The Devil You Don’t Know
In The Devil You Don’t Know, Lindsay, Cleveland, and their guests discuss personal growth and development by taking chances and getting out of your comfort zone. Topics range from whimsical to serious and everything in between but are always relevant to growth and development.
The Devil You Don’t Know
Wendy Correa Author of My Pretty Baby: How One Woman Rewrote Her Story And Broke The Cycle
What happens when your family’s secrets become the script your body follows? We invited author Wendy Correa to share the story behind her memoir, My Pretty Baby, and the result is an honest, generous conversation about childhood grief, domestic volatility, and the slow, steady work of healing. From losing her father at seven to navigating a stepfamily shaped by fear and intermittent warmth, Wendy traces how unspoken pain wires our biology—and how breath, therapy, and brave storytelling can rewire it.
We dig into narrative therapy and the power of sensory detail to surface truths the mind hides. Wendy’s acting-class “sense memory” unlocked anger she didn’t know she held, a turning point that eventually led to meditation, yoga, and Buddhist psychology. She explains how to work with the monkey mind, why walking and washing-dishes meditation count, and how to spot the inner committee of critics. We also unpack the complexity of forgiveness: releasing the burden for yourself without reconciling, and holding family to the same standards as friends. Boundaries become a form of compassion when they protect safety and dignity.
Wendy takes us inside her writing process with EMDR and image transformation, showing how trauma processing can reduce triggers while honoring memory. We talk ACEs, hypervigilance, and the nervous system, then bring it back to practical tools: count the breath, name what hurts, begin again. The throughline is simple and profound—trauma is universal, but so is healing. If you’re wrestling with grief, secrecy, or complicated loyalty, this conversation offers language, practices, and permission to write a new ending.
If this resonates, share it with someone who needs it, subscribe for more candid mental health conversations, and leave a review so others can find the show. Your story might be someone else’s survival guide.
Please email us at Gettoknowthedevil@gmail.com
This is Cleveland.
SPEAKER_01:And this is Lindsay.
SPEAKER_00:And this is another episode of The Devil You Don't Know. Today, since I'm doing my second introduction, we are joined by Wendy Correa. That's the correct way to pronounce it, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, that's correct.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, I'm so good. I am so good. Lindsay is like disappointed in me again. She's like, why are you asking the right way to pronounce the name? But we are joined by Wendy Korea, who is the author of My Pretty Baby. Um, I'm gonna just jump into this intro that I wrote. When Wendy was just seven years old, she experienced a loss that shattered her world and the sudden death of her father. And in this powerful and deeply moving conversation that we hope to have, we are gonna speak with Wendy about her book and the traumatic events that shaped her childhood from early grief and living in an abusive home to struggling with self-worth and identity. Um, you know, this is a topic like we were just talking about in the pre-show, about like Lindsay. One of the things Lindsay said, and I'm definitely let Lindsay uh lead on this, is we were really impressed when reading the book about like the vivid memory and the great recall that you had on this. And so just starting from there is like what inspired you to write the book and you know, and let's go from there.
SPEAKER_02:I realized that my family's dysfunction and secrets had written my biography and hence my biology. And I wanted to rewrite my own story and choose my own happy ending. But even more so than just my story. It's about how millions of us carry wounds that science now shows rewires our biology and impacts our health and our relationships for life.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, right. One of my uh favorite authors, Belle Hooks, uh, speaks about that in her um, I think it was a short story she wrote called On Autobiography, and she talked about her own trauma and how narrative therapy, and uh we're both therapists, and I really love narrative therapy. And your book really reminded me of the importance of narrative therapy, which is the telling of one's own story. And writing down that story, like Belle Hooks in in On Autobiography, actually thought of herself as a different person. And then writing herself as a different person helped her not only like examine herself and her trauma from like the outside, but also helped her like reconcile that the the little girl that she once was. And definitely reading your book was what actually reminded me of that experience with bell hooks.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, absolutely. Uh and of course, as you know, we we we are different people as we age and grow and learn things and change. And I also wanted to say, you know, that I was at a place where I could look back and recall a number of these incidents. And people ask me, you know, well, what is Pretty Baby about? And I always say that it's an autopsy of my family and peeling apart the layers of intergenerational and childhood trauma, family dysfunction, family secrets, and addiction, and how I found healing through Buddhism, meditation, yoga, sobriety, music, psychotherapy, Native American spirituality, and eventually writing my book. Um, as Joan Dideon used to say, I write to make sense of the world, and I write to make sense of myself. And so in the actual writing of it, that was another modality, another therapy modality, you might call, um, that I used to heal myself, to make sense of what had happened to me when it happened to my family.
SPEAKER_01:Um, well, I wanted to ask you before, now that you've released this book or it's coming out shortly, do you have family members? And I'm wondering what your experience is like with family members seeing you kind of put everything out there for the world to see.
SPEAKER_02:I do still have a few family members who I am not in contact with.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I'm curious because of my own experiences in life. And I think that uh my in my own experiences in the family, everybody wants to keep everything a secret. Right. So when you do speak up, sometimes it causes a bit of controversy.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Being in African American families, especially, and and it's it I I always just thought of it as just our families, but reading your book really made me realize that family secrets are in every family. And there's this idea of, especially in families with traumas, like we just keep this to ourselves and this just stays in the family. And so how is it that like uh how was it for you like to actually decide to like break this narrative?
SPEAKER_02:Well, uh, as I said, a number of my, you know, my father and my mother are already past, and um I have a brother who um I talk to occasionally. I have a sister I'm estranged from and a niece I'm also estranged from. But um, I have cousins, and I think they're all looking forward to reading my book. Um, I pretty much, you know, when people ask how are, you know, the people your family members going to feel about when they read the book. And I pretty much say anyone that would be angry or pissed off about um my book is already angry and pissed off. And so it's not gonna make any difference at all. And I wanted to say I wrote the book, you know, people, good teachers will tell someone in writing a memoir, just write as if no one is ever gonna read it. That is the way that you need to proceed. You need to be able to tell your story. And for many people, I say you can go ahead and write your story and don't think about publishing it or don't worry, no one else is gonna read it. This is just for you. But as I continued to write my story, it became clear that I needed to have it published and I needed it to be out in the world because it isn't just my story. It is for millions of us. It's for the 61% of us adults who do have some form of adverse childhood experiences. And as I wrote my book, I realized it is a call to action. It is a way so that you and I can have these conversations that I so believe our society needs. We need to be able to talk about these things without shame, without guilt. But the reason that I changed the majority of the names in my book, including my siblings and my niece, is because it isn't about blame or retribution. So it doesn't really matter what their names are. This is my experience. And uh, you can put anybody's name there. And it's not about shame or blame, it's not about calling anybody out. It is about being a cycle breaker and healing. And so it doesn't really matter what the names are. And um I believe, you know, that the few cousins that I still have who will heal hear the story will probably concur with episodes from their own families. So it is a story that needs to be told. And I I it gives me strength and uh, you know, to encourage to tell my story because I do feel that it's not just my story. I'm telling it so that others might uh glean a little bit of courage for themselves to tell their own story, but also for them to see how I went about healing myself. And that's my main concern, too, is that people be able to feel like, okay, I could take one step in the healing. I can take one step in bringing the light to these, for instance, buried family secrets or the things that we had to keep quiet about or or never talk about. Because our generation, um, yours, you Cleveland and Lindsay and mine, and this generation, we now have so many more tools and the ability to have these conversations. And I think it's fabulous that the two of you are doing a podcast like this so that other people can learn about how they might start a conversation with the uh their family, for instance. Right. And yeah, we have these tools now, you know. But like my mom would always say to me, you know, Wendy, we didn't have Oprah when I was growing up. And I believe that now we've removed some of that shame. And so we're having these conversations now, and this is a good thing.
SPEAKER_01:I agree. And I think it it sheds light for people on the fact that it is okay to have experienced these things. And it's pretty normal in this world to have had these adverse experiences because I think we are taught so often that it's shameful or it's something that we shouldn't discuss. And there has to be amongst all of us, and this is something I talk about with my clients also, I'm not healed either. And it's important to know that everybody has healing to do.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. And before I ever had it, you know, before I knew all that, I thought, oh, I just have this dirty little secret. Everybody else has these perfect families. And, you know, until we start talking about it, going, oh, you too? Oh, well, hear this. And like, you know, we the more that we talk about it, the more people will be able to share that. And we will be able to lift that veil of secrecy and that veil of shame.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, a hundred percent. So two of the quotes that you have in the beginning of your book, the first is by uh the first was by Brene Brene Brown, and this is one that really struck me is one day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through, and it will be someone else's survival guide. And then the second quote by Steve Allman, which is your job as a writer is to love and to mourn and to tell the unbearable story so that others might feel less alone in theirs. And that's really important because someone who's been doing this work for a little bit and Lindsay's been doing it a little longer than me, it's one of the things, and why stories like yours are so important is because one of the things that clients often feel is like you said, is they're alone in their suffering. They're alone in their shame. And like this, I'm the only person this has ever happened to. And then when you see somebody like you, Wendy, who's functional, who's successful, and then you read, like, wow, this is what happened to her, that it actually does bring encouragement to other folks that you that you can actually overcome your trauma. One point I want to make is, and I want to go back to something that you said about the family, is Terence Real in his book, Us, talks about that the first person to break the cycle of trauma in a family has to face the fire of the pathology of the family. And that you are in writing this book and everything that you've gone through, have had to face the fire of the past. And he said it takes a lot to be the first person in that family to break that cycle. I think one of them, and Lindsay knows her quotes better than me, but I think you always say that in a dysfunctional family.
SPEAKER_01:I always say in a toxic dynamic, uh, the healthiest person is the one who causes the most friction. The person who stands up and says, I'm going to do something differently, I'm going to heal, I'm going to speak up. It disrupts the status quo of everybody keeping the secret or everybody following the set of rules in the family. And that person then inevitably becomes the black sheep often.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, absolutely. And to add on to that, I learned how to do that through my Buddhist studies, through Buddhist psychology and the writings of the Zen master Tek Not Han, who said that the art of happiness is the art of suffering well. And, you know, even Robert Frost said the only way out is through. And through that work and through the philosophies of 12-step programs, I learned that in order to heal, I had to sit with the pain of my family through generations. I had to acknowledge and embrace that pain and allow it to be. That is the way to heal is by sitting with the pain, by acknowledging it and investigating it and allowing it to be and incorporating that into your being. I spent years trying to push away the pain through substances and uh many people who have uh addictive issues, it's the same. So until you're actually willing to be the one that sits in the fire or walks through the fire of intergenerational trauma and childhood trauma, you have to be the one willing to do that. And that's what I did.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I that is really so interesting to me because I have done a lot of studies of yoga, meditation, breath work. I'm currently in a two-year training with Tara Bracken, Tara Brock, and Jack Cornfield. And it it has been so transformational for me. And beginning to study meditation more than 10 years ago was just a pivotal moment in my life. And it wasn't easy in the beginning, but it's that consistency of the practice that gets you to come out on the other side with such a different outlook on things and such a level of self-compassion.
SPEAKER_00:I want to I want to start off a second, um, because I had written a little bit of an outline, but I just like to also have a conversational uh speak also. I want to touch on a little bit about the childhood grief um and this idea of losing your father at age age seven. And a lot of times, folks, my neighbor, my dad died about four years ago. And my neighbor, her, her uh, her husband died about the same time. And she was in therapy and she said to me one day, she was like, Cleveland, you know something that I've come to learn that grief is a chronic condition, right? And so what she meant is that, you know, grief just never goes away. Like it is always there, it is always something that marks us and wounds us. So, in your own personal experience, I and this is one of the quotes from your boot book losing my father was a wound. But what hurt more was being alone with that pain. Tell us a little bit more about that and how that'll help folks. And how can you help folks that are living with not only the pain of the loss of a loved one, but maybe a pain of a trauma or a secret that they're holding.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and as you said, I was seven years old. So developmentally, uh, that is an awful uh wounding for a child of that age. Um, therapists say that a child losing a parent, especially under the age of 12, is the most traumatic because of how the brain is is developing at that time. And it was the first time that I felt a separation of myself from other people because my mom and my older sister, who was 19 at the time, and my brother, who was 14, had their own way of dealing with the grief. But it didn't occur to them back in 1964 to explain anything to me. They didn't even attempt to try to explain what death was, what death meant, or even to say, you know, even to murmur some comforting words like, you know, your daddy was very sick, and the doctors did all they could, but he was too ill, and he's so sad that he's never gonna get to see you grow up, but he would want you to be happy even though he's dead. No one murmured any of those things. Or even more importantly, you needn't worry that your mom will die because she's very healthy. So don't worry, she's not going to die. So as I watched the old the adults in my life, uh, how they were dealing with grief, it didn't make sense to me as a seven-year-old child. So I felt myself separate from them and I felt so alone. And it was the first time that I really felt this disconnect from other human beings that no one offered me any kind of words of encouragement in that way. Of course, now as an adult, um, I realized that in 1964, a lot of people did not have the wherewithal to explain to a child about death. And we know so much more about that now. And in fact, in college, I had to seek out understanding about death. And even as a kid, I remembered writing papers about how to explain to children about death. And I was engrossed in euthanasia. And in college, I was so lucky to actually spend time with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross when she was still alive. And I did workshops with her on death and dying, and I became obsessed with how to explain death. And um, so now we have so much more information. But for me at the time, I realized that I was just left with this unresolved grief and loss and sadness. And it wasn't until years later, in my 20s, in an acting class, a sense memory acting class, that I came in touch with those feelings. And then in therapy, it was the first time that a therapist said, You've had low grade depression since you were seven years old, since the death of your father.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. I I found your vivid memories so fascinating from recalling being sent to the neighbor's house and the neighbors telling you to go home, and from your experiences in church. And I saw a lot of themes come forward. Almost, it felt like you didn't know. To me, as the reader, I thought you didn't really, there was there was a lot of confusion around it, and you thought you had to do certain things. And then there were times where you'd run out. And then I think I read about the baptism. Is that correct? And I thought, wow, now she's trying to fit in. Right. And I can't imagine as a little child what that must have been like. And it just to me, the big theme was around confusion. And you know, what what do I do? Where do I fit in? Where do I go from here?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I want to add, it goes back to this idea of the wound, right? It's like I also feel like at that point in your life, you realize, like, man, none of these adults in my life actually have the answers, and none of them can actually help me, right? Mom, when your dad died, instead of you know, comforting you or talking to you, was like, hey, go play. And that's got to be something that sticks with you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I I can't imagine that. I mean, should um, you know, God forbid anything should have happened to my husband, I certainly would not have sent my son to the neighbors to play. And it would have been a completely different sort of, you know, circumstances and situation. I wanted to go back to what Lindsay said about the memory, um, because yes, I want to point out that um, particularly, you know, children uh who have been subjected to trauma, but even adults, I mean, you will remember some traumatic event very vividly. And since my father died when I was seven, and that set off um this, you know, brain mechanism that everything became very vivid. And so I do recollect a lot, and I'm sure it's because my fight or flight, my body was flooded with hormones for most of my life. Um, and that does heighten your memory and the details. But I would like to point out that in my 20s, in an acting class, when I did the sense memory acting class, a Stanislavsky sense memory class, where we this was this is an exercise for actors to be able to make their characters more three-dimensional and vivid by recalling a memory such as a childhood memory through the senses. So taste, touch, smell, visual. It turns out that in writing, that is also a tool for bringing characters to life and making scenes alive and to make them more cinematic. So I had I outlined this in my book, The Sense of Memory Class, when I thought that I was doing this very happy memory of my father who died, of us walking around his garden and him plucking a strawberry and popping it into my mouth, and those the senses of smelling the honeysuckle. And smell is one of the most intense um senses that we have. It goes directly to the brain. So the smell of honeysuckle takes me right back to holding my daddy's hand, looking up at him as he inhales this honeysuckle. And I see him sort of like inhaling it like it's the elixir of life. So I set out in my 20s to do this sense memory exercise of my father. And it was just going to be this wonderful little memory about my dad. But as I am as I am telling my class and my theater teacher the details of what I'm seeing, what I'm tasting, what I'm touching, these emotions are bubbling up inside of me that I have no idea what they are. I'm not in touch with them. They don't fit this happy little memory that I have. And I'm choking on words when my teacher says to me, Wendy, speak to him, speak to him. And I did not know how to speak to my dead father. And my teacher said, speak to him, tell him what you're feeling. And I blurted out, I'm mad at you. And I was shocked. Like I had no idea that I was mad at my father for dying. Did I miss him? Was I sad? Yes. But I didn't know until that moment in my 20s, 19 years after he's died, that I had these feelings that I'm mad at you for dying. And I was mad at him for dying, for not taking care of himself, or just I'm mad at you for dying because that then he abandoned me. And my whole life changed then. My whole life changed. And I spent my childhood fantasizing and with magical realism about how my life might have been had he not died. I wouldn't have had the alcoholic, violent stepfather and all of the things that happened after his death that sent me on this trajectory. So that's a long-winded explanation about talking about memory. And when I sat down to write it, I used that very same exercise from my acting class to go back. I used other things. I used photos and journals and um, you know, emails and letters, but I used that sense memory class to put myself back into that moment that I was writing about. And that also helped with the details that I remembered.
SPEAKER_00:And that's why I 100% believe in journaling. I 100% believe in narrative uh narrative therapy. And like I said, it goes back to this ideal that Bell Hooks even talked about in autobiography, is that it is a re-examination of yourself, right? Like you having for this acting teacher to help you use that sense memory to get back to where you were, you realize, like, oh, snap. Like I'm mad at my father for dying. And I'm mad at my father because, like, if you know anything about Brothin Bonner's nested systems, it's like these different stages of life that we go, that we go through. But this, the whole trajectory of my life that would have been this one direction is now this man's fault because he and it's an unreasonable thing because he didn't trust me, he still would want to be here right now. Of course. But but you were angry with him because he's gone. And the mess that your life became after he was gone, and all you could do is think about is that this is that that that anger is real and palpable because all you can think about is what could have been. I definitely get that.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And those emotions were the emotions of the seven-year-old. They weren't the 25-year-old. The 25-year-old would say, Well, of course, he it's not his fault, you know. Like it's the seven-year-old who didn't understand why he died that is mad at him for dying.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. But those traumas that we have, and I'll definitely let Lindsay speak to that too. Those traumas that we have, uh, Terence Real says, and us, like we get stuck in that, right? And we get stuck in that little adaptive, we get stuck in that adaptive child instead of being the wise adult and these things that hurt us, like we get stuck there. Do you have anything to add to that?
SPEAKER_01:I agree with you. What happens often is we develop personality and character traits based on the things that we experience. And in our childhood, they keep us safe, but then in adulthood, they don't serve us anymore. But most people do get stuck and then they can't get out of it. They don't know a way out of it. And I would like to learn a little bit more about because you mentioned in your 20s, you did this uh, was it like an acting class? Yes, acting class. You know, and it's interesting because that was something that really even heightened your awareness even more, those practices. And that was at a time where you weren't even ready to write this book yet, right? The book wasn't even uh in your mind. But I would love to learn a little bit more about especially some of these Buddhist practices and how you came to that and how that helped with your healing, because it's something that it was so transformational for me that it's something I want, I want all of my clients to practice. And it's so hard for me when they're like, it's just not for me. I can't do it, because I know how how great it's been for me and how much it's helped me to change my life. So I I love, I love that that you had that experience. And I would actually love to hear when that came into play and how that um, you know, began to kind of help you to transform even more.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it was when I left home or fled home, I would say, and I went to college in the Bay Area and then and then went to Humboldt State University, and I was really beginning to open my eyes to the whole world in many things and culture and art, and and I had a very strong um survival instinct, and I always felt some spiritual connection as you read in my book. I I eschewed um organized religion, but I knew that there was some other way that I. could connect with God or goddess or higher power or inner wisdom. And you know, back then, um 1970, 1970s, of course, we didn't have the internet, but we what was our internet were flyers tacked on our health food store bulletin boards. And I saw something about a Buddhist retreat. And I signed up for it. And I went. It was a three-day Zen meditation retreat. And I had read some books on meditation, but they seemed very academic and uh a little confusing to me. So I wanted to actually experience it for myself. And I was very disconcerted to learn I didn't even know how to breathe. I had been holding my breath since I was seven, you know, years old and I didn't even know how to breathe. And the the breathing that they wanted me to do, it made me dizzy, it made me sleepy. I didn't know how to quiet my mind. The practice then was to inhale one and exhale one, inhale two and exhale two all the way to 10, and then you start over again. And so many times I was counting 13, 14, whoops, where did I go? Oh, okay. Come back to one. And that was the practice. And of course, you know, then there was um oh my God, my back hurts, my my hips hurt, I I can't sit this long and I couldn't wait until we did the walking mistake. Uh-huh. And you know so um but even you know as I'm writing in my book when everything was coming to a head I would say um when you get you know to that section of my book when everything was really at its worst and I had had years of meditating I still couldn't um sometimes meditate. I would try to relax and breathe but then I would jump up because it was just like a tsunami of emotions. And so that is when to me it's really important to use what I call walking meditation, moving meditation, washing dishes meditation. You know there's many kinds of ways to meditate and we don't have to just sit in a cross legged position. When I go to yoga when I go on my walks when I go hiking that is a meditation for me. And so I learned to adjust for my own purposes and that it's okay if I inhale one and exhale one physiologically just that you're already starting to quiet your mind. But what was important is that it educated me about how we can have these old cassette tapes running in our head of voices from our past, voices from our family and that they could just be running amok in the background and were not even aware of it. I had read this book years ago by Richard Carlson that to this day I wish everyone could read. It's a tiny little book uh taming your gremlin and it was such an aha moment for me I was like wow I didn't realize that I had a committee there is a committee of voices in my head that are always weighing in or making comments and that was life changing for me that I could finally stop and say okay committee thanks for your input but I've got this and that is also the monkey mind that they talk about in Buddhism in meditation and even as I was older and I was teaching yoga and I would often say to my yoga students you know in meditating just imagine that your mind is like a two year old child. We this toddler is meant to be active and bouncing around and you want to give the toddler something to do. So give it some paper and some crayons and let it be active and focused on the paper and the crayons. It's the same thing with the mind the mind is meant to be constantly on the move and constantly looking for danger and trying to keep us safe. So in order to appease the mind we're going to give it something to do we're going to give it the activity of watching the breath of following the breath of counting the breath and that is how you proceed and even if it's taking a walk and listening to your breath for inhale one exhale one and then you're off somewhere bring it back and just as as Jack Cornfield and Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg who are my teachers will say you can always begin again. Right.
SPEAKER_01:Yes I always say that that's okay just begin again and also all of the teachers say when they began to meditate initially they were just the way I was which was in class they had one eye that they'd peek open to see what was going on to make sure they weren't the only one who missed something. And I find that very amusing too because it is very hard and I and a lot of my clients when I get them to do it successfully they say the first couple of times all they could do is cry. And I'm like that's so great. Right there's such a a moment there for them and and just this week I had such a great moment with a client where she said you know I think I just want to see you once a month and then every other week in between now I just want to do that sitting you taught me. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And and well even the Zen teachers that Tik Not Han I remember reading him saying I'm human. I'm like everybody else I wake up in the morning and I have to wash my face and I have to brush my teeth and then I have to have some tea and then I have to have my breakfast you know I'm it we're human. And so I think you know some people have the erroneous idea that oh I can't do this. You're different than I am and that's simply not the case. We're all human. We all have central nervous systems and we all have you know monkey minds. So it's just a matter of of practice and um having compassion for yourself.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah before we switch gears I want to just say that reminds me of what Dr. Robert Glover says anything one man can do another man can do also. And so when you see someone do something never say well that's just Wendy's journey or that's Cleveland's journey or that's Lindsay's journey. That can be your journey too if you learn how to make that path right I want to I want to switch gears for a second and I want to talk about living under the weight of fear and the mixed emotions of having adults in your life who don't protect you. You know recently I do some work um with the at-risk community up in Washington Heights and unfortunately your story is is one that I've seen repeated over and over and over again in family after family where where moms choose a toxic and it's not I don't want to just say it's just women because I've seen men do the same thing but they choose a toxic individual to come into the family that now disrupts the family. And you you have this quote here let me just see if I can uh I can find it it's like accept Paul or lose mom, right? And it's like you put your children through this impossible choice of I want to stay with my mom, I want to stay with my parent, but I am in a house of domestic abuse. So how do you how do you how do you come out from under that? Or what suggestions do you have for folks even now? Like I've I've worked I've worked with folks as as as recently as in their 40s that are still carrying secrets of abuse and shame that happened in their homes and are still internalizing that shame and still holding on to that fear and still have very complicated emotions about the adults that are still very much alive in their life that failed them.
SPEAKER_01:So how how would you give how would your book help those people or how has your own journey can help folks well I'd also want to add to that too as well if you can speak to this something that I observe and is that often when it is family, people have a harder time letting it go and and moving on from it. Whereas if it were friends, they'd just say I'm not going to spend time with that person anymore. So I'd like you know I'd like to reflect on that as well because the family dynamic and that was what you experienced was really significant for you.
SPEAKER_02:Yes and just touching on what you said Lindsay um Eamon Dolan just released a booking and family estrangement and he says we need to hold family members to the same uh you know we need to hold them accountable in the same way that we would hold friends. If a friend is abusive to you and calls you names or hits you or whatever the case may be, you would be like I'm out of here I'm not your friend anymore. And but with a family member we even put this word estrangement. We don't say we're estranged from a friend who was abusive like why do we call it estrangement when it's a family member and I think more and more books like mine and um other books about estrangement and setting boundaries with family members we are starting to understand that we do not have to live by the blood is thicker than water and family always comes first and oh but they're family you can forgive them we're breaking free of those shackles and those ideas that are pushed on us. So that is giving us courage to set those boundaries but it took me a lifetime to do that because uh as you understand at seven years old I I was um trained groomed um you know trauma traumatized from a very young age and so my circumstances are uh perhaps different in that losing a parent I was so attached to my mother and um as my therapist explained to me of course you wanted to protect your mother that's what a child who loses a parent wants to take care of the other parent. So I immediately what would do whatever my mother wanted so that I didn't lose her. And she chose my stepdad. So therefore you know if I wanted to have a relationship with my mom I had to have this relationship with him. And so that was ingrained in me from a very very young age. It was not until my immediate my husband and my son were being affected that my tiger mama jumped in to say oh hell no you know I'm protecting my family the way that you didn't protect me. Right. So it took me a full adulthood and in fact you know it was really only after I had written my first draft and a teacher of mine read it and in all the margins of editing he would say things like what the hell is wrong with your mother why didn't she protect you? And I I was shocked it was a revelation to me I was so um you know trained to take care of my mother that I never wanted to hold her accountable. I never wanted to say that she was culpable and complicated by the fact that she was the only person in my family that I felt loved by. I didn't feel loved by my siblings and certainly not really my stepdad. And so she was the only person that cared about me. There's no way I was going to throw her under the bus. So in my situation it was complicated by the death of my father when I was seven and the messages that I got from her to just focus on the good side of my stepdad. But for someone who that you know training um does not apply to it really does take a lot of courage to set boundaries with family members.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah since our show I always call Lindsay the queen of boundaries but why are boundaries because here's the thing about family and this is one of the things that frustrates me about family is like what and we all just talked about I've worked with so many people that their abusers are just still sitting there and and everybody knows that this person was an abuser. Everybody knows this person was a total piece of crap but it's like it reminds me of Encanto we don't talk about not Bruno was an abuser but we don't talk about Bruno. Yet this person just gets to sit there and it's it's almost like you're re-traumatized because it's like how dare you tell me to look at the good side of the person that just beat the hell out of me. And so how do you learn to reconcile those two those two parts of your mom and and then and then I want to talk about forgiveness and you really have some good quotes about forgiveness but how do you reconcile those two parts of your mom?
SPEAKER_02:So I also thought of my mom as a victim as I was older and it wasn't until she was in her 70s that she confided in me that as a child she had been repeatedly sexually assaulted by a neighbor and I didn't it made me realize that um a lot of her decisions in life and her personality and her ability to not talk about bad things it I did um I continue to to see her as a victim. And the other thing that I want to point out is the intermittent reinforcement that my therapist pointed out to me because my stepdad was not all horrible and that's a chapter of mine black and white and gray all over it would have been absolutely wonderful if he had just been the horrible person that nobody you know pointed out. He could also be charming and loving and generous it's just that then you never knew what stupid thing was going to set him off and then he's um threatening to kill everybody. So that re that that intermittent reinforcement of the good times I was always hoping the good times were coming back. So even to this day Cleveland I have a hard time holding my mother accountable I can say intellectually my mom was a codependent and now I understand why but um it's hard to to do that just because of everything that you already know about my upbringing and and sort of how my brain was literally rewired you know and I say in my book too when I'm pouring their ashes together you know I wish you guys could both be alive for just you know a half an hour so we could talk about the things that you never wanted to talk about.
SPEAKER_01:Definitely and and what you said reminded me of I think in the situations you have to look at your mother as she she had to try to keep herself safe. And so when someone else is walking around in fear but it takes a higher level of thinking and understanding to have that realization. But you know I think often in my household that's how you know that's how it was. And for me I I got a really I felt a sense of compassion for my father once I had um an interaction with my grandmother that was particularly negative and hurtful and I thought oh wow that's probably where he got some of this from and it made me look at my family in a different light.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah I I I think um part of forgiveness is is exactly what you said and I can't remember who said it but I think it's Terence Real says one of the things that we have to understand or it might have been Jack Canfield says one of the things we have to understand is everyone is trying to do good even the worst person that you've known and I do believe that there's genuine evil in the world and so I count those people out of that. But even the worst person you know is trying to do good in the best way that they can. And unfortunately so many of us were raised by damaged people and damaged parents and it's like a pot that's dented and you cook a cake in it and it's all obviously it's gonna be the cake's gonna come out dented and then it and so it's a pattern that repeats itself and it goes back to this idea of being the first one in the family to say enough stop I'm gonna face the fire of this but it now it brings us to this idea of forgiveness. And I remember I once I worked with a client and I could see you know that he was torn up by some family trauma and some family secrets that were going on and I actually said to him hey man you got to forgive and let that go and the first thing I'm not this is not a blue podcast so I'm not gonna say what he said back to me but it kind of was like you can go F yourself and F your ideas and F all of that and I was like that's what I'm talking about. Because why are you mad at me now? Because this rage that you're holding on to I'm not telling you to forgive the person right I'm not telling you to forgive it and act like the stuff didn't happen. What I'm saying is you've got to let that anger go because it is killing you. Right. And I want to talk to you about your own ideas about that and these own ideas of that you're not damaged goods and that maybe it was the people around you who were damaged and how you brought forgiveness in to heal yourself eventually.
SPEAKER_02:Yes and a lot of that came from Jack Cornfield and his writing on Buddhist psychology that forgiveness is for the forgiver not for the transgressor it is for us to let go of that rage that anger that pain that hurt that resentment that is damaging to us and they they say the Buddha said that anger is like picking up a hot coal as if you're gonna throw it at another person. You're only burning your own hand and Jack Cornfield says we forgive for ourselves to have grace and compassion and love and understanding for ourselves for ourselves to be held in dignity and that does not condone what the other person did at all.
SPEAKER_01:Nope I always say that yeah it doesn't mean that you are allowing the other person you know you're it's not like you're you know saying to them oh it's it's okay what you did it's just that you're relieving yourself of the burden right you're relieving yourself of the burden that you're holding on to it doesn't mean that the transgressions of another are okay and you're condoning them.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely not so you're not saying it's okay you're not saying um you're forgiving for yourself but also forgiveness does not necessarily mean reconciliation and I say in my book just because I forgive them does not mean I want to have lunch with them. So that's where boundaries come in I forgive you but I don't need to have a relationship with you and I need to take care of myself um so that is that that to me is the essence and and also people have the right to forgive on their own terms in their own time and honestly to not forgive at all I believe there are some things that are completely unforgivable. And so I'm not here to tell anyone you should forgive anybody but if you can then it does I I feel a tremendous release from forgiving everyone but we're not going to have lunch. No I agree.
SPEAKER_01:A struggle that I have is um and I've talked about this in my meditation training and in my own therapy is that I consider myself to be a pretty compassionate person. And so if there is somebody that I really don't enjoy spending time with or if the relationship is not for me, whether or not they've done something or not, I struggle that with my do I lack compassion if if I you know don't don't spend the time with them or as you would say if I don't have lunch with them. And my own therapist said to me that no, because then you're having compassion for yourself. So I'm wondering what you think of that.
SPEAKER_02:Oh 100% that's exactly it is that first you must have compassion for yourself. And that's where you begin you can't have compassion for another human being until you have compassion for yourself. And so for whatever reason you don't owe anybody um an explanation or an apology if a certain relationship is not working for you, you know, live and let live and I bless you and I release you and with compassion but we're not gonna have lunch right that's what I'm gonna use from now on.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah I like that so much. Yep.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah and I've always told folks that when when we talk about when I've talked to folks about forgiveness especially when letting go of past traumas is I'm not asking you to for to forget. It is not about forgetting right if you burn yourself on fire it's not like you're gonna be mad at the fire but you're gonna be well I'm gonna handle that fire a little differently next time. It's that and it's just you just have to understand and I love what you had to say there. I'm just not gonna have lunch with that person. But your your one of my favorite quotes in your book is I did not forgive them for I did not forgive them for them. I forgave them for me. And it might sound selfish but a degree of selfishness is what you need when you have to heal right I once worked with somebody who who who went through very bad trauma and they were like I'm so angry all the time and I'm mad and I'm upset. And I was like well why shouldn't you be you know the world kind of teaches us this this this weird idea that we shouldn't be be depressed and we shouldn't be anxious. But one of the things that Dr. Gabor Mate says is it's not healthy to be well adjusted in a toxic world. And if there are situations in the world that have made you depressed and anxious we're not saying like lean into the depression or lean into the anxiety but kind of take the journey that you've taken which is why am I depressed? Why am I anxious? Why am I on these substances? Why can't I find myself? And now use that as a journey to move forward and transform your life and as you have and not only transform your life but write this great work that is going to be a good guide to help other people overcome their own trauma.
SPEAKER_01:It's more of using it as a self-inquiry than pointing the finger at the other person that you feel angry at or who's caused the you know conflict in your life.
SPEAKER_02:And we could shoulda coulda woulda ourselves to death. So we gotta just have compassion and grace with ourselves first. And we know you know as an adult now I I I know my central nervous system pretty well and I know when I'm feeling overwhelmed or when um I need a break from a certain conversation or when I just need some quiet time alone out in nature. You have to take care of yourself first. I tell this to clients all the time who are caregivers. I mean everybody uses the same um you know story about being on an airplane and should we need oxygen, the adults put it on your face first and before you put it on a child because as a caregiver you cannot take care of anyone else until you've taken care of yourself. And it's the same for just being a member of the human world and human society is that we do have to take care of ourselves first. And that is not being selfish that is being self full so that you can be a good human steward of of the world and to have good relationships with other people we we have to fill our own cup up first.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah as we get ready to wrap this up I want to ask you um some two two final questions and and one of them is what the process of writing my pretty baby like for you the the actual process. Yeah so when what let me let me let me clarify it. So when when in revisiting these painful memories and then crafting this memoir what new insights came up for you or did it help you even further along in your journey and did it give you a sense of closure or was it or a sense of catharsis were you able to blud it all out and then feel even more of a weight come off of you that's the that is the long version of my short question.
SPEAKER_02:Yes absolutely to me writing and writing my book is another of you know it takes a village of of the therapy um the Buddhist studies writing is so cathartic and healing and again as Joan Dideon said I I write to make sense of the world I write to make sense of myself and so it was so healing and so helpful to write out the story to look at it on the paper. It I began to unravel this Gordian knot and the question that I had been asking myself my entire life what happened to my family? And the actual writing process again as I said I used that sense memory and recreating and reliving and remembering what happened and there were times when you know it brought up deep pain and grief and sadness and I found myself just you know sobbing. And luckily at the time that I was writing the bulk of my book I was also in therapy and the therapist um I used the wonderful technique of EMDR as I was going through and reliving a lot of this I was able to process those memories and as you know EMDDR is considered by the World Health Organization one of the best tools that we have for processing trauma. And I was able to process it in a way that of course I still have those memories but I'm not so easily triggered by them physiologically and emotionally. And she also used a technique with me called IMTT image transformation so that you are sort of transforming this memory and processing it and releasing it in a very gentle way. So luckily I was doing those things at the same Time that I was writing my book, but I was also studying all the works of Gabor Mate and Bessel van der Polk and Peter Levine and Nadine Burke Harris. I was reading those books and understanding, oh, right. Now I understand that I have a seven out of a 10 on the adverse childhood experiences score. And it isn't something that I've made up in my head. These things happen to me. This is real. I'm not just weak that I have an anxiety disorder. This is how I was programmed. This is how my biology was wired. But I can do these things to heal myself. And I still have, you know, those instincts that I have to keep check on. You know, when my son was a teenager and living at home and he'd want to take off on his bike. I was the mom, the anxious mom of like, you know, well, wait, where's your helmet? And, you know, I still, my husband left this morning to go visit a site. He's an architect and he had his safety, you know, vest on. And I was like, where's your helmet? Um, because I've had, you know, people die. And um, I'm always, you know, sort of like waiting for the other shoe to drop. And I have, even like doing this podcast, I have to say to, you know, when I was feeling anxious and nervous, no, it's nothing bad that's happening. Lindsay and Cleveland are wonderful people and it's gonna be fabulous. But I have to sort of speak sometimes um intellectually to my body, to myself, to say there's a there's a difference here. The anxiety that you're feeling is more excitement. It's not frightening.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's what Mel Robbins says is you got to reframe that anxiety. And I just want to correct you. Lindsay's a wonderful person. The jury's out on me.
SPEAKER_04:I was going to say the same thing. I was actually gonna say the same thing. I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00:But uh the last thing I want to say, um, and then I'll let Lindsay uh wrap up any comments that that she wants as we approach, um, as we approach the hour, is your journey reminds me of the scripture in Philippians 2.12, which a colleague uh reminded me of the second half, which is the Philippians 2.12, I believe is the scripture, says, work out your own salvation. And then one of my colleagues who's from the south, I can't help it, I gotta do her accent, said, and you forgot the last part, it's with fear and trembling. And it's like, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, which is the journey is is the listen, the road to fixing yourself is not easy. It is a very hard journey, and it is one that unfortunately will last until we take our last breath. But it is one that it takes like I've like leading your story and seeing how far you've come and seeing how far you've continued to go, is it is a uh uh a journey that is full of fear and trembling, but it is worth really, really, really worth it to work out your own salvation. And so going back to that initial quote is I love that this that this story is gonna be a guide to so many people out there who are going through hell, who are going through family secrets, and your story is gonna help them see that they're not alone. Um, and that's really and that's really it for me. The core message. Um what is the core message and the last and the that you want folks to take away from from this book?
SPEAKER_02:What I want people to know is that trauma is universal, but so is healing. And telling the truth about what happened isn't about blame or retribution, it's about breaking cycles and healing. And especially if you have children, I believe one of the greatest gifts that you can give your children is to be the cycle breaker yourself and to know when you're going through that fear and trembling. On the other side of it, healing is possible and it's contagious in the best sense of the word. And I end my book with another Brene Brown quote that says, When we deny our stories, they define us. When we own our stories, we get to write a brave new ending.
SPEAKER_00:I love that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love that too. I think that's actually a great place for us to wrap up.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think it is. Lindsay, you have any final comments?
SPEAKER_01:No, I think this was great, and I I really enjoyed this time together. I really loved the book, and I loved just how how vivid and descriptive it was, and I would love to share it with even some of my clients.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, please do share it with everyone. Yes. Thank you so much for this opportunity. No, thanks. And I'm so grateful for the both of you doing this work out into the world because these are the conversations that we need to have, whether they're in a in a therapy session one-on-one, or whether they're on a podcast, or someone reading my book. These are the conversations that we need to have, and thank you both so much for the work you're doing.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Wendy. So before we go, your book comes out on um November 4th.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, 11 days and counting down.
SPEAKER_00:Don't be jealous. I know only guys listening to this, I'm gonna drop this uh next week uh so that folks will know. So 11 days and counting from today. So when this episode drops, it'll probably be eight days and counting. But you can definitely find this book on all major sellers.
SPEAKER_02:I believe it's published by Simon and Schuster, so it'll be It's published by SheWrites Press and distributed by Simon and Schuster. And people can find me on social media and my website uh www.wendybkorea.com. And on Instagram, I'm Wendy B asmboy Korea, and on Facebook, I'm Wendy Korea. And yes, they can find my book pre-order uh right now, but um November 4th, it is available wherever you buy your books.
SPEAKER_00:Barnes Noble's Amazon. Is there gonna be an audiobook version of this also?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, thank you so much for asking. I just finished my audiobook and yesterday went into the studio to correct a few things, and I'm going to be uploading that to Audible within a couple of days. So hopefully the audiobook is released on November 4th with the paperback book as well.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so once again, that is my free baby, it'll be released on November. I don't know how we just check the day of November 4th. Yeah, what day of the week that is, I was gonna say the day of the week is Tuesday. Tuesday, November 4th. And we look forward to stories every week. Um this has been Cleveland and Wednesday and Wednesday. And thank you for tuning in to another episode of The Devil You Don't Know.
