The Dr. John Delony Show - The Trauma of Growing Up with a Holocaust Survivor

Episode Date: August 16, 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 mom was born in hiding during the Holocaust and lost most of her family. She had bipolar disorder and schizophrenic manic delusions and was an awful parent. She is in a home and I help care for her. How do I reconcile what she went through and how bad of a mom she was? Survey finds 'shocking' lack of Holocaust knowledge among millennials and Gen Z Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma - Dr. Peter A. Levine The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma - Bessel van der Kolk M.D. Lyrics of the Day: "The Age of Worry" - John Mayer   As heard on this episode:  Conversation Starters BetterHelp Redefining Anxiety John's Free Guided Meditation Ramsey+   tags: trauma/PTSD, parenting, family, anger/resentment/bitterness, anxiety   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.

On today's show, we take my favorite call of all time. It's heavy and it's hard, and we take a deep dive into generational trauma and what it looks like to be strong, courageous, stare down family legacy, and say, we're making changes starting now. Stay tuned. Hey, what's up? What's up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney show. I'm still getting dressed here. James is in a hurry. It's all about James. Hey, we're so glad you're here. If this is your first time listening to the show, you don't even know who James is. None of us do. Hey, this is a show about your mental health your relationships about life we're so glad that you've joined us we've got a packed house out

there in the studio and by packed house we mean like four people but it's so good to see y'all um oh there's another guy over there he's like hey I he actually got out of the shot well played man hey uh thanks for joining us if you want to be on the show give me a shout at 1-844-693-3291 or go to johndeloney.com slash ask. johndeloney.com slash ask. So, hey, how are you guys doing? Doing pretty good. Yeah.

Awesome. And James? I'm doing great. So great that it's time for the conversation starter cards. We have them this time. Oh, the John Deloney starter cards? Yes. The how to be a human again?

Yes. Half of them just say, ask me anything, so it could go very open-ended. But today's is, if you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be? Pez. Cherry-flavored Pez. No question about it. Just kidding. That's from Stand By Me. If you knew that, you'd be the greatest person ever, but

I could tell by the look on your face. You didn't really give me a whole lot of time to identify it. Alright. What meal would you have? I would have Jasmine, my favorite Thai restaurant, I would have their soy sauce noodles with chicken and a spring roll. Two spring rolls.

He eats two spring rolls. That's pretty specific. And for the listener, yes, he does have severe OCD, and that's what we work with and live with. What about you, Kelly? There is a restaurant here called Perry's that has these pork chops that is the best thing I've ever eaten.

By far. And normally I would have said steak. But these things are amazing. So it would have to be those pork chops. I think my death row meal has always been and live in the life that I grew up with. We always just kind of just in case, right? I think it'd be a big crawfish boil, a big crab crawfish boil where they dump it out

and you just eat until you can't feel your face. And then in my scenario, they kill you after that, right? But that's what I would do. And way to go. Way to go. Sounds like a Viking crawfish boil. That's the kind I like. Viking crawfish boil and New Orleans crawfish boils are very similar.

But if we were on an island, we know that you would die. Yeah, so for you folks listening But if we were on an island, we know that you would die. Cause. Yeah. So for, for you folks listening the other day on the internet, somebody asked who would live the longest on a desert Island, me, James or Kelly.

And clearly there's no question about this. James and I, at some point would fall asleep. At which point Kelly would murder us in our sleep and Kelly would win you would live the longest I don't deny any of that James would be the first to go there would be no record of us having ever existed because Kelly is

so into murder there would be none of you found it would just be wiped off the face of the earth oh good we're starting off this podcast on a positive note so that's so great If none of you found, it would just be, yeah, wiped out the face of the earth. Oh, good. Unless I'm glad. Hey, we're starting off this podcast on a positive note.

So that's so great. So good. All right. Hey, where can people find these cards? They're on the internets, right? They're on somewhere. I've got a paper here that tells us. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So listen, actually, we had a meeting yesterday and I'm excited about this. They're going to be ready in time for the holidays. One for adult couples, one for grownups and kids, and then one for your families. Like when you go to wherever it is you're going to travel for the holidays, conversation cards that are going to help you. They are 100% politics and COVID free. You're going to be able to have regular conversations

or new ones that you haven't had in a year with people that you're going to be stuck with or that you choose to be with. It's going to be like, what's the worst boundary your mother-in-law has ever crossed with you in the family one? And then it's going to have in parentheses stare directly at your mother-in-law in her eyes.

Go like that, right? But it's, man, it'll be awesome. You can go to conversation, text conversation to 33789. And I think there's like 20 of them in there that you can practice being a human before you go meet with your mother-in-law or your kids or whatever. But go to text conversation to 33789. And then we are working on these cards and we will have them out soon. I'm excited about that.

All right, let's go to the phones. Let's go to Sherry in Grand Rapids. Sherry, what in the world are you doing this morning? How are you? Good morning, John. Thanks for taking my call. Thank you for calling. And it is early bird there. So thanks for being up with us. So what's up? How can I help? My mom is a child Holocaust survivor. She was born in hiding, kind of born under a barn. And at the time, there's very little food, there's no medicine, no

doctors, a ton of trauma, and absolutely no psychiatric care, right? So she's a refugee to the U.S. as a teenager. And we really believe that she developed some severe bipolar and some schizophrenicic kind of

manic delusional things from all that trauma. So she's, you know, fearful of soldiers and police and, you know, Christian pastors and priests, those kinds of people. And, you know, unfortunately, she was a pretty awful parent. So we experienced the homelessness, the divorce, hunger, neglect, it was a really extreme survivor behaviors. So fast forward, I'm now an adult. And I have her in like this adult supervised nursing home care. I have to care for her. She still has those manic delusions occasionally,

and they are starting to scare my teenage daughters. I understand her trauma. I mean, that generational trauma, I get why, but I have so much resentment, I think maybe anger, that I have to care for her, that even though she was, you know, this terrible parent, and I know why, though I'm just looking for suggestions for those of us that have these mentally ill parents that that maybe didn't care for us, but we are caring for now. Wow, that's man. Number one, thank you for your trust. That's a that's a big one.

Do you mind if we spend some time unpacking this? Yeah. It was a few months ago that a study came out and I don't even, I don't even know where the study is. So it may not even be real data, but that a number of high school kids, millions of high school kids, middle school kids across the country have no understanding. They've got no reference point for the Holocaust. It might as well be 500 years ago. It might as well be dinosaurs, right? And for me, when I saw this, I remember thinking, that's a shock because my granddad was involved in that. And that's just, that was the other day, right? Especially when you look on like a

timeline of earth, that was literally a few minutes ago. So walk us through the stories that you know, your mom's experience. She was born in a barn. So talk about what that occupation was like, what her childhood was like. And so my grandparents were in their young twenties, a newly married couple. They had a little daughter and he was an accountant and they were just living their life in an apartment like everyone else. In Germany, right? No, they were in the Netherlands. Oh, okay. Occupied by the Nazis had occupied. And they didn't, you know, nobody thought that someone, their neighbors were going to come for them. No one thought.

And they wore their stars because they were slowly starting to require. And at one point they were warned they're going to, you know, they're starting to round people up. You need to be prepared. And sure enough, they got a knock on the door and the story, you know, they ultimately were able to escape. My aunt went into hiding with other families. They always took the children separate from the parents to protect them. And my grandparents were hidden in several different places before landing on a farm with this really, really brave young Christian family, like in their 20s, had like a seven-year-old son, and they took in my family, knowing it would be certain death if they were found.

Yeah, so just to put in context, so Jewish family in hiding, they first had to start wearing stars, right? So to note, they couldn't go to the stores. Walking on the street, everybody had to be able to point to them and say, we know who you are. Well, and you weren't allowed to go to public schools anymore. You couldn't go to the theaters. You weren't allowed to have certain jobs. And eventually it became that almost everything was controlled. And then they just started rounding people up. And you have to understand if you like, so I would say right now, if, if we got a government mandate that I had to start wearing a star, my first thought would be, I'm just not going to do it. And we have, it's so far from the, where we live right now. You have to understand that anybody could stop you at any time and say, let me see your origin papers. And they could shoot

you in the street if you didn't have your star on and just keep walking, right? It's a world that we can't even imagine right now. And I know it gets thrown around a lot. We have no, no picture, modern picture of this right now. And so then you move to, yeah, then that news starts tightening, literally. And, like, it starts to suffocate, and then they start rounding people up. So then a family on a farm, as you mentioned, if Nazi soldiers came to a family farm and found that they were harboring, hiding Jewish families, they're executed on the spot, right? And their farms are just taken. Everyone would have been. And, you know, the butchers had to be in on it. The baker had to be in on it on these towns. These whole towns had to be so brave to know that they were hiding. And so my mom is born there. So you have a baby. The soldiers would come periodically to

take supplies or to search. And it was a very scary, and it was years of hiding like that. So I've heard of families, especially early on when COVID first started, and we just didn't have even a grasp of how big it was. And then a couple would find themselves pregnant and the fear they had, just how that discomfort. Imagine hiding out in a barn and people are actively hunting you. And then you find out you're pregnant, right? So your grandmother finds out she's pregnant and your mother, that maternal stress. And so what I'm trying to build is an arc here. There's a lot of emergent scholarship showing that mental illness often starts with maternal stress in utero, right?

And so imagine you're being hunted literally by your neighbors. You find out you're pregnant and you give birth to a baby in a barn, right? And then walk us through there. So your mother's born as an infant. And imagine people knocking on the door to come search your house and you've got an infant that you can't tell whether they're going to scream or they're going to cry or they need to have their diaper changed, right? So you're trying to live that life. And then your mother grows up how?

They had to figure out who was still alive, what family's there. They had to find their first daughter that they had put in hiding. And, you know, they're my grandparents. They lost almost every brother and sister. They lost all their parents. And they you know, they're my grandparents. They lost almost every brother and sister. They lost all their parents. And they found that they had two nieces that survived, that had been hidden. And so now they went from a family that they had just been a family of one, and now they became, they found their other daughter. They had two nieces. They had my mom. And there's still no job. There's no transportation. there's still anti-semitism so they had to find housing and there was this constant fear that they were coming back

yeah and pause on that wasn't over imagine having a seven-year-old and a four-year-old and i've got it i'll do it with just me i got a 10-year-old right now i got 11 he's 11 and a five-year-old and imagine me and my wife are being hunted in our own neighborhood. And I have to take my 11-year-old and my five-year-old and give them to another family just in case we're caught. They won't kill all of us. And this isn't just a few people. This is millions and millions of people. And so I don't know where my kids are. There's no texting. There's no email. I just have to give them to somebody else and hope they've got a better shot than I do.

I just can't wrap my head around that. My son just came home from camp after being gone for a week and the first day was pretty awesome. You know what I mean? I didn't have to give anybody any snacks and then the second day was kind of cool, you know, and then by day three and four and five,

we're all kind of moping around the house, missing our son. There's a key part, there's a key member of our crew that's gone, right? Can you imagine handing them off and saying, best of luck, and I hope I see, I just can't wrap my head around that. And suddenly your parents, when this thing is quote unquote, supposedly over, which you trust anybody at this point, right? Your neighbors have been hunting you and then there's an announcement, it's all over. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah, right. So your parents, your mother is a toddler here. She finds she's, they're just trying to round up and just connect families any way you can. There's no way to get food. There's no jobs,

no anything. And when do they, so that she grows up like this, right? Where are we going to get food? Where are we going to, what are we going to do? Thinking of the stress of parents, then what? It took him a few years to, to be able to find housing, to get stable. And then my grandfather insisted that he wanted to move to America. And then we had, they started the immigration process, which takes quite a few years. And then once again, you have to sell everything. And you have to leave everything behind. And you have language barriers and knowledge and education barriers. And so the entire family got on a boat. One of the last generations to sail into New York to see the Statue of Liberty.

And my mom was 12. And on a boat coming to America with no English. And starting all over again. We don't know what's over there, but it has to be better than here. So everybody grab a bag and we're getting on a boat and we're just heading, quote unquote, that away. And we have to remember there was no Google. There was no maps. There was no books. You're talking about getting on a boat and going just somewhere.

We don't like moving to a new town, right? Like what church are we going to go to? What friends are we going to have? What movie theaters? How close is public's going to be? You're talking about millions of people who got on a boat and just said, wherever there is, is better than here, right? And what, a 12,

12-year-old? Man. So you take all that stress, all of that, and that's not just stress like, hey, dad got laid off. It's stress like we said, your neighbors are hunting you, and now we're just going to leave our land. We're going to show up to a strange place. We don't speak the language. We don't know any of the quote-unquote cultural rules, we know none of these things, and then what? Then they settle in, and then like many immigrant families, they just went to work hard, right? That's exactly right. The older kids, you know, the older aunt cousins were 16, and they went to work. And my grandfather went and found a job.

And the younger kids, there's another kid by this point, and they tried to go to school, tried to assimilate. And you just did the best you could. And you, you know, some of them, no one talked about trauma. No one talked about, no one talked about it at all. It was not, no one looked at the past. It was too hard and too tough. And everyone just kind of went their ways. So let's fast forward here. So your mom has you, you got brothers and sisters?

I have two older brothers. Two older brothers. So there's three of you. And did your mom get married? She find somebody she loved? How did that work out? She really kind of ran. So she found someone, you know, an atheist, someone, and he moved to the middle of, you know, really far away from her family, out kind of in the middle of nowhere. And, you know, they were very volatile. She, you know, she obviously had mental illness back then, and he had alcohol problems. So they had this very tumultuous—it really was pretty bad. And they ultimately divorced when I was 12.

So at this point, she's mentally ill. She doesn't have job skills. English is still not her first language. And there's no support structure, partially because she's afraid of the government. She's afraid of, you know, I was going to be taken away. She was afraid, you know, and the boys ended up kind of doing their own thing and they were a little older than me and they went off and became very adult very quickly on their own with other people. And I, you know, became to some extent her cohort, her caretaker, you know, as we, she had some serious survivor abilities. I mean, so she

would manipulate men to have a place to stay and to have money. And she would, you know, we would go from church to church looking for, you know, food and aid. And, you know, we were always beyond the go because she was afraid they would take me away. So, you know, if people found out how we were living or, you know, we didn't have money or we were sleeping in our car and she would steal or she would lie or she would do, and then she would just have these manic episodes where she was so afraid of the police and people coming to get her, the paranoia. So she was a tough parent, right? She was not a very good parent. Oh, gosh. You grew up in a swimming pool of trauma, right? I mean, I can imagine if you've, have you ever taken the ACEs, the Adverse Childhood Experiences scale? Have you ever

taken that? I did. What are you, seven or eight? I'm a seven. Seven, yeah. And you know what that means for you downstream, right? I do. I know that there's going to be some potentially serious. And I know I'm going to have health issues no matter what, probably because of generational trauma. And I'm trying very hard not to pass that to my kids. I'm trying to be informed. Yeah.

Well, and so we can talk about that here in a minute. There's some context, but there is some healing that can happen, right? So it's not, it's, you're on a track, but it's not predetermined, right? Which is cool. That's the beauty of this stuff. The earlier you see it and the earlier you find it and the more healing you're a part of, you can change some of those things. So you grow up in this situation how do you end up a stable mom what the world did how did you end up here ms and we're always asked that and i think our families were so bad we're so dysfunctional

that we looked around for who had it right and what we really wanted and how different we wanted it to be. So I really, really focused in on school and made sure that I was getting out and going to college. And I watched people that I saw, and this is silly, I watched sitcoms, but how might families interact? How might this work? And then you watch other people that you see around, other families and how do they talk to each other? And then I've read a lot, a lot of books. That's different than putting this into practice. Something you chose a different life in a very difficult set of circumstances. How did you do that? Emotionally, I don't know that I have a great answer. I can tell you that I came across this really nice guy when I was just starting off for college, and I ended up marrying him. And he's stable, and he's caring, and his family is, you know, wonderful and great examples.

And I am blessed to have had some great friendships that were around me. So I may not have had family support. But you had connection. I definitely didn't have any other don't. But I had friends and had some really strong friendships and then a very strong, caring boyfriend slash husband. So 100% of the time when somebody makes a transition out of the life circumstance you have and yours is bananas, right? Yours is one that that is not the norm. But when you if we back it way up, right?

And we look at kids who grew up in tumultuous relationships or in the home of an addict, which you did both or the home of a parent with mental illness, which you did home of abuse. And we could probably go down that rabbit hole and you've seen and experienced that. And, and, and a hundred percent of the time, healing starts and begins with relationships. Somebody, somewhere, some group, some community, somebody they get connected to, right? Whether it's some cute guy that you ended up marrying, well-played by the way, and he won the lottery marrying you and a group of friends. And then that starts a healing process. That's your body can finally start to turn down those trauma alarms that says you're disconnected, which is awesome. So you find yourself here. How old are your kids now? I have 16 year old twins.

You know what? Because why not? Why not, man? What do you do for a living? I'm a bank manager. What about your husband? What does he do? IT. We're vanilla. I was going to say, someone would just see you in the grocery store and they'd look at your twins and go, wow, that was pretty tough. And you just smile at them and go, oh, honey, you have no idea. That's very true. They have no idea. Wow.

And that's okay because the goal is to have the kids understand but not live it. Yeah. And that's the hard trick. And it's hard to separate because they want to hear the stories, they don't want to hear the stories. And sometimes I'm not ready to, or not sure that they even should hear. Which parts of this still hang on to you? Meaning, regardless of the amount of work you do, there's still parts of your body that are scanning the environment 24-7, 365. And that end up, if you have a legacy of childhood trauma like you

experienced, that ultimately is the, I hate using mechanical analogies, but that's ultimately the, what's got to be turned down, right right that's what causes long-term body inflammation that over time just wears your body out right because it's scanning 24 7 it never rests what are the things that still pop up in your life that you have to be vigilant about i find that i want desperately to teach my kids survival for their life and maybe a little bit more than other parents for their age. So I have to tone down to make sure that they still have that childhood and I'm not over preparing that desperate need to make sure they have a knowledge of how to live and survive.

That survival instinct apparently still continues. I'm very focused on money and caring for and making sure stability for food. And I always fight a food battle because we were hungry a lot and making sure that monetarily, even though we've done well, we followed Dave Ramsey's plan, we've done well, it's still hard to always feel that enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Feel that safe. That safety, I think is always something I got to work on. So it doesn't surprise me at all that someone who has worked really hard to heal and to change their entire family tree becomes a banker, stable control, right? There is a spreadsheet that I can know,

are those numbers on this side of the ledger red or black, right? It's a beautiful testament to how you've wrapped up the world and said, I'm going to control what I can control. And in those tendencies, I bet there's moments of peace when you have a full refrigerator, right? Or every month when you get that email that says your check has been automatically deposited, I would almost be willing to bet if we had a heart tracker on you that your body would settle for a second, right? And then over time, it slowly

ramps back up until two weeks later when you get that next check and you go, right? And it's working on that constantly over time. Golly, you're incredible. All right, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about the situation you find yourself in, which is how do you care for a mom who played a significant role in your childhood trauma? And you got a context. You know where her trauma comes from.

And still, whew, that's a fireball, right? So stay tuned. We'll be right back on the Dr. John Deloney Show. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. All right, October is the season for wearing costumes and masks. And if you haven't started planning your costume yet, get on it.

I'm pretty sure I'm going as Brad Pitt in Fight Club era because, I mean, we pretty much have the same upper body, but whatever. All right, look, it's costume season. And let's be honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind costumes and masks more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social setting. We do this around our families. We even do this with ourselves. I have been there multiple times in my life, and it's the worst. If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self, I want you to consider talking with a therapist.

Therapy is a place where you can learn to accept all the parts of yourself, where you can learn to be honest with yourself and you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic, direct life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves. If you're considering therapy,

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Visit BetterHelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Deloney. All right, Sherry, we're back. Hey, first, thank you just for talking about your childhood i know that's not super fun thing to do early in the morning on a on a whatever day this happens to be so now we're going to fast forward you just to recap you grew up in the home of a nazi holocaust survivor your mom was born in a barn to grandparents who were hiding because they were being hunted by their neighbors. They were being hunted by the police officers,

those who were supposed to protect them and serve them. They ultimately went from house to house and had to reconnect with whoever happened to be still alive. Then over time, they just said, wherever there is is better than here. They got on a boat, immigrated to America. America was a welcoming place in that there was a port, but they didn't know the language. They didn't have jobs. Jewish immigrants were treated like garbage when they got here. And your parents and your dad went to just work, right?

You just went to work and had cousins that tagged along. And then your mom's born in this mess, and she's got some significant mental health challenges. She always has. She demonstrated what I would call normal survival behavior, which is going from relationship to relationship and always trying to make sure there's food. And that turns into some pathological behaviors. And then you and your brothers are born into this. And you're raised in a very traumatic household with addiction and abuse. Go on and on and on. And then your mother is in, how old is she now?

76. Okay. So she's getting to the end here and she's got some health challenges and you are responsible for taking care of her and giving her twilight years of respect and dignity. And it's wearing on your soul. Tell me about that. It's hard to care for someone that didn't care for you. And we often say that she's very nice, that she's, you know, in that crazy form of nice. She does everything she can to not acknowledge past, not just, you know, childhood, but everything. So then, but that includes my childhood. There is no stories of when I was younger, there is no reminiscing. I am a caretaker to her, I exist. And so I didn't have a mom that I see my mother-in-law being,

and I didn't have, or that I want to be for my daughters. And it's hard because she wants connection quite regularly, and I don't feel that connection in the way, and other people can't imagine that. They assume everyone loves their mother, everyone loves and everyone, and I have some cultural and religious obligations to care for her, but that resentment is so strong. And she just had a manic delusion where she just lost her connection to reality recently and called the police to the nursing home to say that the aides were fighting. So I was hoping she doesn't get kicked out of places for some of these delusional behaviors. So she's very nice. She's very mentally ill. And it's now that my daughters, I've asked them to help a little bit, and I'm realizing that that's really scary. What's normal to me is very scary to them. Right. So how far do you want to dig in here? Let me ask you the overarching question is, how can I help?

When you have individuals, there's probably, there's got to be thousands and thousands of people that have mentally ill parents. And that really isn't something we talk about. We don't really discuss that. And maybe some, how do I reconcile that feeling of resentment and to be able to take that logic of understanding their trauma and be more compassionate and more empathetic? How do I build that empathy back? Great question there. So a couple of things here number one i would let the the uh it's necessary it's normal and it can wear you out i would let go any trying to put puzzle pieces together of an origin story here okay the well i think the the schizophrenia came from here and the bipolar. I would let that past part go because all it does is it adds mental anguish.

It adds bricks in your backpack that are unnecessary. Right now, you found yourself here. And have you ever sat down and forgiven your mom? Have you gone through a process to just forgive your mom? I don't think I have. I don't think you have either. And when you're carrying that around, you're carrying around the fact that your mom stole your childhood. You're carrying around the fact that your childhood didn't.

Every time you're around your husband's family, you both love it and it pisses you off. Because you should have had that and you didn't. And every time, your mother-in-law's pretty awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Every time you're with her, it's incredible because you get that maternal care that you never got and it burns a hole in your soul because you should have got it, right? Is that right? Yeah, you're right. Sherry, you should have had a mother who loved you. You should have had a mother who looked you in the eye and said you have value and she hugged you a lot and she was stable and you never had to worry about food. And you didn't.

But the problem now is you're still carrying that resentment. And you mentioned it, like, man, how do I get out of this resentment? The easiest way to get out of resentment is forgiveness, and forgiveness is hard. And you're right. It doesn't have to be the survivor of a Holocaust. What I would tell you is this. Even if there was not the legacy of trauma that your mom endured,

because we can look at this and say, yeah, I can see that totally. Right. Even if your mother was just mean, she just grew up in a normal house in Alabama and she just grew up mean and treated her kids like trash. You as a 45 year old or a 40 year old or however old you are, you carrying that does not affect your mom in any way. It just affects you and it just affects your kids and it just affects your marriage. And so the day you decide, I'm not going to carry that,

I'm not going to carry her stuff anymore. This happened to me. It will always be something I wish was different. And then I'm going to put a period at the end of that. And then I'm going to write the next sentence going forward. And that sounds so trite. But if you think of it, literally what I would love for you to do is to go out, get a, buy a cinder block, like at Home Depot or something and write it down right on like maybe put duct tape on there or something that you can write some things on that block and i want you just to carry it around your house for a while like physically hold it and then i want you to go out in the yard and just set it down on the ground and there's some sort of physical

representation here like i'm not going to carry what my mom did or didn't do for us as children. And trying to figure it out and understand it, you can't understand that sort of evil and madness of Nazi occupation. And if you're listening to this show and you're like, well, I don't know, I want you to go read about it because Nazis get thrown around a lot these days. Most people have no idea the depth of evil that was going on. But there's something for you just to set it down. And then there's a couple of things you've mentioned here.

Can you forgive her? Maybe you can't. Can you? I think she deserves it. Forgiveness is for you. Forgiveness is a decision on your part that I'm not going to carry this anymore. Then I think I deserve it then. There you go.

I think you do too. I think on the scope of, like while we're, I don't know when this episode will come out, while we're filming it we're in the middle of the olympics right we talk about heroes and rock stars and look at these extraordinary people nobody will understand the depth of extraordinary heroes until they've sat in your shoes because you stared down a forest fire of generational trauma and you said no more. And when somebody does that, they usually end up with third degree burns all over themselves, but their kids don't. And that's you. That's my greatest wish. It's not a wish.

You're doing it. You're doing it right now. What would be extraordinary. Your daughters are 16? Yeah. They're old enough. They're old enough to have conversations, whether that's watching, taking them and doing something like watching Schindler's List together or taking them and reading a book and then just saying, hey, here's where grandma

grew up. And this is how generational trauma works. And this is where we find ourselves. And you could walk them through the ACEs test that you took. And you don't have to be graphic. At some point when they're in their 20s or 30s, they're going to want to know where they came from. And some of those stories, as you're able to talk about them, you can. But this is part of their generation too. This is part of their generation too. This is part of their legacy too. And man, what a gift. You're talking about a gift you give your kids is watching them,

letting them watch you go through the forgiveness process. I'm putting it down. I'm going to set this down. I'm not going to carry it. And then they get to see, here's what dignity and respect look like. Because at some point, yes, your mom needs care. She does. But more than that, you need to care for your mom and you know that. And I think that's what's killing you. Is that fair? Yeah. I don't think you could not care for your mom. No, I can't. There you go. And revenge, what is it? Revenge neglect is not a thing. You won't feel good, right? That would perpetuate your family trauma further. To say, you were mean to me, mom. I'm not caring for you.

I'm going to turn you over to government resources and best of luck to you. You know what I mean? And I know they are psychotic delusions that she's experiencing when she calls the police and thinks the police are coming to get her. She's also seen that with her own eyes. And that's a different level of delusion. Does that make sense? Yes. She's got traumatic memories in her body and her brain and in her heart and in her mind and in her spirit. She's seen those things. And so it's like when you, if you were to be in the woods and a tiger jumps out 20 years later, if you flinch every time you see a shadow, I can say, man, that's crazy.

What are you doing? But I also understand. Right. And so I trying to classify is that a delusion is that great, man, I'm just going to put that mental energy down. I'm just not going to carry that stuff around anymore, but I want you to forgive your mom. I think you, I love that you said that you deserve to forgive your mom. I think you, I love that you said that you deserve to forgive your mom. You deserve to not carry this anymore. And then you deserve to teach your daughters.

Here's what dignity looks like for me, for my children, for my family, and for my mom. And every time you think I should have had this as a kid you can go yeah i should have and i'm gonna make sure my daughters get it right and that way you don't stew on that thing you don't ruminate on what you missed there's a period at the end of that sentence because you can't go back and edit it you can't go back and change it so ruminating on it doesn't do anything other than send your body back into fight or flight, back into anger, back into frustration. And I love, I've completely shifted my definition of trauma based off Peter Levine's work and Bessel van der Kolk's work. Trauma isn't what happened. It's not the bad, ugly stuff that happened in our past.

It's our body's remembering of those things in the present. And so when you think about what happened to you as a kid and your heart rate takes off on you, that's the trauma. That's what you're looking to heal. That you can remember those things and your heart rate doesn't pick up on you. That's healing the ACEs stuff, right? That's healing the adverse childhood experiences that your body doesn't respond in an inflamed state anymore because am I carrying that crap around anymore? Yep, that happened. That's a fact. And then there's a period because we're creating something new. Do you think you can do that? I can. I can do it. I 100% know you can. And there will come a season when you'll make meaning of this. That's not today,

but you'll make meaning of this. Here's not today, but you'll make meaning of this. Here's what I would love. It'd be an honor. I'd love for you to sit down with your daughters and talk about that cinder block, put some masking tape on it or some duct tape on it and write it down. I'd love for you to take a picture of that and email it to us. Okay, I can do that. Write down the things that should have happened, that didn't happen.

Here's what it was like growing up with mom. And I think it's not bad for your grandmother. I mean, for your mom to scare your daughters a little bit, not terrorize them. Right. And if she's swinging at them or screaming at them, I mean,

that's scary, but I think it's okay for them to see mom's not well. And here's what I'm going to do in light of that. Oh my gosh. You're talking about changing generations. That's it. And you are standing in the gap. You asked for none of this. You deserve none of this, but here you are. And if the world had more people like you willing to stand in the gap and saying, I didn't cause this, but I'm in it and I'm going to turn the page, the whole world shifts, Sherry. You're one of the bravest, most extraordinary women

I've ever had the opportunity to talk to and I am grateful that you have blessed me and this audience for telling your story. Man, and what's cool about you is your story is still getting rolling, right? Yeah, absolutely. What a gift. Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing with us. Take a gift. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for sharing with us. Take a picture of that brick. Spend some time carrying it around. Maybe even have your daughters carry it for a minute. Maybe even your husband is involved in this thing. But this is a family event where we're forgiving grandma. And then we're going to decide how we're going to take care of her, how we're going to love her.

We're not going to live in resentment. We're going to choose to not live in resentment because all resentment does is burn your house down. Nobody else's, right? And then we're going to talk about here's what dignity and respect looks like for all of us moving forward. Wow, you're incredible. Thank you so, so much for your call, for your heart. I can't wait to get that picture. I might even show that picture to my family. That incredible sherry you're a saint thank you so so much for your call hey as we wrap up today's show um we took a longer time with that

one that was a deep dive call and um there's a lot there if you don't know about the horrors of nazi germany go get a book and read. Don't Google it. Go get some books. There's plenty of them. You will stop throwing that around. That was a harrowing, evil time in our world's history. And it will also help you be vigilant

about what the history looks like moving forward. And if you are with people in your life, whether your parents were addicts or whether they were overweight or whether they got fired a lot or whatever, what I'll tell you as an adult, you're 20-year-old, you're 35, you're 45, you're 65 listening to this show. Carrying that around does nothing but burden you. And there is healing from that. There is peace from that. and it is more complicated often than just dropping a brick down in your yard.

I get that. Many people need to go to therapy, go to counseling, and go to betterhelp.com slash Deloney. You can pick up, if you can't find a counselor, you can find a trauma counselor. Relationships, relationships, moving your body, sleep, all these things, right, they all work together, but you can't heal. You can reverse some of this aces trajectory where that is going to guarantee

you have a higher rate of of physical harm and cancer and strokes and heart attacks and all those things you can turn the corner on those things but it starts with you saying i'm not gonna i'm not gonna carry this around anymore i'm gonna forgive because i deserve it i'm not gonna live in resentment. And we're going to go be about healing. Thank you so much for being a part of the show today. All right, as we get out of here, man, perfect song, perfect song for today. Off the Born and Raised record out in 2012.

It's one of my favorite songs in the world. John Mayer's song, The Age of Worry, and it goes like this. Close your eyes and clone yourself and build your heart an army favorite songs in the world. John Mayer's song, The Age of Worry, and it goes like this. Close your eyes and clone yourself and build your heart an army to defend your innocence while you do everything wrong. Don't be scared to walk alone and don't be scared to like it. There's no time that you must be home. So sleep where darkness falls. Alive in the age of worry. Smile in the age of worry. Go wild in the age of worry and say, worry, why should I care? Dream your dreams, but don't pretend. Make friends with what you are. Give your heart, then change your mind.

You're allowed to do it because God knows it's been done to you and somehow you got through it. Sing out in the age of worry and Say, worry, why should I care? Right here on the Dr. John Deloney Show.