So there we go, good folks. Listen, I'm not going to bring the horse noise back. I don't mean it's like if you don't know what I'm talking about, I when I get frustrated or I don't know what to do. Some radio folks are so good with coming in and out of these breaks and they they're like, ooh, as we transition or let's take a turn. I just go. And James said that sounded like I was a horse. And it hurt my feelings.

And so to America, thanks for reaching out. And by America, I mean all 18 of you and my mom. And seriously, mom, you got to just lay off. It's cool. Kelly, she's a good person. She's taking care of us. It's good. All right, let's go to the phones today, man.

Let's go to, I'm glad we got to see your heart, James. He doesn't even have one. It's so great. All right, let's go to Mike in Seattle. Let's see here. What's up, Mike? How are we doing? Hey, Dr. John.

Thanks for taking my call. You got it, brother. What can I do, man? I've got a stepson that's 11. We have a lot of problems with respect in the home. It causes a lot of issues between my wife and I. Yeah. And his dad, his biological father died before he was born.

Yikes, man. I'm sorry. Yeah. So he never got to meet him, huh? No. Okay. And so you're the only dad he's ever known, right? Yeah. How long did he live with, how long was mom a single mom before you came into the picture?

Until he was seven. Until he was seven. Okay. So tell me about what you mean by disrespect. You know, it's kind of broad. Some days we'll be talking and interacting with each other. He'll just turn around and walk away. And most days he just will not do what he's told around the house. Okay.

Anything from just not following our basic rules of the house, not doing his chores and homework and things like that. Just everyday stuff. Does he do that to your wife too or just to you? No, mostly just to me. I mean, some of it to my wife, but not as much as me. What, man, I hate that for you, dude. I can hear it on you. So kids, this is a different situation a little bit, but not totally.

Kids learn respect by watching respect, right? And kids lean up against boundaries to see if they're real or not. So first question is, how does he see respect modeled in you? You're the first man that's ever had that presence in his life. How do you model what respect looks like? I guess just how he sees me interact with the world. I act the same around him that I do anybody else. And so what I'm getting at, he doesn't... How I interact.

Something about you, something about him just turning and walking away when you're in the middle of a conversation is an 11-year-old saying, you're not worth my time, old man, right? Right. I've got – or the first guy didn't even – never showed up, and I want to see if you're going to come get me. There's another way to look at that. And I want to see if I push and I push and I push. Are you still going to be there? Are you still going to be there?

Are you still going to be there? And what are some moments you guys have together that he is respectful, where you all can connect? When we go out and do things one-on-one. Okay. Tell me about that. I have a speedboat. We take that boat out, and that's generally a good time. We don't have any issues with him turning around and walking away

or just being blatantly disrespectful. He doesn't say anything sideways or do anything crazy. Yeah. Is there other kids in the house too? Yeah, my wife and I have a two-year-old. Okay. So not only did he get a new dad, but he got new competition, right? Yeah.

Yeah. How did mom process loss? As far as his father? Or let me ask you this way. Was her son, y'all's son, was he the solution to four or five years of grieving? No, I don't know that there was much grieving there. I don't think that they had much of a relationship. Okay. Okay, gotcha. Hmm.

Okay. So there's a couple things you can do here, man. One is, let me back up before I start giving you solutions here. Tell me about your marriage. How does it impact you guys? There's a lot of second guessing. My wife is very defensive. Okay. And so if I react a certain way and she doesn't like it, it turns into an upset household, right?

I mean, I'll be dealing with my stepson, and then all of a sudden, I'll have to deal with my wife as well. Ah, that's it, man. That's why she doesn't have, that's why he doesn't respect you or listen to you because it doesn't sound like she does either. If y'all aren't on the same page with how we're going to all be unified as a family who respects one another and has fun together and laughs together, et cetera, he's not going to do that either. And so I actually screwed up here, man. I was looking to you, like, how are you

modeling respect? But the real challenge is, man, if she's going to disagree with the way you respond to something in view of, man, he's got no use for you because mom is the OG. Mom's the original, right? Right. And so let's back out of this way back. What do the conversations look like with you and your wife before this stuff gets going? Like, do y'all have a common sense of purpose when it comes to raising kids or is she going

to protect this son with all of her might, and she's also married to you? Well, we do. I should add one more layer of complexity here. I also have ADHD, and we have a dynamic going on I think we're in alignment with what we want, but it just seems like, uh, she's overly defensive of my stepson. So when you say the complexity that you have ADHD, I do too. I still have responsibilities and I still got to treat people right. I still got to show up on time and get my stuff done.

Right. So when she gets defensive, does she get defensive? Does she get upset with you about other things besides just him? Yeah, it's almost like she's parenting both of us. There you go, that's where I was getting at. Is she, both of y'all, so is he your younger brother? Right, that's what it feels like. Okay. So, I always want to go back with kids and ask this question, or make this statement,

ask this question. Behavior is a language. So, what is my kid trying to tell me here? Number one, they are telling me that I'm not worth their time. Number two, they're telling me they don't have to listen to me. And in this case, both of those things are true. Because you don't have to listen to you because in this case both of those things are true number because you don't have to listen to you because mom's going to back him up number three what's being modeled out there right like behaviors the language was being modeled modeled is we can run over this guy right mom and so it sounds like you've got to back out i know that your son's disrespect that think of that as the flashing light letting you know that the water's really

choppy in your boat. Right? Your son's behavior here. He's unsafe. He is on a raft. He's going up and down, up and down because your marriage isn't fully tethered in there.

How long have y'all been married, man? Two years. How are things? Theyall been married, man? Two years. Two years? How are things? They don't sound like they're good. Well, once we get past once we get past her treating me like a child in the house,

things are okay. Mike, that's everything. That's like once I get past the explosive diarrhea, I feel great. That's the problem. That's why you don't feel great, right? Yeah, yeah, that's true. Once you get past being treated like a child, acting like a child,

belittled, and she lets her 11-year-old son run all over you, things are awesome, right? So what I'll tell you is, man, things aren't awesome. They're not awesome existentially. They're not awesome relationally um it sounds like you guys the kids are second right now you've as an adult with adhd you are a whirling dervish of chaos is that fair fair okay she has raised a son on her own. She now feels like she's raising a second son. Probably not because she's a jerk. Probably because that's her defense mechanism.

That's all she knows. And she did this alone for seven years, and then you came along. She loves you. She wants you to be a part of her world, not to build a new our world. And what y'all have to do moving forward is build an our world together. And it doesn't sound like y'all have done that. And now you brought another kid into this, which I think is great. Good for you.

Now you've got a two-year-old, and they're a whole host of chaos themselves, right? They're a nuclear bomb of chaos in a home. And so it's chaos, chaos, chaos. And then your wife's doubling down with the thing she knows, which is I'm going to be everybody's mom. I'm going to be everybody's caretaker. And so I know you've got to deal with the disrespect of an 11 year old. You really do. And you can deal with the behavior part of that, right? You can have firm consequences. You can have what I call preemptive, preemptive relational time. We're going to spend 15 minutes together

talking. You can just stare at me. That's cool, but I love you. You can get together as a family and create. We did it on a canvas in our house, like a we are board, which is like, here's the we are's for the Delonys, right? We are people who have adventures. We are people who say yes. We're people who treat each other with dignity. And then when somebody violates that, you point back to it and say, hey, man, you just opted out of whatever's coming up next, of

joining us in this event or whatever, because you chose not to treat us with dignity, right? And then mapping out for an 11-year-old, here's what dignity looks like. Here's what respect looks like. You can do all that, but none of that matters when mom and dad aren't tethered, when kid is absorbing and watching a dynamic that's not healthy. And so I'm going to suggest, brother, you guys got to step back. And it's a good time anyway. You got a two-year-old. Your whole world just shifted. I suggest you all step back, go sit down with a marriage counselor,

and maybe for the first time in your marriage, be really, really honest with one another. Tell her that you feel like, I'm your kid. I feel like you're parenting me. And she may say, you're acting like it and I have to. And once you can get past the feelings and the emotions part and start mining that stuff for what's true and what's not true, then you can get to the activity part. You can get to the action part.

Who are we going to be together? And then you're going to model respect and dignity to one another, and then you're going to be able to tether your son to that. But that's the process. The process with a chaotic kid often starts with mom and dad's relationship first because he's just repeating what he knows. He's just living out to what he sees. So, Mike, I'm so grateful that you called, man.

I know that's hard and I can hear it on you. What I want to tell you is this. You're worth a hard conversation. You're worth going to marriage counseling. You are worth leaning into this. And you're worth not being disrespected by an 11-year-old, but it starts way before that. Okay?

And I want you to be a good dad for both kids. I want you to be a great husband. And I want your wife to be a great wife. I want you to be great partners. And I want y'all to just raise two extraordinary humans. And I think y'all can, but it's going to start with y'all getting back on the same page and creating an our world, not a living in her world, right? All right, man. So thanks for the call. Let's go to Nevin in Georgia. Nevin, what's going on? Yes. Thank you for taking my call. You got it, brother. What's

going on? How can I help? So basically, my question is how to deal with grief question. I lost my son, firstborn son here about five years ago in 2015. I'm so sorry. It was a stillbirth and then we did have a healthy little girl a couple years later and then here two years ago

I lost my next son to a complicated, messed up pregnancy. Anyway, my wife is ready to move on and try again. But I guess one of those things where I'm just ready to hang it up on pregnancies. Yeah, pretty hesitant, man. Yeah. Well, hey, dude, thanks for sharing that.

I know that's hard to talk through that. Tell me about your two boys that passed away. What were their names? My firstborn, his name was Jackson. Yeah. And the one that just passed two years ago is Hudson. Hudson, beautiful, man. Tell me about your daughter.

Tavia. She's my little firecracker. She's about four and a half right now. Yeah. Into everything. Just as she should be, man. I have a firecracker four-year-old, too, that's into everything, man. How did you and your wife grieve these losses? Well, the first loss was an absolute shock.

Yeah. We, everything was progressing normally at 38 weeks. There, got uneasy when we didn't feel movement,

went in for an ultrasound and no heartbeat. Wow. And so that one, that one, we took hard. Right. And then, but then with, with Hudson, And so that one, we took hard. Right.

And then, but then with Hudson, we knew early on in the pregnancy that there was some major issues. And so we were kind of able to, over the course of the pregnancy, kind of, we knew there was a very slim chance of survival for the child, but we wanted to give him every chance. And then when he was actually born, his abdomen was open. It hadn't closed up, and he actually bled to death before they could do anything. The only response I got out of him was when he was born I took his hand and he kind of squeezed my finger a little bit and his heartbeat, he never took a breath on his own, his heartbeat for about 20 minutes.

And then, yeah, that was You still feel that squeeze every once in a while, don't you? Yeah. Yeah. So after You still feel that squeeze every once in a while, don't you? Yeah. Yeah. So, after the fact, two months, three months, six months later, that grief is still with you. What does it look like in your wife and what does it look like with you? Well, I'm not sure exactly how I'm supposed to answer that.

Did you go back to just the way things were? Was your wife just automatically planning, all right, well, here's the next thing? Or did you start drinking a lot, hanging out with your buddies? Did you find it hard to wake up? What did being sad, what did owning this just suck? What did that look like in your home? Well, for my wife, I think she probably took it the hardest at the beginning. But yeah, I think she probably did hang out with her friends a little more.

Okay. For me, I've had a little bit of a tough time. I mean, I have a couple close friends, but we've kind of drifted apart over the last year or so, and I'm not really close with anybody at the moment. Okay. So here's the thing. Few things can disrupt and fracture a family like mismatched grief or comparative grief. And sometimes somebody just shuts it down for months when they lose somebody,

when they lose a pregnancy, when they lose a parent, when they lose a spouse, they shut it down. Other people go into meaning-making mode, and they just start creating businesses and things and getting fit, and they deal with it over the next four or five years. And some people fill in the blanks, some people do something else, some people do something else. But if your wife went and met with people and grieved and wept and wrote letters and talked and met with a counselor and you just went to work and then you just went to work and then you just went to work and i'm just making this up man okay no you're hitting it on the head okay at some point i would step back and say

she's going to be way further down the road of not getting over you don't ever get over this that's why i say you're going to feel that squeeze for the rest of your life. And I'm glad you are. It's a powerful, important memory. But she's further down the road to healing than you are. Which makes her wanting to hit the gas pedal again a lot more likely

and your foot is jammed in on that brake. Because you've been in that car and it's wrecked twice. And I'll be damned if I'm going to do it again. Right? And she's been in that car and it's wrecked twice and I'll be damned if I'm going to do it again. Right. And she's been in that car and it wrecked twice. And then she met with people and slowly took driver's education again and got in a car with somebody else driving for a season. And now she's ready to start driving again. Right. And so here's the thing, you, my brother, this has nothing to do with whether you're going to have another kid or not.

That's down the road. What you have to do is decide, I'm going to heal. Not forget, not toxic positive. It's all great. No, dude. But you're going to have to decide to let Jackson and Hudson go be with the angels. And you are going to have to exhale and own the fact, and this is hard, brother, okay? Imagine me and you sitting like having a drink on the back of a tailgate, dude, not just some

dude on radio, right? So I'm not talking at you, I'm talking with you here. You're going to have to decide, I'm ready to let those two boys go. They're always going to be in my heart. I'm always going to feel that squeeze, but I got to let them go and I got to heal. And more work and more busy and more activity and more protection and bigger walls and thicker bricks and all that stuff isn't going to solve that until you decide you're going to do that. And you and your wife shouldn't be talking about next steps until you've both talked through what grieving feels like and looks like and what you all dealt with and what you haven't dealt with, and then talk about where you are,

and then talk about your son's names and where they happen to be, and then be honest about your feelings, then be honest about the medical challenges, and then you're in a place to talk about what comes next, right? And right now, it doesn't sound like you've healed, man. And if you heal, hey, here's the thing Nevin if you heal and land on a place that I don't want any more kids

you're allowed to do that and that's okay and then what I would tell your wife is if she is hell bent on having a fourth child then it's not about what's best for this kid because she's going to be bringing a kid in a situation where dad's uncomfortable with this.

It's going to be about, I need to have a kid, I need to have a kid. My guess is that either after a healing process, you would be ready to get back on the wagon, or after a joint healing process together, she's going to realize that more kids aren't in the future. But right now, y'all are living parallel, different lives. And there's, like I say, this is how marriages just drift apart over time. Yeah.

Yeah, and if it was just those two, because, I mean, that's the only two of the deaths we've been traumatized with since my son's death. So, I mean, her brother died, her sister died from cancer, my mom died from cancer. Jeez. It's been an absolute emotional rollercoaster trying to figure out how to navigate this whole death loss. But obviously, with my son, it's a lot personal. Hey, hey, hey, Nevin. In my own family unit. All of those are personal, right?

Well, I know. Yeah, I misspoke. But yes, what I mean is it's in my own family unit that I live in with every day. Yeah, that was your boy, man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was your boy. And you're exactly right, man. And the last thing your brain and heart and body wants you to do is to get yet

another relationship that means something to you that you might lose. Yeah. Right. And that's just your body taking care of you, man. It's just trying to keep the pain out because it hurts and it hurts and it hurts. And at some point, enough's enough. Right. And that's the question body taking care of you, man. It's just trying to keep the pain out because it hurts and it hurts and it hurts. And at some point enough's enough, right? And that's the question I always want to have for your wife too, right? That's where a great marriage counselor that you guys got to go see about grief, okay, is do we want to have another kid because we think that's going to help with the ache of this loss or are we now healed and still and ready to add to our family and those are two different things because what i'll tell you is another child is not going to take away the pain and the loss it will give you joy and chaos and mania and all the stuff that kids bring

right fun and bananas and no sleep all that it's. But it will also not make the bad go away. Yeah. And so when couples race out to have another kid, I always want them to go, hey, just breathe. Just breathe. Because it's not going to take that loss away. Well, the other side of it is when folks are like, nope, never doing this again, never get back on the horse again, never, never, never, never, never. Here's what I'm going to tell you, Nevin. I've been in this boat too, right? And I was a similar to you. We lost several

pregnancies, one after the other, after the other. And I said, man, I don't know. And my wife said, I don't know. And then slowly we began to grieve. We had some hard conversations. I didn't know what was in her heart. She didn't know what was in mine. We finally, and I do this for a living, dude. And we finally sat down and we finally got about the business of healing. And then as we were on the road to creating a new tomorrow, we had to create a new world, a new our world, because our current world was ash. Then we created something new and said, yeah, now we're ready. And then that's how we got Josephine. And it's awesome. It is awesome. But again, that's just our journey.

Every journey is different. Brother, you got to heal. Y'all aren't in a place to be asking, when are we going to have another kid or should we have another kid? Y'all aren't in a place to look at one another. You just got out of the ocean. You both saved one another and you looked at each other and said, are you okay? And are you okay? And one of you is going to say, I'm not okay. The other just needs to go, I'm not either. And then you got to be about getting well. And you got to be about coming back together and you'll have to build a whole new marriage. And that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing.

And it's hard and it's exhausting. It's frustrating. That's where y'all are at. And then when you see the sidewalks laid, you see some walls going up, that's when you can look at one another with that look and say, you down for going again? And now you can have that conversation. She's just not there yet. Okay.

I'm so grateful for your heart. Thanks for sharing this, man. I know it's a hard thing to talk about. It's a hard thing to share. Get about healing. Get about healing, brother. And just whatever it's worth, man, you're worth getting well. You old man, Nevin, you're working well, brother. And I didn't believe it either, but I was worth it. My son was worth it. My wife is worth it and you are too. All right, man. Before we take this last call, I want to just read this follow-up here.

This is awesome. So I got a follow-up from Becca from Washington and here's what she writes. She says, I heard your call in the last episode to put out some positive energy in the world. I want to take this chance to brag on my people. She called the show several months ago about her husband going on deployment. And my advice was so helpful. Yes. I told my wife, my advice is good. Sometimes she, here's what she writes. He's finishing up his deployment and he'll

be home soon. You asked me if I had a support system and I said, no, I have no family near me. And we moved to this part of the country about eight months ago. But in the past few months, I've had more people rally around my daughter and I, than I could have imagined. My kiddo is almost two and part tornado. Awesome. Her daycare teacher is her favorite person. So when it's time for her to move up to the next class, I was terrified. Her teacher stepped up and offered to practice walking into the new class, meeting with her new teacher every day to get her used to it. It was a seamless transition, and my daughter handled it like a champ. My aunt, cousins, and siblings set up weekly Zoom call for us to do church together.

We talk and pray, and that time has become sacred to me. We never miss a week, and my dad isn't much of a communicator, but he sends my daughter books every few weeks because he knows she loves to be read to. Good job, granddad. Even stubborn old grumpy granddads, if you don't want to talk cool, send books. My husband, man, if I thought I loved him before, I don't even know what to call it now. He's a beast. That's a weird thing to say after you said you loved him, but it's cool, whatever. Way to go, Becca. he's made rank and completed several qualifications all while being so supportive and present for us our relationship is growing our communication has been phenomenal he sends videos of himself singing and talking to our daughter

he's a soldier on deployment stay at home laying around working every day and going back to your suburban home dad and he can sing and talk to his daughter, you can too. And you get to do it in person. I had no idea support like this was a thing. Thank you so much for your show. Forget that, Becca. Thank you so much for writing in and letting us know. If we have people in our corner, guys,

we can do hard, hard things. We can do hard things with people in our corner. Good for you, Becca, and good for you to granddad, to dad, to community, to friends, to teachers for stepping up and being that makeshift family, that makeshift neighborhood for Becca and her little girl. And man, thank you for your stay-at-home service. Thank you for your husband for his service. Thanks to everybody for being involved in that. That is awesome. That is awesome. All right, let's take one more call.

Let's go to Kayla in Salt Lake City. Hey, Kayla, what's going on? Hello. Thank you for taking my call. Thanks for calling. How can I help? So I have a question of get some advice on healing for my family after I recently brought up charges against my cousin for repeatedly sexually abusing

me 32 years ago. Okay. So what brought you to this decision? Well, hold on. Let me stop. Let me stop for a second. I should have said this before that. You're brave you're a a lion and i'm proud to know you kayla okay i appreciate it i had to do it it was something i i had to do to protect other girls good for you man that's hard hard hard stuff and that choice is yours and i'm proud of you for making the choice that was right for you all right so now tell me about what it's been like. Okay, so he repeatedly sexually abused me when I was five years old in 1988, and I never told anybody until I was 12 years old. I told my mom and dad, but my entire family, they all knew about it,

but they just swept it under the rug, pretending nothing ever happened. Nothing. Well, fast forward about 20 years, or 15, 20 years, he got charged for doing it to his biological daughter, but the charges got dismissed because she was afraid to testify on the stand against him. Well, when I read the article two years ago about that, and I found out that he'd been charged for doing it to his biological daughter too, I just like snapped and I had to come forward and tell my story to an investigator because somebody needed to stand up against him. And that's what I did. And he picked up multiple charges of first degree felonies and he's been sitting in jail for a year and a half awaiting trial. But this has caused a big can of worms to open in my family, especially with his mother, who's my aunt,

and his sisters, who are my cousins. They hate my guts now. They refuse to talk to me. Hey, you know what, Kayla? They think it's ridiculous. I don't... They're not worth the air you breathe. They're not worth the air you breathe.

Your parents left you as a child high and dry. There's predators and pieces of crap everywhere. That's life. It sucks, but that's life. And we do what we can to keep them off the streets. That's why we have parents. That's why we have cousins. That's why we have aunts and uncles.

That's why we have friends and community members and church members and people who've got our backs. And yours let you down and so how dare they circle back and try to roll this over on you no no so then i just um yeah i just uh just have it they're out of my life for good not by your hand just leave it that way? Like, they walked away from, but just come to grips with it? Kayla, they walked away from you. Right. They chose a child molester

over somebody who was injured, somebody who was hurt. For years. Yes. And they did it for years. And then they allowed, it caused other girls to get hurt. Yes.

They chose, you don't want to associate with them anyway. Yeah. Well, I don't. to associate with them anyway. Yeah. Well, I don't. I just, I wish I could conk them over the head so they have some common sense. Listen, you can't. They're not going to. They're never going to.

Anybody who's going to stand up for a repeat child molester is not something that you can solve. Right? You dust your, dirt off your sandals and you walk out and i know that's heartbreaking and that's lonely not because of them per se but because now you're lonely now there's consequences to your boundaries and that's hard and i get that but i'm just telling you as a as a dad of a daughter thank you for being bold and brave and strong even though it's 20 years thank you thank you for keeping that piece of garbage off the street uh once my daughter turned five that's when this all like yeah it did inside me that

i couldn't stop anymore like i had to do That's exactly right. Your body's alarms go off because it sees another, it sees you walking right in front of it, right? Every morning at breakfast time it sees it, right? Yes. Yes. So. So do you have any advice for me on how, what would be the best, like what should I do to, this is going a giant step towards healing. Yeah. Of him finally being in jail and being off the streets.

And, you know, hopefully he gets convicted and does a long, long time. But what advice do you have for me to fully heal from this? So I'm going to give you a statement, a comment about the jail part that I testified against somebody in jail once that committed a crime. And they got a lot of – it was a pretty ugly crime, and they got a lot of jail time. And I called a friend of mine. She's a mentor of mine. She's a psychologist who works with abused kids. And when the verdict was read the next day, I felt sick.

And I thought I would feel awesome, like, yeah, that's what's up. And I felt sick and I thought I would feel awesome like yeah that's what's up and I felt gross I felt terrible like just gross and I called her and said I don't understand these feelings and she said John nobody wins everybody's life is destroyed with

childhood sexual abuse everyone yeah right and so you will there will be a level of safety, hey, this person can't get to me anymore, and that's real and good. And there might be that cheery, like, yeah, moment if there's a verdict that comes down. But I don't want you to think you're going to feel good. Well, I haven't felt great through the whole process the whole thing is awful right and so here's the first question and this is an important question and i i'm asking this because i love you not not as a way of poking okay and there's times um that

this question gets asked and people can weaponize the way they ask this, and I'm not doing that, okay? I'm with you on this conversation, okay? Okay. Are you ready to be done with this? And before you answer, here's what I mean. When we hang on, when we loop the story, when we hang on to it tight, it feels like protection. It feels like hypervigilance. It feels like nobody's going to ever get me again. I'll be damned if I'm going to let that happen. No one's coming for me. No one's going to, and if they do, there's going to be hell to pay, right? It feels like this stressed, alert, vigilant, like I am protecting myself. I'm protecting my daughter.

And that keeps you alive now and it kills you tomorrow. That level of stress circulation, that level of vigilance, always on, always on, always on, wears out your adrenaline and your cortisol. It just slowly grinds your body down. And so when I ask you, are you ready to be done? That means not, I'm ready to just go have an abusive situation again. No. Are you ready to stop carrying this guy in your backpack? This brick?

Yes. I'm ready to stop carrying it. And the five-year-old inside of me had to come forward and get some justice to finish it off. And now I want her to be able to go be a five-year-old, right? Right? And I want you to be able to raise your – was she six, seven, eight, nine now? Your daughter. And let her have the fun, joyful, like learn how to be a strong, powerful woman like her mom.

I want her to be able to like have that world, right? And so here's a couple of things you can do to help, to heal, right? Number one, real important is to become aware of your body's response, the physical part of it and learn to honor it and let it complete the cycles. Right. And that's from Emily Nagatsuki's new work. I love it. Um,

but it's this idea of when you feel your heart start racing, when you feel those, those thoughts start looping on you, when your hands get Clint, whatever it is with that you feel right. When you're in the presence of somebody, a guy that makes you feel uncomfortable. When you find yourself here or there,

you remember, you know, and that kicks in, right. makes you feel uncomfortable, when you find yourself here or there, you know when that kicks in, right? Mm-hmm. When you notice that and begin to honor that, oh, here it goes, man. My body's trying to protect me. And you can slowly distance yourself from it. Not as a thing that you are, but it's just a thing that's happening in your body. And then you can begin to ask, hey, what's it trying to protect me from?

Oh, that guy's safe. He's all right. I know that guy. He's goofy and he's silly and his jeans are way too tight and he's got a mustache, but I like that guy, right? So it's beginning, it's becoming aware of how your body's responding, right?

And then when it does take off on you, do you have anxiety attacks or panic attacks? Do you have moments of rage? What's still, how does it emerge in your body this many years later um i'm not really anxiety or rage like i think i'm past all that because you know so many years so but i've just been wanting it to be, like, I feel like, it's hard to explain. I just feel like the little girl that was inside of me that that happened to, the five-year-old, she needs to be heard. Yeah. And she needs somebody to listen.

Yeah. So here's what I want you to do. Will you do me this favor? I want you to write that five-year-old girl a letter. I want you to write her three letters, okay? Are you ready? Yeah. Letter number one is going to be the letter from your parents, what they should have said. Okay? Okay. And I want you to write a letter from you to her, letting her know that what happened is not okay.

And that you're so sorry that nobody protected her when they should have, but now you're going to. Okay. And then the third letter is, I want you to write her a letter letting her know who you're going to become, how you're going to make meaning of this this many years later, what kind of mom you're going to be, what kind of professional you're going to be, what kind of community and neighbor you're going to be.

And at the end of that letter, I want you to let that girl go. I want you to let her go. Go play. Okay. Okay. I really appreciate you talking to me. No, I appreciate you calling. And here's, are you married now?

Yeah, I just recently married. Okay. And I'm pregnant with my fourth baby. Hey, there you go. Fourth, man. You're a bad mamma jamma. All right, here's what I want you to do. And this is going to be a bold step for you, okay?

This new guy, he's all right? Oh, he's wonderful. Okay. So here is the evil beyond the evil there's 18 layers of evil with childhood abuse 18 layers of just it's why it rages through family

like lineages for years it's because the only thing that keeps a person well and whole and sane and alive is vulnerable connection to other people. And childhood sexual abuse particularly tells a child that safe relationships don't exist. And in fact, relationship is the core of the worst pain you can experience. And so what you're going to have to do as a about-to-be mama of four is you're going to have to learn how to be in relationship, how to roll over and expose your belly again, be vulnerable again, and risk getting hurt again because that's the only way you're going to be fully vested

with this new knucklehead you just married. And here's the thing. That makes sense. It's scary, and it's hard. And here's the thing I want you to hear me say. You've got to practice it. It's something you learn how to do. We think we just know how to do relationships.

We don't. We all suck at it, bro. We're terrible. And so if you go into it saying, hey, honey, we're going to take dancing lessons, We think we just know how to do relationships. We don't. We all suck at them. We're terrible. And so if you go into it saying, hey, honey, we're going to take dancing lessons or we're going to learn how to build a cabinet. We're going to go to this little class at the YMCA and learn how to build a cabinet. That's what you're doing. But I want you to tell them, I want to be so plugged in with you.

And that starts with me learning how to heal, with me saying, I'm never carrying this dude's crap for another second. I'm going to do the work. I'm going to write the letters and let this five-year-old girl go be. And then Bubba, you don't even know what's coming for you, right? I'm going to love you in a way that you ain't ever been loved. And I'm expect you to love me back that way. And that's just something we're going to practice and learn together.

Right? No, that sounds great. And we both deserve it. Hey, you do Kayla. You super do. What's his name? Trent. Kayla and Trent.

That just sounds romantic. Kayla and Trent, both of you deserve it. And my heart tells me you just got to learn it and that's okay. And that's so good. You meet 70 and be like, you know what?

I'm going to learn how to do vulnerable connection because I'm going to have the last 20 years of my life be intertwined with other people. Good for you, Kayla. Good for you. You are a brave, powerful, lion, cheetah, awesome stud woman. I'm so proud of you. And I can't wait to hear how this goes.

Let me know how it goes after you write those letters let me know what kind of relationship counseling you get into you and Trent, Big T and let us know when that fourth baby is born and we'll celebrate here on the show thank you so much for your call, Kayla and thanks for being brave alright, so as we wrap up today's show

man, this is off one of my favorite records of all time I just remember, the only word I can think of was when this came on mtv back in 1992 for those of you who don't know mtv used to be a channel it was on the televisions that had music videos now they don't have that but it used to and it was rad and i had to sneak it when my parents were gone social distortion came on with their new record somewhere between heaven and hell and they had this song that just they just look cool man i don't know that we say it i haven't watched the video in years it might be awful and terrible please don't uh send me mean cards and letters i just remember as like an 11 year old being like these guys these guys they're slicked back here the song's called bad luck and it goes something like this not something like this it

goes exactly like this here it goes some this. It goes exactly like this. Here it goes. Some people like to gamble, but you, you always lose. And some people like to rock and roll, and you're always singing the blues. You got a nasty disposition, and no one really knows the reason why. You got a bad, bad reputation. Gonna hang down your head and cry. This kind of sounds like Kelly.

You got bad, bad luck. You just got bad luck. 13's my lucky number. To you, it means stay inside. Black Cat Dunn crossed my path. No reason to run and hide. You're looking through a cracked mirror. No one really knows the reason why.

Your enemies are getting nearer. Gonna hang your head and cry. You got bad luck. You're always scratching at the eight ball, and no one knows why. And you get on the top and then you fall. You're going to hang your head down and cry. Brother, you just got bad luck. Kelly, that's not you.

You're beautiful and kind. And this has been the Dr. John Deloney Show.