These Fukken Feelings Podcast© - Season 2.5 - Episode 104 - Interview with Allison Frye - Host of the "Allison in Wonderland" podcast

Episode Date: April 22, 2023

Send us a Text Message.Are you looking for a podcast that tackles mental health issues with empathy and understanding? Look no further than These Fukken Feelings Podcast, the podcast that explores the complexities of mental health and emotional wellness. In a recent episode, host Allison Frye of "Allison in Wonderland" joins the show to discuss her own experience with mental health and how it led her to create her own podcast. Allison shares her insights on how to find hope in difficult ...

you don't have to be positive all the time it's perfectly okay to feel sad angry annoyed frustrated scared and anxious having feelings doesn't make you a negative person it doesn't even make you weak it makes you human and we are here to talk through it all we welcome you to these fucking feelings podcast a safe space for all who needs it grab a drink and take a seat. The session begins now. What is up guys? Welcome to these fucking feelings podcast. I am Micah. This is Rebecca. Hi guys. Yeah, we're actually here with Allison Fry, who also has a mental health podcast, Allison in Wonderland.

Yes. You fall down the rabbit hole, go through the looking glass, all of those things. And we were just talking about rabbit holes, too, but in a whole other way. Yeah. So, yeah, so I believe that the best way to introduce yourself is to introduce yourself. So let's go ahead and tell our viewers a little bit about yourself. Absolutely. Hey, I am Allison Fry. You should spot out for the fact that you have three adult kids.

I'm sorry, because you don't, you look like you're 19. Yeah, so my youngest is 19 years old. There's this picture kind of like Dorian Gray in my closet and you're just like not allowed to look at it. I can never see it or I'll age really, really fast. So I love that Dorian Gray. I love that. Yeah. So I, I definitely, um, get carded more than my 19 year old son does. I, um, was born and raised in Alabama. I now live in, and, um Alabama. And I've been in marketing for 20 years, but I'm a mental health advocate. I started my advocacy journey in 2007 after the loss of my brother as a result of suicide. I also it, I'm working on advocacy with a lot more, which is where the podcast came in. I'm writing a book. So many things.

Right. Sheesh. I didn't know about the book part. No, I didn't know about the book part either. There's also Allison in Wonderland. Okay. So that's pretty cool. We're actually probably very similar.

We're just mental health advocates kind of two. I feel like it's really cool to hear from people who actually went through things than it is sometimes to talk to professionals. I kind of went through my journey where I was seeing a professional and right away the answer was medication when I really didn't need medication, you know, it's like they took all the signs of like depression and like, was like, oh, you need to do this. But really it was just kind of who I was, you know? So. Yeah. I grew up in the craze where everyone that was not sitting calmly at their desk was immediately diagnosed with ADD. So that was, that was a thing. But I mean, I think definitely, I think people feel like when they find a therapist that they have to stick with that one when really it's the most intimate relationship you'll probably ever have in your life. So you

need to just keep trying until you find the right one. And you can actually tell your therapist, which is how I found the one I'm with now. I was like with another lady and I was like, I really like you and this is what I like, but this is what I need. And she put me in contact with the lady I've been with for six years now. Wow. That's nice. It's like super open and honest and be like, I'm not getting what I need out of this relationship. Who do I see? Right. Definitely. I actually had a therapist and we did really good for two years. And then she decided to quit on me. So she felt we started becoming like friends. And she started to see the issue with that. You know, it was like, I care a

little too much. So maybe you need to see someone else. But now it's been so hard to find someone new that I was like, I'm going to start a podcast. It is. It's really hard to find someone you mesh with. When I moved from Georgia to Kentucky, when my youngest graduated, I was like, I told my therapist, I was like, I don't care if I have to pay for it, but you have to get licensed in Kentucky, which she did. So I could just bring her with me. Oh, that's good. Yeah, that's nice. So how long have you been doing podcasting? Well, I decided the last week of November that I was going to have a podcast. I'm a digital marketer, so the next week I had a domain and a website and started recording episodes and launched in January.

Okay. So you're fresh to this. Right. It was not even part of the plan my 19 year old was like gosh you talk about mental health all the time you need to have a podcast and it's like okay right sometimes that's the best idea right like ideas like that are just kind of like the best thing yeah we um actually started off as uh when we first decided to do podcasting it was about um prison reform but it was kind of a conversation that people really didn't want to have.

So it didn't take where it was supposed to go, you know? So the original thought was just to cancel. Like I'm good. I tried it, you know, but then my dad passed and things kind of kept happening. And it was like, you know, I don't, I don't see this happen to many people like me who actually speak about it, you know? So it was like, oh, let's talk about it, you know? So that's kind of when we changed into mental health thing. We say season 2.5 because we started off season two about a year ago. We made it through eight episodes and then kind of was just derailed by life.

So once again, it came to the part of like, hey, we're just going to stop this. We're not going to do it. But then it's like, no, you know, even if you just make change one person, like you're doing something. Yeah. And I just got back from a go ahead. Sorry. I'm sorry. I was like, just like you said, I watched some of your episodes or the first episode. You said that mental health is something that people are talking about more often or want to talk about more often. So I think having a podcast about it and making it more real and making it sound real to people is really the best way to go. Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, we're talking about a couple of the issues, but there's a lot of things that no one does talk about. So I try to make sure

and it seems very much like, you know, let's talk about everything mental health, which seems a lot like what y'all are doing. I think that it's unfortunate about the prison reform audience because they think that people don't realize, you know, the reasons for recidivism and things like that as to culturally how we're not helping people. And so the stigma, you know, there are all of these things that we have stigma on. So we have stigma about mental health. We have stigma about suicide and then also about prison reform and the needs there, which my master's is actually in criminology, focusing on forensic psychology. So I've, I've studied a lot about it and it wasn't until I took, like went for that degree

that I realized, like, and even I'd never even thought about the prison system right and i was just like oh my goodness this is so broken right right definitely definitely we actually i have a uh say like a brother to me um who's in prison and has been in prison she, 23 years for armed robbery. And he was 15 at the time. He was with somebody else. He was the younger person. Everybody said it was his idea kind of situation, you know, so he was kind of railroaded. And for a long time, it was like, I hated the criminal justice. So even now I see police officers and I'm like, yeah, always bothering people. Like, stop pulling people over. But it was it was it was unique.

So when we decided to do the mental health podcast, we invited someone on, Rebecca Height. She's actually going to come back. She has her second book. But I invited her on and she actually was someone who was robbed at gunpoint. And that was the other side of it. Right. And that was the thing. So that was the turning point in her life. Like being held at gunpoint, like completely derailed her. And I'm like, you know, I still don't believe a person who robbed somebody at gunpoint should do over 20 years when we have murderers who do less, you know, child molesters, rapists who do less. Yeah, exactly. Should be in there

for life. Right. But I also never considered what it did to that other person. Sorry, I didn't mean to talk over you. Oh, no. Yeah, I agree completely. I think that that's, it's like gun control. People need to use common sense. You know what I mean? Like you can support the Second Amendment and support common sense gun laws at the same time. So I think it's like you can support the idea that, you know, people that commit crimes need to go to prison, but you can also support prison reform. Use some common sense. And then, you know, I believe it takes it takes like a whole story to see and determine how somebody's life should be judged. You know, right. And I feel like sometimes, you know, I do feel like where you were raised, you know, the situations, you know, it's it. I'll rob somebody at gunpoint before Rebecca will just because of how we were raised. You know, I don't know. Rebecca looks kind of shady. You wouldn't think I am, but I'm very Sicilian.

I'm the scariest person ever. You're right. I wouldn't have guessed it. I know. We were just all amazed here. We heard you say that you had three adult ever. You're right. I wouldn't have guessed it. I know. We were just all amazed here. We heard you say that you had three adult kids. And we're like, you know what? She lies. So I was in Vegas for a work trip.

And I had to show my ID, not to get drinks or anything, but to like four other people I met at the convention that thought I was lying. And my 19-year-old son was with me. And I still was pulling out my ID going, I swear. And I'm like, this was the number one hit single the day I was born. And I'm like naming all these things from 1982. My youngest is 16.

My oldest will be 21 this year. Yeah. So close. I just aged myself by telling the age of my oldest. Right. Yeah. She said, I didn't start believing in this until my, until I had my third child, but it was the way she said it. It was like, Rebecca, you're not 103. So, um, you had made the comment that, um, your son said you talk about mental health so much. So is that something kind of you were, you did during like, I guess their upbringing?

Yes, absolutely. I, I, it took a little bit before I actually told my kids what happened with my brother and my mom, just because they were very little when this happened in 2007 and then again in 2010. But we were very open about mental health in our family. And I always say I'm cursed with the gift of empathy. And my youngest is also very much that way. And he would take on that counselor role for friends at school, for friends of friends, would let people know if someone was having suicidal thoughts and, and really jumped into that. So he, I don't know that he realizes it, but he's also a mental health advocate. He advocates for mental health every day, even if he doesn't like have

that next to his name on his LinkedIn page. But it's just that we spoke so openly about mental health in our family that I just really wanted to make sure that it wasn't a shock because it was, it was such a shock when I lost my brother. And I, I wanted to make sure that they knew there were things that we were okay to talk about. It was like, Hey, mom's going to therapy today. Like it's super open. And I, I also usually will tell people that I am the most open person you will ever meet about your own, like my own personal mental health. Obviously, I have to reign that in a little bit when I'm talking to my kids. What was the first thing you did after the passing of your brother? What was, I know you sought out therapy, but what was like the first thing that picked you up off the floor? So I spent, I really just got, I was destroyed when I lost my brother. And I really do feel like my, my kids were the reasons I was able to hang

in while I figured out what was going on. And I tried to find multiple, like I went to multiple therapists at that time and they were putting me on different medications that were making me sick and it wasn't really helping where I did need something for my anxiety, but I didn't, I never found the right person like right away, but I am a research person. Like I want to know everything. So I took to the internet. I found the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The week after he passed away, I went to the one and only suicide survivor support group I've ever been to because you should not go the week after your loss. But it did at least help me find a resource of people. And then when I finally got to where I could get out of bed each day, that's when I enrolled for my first degree, which was in

psychology. Because my thing was that I needed to know as much as humanly possible about what happened. I needed to understand. And that's what I was going to ask. So sorry, were there signs? Was there like signs, visible signs that your brother was going through something that would lead up to suicide? Yeah. So you basically, they call it a psychological autopsy, but in my mind, it's like a murder map. So like, if you're thinking about like a crime board and you're like putting pictures and things that everybody heard and you're like, you know, pulling the little string, the string from one spot to another, you know, if 20 of us had all gotten together and been like, yeah, he said this, or he did that, then we would have known, but it, nobody had all of the information. And so there were signs and nobody realized that that, that those were signs. The

one person that knew the most about it was my mother. And I don't know if any of the listeners know what MySpace is, but my brother had basically turned his entire MySpace page into a suicide note. He changed the music, the background, his, you know, the information on his page was his note. And actually part of it, he called out an attorney that was trying to get him thrown into jail for having a joint on him in Alabama and called him out by name. The attorney like tried to make me take it down and I just kind of blocked out his name. But it takes me back to that prison reform thing. Pot's legal all over the place.

But yeah, let's go to prison for a joint in your pocket. It's crazy that it's still not legal in some places. Like to me, I think that's sheesh. I know. I mean, think of the PTSD drugs I wouldn't have to take. Just like a little weed legally. But my mom, when he posted his letter and we were looking for him and I was in Georgia and my family was in Alabama and he was living with my dad. So I was on the phone with my dad while my little brother was looking for him.

And my husband was on the phone with my dad while my little brother was looking for him. And my husband was on the phone with my mom. And she said, when Kevin gets depressed, he likes to throw a rope in a tree, go look in the woods. And I was just like, what? Nobody knew that. Now, I also look back at my life, and I now know of times in my life that my mother had attempted to take her life. And I didn't realize that's what had happened when I was a kid. So I think for her, she felt like maybe this is a normal thing you do when you're depressed and he's okay. But when she said that, that was obviously the number one sign that there was that there was a problem. But no one else knew that. Wow. And it's crazy. We were speaking earlier and I was talking about like kind of when I grew up and we're all pretty much about the same age.

But in our household, it was kind of like we didn't speak of things. And what happened in this house, you know, stayed in this house. And like my mom was manic depressed, you know, manic depression, but you know, it wasn't okay for us to talk about it, you know, or we didn't want to like really, you know, it was, you, you kept it in the house kind of thing. You don't, you don't discuss with friends and those kinds of stuff. And I feel like the, the times I'm glad with the time changed that that's changing. And now people are starting to talk about things so that we can see the signs and find the signs when, you know, we don't know what we're looking for. Yeah. And I think that one of

the clues for me as I, you know, worked to find the right therapist was one, I made two therapists cry telling them my story. And I'm just like my childhood and I'm just like sitting there calmly explaining like my life and they're crying. And I, well, and like, I didn't realize that, that anything that had happened in my life was unusual because I lived in this neighborhood where, you know, the drug dealer lived across the street. And, um, I look back at it and every sibling set that I grew up with had either lost someone as a result of suicide, drug overdose, or they are in prison. Every sibling set in the neighborhood I grew up in. So that says a lot about just, so everything that was

happening in our family seemed very normal because it was happening in all of the other houses. And we all lived in like single parent homes with working moms. So we could all just go get high wherever, you know, wherever. And so everybody was self-medicating and everybody's parents were self-medicating. And it was just one of those things where you look back at it and you're like, oh, your childhood wasn't like that. That's not what your neighborhood was like. Yeah. It sounds like you've had to overcome quite a bit to get where you are. Yeah, I think it's just that I'm really stubborn.

I mean, I did. I got married when I was 18 and moved away from my mom, who was bipolar and a pathological liar. And that, you know, now that I understand the psychology behind it, I can be a little less jaded about it. But at the time, like I just needed to cut the toxic out of my life. So I've been married my entire adult life. And I don't recommend anyone gets married at 18. I've broken every statistic known to man about marriage. I'm telling you. Yeah. But I mean, it's definitely been a process and which is why I'm writing a book, because it's definitely been an interesting process. And it's a lot of just being too stubborn to give up and really focusing that energy on maybe helping other people. If I just help that one person, like you said earlier, that's, I have people ask me all the time, like, well, what do you expect to get out of this? And I'm like, if I help one person,

really, and if I can help two, then that like balances out the two that I lost. Oh, wow. I think it's more than stubbornness. I mean, I don't, I haven't known you, obviously, I don't know you, but I've been talking to you now for 19 minutes, and I can almost feel just how strong you are. I mean, you must be pretty strong to have overcome from a child everybody going through what they've gone through in your neighborhood, including yourself and your eight siblings. And losing your mom and your brother and raising three children through all of that and getting married so young. And it just sounds like it doesn't only take stubbornness. I think it takes extreme strength. So that's pretty profound. And just, I'm looking for the right word. but it's empowering, I guess.

So I think you're sending more than just a message of, you know, helping others with suicide or, you know, mental health, but I think you might be empowering women as well. I really appreciate that. Every time someone says that I'm strong, I look back at those moments where I felt so broken. And then I have to remind myself, just like I wish you would like tell yourself, you know, how you, how you would tell me if I was complaining about my weight, you're beautiful. You know what I mean? It's, you know, you can, you're allowed to have a cupcake. So it's like all of these things where I think if I saw it in someone else, I would be like, no, you're allowed to have really bad days. And that, and you know, you, you wake up the next day and you get out of bed and that's because you're so strong. But then like, it's, it's really hard to see it in yourself, I think,

but I really appreciate it. I think that there was, there was a lot growing up. I, I mark my mental health journey as having started when my brother died in 2007. But since I've started therapy and gone through that many years of therapy, I learned about all of the stuff going on that was a detriment to my mental health growing up. And so even though I say 2007 is where it started, I mean, it started a long time ago. So I think a lot of it is, you know, it's like those, those children of, you know, homes with mental illness, you learn how to read a room when you walk in. Is this a day that, is this a good day where mom's going to go on a shopping

spree and buy everything? Or is this a day she's going to tackle my brother with a butcher knife? Like it's, it's seriously like, those are the rooms you got to read. Right. Those real life examples. Right. I struggle with mental health myself. And, and like you, there was a moment in my life when it was triggered. I'm going to use the word triggered. And that was the birth of my second son. I went into postpartum depression and I feel like I've just never come out of it. Of course, medication is what I turned to. And I tried so many different medications over time, so many different therapists and so forth. And over time, I've managed with some medication and different therapists. And honestly, what has helped me get through has been more my family and friends and their support. But I've had occasions where I've kind of like fallen off the wagon, for lack of a better term, where I had quit my job suddenly and just stayed home and laid on the couch and did absolutely nothing.

And there was something that triggered that. And that's when I started gaining weight. And I started just wanting to eat everything in sight. And I didn't want to do a single thing. And so now I too look at myself like I can't, I'm not pretty. I'm not anything anybody would be attracted to any longer. So, you know, I still struggle every single day. And I could say you're beautiful, but since I'm in that same spot, I know that that's not what you're like. People are gonna be like, but you're beautiful. Well, that doesn't make me not feel that. Um, so what really, and I had that exact moment, not after I had, um, my youngest is my only biological child. My older two are adopted. So, um, I didn't,

I don't know if I went through postpartum depression, really. I have no idea because I was very isolated. So I know that I was stressed and depressed, but I do not know. We weren't as connected about issues like that at the time. But you just described what I was like after my brother died. I tried to go to work. I couldn't. I quit my job. I laid in bed.

I sat and ate peanut butter crackers. And then I sat and ate peanut butter with a spoon. And then I reached this point where you're like, well, what was rock bottom? I didn't know I was a stress eater until then. I literally would sit there with peanut butter and eat it out of the jar with my fingers because getting up and going and getting the spoon was too much work. And so when I would look in the mirror at my weight, not only do I not feel beautiful, but I see the trauma that led to that stress eating. And it reminds me and it's almost like being re-traumatized by it. So, but also like, I think what's really important and I'll mention my little sister again. She was telling me about a podcast to listen to because I was downloading episodes of random

podcasts to listen to on the plane from Kentucky to Vegas. And it was one talking about all the junk science around diets and things like the BMI that was never meant to be used as like a person by person thing. It was meant to be like a global scale because insurance companies did not know how to say if you were healthy or not. So I have, even with the weight that I've lost, when you look at the BMI, I am considered grossly obese. Same. Legit. Okay.

Is that not the most horrible thing in the world? That is one of the worst terms I've ever heard. I feel like if anybody looked at either one of us that isn't just like the most shallow person in the world, they'd be like, she's got some curves. That's the way I see it. I am labeled as grossly obese. Yeah. I think what we're doing here is kind of important when it comes to all this it's that we're talking about it, you know? And I feel like that's the way kind of to get yourselves out of that funk

sometimes it's like, you know, you got to talk about it. Like, you know, it's like, let it out, you know, just yell, just scream, just, you know, it's mental health is very tricky. You know, it's a lot of, there's a lot of things that it's kind of like dieting, you know, it's all these cures, but none of them are really a cure, you know, like 90% of them make you gain more weight. And it's the same for mental health. You need this pill for depression, but then you need this pill to help you from the depression that the pill is

going to cause you to get. And then you need this pill because now you are also going to be anxious. You know, and a lot of times. There is a place for medication. There really is. So I think that, you know, if you have a chemical issue that causes your, then, you know, like if you are, you know, medically bipolar due to a chemical disorder, then there is a right medication for you. And it's not an antidepressant because antidepressants are are dangerous for people that are bipolar. I suffer from PTSD from childhood trauma and I have extreme insomnia. So my main thing is that I take medicine for my insomnia back to that,

Hey, Kentucky make weed legal. Cause I bet that would get me off this. It would. I was, I was sitting here and I was just thinking like, we just need some weed. It's legal here in New York and I have a medical card. Well, that's the thing too. My psychiatrist is like, you've got like four conditions that would make it legal for you. PTSD alone would. Yeah. Plus Kentucky is very poor, but had all these tobacco farms.

So the farm that we're on the barn is actually a tobacco barn so if they would just repurpose them right to marijuana farms then hey look the economy's better sorry i feel like we've touched on like 15 different soap boxes since i have done and that's actually what we're about we're about those soapboxes exactly and speaking of boxes i like your analogy or your your phrase about you, mental health does not fit in a box. And I'm quoting you because in this box, I just want to find a lid for my mental health because I feel like website, I felt like that that was a good way to put it, that if only we could just put it in a box and put a lid on it, I feel like maybe I could contain it better and maybe control it better. But half the time, I can't because one minute I'm thinking about something more, you know, focusing on something. And then the next I'm thinking something erratic or feeling something completely opposite of what I should be.

And it's just I'm all over the place. I think before you actually put the lid on the box, you need to actually deal with what's inside the box. You know, I think that's easy to say though, but that's kind of like saying, calm down. What is it like telling a woman to calm down is like trying to baptize a cat. I like that. up in life. So I was cool being an introvert and, you know, if I could have a job at home and not have to deal with people, you know, but it took a lot of actually going through my box to make me see that, you know, I'm on that path to being okay and getting it right. You know, so, you know, I wasn't speaking it as a cliche or that it would be easy, but that it was possible. It's possible

to go, you know, and we should, we should go through those moments and no, not to relive them, but to discover the truth out of them. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like the thing is, is that there are moments in life where the box and the lid are needed just to help you get by. And then when you're a little bit stronger, you can open that lid and start to let it out. And I think that, you know, when you're caring for a newborn, dealing with your trauma may not be the best thing. It may be working with someone that can help you with just making it day to day and not resenting the baby that's making that, you know, prompted the postpartum depression and things like that. My childhood trauma, I would, I was honest with every therapist that had happened, but always told them it was entirely off the table. My brain built up walls about what happened and it needs to stay there.

And then I had read some research about how when you become an empty nester, suppressed trauma will force its way out because you're no longer focusing so much energy on your children. And so that's when I finally told my therapist, okay, let's start dealing with the trauma. Let's pull out, you know, let's do the PTSD stuff. I'll do the work now. So I, I think it was because like, I knew I fell apart so entirely when my brother died and I was worried about like falling apart and having kids to raise. And I mean, obviously I think it's healthier to deal with it, but that was the, that was as much as I had in me at that time. So my therapist knew it was a thing. And, um, I, I think that, um, you said something else when you were talking about your postpartum

depression, that your family and your friends really supported you. And I think that what's really important there is that not everybody has peer support. Not everybody has that support system. And it's, it's really hard. When I started going through my trauma counseling, because, you know, my husband does not want to hear about childhood sexual abuse. And so I'm not talking to him when I have some great epiphany as to what happened. I called my sister who lives in San Diego and was like, this is what I'm going to do. This is my therapist number. And like explained to her what that like memories may come up. I may call her, I may need her. And then for my husband's, you know, purpose, I was like, if I get in a brain loop, this is what Dr. Thomas said to do. You know what I mean? So like I gave him like, he knew I

was going through the counseling, but did not, but I did not talk to him about any extreme revelations with it because it wasn't a comfortable conversation to have with him. So finding the right peer support person or people is really important too because not everybody can be there for you in that way. Right. We actually were having a conversation pre us filming this episode, recording as Rebecca says. But we were actually having a conversation about her husband. And what you described is kind of similar to what I was saying to her husband. Like right now it's about him. You know, it doesn't mean, you know, it doesn't mean that it's not child and you guys are not married, but it doesn't have, it can't be about you right now. It's definitely about him.

You know, he's going through his rebirth and his growing and, you know, it doesn't mean he doesn't want you there, but he doesn't need you there, you know? And so to me, it kind of was very similar to basically what you were saying, you know, it's like sometimes you are the only person you can count on, you know, and you have to find your way to that. So what you said, so you were sexually abused as a child? Yes. It's actually the first, it's not going to be the first chapter of my book, but it's the first chapter I wrote. I call it the lost chapter. So I have a PTSD dream that I will have like was third grade and third grade was when I was raped by this person in my step family. And so that is the recurring memory. That's the lost chapter.

I went through the PTSD thing, therapy thinking maybe it would help me remember. And then I realized, you know, maybe forcing, because I thought if I would finish the memory, if I would finish the memory of that moment, then that would make it better. But the memory didn't come. So now what I've transitioned into is sex therapy, so that I can feel more comfortable with myself and less pressured when it comes to sex, which is a very normal thing for people that are, you know, grew up with abuse or have been rape victims and things like that. So I shifted from the PTSD counseling to the sex therapy. And like I said, I'm the most open person in the world about my mental health. So, I're, if you're thinking about where people are at third grade, it's a very

young age. You don't even know what sex is at third grade. And I was a year younger than everyone like in my class because I had a late birth, like, like at a late August birthday. So, it's, it's just weird because it's like I say, losing my brother, it was what started my mental health journey. But that's because I had already suppressed all this other stuff that I didn't even realize was part of the journey. So but I still say losing my brother is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. And everybody has their own scale. Right. Yeah. And that's actually what I was going to bring up is like everybody's journey is your journey, you know. And I think that's kind of the takeaway from, I think, both our podcasts that, you know, it's like there are so many methods.

Find yours. You know, that's the goal. Find your method. There are a million of them, you know, where I had to dig through my box. Maybe Rebecca needs to put it in the closet or in the dungeon or, you know, but me actually had to like go backwards in order to go forward. It was the only way I was able to move forward. But, you know, it's your process. You know, I feel like, you know, if you need to be depressed for a month, be depressed for a month, you know, but then what? Another month? Okay. But then what? You know, because life is going to go on and you're going to want

have to want to live that life you know and i think that's the important message about this like we all are affected by mental health one way or another what we need to start doing is finding the methods to coping with them or delete you know living with them or living without them well and that's what i think is interesting is like when you say you know i also suffer you know living with them or living without them well and that's what i think is interesting is like when you say you know i also suffer you know have mental health issues well you know honestly everybody even if they don't realize it everybody's got something going on and even if it's to some small level everybody's like well what about the people that don't have mental health issues and i'm, where are those people?

Because I have yet to meet them. Like, I don't know if y'all have seen the Truman show, but it was like, you know, if you were like raised in this little bubble of the perfect world where everything was catered around making you perfect and everything seeming perfect and fitting together in this great way. I just said perfect a whole bunch. Then that might be the one person that doesn't have mental health issues until they realize, oh my gosh, this isn't what the world is really like. Because we are, we're affected by things that happen. I went to the 9-11 Museum November before COVID hit with a group of choir students that were singing at Carnegie Hall for Thanksgiving. So my youngest. And they weren't even alive when 9-11 happened. And they cried listening to the phone messages and things like that. And so we all experience trauma, even if it's secondary. We experience trauma when these things happen.

So I think it's important for people to realize, too, that you can be traumatized by what you see on the news. And you might want to talk that out, too. You can be traumatized by election results. You may be traumatized by something that you're, you know what I mean? Like those are things you also can validate. My mother is still struggling with the fact that Trump was our president. Oh my gosh. You just.

Like really. I try really hard not to get political or religious. I'm sorry. I mean, we can be having the most simplest conversation and she will turn it into something about Trump. Like, I just wanted to go to McDonald's. I just wanted to know if you wanted something. You know, somehow she made it into a Trump debate. And it's not a debate because I'm not saying anything. It's the debate she's having with herself. She's having it with herself. It's so funny. I mean, it's sad that our world is there,

but we are just so divided on so many issues that regardless of how an election turns out, 50% of the population is going to be traumatized by the result, or at least 50% of the voting population, because the other people that don't pay attention. But I think that it's definitely one of those things where when Trump first got elected, my therapist asked me, and she was like, so are you, because she'd seen a lot of people that were having like extreme anxiety over it. And she asked me how I was doing. And I was like,

I've been under extreme anxiety since the primaries because I'm, I'm registered as an independent. I vote for the person, not the party. And I didn't want to vote for either one of them. So like I'd been, and I was like, but now it's happened. Nothing I do about it. So it was like when COVID hit, I get stressed about everything. And my husband was like, I can't believe you're not stressed out. And I'm like, dude, the whole world is in a pandemic. I just had to have my in-laws ship us toilet paper.

And your company just decided to cut everyone's pay 10%. There was no way for me to prepare for this. Like absolutely no way. Why is that the thing people decide to run out on? I don't know. It was so, it was so bad. So yeah. So my father-in-law didn't have a job. He's retired and he sat online and refreshed pages over and over again until he could find the toilet paper. And I actually have an Instagram picture somewhere where I'm like holding this whole stack of toilet paper. And it's like, when your in-laws have to ship you

toilet paper. And you know what is funny? Because everybody kept giving us toilet paper. So like, I never, you know, it was funny, like neighbors would drive down the street. Oh, we found some here. And it's like, I'm going to take it because I guess there's a shortage. But I think I'm still using toilet paper from that period. Like, I think I still got some in my garage. But just, I wanted to back back on Trump a little bit. My mom was so anxious with this guy that we're Puerto Rican. And she changed her name from her Puerto Rican name that was given from her family because she didn't want it to be too Spanish for Trump. So she changed her name to an American name, like legally changed her name to an American name because she said.

That's very common, though, if you think about the names that from Ellis Island. So my maiden name is Rumor, but in Italy it was Rumore. And when the family came to America because I'm third generation American. Seriously, I don't look like my family. They're all so much darker than me. I think that like people are like, what? I'm that person too. My family's very darker.

I have like this weird, it wasn't until Ancestry DNA came out that I could prove I wasn't adopted. But they did. They dropped the accent to Americanize the name. But you just don't think about that happening these days. Like now, and that was calm down. See, I'm one of those ignorant and split people.

Like clowns are happy. So when it comes to political stuff, I'm just ignorant. I don't want to know. I know I probably suck. I don't vote. Sorry, people. I don't care. Oh, there goes several listeners.

Look, I just say it. No, they're going to try to convert you. So I've gotten to where I can't watch the news. And so if something big happens, my husband will tell me what happened. I don't watch the news either. Yeah. Well, I watched it a lot after 9-11 and I had to stop and that's when I stayed stopped. But he'll tell me something that happened, but we're on very different aisles of the political fence. And so I'll then go do my independent research about whatever happened. Or we'll be driving down the road and I'll be like I just like, okay, taxes went up, I'll pay them taxes. Oh, cool, taxes going down. Okay. You know, it's like I'm going to.

I know, it's like gas prices are so high and everybody's like, oh, what about gas prices? And I'm like, I don't know, I got to put gas in the car. It doesn't matter. Right. And see, that's how I live. It's like I still, it's still $50. So question though, you said you had two adopted kids. It's like I still it's still fifty dollars. So question, though, you said you had to adopt the kids by marriage. Well, so my oldest was one year old, was one when I married my husband and my husband had custody of him and I adopted him.

And then November of 2021, his biological half sister was abandoned by the bio mom that they both shared mom moved to Australia with the boyfriend she lived in Alabama and in Alabama you were not you were a minor until you're 19 years old so she was going to be a ward of the state for two years so we adopted her at 17 um so she's my daughter but you know she's definitely been in my life not as long as the rest of them so she is the half sibling to my oldest and my oldest and my youngest are half siblings so they're it's they're all related to at least one or the other yeah and I guess the reason I actually struggle I don't have any kids I feel like sometimes I'm too selfish I just I don't I feel like I don't have time for kids in my life because I take care of so many people that my child will be abandoned.

But I hate the idea of people living in this world, not knowing what love is. So my plan is to eventually foster older kids. Because they don't get fostered. Right. But my struggle is the loving somebody past their pain part. It's like, I'm going to have to learn to love somebody past their pain. I don't want to fail anybody, you know? Like, it took me 43 years to, like, be this kind of level-headed person I am now. You know?

But it took me, like, I know now what peace is. You know, I've been at peace, you know, but it took me like, I know now what peace is, you know, I've, I've been at peace, you know, and it's like, I know that. And it's like, can I show a child how to do that? I think shared experiences. And I think that that might be hard, but so my daughter, the bio mom, and I didn't know this because I didn't know her. I met her one time before, like one time ever, because she had visitation rights and never took them. So I did not realize this until we adopted my daughter, that her mom and my mom were basically the same people. So we had a lot of the same shared experiences and a lot of the same stories. And so I think that helped a lot, but then also realizing that she had such a toxic relationship with her mother and accepting that she has a better relationship with my husband than she does with me. And I understand that because she had such a toxic relationship with her mother, but no relationship with a father.

And so just I understand that and accept it. And I'm there where I can be. But I understand where she's coming from so much because I'm like, holy crap, I have lived through that. Right. Definitely. That's just my biggest fear. It's like, oh, I want to do it, but I don't want to do it if I do it wrong. You know, it's like people. That's definitely a good example of loving her through her pain. I'm sorry.

I just wanted to connect your two points that you definitely love her through her pain. I try. We're all, we're all a work in process. Definitely. Definitely. But I guess we should take time out and actually talk about your podcast. Yeah. Yeah. So Allison and Wonderland, believe it or not, that was like the 10th thing I put into GoDaddy. And we were just making jokes about how expensive all the things I wanted were. And I was like, let's see how expensive this is. $10. I was like, okay, there's all the branding. So yeah, I have to guest on the words. I don't usually struggle with them. I blame Vegas. So I have guests on every episode. There are a few episodes where it's just me ranting at the screen, but usually there's guests and they are

industry experts, they're authors, or they're people that have a mental health story. So guess what? Everybody in the world can be a guest because everyone has a mental health story. And I am I'm working on a book, which is it's really short stories of my life. And then I have a mental health professional that also writes who is doing companion chapters that are through the looking glass. And so she takes the chapters of my life and basically writes them up as a psychological case study of the ramifications of whatever that event was. So it's like some people may only want to read her part and some people may want to only read my part, but it's very interesting companion chapters to each other. So I'm doing that. And, and like, whenever I can throw the website up, I've been starting life coaching, but not life coaching in the sense that you would think about

it. It is actually peer support. So I'm trauma support, grief support, accountability partner for someone that doesn't have that support system. They're working with a therapist or something, and they need somebody that they can text it to in the morning and be like, oh my God, I'm freaking out. Because you can't do that with your therapist. You're not going to get a response. So it's called life coaching just because that's what everybody else, like that's what it's called when you get a certificate in life coaching. But it's, I'm kind of going on a different angle. I'm not focusing on food or diet or exercise because I feel like those things in my life are very toxic subjects.

And so I do know people that are life coaches that do handle that the right way that I can refer people to, but I'm not touching that with a 10 foot racing coach. That makes sense. Of course, we will have all your links in the bottom of our page. It actually has been going on throughout the show, but we'll make sure we pass on all your contact information. But I wanted to say, so now you have this random person out there. They're going through the worst possible situation they could go through.

Somehow they come across our podcast and they're at this moment. What do you say? I say that tomorrow will be better and the next day may be worse. But there's really no getting better from some things. You become a different person. You learn how to adapt. And no matter how you feel that other people in your life feel about you,

if I found out tomorrow you weren't here, I would grieve. I would grieve for the fact that you're not here. I would grieve for your family having lost you. If you think that none of your family loves you, and even if that's true, which I doubt it is, I would grieve for you. And I think that every time I see the statistics or every time I see about a celebrity that I didn't even know who they were before it post. I grieve. I go through a true mourning process for them. So when I say someone would miss you, I'm that person. There may be others, but I am definitely that person. So please don't make me

have to grieve you. Email me. Let's chat. I'll help you. I have sat down on psychologytoday.com and helped so many people remotely pick out which personality of the psychiatrist they want to see. Because sometimes you just need help going through profiles. I will be that person. And I will not charge you. I just want you to be here tomorrow. Definitely. They're pretty dope words. So we're going to second that everything she said. We're saying, yeah, definitely. Like we would grieve also, you know, especially when there are, there is help, there is help for you. There's ways to get help. There's ways where you don't have to cost you. You know, I know a lot of

people that don't go to counseling because they're like, oh, my copay is a hundred dollars, you know, how do I get somebody to watch my kids? All these things like, right. Yeah. And it's like, there are so many ways. I mean, I was in Virginia and my therapist was in California and we used to every now and then be on FaceTime. I mean, Tuesdays, Thursdays until she quit on me. I hope she's watching this. But definitely. So, yeah, we agree. I mean, it's it's help out there, guys. Just make sure that you you can you can find it. It's there for you. And one more thing that I do like to mention is that the National Suicide Crisis Lifeline has recently changed its number from an 800 number to 988. So you can text or call 988 from anywhere in the country and they will get you to resources that are in your area if you're in a crisis state. Also, it's not just for people that are in a crisis state,

but if someone comes to you and you're worried about them and you don't know what to do, you also can call or text that number. And 988 is that number. So I think that that's really important to share. Definitely. Yes, thank you for that. Yeah, I didn't even know that.

Just 988. Okay. Call or text. All right. That's perfect. And if you don't remember nine, eight, eight, you can dial nine one, one. Yes. They will still get you help. Absolutely. Right. Definitely. So Allison, we thank you so much for being on. We hope you enjoyed us. Definitely. Yeah. Definitely enjoyed you. We'll make sure we put all your contact information in the information for this episode. And yeah, we definitely appreciate you. You know, maybe we can be guests on your podcast.

Absolutely. Yes, I you're definitely going to have to be. Thank you so much for having me. And we will talk again soon. Thank you so much. Thank you. Guys, until next time, if you need help, go get it.