Unlonely with Dr. Jody Carrington - Jody's Story

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

In this episode, Dr. Jody will tell you where she came from and why Reconnection is at the root of all she does. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at one you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Let's start here, where I think the answer begins for everything and everybody. In the place of acknowledgement. Indigenous peoples in this country have taught me the most about what acknowledgement truly means. So everything that I've created for you happened here on Treaty 7 land, which is now known as the center part of the province of Alberta. It is home to the Blackfoot Confederacy, made up of the Siksika, the Kainai, the Pikani, the Tatina First Nation, the Stony Nakota First Nation, and the Métis Nation Region

Three. It is always my honor, my privilege mostly, to raise my babies on this land where so much sacrifice was made, and to build a community, invite a community in, talk about hard things, as we together learn and unlearn about the most important things, that we were never meant to do any of this alone. welcome back and welcome in amazing humans this is the everyone comes from somewhere podcast i'm dr jody carrington and in episode, I'm so excited to talk to you about stories. And that was the whole premise for this podcast is context. Context is a prerequisite for

empathy. Where we come from, man, we don't ask that question nearly enough. We always ask what's wrong with you, not what happened to you. And today I'm going to talk a little bit about my story. And I'm going to try and answer the questions that I want to ask every guest. And so I thought it only fair that I try to answer my own questions, which I'm already not happy about, so I feel like that's probably important to reflect on at some point. But anyway, I think there's got to be such a premise around this telling stories thing. I mean, it's an ancient spiritual practice. It's a tool for communication, a way of sort of

passing on our experiences. Before we could read or write, we had this ability to sort of tell stories. And there's this ancient idea of, you know, sitting around campfires or at bedtime and telling experiences of the day, because the human brain has, it's been on a slower evolutionary trajectory than technological advances have been allowing us to even process. And so our brains respond to content by looking for story. That's how they always have to make sense out of the experience. And so our brains respond to content by looking for story. That's how they always have to make sense out of the experience. And so no matter how fast technology can assist sort of in the processing of data, the meaning starts in the brain. And so stories sort of act as the vehicles that by stimulating neural pathways trigger our imagination. And we start to group those similar stories together. And we sort of become participants of the narrative.

And I think that it's sort of hard when you want to tell a story because everybody has their own and their own version of their story. And often we're involved in everybody else's stories to some degree. So what's ours to tell what's not ours to tell, I think is always a pretty big question. But I, my hope is in every single episode that I get a guest on is to ask this question, you know, everyone comes from somewhere. So tell me where you came from. And what I want you to listen to over the episodes is the different takes that people have on that question. You know, some people start, you know, from a very sort of genetic perspective. Some people taught us, you know, from a cultural perspective or

a spiritual perspective. And I think that it is such a process that I'm drawn to as a psychologist because most often my work as a therapist is getting your perception of your story at the time in which it was embedded in your body and to challenge it, to help it grow. This is so true in trauma. You know, some people sort of in that moment, their body has encoded something in terror that when we unpack it in a place of calm, when our neurodevelopmental system is calm, we can put it back in a different place. Okay. So if you, if you learn something at age three, if you experience something at age six or age 17, um, and it stays stuck in there because you've never had a place to lay it out on the table or try it on for size with somebody else. The whole purpose of therapy is to be able to reintegrate that

experience in a different place, maybe when your body is in a safer place. And that's what I love so much about therapy. And I want to start with this idea of, you know, what is a piece of my story? Well, I mean, I, it's changed through the years, uh, obviously as all of us do. And I think there's some facts that maybe don't change, but the perception around those things or understandings of how our parents, our caregivers showed up in those moments, um, really matter. And, uh, I think that, um, there's something always about, um, for me about connection and reconnection. And the later in my life, when I learned this part of the story, it changed everything for me. So if somebody were to ask me, uh, where do you come from? I always say Viking, Alberta, Canada. And this is the little small farming town that I grew

up in that I loved and hated all at the same time. White, straight, able-bodied, privileged household. That's what I grew up in. And I never knew, I mean, this is the definition of what privilege, right? You don't know you have it because it's, that's the privilege, um, because you don't need to. And it was for all intents and purposes, a pretty safe, uh, connected childhood. There was a big story there though, that I didn't know anything about until I was in my late thirties. Um, and I, I think there's so many pieces of this that, that are, you know, that, that now that I know this next piece, um, I maybe remember differently, but I remember always being the funny one. I was born as the oldest, as I knew it, the oldest child in our family and, um, kind of chunky, always the one that could make people laugh. Like I was born as the oldest, as I knew it, the oldest child in our family and, um, kind of chunky,

always the one that could make people laugh. Like I was, I remember being the funniest fucking deal at any of our family functionings. I'm the oldest of, uh, 12 grandkids and I would be the one that could make everybody laugh. And if somebody was struggling, I like, no problem, I got it. No problem. Okay. And here's what I didn't know. I didn't know that I actually wasn't the oldest grandchildren child. So my parents, who were high school sweethearts, they got pregnant in their teens. And there was some time before my mom knew she was carrying a baby pregnancy tests were not a thing. You had to go to the doctor to get that confirmed. But this young woman, my mom, she was wildly committed to not disappointing her hardworking religious

parents. I mean, my dad's parents and my mom's parents grew up within miles of each other. And once they discovered that they were pregnant, this was something they both hid and really were scared about, right? There was also such a heavy religious component that not only was, you know, terminating the pregnancy, not an option. I don't know. They would even say they didn't, they wouldn't have known how to go about that. What they did figure out, or I don't know how this really even happened. What they did figure out is that there was a home for unwed mothers. And my father orchestrated this experience where he got my mom there safely. So they would have borrowed somebody's car. I think it was a buddy's car. And they drove down with this pretense

story that my mom was taking a summer job or she was taking a job out of the province. And there was very little phones and communication. So everybody just trusted that this was the truth. She even stood in my aunt's wedding at, she believes she was six months pregnant and bound her belly as a bridesmaid so that the rest of the crew wouldn't know that she was having a baby. And she goes to this place in the final two months of her pregnancy by herself. My dad drops her off, leaves her. And she navigates. She talks about the social workers and the nuns and the other women that she met in this process. She, you know, I've known about this for over 10 years now.

And we spoke very little about it to this yet. I mean, how lonely it was, how scary it was, how much she loved this baby that she knew she wasn't going to get to sort of watch grow up. And she talked, she's talked a lot about what it meant to give birth to the child and how the nuns in the moment really didn't want her to see the baby and how she was screaming and asking because she heard somebody say that the baby, it was a girl, her head was misshapen because of the birth. And so she was really scared for the safety of the baby. And so she was screaming and asking the nurses to have, she just wanted to see her. She just wanted to see her. So they allowed it. And she was allowed to hang on to, to my sister for 20 minutes and she sobbed

and, and rocked her. And, um, they kept asking my mom if she was sure. And she said there was never anything she was more sure about knowing that she couldn't raise that tiny human. But that it was, you know, to this day, the most painful thing that she's ever experienced in her life. And she never saw her again. And she didn't know, you know, you sort of sign away your rights. And there was a lot of conversation about like, you cannot find her again. My dad came and picked her up a couple of weeks later after she had healed. And she remembers so many things about the day that he picked her up that she had knitted a skirt. She told me this not very long ago. And so she remembers what she was wearing and how awkward it was and how she just stepped back into that farming community with just the understanding that the job didn't work out and nobody asked a lot of questions. And fast forward, five years later, they have me.

They get married, they have me. And I can't imagine now as a mom of three, what it must have been like. They couldn't doctor at home in our little town because the doctor would have seen the C-section scar. And so they had to fake that there was a problem with the pregnancy and go to the city. That's where I, you know, to the city next to us, which was Edmonton, have me, bring me home. And there's so much of our baby pictures now that my sister and I look so much alike that I can't imagine what it would have been like for my mom to look at my sister who looked

so much like me and wonder, you know, about that. And she said, you know, in the first few years, every December, which is, um, my sister's birthday, you know, wondered about, um, you know, what she would look like now and, you know, all of those things. And then they have my brother and life goes on and we had this family that was um you know relatively lovely and stable and connected um and my parents uh never talked about her and certainly never told anybody but each other and i as a psychologist now reflect on this for my mom and my dad, and I can't fucking imagine what it would have been like to hold the gravity, the weight of that story in this little

town, having then two children, one who looked very much like your first daughter and wondering all the time, where is she? Where did she get adopted to? Is she ever going to come through our door? Anything like that. And we grow up, mom and dad get a divorce. Now I have lots of opinions about why this happened and how this happened. And, uh, the stories are of course there's to tell, but it was remarkable to me that, um, until we started to talk about this mom, uh, sort of had never considered that my sister might've been a part of, um, the disconnect that might've happened between them. But I, I mean, I got my own theories on that, that I'm sure I will share many times, but she, mom and dad called us home one weekend.

I was married. I was pregnant with our first son. My brother was married to two daughters. And, uh, I came home to the farm that I grew up in. My husband was away and, um, mom and I were sitting at the kitchen table and in walks my dad. They'd been divorced for maybe 15 years. And my dad never just walked into the farmhouse before. But he walked in with my brother and it was kind of fucking weird. And we all sat down at the kitchen table and people are, you know, they're laughing and telling stories. And I was like, what the shit is going on here? Is this like an intervention or something? Like it was fine. Mom brings out the lemon loaf, which is the universal sign of death. And so I'm getting concerned and everybody's got

a coffee and, and I look over at my father and he starts to cry. And I was like, fuck, okay. Somebody's dying. Like, honestly. Uh, and I was so selfish in this moment as I reflect back on it. Cause I was like, I have six months until our baby that I was pregnant with is here I wonder if dad's gonna die before he gets to see my baby like that's that's my only thought right and then he says we have to tell you kids something what we haven't told anybody in 40 years well what the fuck so obviously he hasn't had uh a life threatening illness for 40 years maybe I didn't't think, maybe he's gay. That was my next thought. And I was like, okay, cool. Like, I mean, we can certainly, this is all happening in like five seconds in my head. And he said, we haven't told anybody this. And I was like,

okay. And I would have never guessed if you gave me a hundred thousand tries that he was going to say you have a sister. Because I speak to my parents, for sure my mom every other day, and certainly my dad after the divorce, at least once a week even, okay? You have a sister. And we have a, a what? And it was like a relief. Like, oh, okay. Nobody's dying. Nobody's gay, which would have been just absolutely fucking fine. But you have a sister. Oh, OK. And then the question was, like, do you want to know about her? And she was like, Jode, my mom, my dad said, Jode, she looks just like your mother and she sounds just like you. And then I was like, whoa, fuck, pump the brakes. You fuckers have met her. What do you mean? Like you you have have, you, you, you know her.

And I looked at my brother, like, do you know this shit? And he's looking at me like, no. Okay. So like prior to this, like 30 seconds prior to this story, I was the only daughter and I was the oldest. Now I'm the fucking middle kid. Like, I don't feel like we should be all like, Ooh, she's looks just like your mother. Bullshit. And then not even time to like breathe. They say, would you like to meet her? And my brother, who's nicer to me, that's he says, of course, guys, because my mom's ball and my dad's fucking crying. I can't take it. There's so much emotion. Fuck. And then my brother says, yes, of course, we'd love to, and I'm thinking, like, I mean, this is, this is the summertime, this is, like, maybe next Christmas, you know, I might be ready,

and my dad says, oh, great, you guys were so happy to hear that, she's in the garage, in the garage, like a fucking puppy, anyway, it's not exactly how it went. He said she's on the way. And my sister now tells me that she would have turned the car around if we would have said, no, we weren't ready to meet her. But who the fuck does that? You just got a sister and you're like, I'm not ready. Hey, everyone.

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routines new locations what matters is that you have something there to adapt with you whether you need a challenge or rest and peloton has everything you need whenever you need it find your push find your power peloton visit peloton at onepeloton.ca Anyway, so in blows my sister now. I love her now. But here's the thing. She's five years, five years older than me. And doesn't look it. And she comes in the door and she's so fucking excited because she's known

about us for 43 years. And I have had exactly 43 seconds. And so I was holding hands with my brother, which is fucking weird for us in our living room. And I was like, what do you say to somebody who like is your sister? Like, do like hi or like what he's like I don't know jode it's like I guess we just start with hello and I was like look at you fucking Dr. Phil so then we come over to the thing and meet her and she's lowly and oh my god so we have this weird fucking family dinner and everybody frolics and um that was almost 13 years ago. And it has defined the course of so many things for me, because as I back up now, when I left Viking Alberta, Canada, I knew very early because of a teacher, because of, I think, the experience of my parents' divorce that I really wanted to understand about relationships and systems. And I decided very early I wanted to be a psychologist. And I worked with the RCMP.

And as a civilian member, the RCMP is our Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It's the national police force in our country. And I became fascinated by trauma and stories and when people don't talk about things, how it can fucking eat them from the inside out. And I thought, that's what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to hear people's stories. I want to create a safe place and understand them. And not knowing that I had a whole chunk of my own story

that I had no idea about at that point. And so I got my master's and I did a lot of work in police psychology and my PhD. I only worked with adults. And then I came to Nova Scotia where I did my residency and I had to do a rotation with kids. And they were like, listen, we think you should do a rotation with kids. And I was not a huge fan of child psychology. Like I don't really even like kids despite the fact that I have three of my own now. But I understood that we knew even less about kids and trauma than we know about

adults and trauma. And so I loved this opportunity. And my first job was on a locked psychiatric inpatient unit for kids at the Alberta Children's Hospital. And we dove into some, you know, the hitters, the kickers, the biters, the ones that tell you to fuck off. And again, I didn't know then how important that would be, but we asked all the time what was wrong with these kids. We never asked what happened to them. There was never a place to tell the story. And when I stayed there and I had the opportunity to be a psychologist, the head psychologist on the team, the only psychologist, but I'll just call it the head psychologist on my respective team. Okay. My job was to conceptualize the story, right? And to understand from the speech and OT and even psychiatry about like how this kid got to where they were and the family therapist and to be able to sort of give that story

back. And it was probably some of the profound, most profound lessons in my whole career happened there. And I remember thinking so much about what a privilege it was to be able to step into some stories where people had been so hurt and traumatized. And when I think about where I came from, I think about how lucky I was, how blessed, how fortunate, how whatever word you want to use, to not have a massive trauma history. Because I do think, for me anyways, it has allowed me to step into other people's hardest moments

with a pretty significant stable base. And when I talk about the importance of just walking people home, we all have a responsibility in this life to do that. And I think given the opportunity to be able to do this as a job every single day has been probably one of the biggest gifts in my, the biggest gift forever. Absolutely. And I think now when I reflect on the fact that, you fact that it took me a really long time to find somebody that I wanted to marry, mostly because I didn't think for a very long time that I deserved to be in a relationship. I was super, super scared after watching my parents' divorce. I didn't trust the fact that rugs couldn't be pulled out from underneath you.

Um, and so it was so much easier to focus on my career. I have 13 years post-secondary education and it made so much more sense to pour myself into my work and to my career and to be somebody I knew in my life that I always wanted to be a mom. And one of the relationships that I had that I almost believed was the forever one. He didn't want children. And it crushed my soul because I don't think I'd ever been more in love with somebody than this human. And I think that it was the biggest reflection piece of my life that I know to the core of me that I love to watch the wonder of children. And if I was going to have an opportunity to have my own, I needed to know that that was a possibility.

And it was an interesting conversation in my own mind about whether I would risk the sacrifice of finding this, I think, true love for something that I didn't even know was possible. And I mean, now knowing now what I know, it was, I think, the biggest risk and the greatest payoff of my life. I met my personal husband when I was at the children's hospital. at the children's hospital. Um, and he's a feedlot nutritionist and, um, which basically means he feeds cows for a living. Um, which is, I always say is obviously very exhausting and difficult, I'm sure. Um, but anyway, he's a nice guy, but he's very, very, very different, uh, than me. And, um, from me, um, we have to talk about how he is the brakes and I am the gas. And the harder he

pushes on the brakes, I fucking full throttle that bitch because nobody puts baby in a corner. But anyway, so it's very, very difficult sometimes to navigate that. But our children children also teach us so much. We had Asher, um, gosh, when I was 36 and it was a beautiful, easy conception and it was a pretty beautiful pregnancy. And then I was a fucking disaster. Uh, postpartum, like you don't even know. I was concerned I was going to kill him. I was concerned I was going to drop him. Um, I will do lots of, I mean, upcoming episodes around parenting and, um, postpartum and just what it means to raise kids these days. Because I think, even though I wrote a book about it, I think about this all the time, how it's a whole new fucking game and we don't have a new set of rules. Um, so Asher taught me more probably than any

human. And then, um, then we got twins, which thank fuck. If I didn't feel like my body was never coming back after that first one, you're welcome. Fucking twins. Anyway, I love them. Uh, and so we got the boy girl, uh, set their spontaneous, so delightful. Uh, we had lost a baby in between the two of those pregnancies, which I got to say, I think about way more than I think we ever give anybody credit for. So I'm going to talk about pregnancy loss and infertility at some points in our lives in this podcast life. And then and only then will we step into the next chapter, which is where we are now. And I think I, you know, we moved back to this little town and I started a private practice. And I started speaking about the hitters, the kickers, the biters in the education system.

And then I met Marty, who, if you are in this brand for very long, if you're around us for very long, you'll know Marty is she runs my whole life. And we're business partners in this little company. And now we speak around the world. And this podcast is meant to be that place where we can bring some of those stories back to you. And I think the people who have made me great, you'll hear about a lot on here. And I also ask this question to many people who didn't make you great. And if you stick around, you'll hear about those too, because I have a lot of people that crushed my soul along the way. All of them are necessary and perfect and beautiful and right on time. It's just really hard to see in the moments. And those are the moments that we're going to unpack around

here because everyone comes from somewhere, even me. And so thank you for listening to my little piece of how I got here. I truly, to the core of me, believe the next chapters are going to be the best ones. So I hope you're along for the ride. I'm a registered clinical psychologist here in beautiful Alberta, Canada. The content created and produced in this show is not intended as specific therapeutic advice. The intention of this podcast is to provide information, resources, some education, and hopefully a little hope.

The Everyone Comes From Somewhere podcast by me, Dr. Jodi Carrington, is produced by Brian Seaver, Taylor McGilvery, and the amazing Jeremy Saunders at Snack Labs. Our executive producer is the one and only, my Marty Piller. Our marketing strategist is Caitlin Beneteau. And our PR big shooters are Des Veneau and Barry Cohen. Our agent, the 007 guy, is Jeff Lowness from the Talent Bureau. And my emotional support during the taping of these credits was and is and will always be my son, Asher Grant.