Shift

In this final chapter of our second sister series, my sisters Kate, Teresa, and I reflect on the slow, complicated shift—the one that happened in our mother’s final years, and the one we had to make in ourselves to survive and heal.

We talk about what it was like to be adults with a mother still deep in the storm of untreated mental illness and addiction, and how we eventually found our way to firmer ground. We explore the boundaries we had to set, the pain of waiting for change, and the quiet hope that crept in when she finally began to seek help. She didn’t become someone new—but she did begin to come home to herself.

This episode is about recognizing the moments when something begins to shift—internally and externally. It’s about separating a person from their illness. About forgiving without an apology. And about choosing to heal, even when the past still echoes.

If you’ve ever loved someone who struggled, or if you’ve felt stuck in a story that wasn’t changing, this conversation is for you.

Host & Producer: Jenn St John
Editor: Andrew Schiller
Website: www.jennstjohn.ca
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Transcript

Podcast title:                         The Shadows We Cast

Episode title:                         Shift

Episode No.:                          9

Podcast Host:                       Jenn St John

Podcast Guests:                   Kate Baker and Teresa Dunford

Content Warnings:               Explicit – discussions around mental health, trauma and addictions

Running Time:                      47:54

PODCAST INTERVIEW:

Teresa  00:02

It's okay to not be okay. That was not the tagline for mom's generation. That was not the tagline for our generation, and thank goodness that our children are experiencing what's hopefully just the beginning of it being okay to not be okay sometimes,

Jennifer St John  00:24

hello and welcome to the shadows. We cast a podcast about what we carry, the impact we leave, and the messy, beautiful reality of mental health. I'm Jen st John, a writer, business owner and a mental health advocate who grew up in a family shaped by mental illness. Some of it was heartbreaking, some of it darkly funny, and all of it shaped who I am today. Here we're going to share honest conversations, stories from me, from you and from those who have walked this road in different ways. Through journal entries, letters from my mom and real conversations, we're going to pull back the layer on mental health, the tough parts, the moments that shaped us and how we move forward together. So grab a coffee, settle in and let's talk.

Jennifer St John  01:15

Before we begin. Just a quick note. This episode includes adult themes like addiction, mental illness, trauma and suicidal ideation. Please take care in choosing when and where to listen, especially if you're in a sensitive place, or if you have little ones around. I also just want to remind you that I am not a mental health professional. The conversations that you hear on this podcast are grounded in lived experience, mine and the stories generously shared by others. My reflections, questions and opinions come from that place and not from clinical training. Our goal here is to create connection, not to diagnose. This is a space for real stories, honest conversations, and the hope that in hearing them, you might feel a little less alone. This episode is the final chapter in our second sister series, which is a conversation that I have with my two sisters about what it was like to have our mom in our lives as adults while she was still struggling with addiction and mental illness. We talk about that stretch of time before things began to shift from when she was still deep in the storm. We share the moment that she started to seek support, and how she began to figure out her medications and find coping tools that really truly helped her. She didn't become someone different, but we did watch her as she came home to herself in a way that she never had before. We also talk about how our childhood experiences shaped the careers that we chose, and how therapy and forgiveness really became a big part of our path, and how even when healing wasn't clean or complete, that it was still worth choosing before we begin. I want to share something from my mom's journal written in the years after she finally started to ask for help. She wrote seven years ago, I decided I wanted to feel whole, well, happy, healthy, excited and fully alive, to get into bed at night thinking today was a good day, a day that I lived in the very best way I could, not abusing myself or anyone else, and tomorrow will be even better. So if you have ever loved somebody who struggles, or if you've had to walk away from someone you loved in order to protect your peace, then you're going to feel this one. So let's get into it.

Jennifer St John  03:33

Creativity for me, was a big coping skill. It was a bit of an escape as well. But I definitely was a really academic student, and wanted to do something in school that I could get a job out of. Afterwards, my art teachers wanted me to just go to art school. And mom was like, Yeah, you have to be able to get a job, which, you know, I get. So the University of Winnipeg, their four year design program with a minor in business, was one of the big options, but that was going to be far away from you guys. I wasn't prepared for that at 18, so I landed on a three year design program at Fanshawe College in London. I absolutely loved it. I love being creative. I love the creative process. And when mur and I moved out west, I was hired right away for a big commercial firm. Worked there for, I think it was two or three years, but any time off we had, we came home and we just saw a bazillion people in a week and went back to work. We didn't have kids. We were both working like crazy, and so I really burnt myself out. I was really trying to figure out, what's next? What am I going to do? I had always loved the film industry, so I ended up using my design experience to get an art department internship, and also, the same time, a producing internship. After two years of working in the film industry out west, when we decided to move back, I worked for a producer in Toronto for about a year and a half. Met my business partner there, and then we had our own production company for about five years. Then we both started to have kids, and the 2008 financial crash had happened, and everything was just different in the industry. When I ended that and we moved out, we moved to the Barrie area I knew I wanted to get back into a business. Every time I tried to think of projects, I was always thinking about mental health in the back of my mind. I wanted to be more hands on creative this time, so I started to develop what ended up being Marnie and Michael. I created leather handbags, but I knew from the very beginning it was going to be a social enterprise. With every purchase of the bag, it was given back to mental health in whatever capacity it could be. It was sometimes financial, and we would highlight an organization and promote them, and then give them a financial donation. It would be writing about mental health, creating events around mental health. Really, what was important to me was to talk about mental health. And I think that, as we all know from our experience, that's the first step. You can't do much if you can't even talk about it. I was having so many problems dealing with the production side of the company, the manufacturing side of the company, that I decided to just close that, and then I really wanted to focus just the mental health side. So this is part of the reason why this podcast is has come to be. So I'm very glad that it's come together now.  we've talked a lot about what we were doing and how we were but how do you guys feel the stigma of mental health held mom back or affected mom during this period of time before mom ended up getting help? 

Kate  06:35

I think the generation plays a part. We grew up with. You don't talk about it. You keep it quiet. I really do think that had a lot to do with it. Mom grew up with that, and then we were raised that way. It was reinforced by our grandparents and extended family when we were going through the different things we were as children, the adults in our lives, whether it be school related or communities, they knew right well, what was going on, but nobody did anything. Fast forward to today. Teresa works for CAS, and none of what we went through would have been tolerated. It would have been reported, it would have been investigated, more than likely, would have been removed from Mom's care. But at that time, mental health wasn't something we talked about, and it was kept secret, and we didn't talk about addiction, and was every family to their own and deal with it and figure it out and survive it. So I do think it played a huge part in mom not getting help until she did, because at that point in time, it was okay to talk about things. It was okay not to be okay. I do believe it was all about society and society's acceptance. 

Jennifer St John  07:36

We heard mom use the word crazy when she talked about how others saw her. It's her word, not ours. And while we don't use it to describe mental illness, we do share it here honestly, because it was part of how she understood her experience, and generationally, it was the terms that were being used. We want to honor her truth, even when it's hard to hear. 

Teresa  07:59

Yeah, and I was just going to say further to that. For me, when I look back, mom didn't have a lot of healthy peer relationships. She had friends all along the way, but I associate a lot of different traumatic events from those different friendships and a lot of substance use. So for me, what I saw was mom very fixated on how her siblings thought of her, how her parents thought of her, that was a big deal. And I think that she always put it down to, they just attribute it to like, well, that's just Marnie. We don't use the term crazy, but that's what then Mom would use. She would say, they just think, I'm crazy. She was very worried about that, and that's why that generational silence carried forward is because she wanted it to seem like on the outside, everything was fine, so we were all conditioned to do the same, to act like everything was fine. In her final years before she passed, she went to school to learn the sign language to help those in the deaf community. She just found the passion of trying to give a voice to those that didn't have it, or give a voice to the areas that should be, for example, mental health. She was so proud of the help that she got and helping others. I hope we continue on the trajectory of making it okay to talk about it and reducing that stigma, because there is no greater way to honor her than for us to say we played a part in creating a forum where people are okay talking about accessing services and resources, just as those shirts that you had as part of your company, Jen that we still wear, that say it's okay to not be okay, that was not the tagline for mom's generation. That was not the tagline for our generation, and thank goodness that our children are experiencing what's hopefully just the beginning of it being okay to not be okay sometimes.

Jennifer St John  09:55

it was the seen and not heard. Generation two, not only. So we're not talking about that, but it was, don't make a fuss. Don't think you're special. Do what you're supposed to do, blend in, just be ordinary, be normal, kind of thing. Obviously, at this point, we know mom's an alcoholic. We know that she's abusing drugs. We also, at this point, mentally, know that something's not right. But at what point did you start to put the puzzle pieces together of, okay, I do think there's mental health here. And then even a step further, did you maybe try to name it, or try to think about what that might be, whether it was a conversation with her or something you came to on your own? How did that start during this period of your life?

Teresa  10:42

Definitely not a conversation with her. I think the signs that I was seeing of the obsessive compulsive and the fixation on germs started my brain going because, again, I had started into a role where I was dealing with that diagnosis with people professionally. Those were the initial parts right in line with that was the period of time where mom was very focused on her abuse history, and so naming it or not naming it, I don't recall, but knowing that there was clearly some significant post traumatic stress at that point for her that was really showing itself, that whole disassociation, where we spent periods of time of our lives being the best of friends with people that at some point in her journey, she then villainized because of the abuse. And so us going from being like these are our people to nope, not our people. And yet, it not being a current event that created that so always wondering for me, like, what happened that's so historical, why was it okay for such a period of time? What started to percolate for me was the is there? OCD, here? Is there? PTSD, much like Kate, you're starting to be around diagnoses and treatment plans and thinking, oh, like maybe there's life on the other side of that for her, but took me a long time in my adult professional career to really see alcoholism as a sickness versus a choice. I very much saw them as the individual puzzle pieces. I realized that it was creating this profile that, of course, wasn't set up for success. How could it be without any treatment plan? She's got all of these situations and scenarios, so I think in line with when she started to get help, was probably that realization for me, that one layers upon another and just exacerbates each other. And I really had to separate mom, the person from the disorders and diagnoses and diseases that she had, that's such a big step. It's such an evolution of thought, because I just had always put it on her. And don't get me wrong, some of her choices were choices she made, but it took a lot of introspection and learning to just understand her from a different place. I'm glad I got to sit in that place with mom still alive for a while. Unfortunately, I think some people don't get to that place until after a person has passed. And although that's great in their healing journey, what an important part of my healing journey was getting her and I to a better place while she was still alive again, mom never had a conversation with me about this. The big pink elephant was one of our extra sisters. We just always had the pink elephant along for the ride. It just really was that kind of unspoken thing in a lot of ways, right until her passing, mom never sat down and apologized to me for anything. Mom never sat down and said, I really wish it had been better for you or anything. I missed that part of mom.

Jennifer St John  13:50

You'll hear us refer to the quote, pink elephant quote a few times in this series. It's our way of naming the unspoken, the thing that was always there, but was never addressed out loud. In our case, it was my mom's untreated illness. And like Teresa says, sometimes this pink elephant felt like she was another sister at the table. 

Jennifer St John  14:13

And those are sorry, Kate, I'm coming to you too. I just wanted to know some of the things that Theresa is talking about, two things that you brought up that I think are huge on my healing journey, and I'm sure Kate's as well, and I think are typical of anybody who's dealing with this is one, in my opinion, you have to get to the point where you separate the disease from the person, because that is such a pivotal marker on your individual journey. And then the second one, which is massive, forgiveness is a huge part of being able to have somebody in your life who is dealing with addictions and mental health, and I can remember definitely feeling that that person in your life is never going to sit down and apologize for all of the things that they have done to hurt you or harm you. And you still yet have to forgive them for that.  Mom probably wouldn't even remember a lot of what she did to us. I had those two things kind of come together, probably around the same time as we set these boundaries. But that forgiveness piece, I think it's similar to that victim, not victim, mode of how you live your life. You can either forgive or you cannot forgive, and that is going to be a path your life takes. And so I think that's a massive piece to this puzzle, and it's a piece that not a lot of people get to but I think that my journey has been different since then, because I could do that. 

Jennifer St John  15:38

Forgiveness is a complicated thing, especially when you know that the apology may never come. But for many of us, it becomes a difference between either carrying the pain or choosing to put it down. It's not for the other person. It ends up being for ourselves. 

Jennifer St John  15:56

So Kate, I know that you already mentioned early on when you were going to school, and you are already starting to form those thoughts of, Oh, I wonder what mom has. In her childhood. We were dealing with coping mechanisms, alcoholism and the drug use, but the mental health piece wasn't there in the beginning. 

Kate  16:12

Yeah. 

Jennifer St John  16:12

Can you talk to us about when did that mental health piece start to come in, and how did you process that as a young adult?

Kate  16:19

Going into college. At that point, my frame of mind was, she's an alcoholic. She's choosing to use drugs and alcohol. She's making these choices in her life. I wasn't really thinking about mental illness at the time, so through these courses, I started to go, and when I started taking the chapter on concurrent disorders, which is a mental illness and addiction, I was like and learning that childhood trauma plays a part in different kinds of mental illness. Things are starting to make more and more sense, and I would say, getting into the career of working with mental health and addictions and the additional training and workshops that I would take. And then I would think, Oh my goodness, these things are resonating with me so much so, like some of the stories and scenarios that were used in descriptors of those certain events, and along the way, did try to have a couple of conversations with mom, not so much as diagnosing her, but trying to impress upon her. Do you not think you need to talk to somebody about this, your childhood trauma that you talk about? Yeah, you've talked to us about it, but we can't help you. We're your family. We're your daughters. We can't help you with this. Have you ever thought about really, truly sitting down and talking with somebody and opening up? And she was always very close to that scenario. And I do remember, after I had set the boundaries of she couldn't see the boys due to some events, I still wanted to help her, because at that point in my life, I was of the mindset that this was mental illness, this was addiction. She needed help. She hadn't got the help. What could it look like if she got help? And so I remember a couple of times driving to Whitby and banging on the door and she wouldn't let me in. And I did that a couple of times before she did let me in, we had a good heart to heart. I said to her, I want you to be a part of the boys lives. I want you to be a part of my life, that it can't happen until you get help. I was just able to, at that point my life, really separate it, and I almost looked at it as a professional. I thought, think of this as a client in front of you, not your mom, having the mindset to do that. I think was very beneficial for mom, because I was able to have that conversation with her and remove the emotion from it. It was shortly after that she did start to seek out support with a psychiatrist, where we then became involved and were able to be a part of that process. I do think it was my ability to separate her as I'm going to deal with this as a professional, not as a daughter, that I was able to withstand some of the storm that came with that, as well as the storm that came after, and not personalizing anymore, what mom was doing as I had done as a child and needed again, like you guys talked about, about the forgiveness, being able to come to the point where I knew I may never get the apology that I wanted, but I had to decide that I needed to move on in my life. So I needed to forgive. Doesn't mean you forget, but I needed to forgive in order to be able to move on and have my life be healthy. So that's kind of how it played out for me. 

Jennifer St John  19:13

I don't think we would all be where we are today if we didn't all find that path. It's integral to, as you said, have any kind of healthy relationship with mom moving forward, but also ourselves. That's a really big piece. I think it was going to school and starting in letters and conversations, learning through you. That was really the first time that I started to put those things together. I wasn't doing the schooling that you guys were doing, so I wasn't learning what you were learning, but that was probably the first time that mental health terms or mental health diagnosis were starting to be thrown around. It definitely changed things moving forward. And I agree with you, Kate, I think that we all knew what had to happen in order for mom to try to get better. This period of time for me, was a lot of frustration. You love her so much, and you want her to get the help so she can get better, but you're so frustrated, and you're so beaten down by the every day of dealing with her when she's not well. It was both of those.  

Jennifer St John  20:14

Just to clarify, when Mum revoked her consent, it meant that we were no longer allowed to receive any updates or information from her care team. We would still be able to share our concerns with her psychiatrist, but we weren't allowed to hear anything back from them, and that made it hard to fully support her in the beginning, it felt like we weren't really being included in her recovery.

Teresa  20:40

Think you have to come from such a place of patience and understanding, and that's where I'm grateful for having the three of us wade through that part of it together. Because, if you recall, even once, Mum was seeing the psychiatrist and opened herself up to some help, and she agreed for us to go down and speak with the psychiatrist, that was the 11th Hour where she yanked that consent so that we couldn't gather any information. We could just share what our concerns and worries were. And so even that you can look at that as a choice that Marnie made, or you can see that as a part of all of this for her, like you said, Jen, she wanted so desperately to be well, and she wanted to be open book because we were demanding. You need to open yourself up to this part of the journey. But she was so conditioned that it's that's private information we don't talk about that how desperately she wanted us back in her life and her in our lives, and she still struggled to be as open as we would have loved her to be. We still took the opportunity to go down and share our worries and concerns and hopefully compliment whatever treatment plan was going on for her, even allowing that was still a big step for her. She wanted it so much, but there was still just so much holding her back. So what I hope for anybody going through this journey is just having that understanding, because it's so easy to slip into those negative thoughts about the person, you could look at that and be like, Well, that's pretty selfish. She still struggled with that as much as she wanted to be better. It still wasn't an easy journey for her. It was still so wrought with challenges.

Jennifer St John  22:19

Yeah, Kate and I have talked about this, we still don't know exactly what her diagnosis was. She only gave us the pieces she wanted to, and unfortunately, we know she came a long way the end of her life. We don't know whether or not to believe her. 

Teresa  22:35

I was just gonna say, like, fact or fiction, right? Because, like, I've heard her in that last period of time, I've heard her say that she was diagnosed with ADHD and OCD, and we've known for a long time that she had bipolar. But again, because that comes out in little dribs and drabs and conversations here and there, and because there were so many different circumstances that we had where mom shared stuff that later proved to be completely not factual. It served her purpose in the moment. But you're right, we never really fully knew that. We knew that she was on a cocktail of medications when she started to get treatment, but what was the actual root diagnosis? We don't know, and we will never know that.

Kate  23:16

Well, even though mum wasn't completely forthcoming with us, I think based on the medication she was on, those were definitely her primary diagnoses, the OCD, and we saw those behaviors, the ADHD, absolutely she was on medication for both of those, and then the bipolar, absolutely. We know in mental illness, different doctors can diagnose different things, but based on her medication regime, and just with my experience in mental health and addictions, that was definitely her working diagnosis for sure.

Jennifer St John  23:45

Okay, and I was gonna say, just going back to this moment with the psychiatrist, I can remember. So two things, one, I know for mom, part of the issues for her too, she didn't know how medication was gonna change her. And I think this was part of her not wanting to get help, as we see in her journal entries, she loved the mania. It was almost like she now was at a point where she couldn't disassociate the disease from herself, of what was going to be Marnie still, and what was the disease, and what was going to be treated and dimmed or changed, and what wasn't. And so I think that was a big hurdle for her to get over. It took a while to figure out what worked for her, because of all of that too, how she reacted to things, how she felt, how her personality changed, all of that massive, massive thing. 

Kate  24:38

Let's talk about when she would stop medications for two reasons. Number one, because she was feeling better, and normally people do that, but also the weight gain, it was horrific for her. She was very fixated on being slim and pretty and trim, and that was always a part of mom's persona. And she would stop medications on some occasions because of the weight. Weight gain and how it caused, like the eating binges, those kinds of things, and she really grappled with that, or she was feeling she was doing well and didn't need them anymore, and she would go off of them. So there were those interactions as well, as well as her drug use and her alcoholism, she still continued with that at moments in time, which then just render those things to not work. 

Jennifer St John  25:21

This is something that we feel really strongly about, because mental illness doesn't happen in a vacuum. Everyone is in a ripple zone, and they all need care. And when support systems include the family, the outcomes, especially for long term healing, can be so much stronger. 

Jennifer St John  25:43

That was one of the big reasons that we all wanted to go talk to her psychiatrist, especially Kate, because you knew so much about the medications that we were really worried about her at that point, we didn't think she was being honest with her psychiatrist, and this could be potentially fatal. It wasn't just we were trying to tattle on her, was, we think you need to know this. So speaking about that, and both of you guys are involved in this professionally, how is the family treated in treatment? Because to me, and I know this might sound naive, because I'm not in it, but nobody seemed to want to talk to us. Nobody seemed to want to ask us a they have no point of reference. This is somebody who they know is going to lie. So how about just, first of all, a, fact check exercise, and then B, how about checking in with us to see how she's doing. Both of you guys deal with now this professionally. But has that changed? 

Kate  26:37

No, in my experience, in working with adults in mental health and addictions. If they're aware their loved one is receiving treatment, they can always call in and share their concerns, but if the individual doesn't give consent, families are not considered in the circle of care, so there has to be consent, and so any good therapist, psychiatrist, any individual working in mental illness, would definitely say to the individual, can we talk to their loved ones? Can we have them come in? And it's really up to the individual to say yes or no, and sometimes they do consent, and then they revoke consent. So it's all about that, and it's left up to the individual if they have the capacity, if they don't have the capacity, then there's other situations where families can be a part of the treatment plan, but if the individual has capacity consent, they can very much say, I don't want my family involved. And the best thing we do for families, because we understand that that struggle is we'll take your call, we'll take your information about your concerns, but we can't share anything with you at this time.

Teresa  27:36

It's such a hard part of the journey that the thought of then opening that up to more people is sometimes debilitating. Which is so unfortunate, because it's people that want to wrap around and support and be part of that circle of care, but you can't see the forest for the trees. Sometimes, I think that period of time for Mom must have been extremely challenging, because she was still dealing with using substances and stuff and then trying to process all of these horrible events in her life, from early right through until as an adult and as a parent, you're bringing up your biggest, deepest, darkest secrets, and that's a really hard time. She really was struggling emotionally for someone who's so conditioned to be like, Nope, that stays in the closet. We don't talk about that, but then it looks little box, just too big of an ask, I think, sometimes, to also then open that up to others having full access to it. I see that whole shred there of still allowing us to go and speak to the psychiatrist, and wanting us to do that, but then pulling back that portion of it was that piece of her like, I want to meet you halfway here, but I can only give you so much. 

Jennifer St John  28:47

Definitely, it's not about trying to get full access to her file and her processes. But as you guys know, I have a son who's on the spectrum, and I've been dealing with therapy for 10 years almost now, and so we have a family therapist that from his grade four year on, and he's now grade 10. Every session, I start it with her, and then it moves on to him. Sometimes it finishes with me, but she's always gaining the perspective of, from your point of view, how are things going? And that's what I just think would help so much with those affected by a loved one's mental health, and because also in those moments, she definitely counsels me, if I'm going through something, I think that's part of the piece of dealing with somebody who's helping themselves. They're doing the work to help themselves, but there's still times when it's hard. So speaking to that as well, did therapy become a part of your journey in getting help. We're talking about people who have substance abuse and mental health issues getting to the point where they can be okay with getting therapy. But I think everybody around those people are dealing with very traumatic and difficult situations, and sometimes it's hard to process on your own. And I think therapy for me, I'll speak for myself, but it definitely was a big part of me being able to deal with my situation with mom. And it wasn't something I did long term over a really long time, but I read a lot of books as soon as Kate started to talk about certain mental health things, okay, well, then I got a book on bipolar, I got a book on PTSD, so I did a lot of research on my own. I did a lot of seeking out, just trying to absorb and learn. And then also I did do therapy with a therapist. And so in Al Anon, when I was in my early 20s, was a huge part having that support and being able to process but did therapy become a part of your solution? 

Kate  30:40

For me, very much like you, in the beginning stages, I educated myself, gave myself more knowledge, just kind of absorbed everything I could through training or books to help me understand everything about mom. In that process, I kind of ignored me, how I was impacted and what was happening for me. And really it wasn't until about, I would say, five years ago, kind of woke up one day and I was coping with my life in a way that was not healthy, drinking quite a lot, and using different kinds of drugs, whether it be gummies or prescription pills, those kinds of things. I know you giggle, Jen, because what we look at is funny memories. But then when I started to look at it, I was like, wow, this is becoming too often and too much. And I would say it really came to light for me during COVID, actually, because in the line of work that I do, because I worked in healthcare and still do, I got an apartment in Ottawa away from family, because my husband was a primary caregiver for my mother in law, who was ailing and quite ill at the time. And at that time, we didn't know a lot about COVID So I didn't want to impact them with the work that I did, because we were still seeing clients and doing the work, even if people were COVID Positive. So I just woke up one day, had a little bit of a health scare, I guess, and I realized, what am I doing? I'm mom. I was dealing with all of this stuff that was happening in my life with substance use, and so I did seek out support and treatment, and did finally take that step in my journey along the way. I think I'd done a little bit here and there, but not really submerse myself in therapy, as I did at that time in my life. I guess it was late 2020 that I started, and then it was April 2021 where I just decided I'm done, and I haven't had a drink or done any sort of other substance in almost four years, and it's the best I've ever felt, the clearest I've ever been but it was making those decisions that helped me finally put some of these other things to rest, to the point that I feel safe, I feel healed, and I feel being able to participate in this part of your project, and in the blogs, those kinds of things that really I was more clear and able to do that. And so now I look at that lived experience, and I take it in my journey, but not with the pain. And so I feel I can even more so help people, including loved ones, that have been struggling with some similar experiences, and I've been able to really support them and be there for them, and they are very grateful for the perspective I have and the support I can bring to their journey. And I'm able to do that because I finally did heal like truly 100% heal in the last four years.

Teresa  33:18

You know, for me, bunkalong T was just fine. I didn't need help. It was fine. I started going into adult life thinking, all right, job, check house, check marriage, check child, check. I think it was when I started parenting. I remember being out west and you suggesting Al Anon to me. In fact, I was still a teenager, so you were suggesting even Alateen, but I remember being receptive to that and hearing the information, but not really putting action behind it. I mean, I was definitely at that stage in identity formation of like, okay, well, that was childhood, and now I'm entering adulthood, and what's this gonna look like? And it didn't play a very front and center role for me, until I started parenting, I have done, like all of the things that both of you talk about, that self growth journey of providing yourself with a lot more information to come to understand others and yourself, but then also reflecting on my own experience and the impact of that on others around me. I think that's probably when for me, I started that profound shift of I want to make the world a better place. If anything I do can help anyone, then help those choices to go on that healing journey myself, and talk a lot about my experiences and be open about that, and continue to be open to learning. For me, it's like the job's not done. There's just chapters in the journey. Mum did not raise us to believe that, you know, like, hey, let's head to therapy, let's talk to counselors, like that kind of thing. And yet, I've been able to do that for our children, of normalizing the fact that it is okay to reach out for help, and there are trained professionals that can join this part of the journey. Me, and so I think I've done a good job of that, and I definitely have parachute in and out with a therapist. It's okay that once in a while, you need someone to come on board and just help you get through some of the stuff. I'm very fortunate. I have a very rich support network around me, friends, family, sisters, who are best friends, but sometimes you need a little more. So I'm not adverse to that. I welcome that, and I think it makes me who I am, and contributes to my ability to help a lot of other people that are or have gone through similar circumstances, understanding myself so that I can understand others better too.

Jennifer St John  35:41

Absolutely. Okay to finish things up for this period of time that we're discussing looking back now, because, I mean, it started for me when I was 18. I'm 49 in a couple of months. Is there something that you feel like you could have done differently that would have helped during this period of time, so I would say that crescendo we all went through before we set that boundary?

Kate  36:06

I knew then what I know now, and that we were going to lose mom at such a young age, I think I would have done things sooner, setting that boundary and saying, You need to get help if you want us to be a part of your life. I think that's what stands out for me, is that I would have done it sooner, and I would have maybe been a bit more forceful. I set the boundaries, and then I stepped back and waited. I think what I might have done differently is set the boundaries and then push and push and push. 

Jennifer St John  36:34

You're making me very emotional right now. 

Jennifer St John  36:39

Just a quick note here, when we talk about pushing or setting strong boundaries with Mom, what we really mean is that we were scared and we were tired and we were trying in the only way we knew how to hold on to hope. It never came from a place of anger. It always came from a place of love, fierce, exhausted and hopeful love.

Teresa  37:04

I really don't know what I would have done differently, to be honest, because I miss mum so much. But when I look back at our lives, I missed mum, then. I agree, I think we lost her way too early, and I wish she had more periods of wellness in her life, but I don't know what I would have done differently, because I can't go back and rewrite the past, and I'm proud of what we did. I wish that she had had more time of feeling more in control of what was going on in her mind and her body and her heart, because that's when we saw the best mom shine through. 

Jennifer St John  37:41

Yeah, I would say the same thing for sure. What Kate said, I think that we did the best with what we had. It's not about that. It's about now, because we've been through so much, and there's lots of people out there who are going through it, what do we think we would have done differently if we could do it again? And I agree with Kate, I think that we didn't know. Nobody knows. You never know at that point in time, I don't think we even knew that she would do it, that she would actually get help, because, as we've talked about, we can push and shove and set boundaries all we want, but at the end of the day, she has to be the one who does it. I don't know if she would have done it earlier. I would have hoped that she would have done it earlier. I think mom did it for her grandkids. She didn't do it for us, but she did it for her grandkids. And by that I mean when we were younger and asked her to do it, she couldn't do it for us, but because she was at the age where there were lots of grandchildren her life, and those grandchildren were being pulled back, I think that was a really big piece of why she did what she did. And the ripple effect was that she got her daughters back in her life too. If anybody on this journey can take anything away from this, the sooner that you can get help, the better, because that is when the change happens. That is when the healthy relationships can hopefully start to turn, when the healing, when the processing, when all of it for that person, but then also the ripple effect of that through everybody's lives, all those people, they also get to, in turn, start to enjoy that change as well, which is hopefully a healthy change. So that's definitely the biggest takeaway, I think, from this period of time as well.

Teresa  39:14

Absolutely.

Kate  39:16

 Yeah. 

Jennifer St John  39:18

This is something we've seen again and again in stories like ours. Sometimes people can't find the strength to get help for themselves or even for their kids, but sometimes something shifts when it comes to their grandchildren. It's a reminder that healing often begins when the stakes feel new or when hope has another name. 

Jennifer St John  39:40

So we've talked a lot about the marriages that we have in the relationships that we ended up in, but how do we feel our partners have come into play during this period of time where our relationship was so stressed with mom. How did their support help us? 

Kate  39:55

My current husband came in when we first set those boundaries. He has said to me many times he didn't experience the Marnie that he's read about, the Marnie that I've spoke about, the Marnie that we've spoke about. He saw mum 80% well, he remembers a few small things. But I think for me, having my brothers in laws, so Mark and Murray, and then my husband, Rob, I feel that they were in these last 20 years so very important in this journey. They were there standing behind us, standing beside us, holding us when we cried, and, you know, just taking our heart and holding it gently as we went through this journey with not only mom but our children, and just kind of trying to bring about healthy relationships, I feel that's been very much a strength in our lives, and we have partners that understand and empathize and are very compassionate and just allow us to feel and to heal as we need to. And I'm just forever grateful for that.

Kate  40:55

Well, and I think the three of them have created a support network. They wouldn't use those terms, maybe, but they've created this connection between the three of them, where they come from, this place of they'll never have all the pieces of the puzzle, but there's a sense of understanding and love for each of us, much like you're saying, Kate, the strength that they have for us and truly just understanding how one event is told three different ways, from your perspective, from your perspective, from my perspective, and important for them to hear that and also then through mom's journaling what her perspective was, sometimes they have a hard time reconciling some of the history that they hear, because again, Mark came into our lives right when mom started getting help. So it doesn't mean that he didn't see some of the dips that still happened. It's not like it was perfect for the whole last period of her life, but nowhere near what the early experiences were. It's hard sometimes for Him to reconcile that one equals the other, but I think it's so helpful to have that strength, and I'm forever grateful for that part of it. Maybe sometimes we're a lot, and there's been moments where we've gone through a lot and they're here for it, they've all been here for it, and they're here for the long run, it's got to be difficult to be in relationships with people where fight or flight is so prevalent, and I have brought that to the table and then some, and yet, Mark has been steadfast and seen me through just sit in a place of appreciation. 

Jennifer St John  42:32

My experience is different because Murray has been in our lives for almost 30 years. 

Teresa  42:37

Yeah.

Jennifer St John  42:37

So in the first year of us being together, mom had her car accident. Murray has seen a lot more than Mark and Rob have. And I think it's interesting too, because no childhood is perfect. Sometimes when people hear a little bit like dribs and drabs of what we've been through, I think sometimes there can be judgment. If there's situations you're dealing with as an adult, we both have things from our childhood that we've had to deal with. Yes, my husband is not the most emotionally intelligent person. He's very intelligent engineer, but emotional intelligence is not one of his strengths. And so I think that we deal with situations differently. Mental health is not a big thing for him. On his side of the family, there's been a lot that he was thrown into with our families that you just didn't even talk about on his side of things. So there's been a lot of growth and a lot of support. And I think that it's a huge part of getting through the tough times in life is having that support. As we said, the three of those men in our lives have been a very strong support for us, and they're continuing to grow with it, just like we continue to grow with it. But I think being open to that growth and being open to the Okay, like, what are we dealing with now? Let's get through it. I think that's the attitude you have to have, because otherwise it's not gonna work.

Jennifer St John  44:05

So what we've learned through decades of loving and losing and healing is that recovery doesn't just belong to one individual person in a family unit. It's shared, and it's possible when the people around you, from your partners to your siblings to your chosen family, choose to stay and to grow and to keep showing up. It's not easy to put words towards these stories, but naming these experiences is part of how we move forward. In this final chapter of the second sister series, we explored that stretch of adulthood where we were still navigating our relationship with mom's untreated mental illness and addictions while she was still in the thick of it. We talk about setting boundaries, about building careers shaped by our past and the quiet, complicating turning point of when she did begin to seek help. So we also shared something that we don't always talk about that much in society, and that is healing is not a straight line, and sometimes it's not even about healing the relationship. It's about healing the parts of ourselves that survived it. If there's a key takeaway here, maybe it's this, sometimes the bravest thing that we can do is to stop trying to save someone else and start choosing to save ourselves. Not out of anger, but out of love. Because healing doesn't mean that everything gets fixed. It means that we stop pretending we weren't hurt, and we begin to build life around that place of truth and not denial. 

Jennifer St John  45:42

Before we go, I want to invite you to join our create calm mental health movement. This is a space for sharing the creative ways that you care for your nervous system and create stillness in your day. So whether it's getting outside or writing, exercising, dancing or being creative in some artistic way, tag us in your moments using hashtag. Createcom Mental Health. We're building a library of these collective tools to help us all come back to ourselves. If this episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear from you. You can connect with us through the show notes on social media or by visiting our website at triple W, Gen, st, john.ca and that's j, e, n, n, s, t, J, O, H N, and if you'd like to support this podcast and help these conversations reach more people, please consider subscribing, sharing the episode or leaving a review, as you know, it truly makes a difference. Now, if something difficult came up while listening, you know that you don't have to sit alone with this in Canada, you can call or text 988, anytime for free, confidential mental health support. You can also reach out locally to the CMHA Simcoe County Crisis Line at one, triple, 88938333, or you can text 686868, to connect with a trained volunteer through the Crisis Text Line in the US, the 988, suicide and crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by call or text for anyone who is in emotional distress, not just for somebody who's in crisis. And for our listeners in Australia, you can call Lifeline at 13, 1114, anytime, day or night, for free and confidential support.

Jennifer St John  47:24

Please take good care of yourselves and each other. Thank you for being here, for listening and for holding space for stories like this. We'll be back next week with a very insightful conversation with Laura Fess from VOX mental health about what it means to grow up in survival mode and how we begin to move beyond it, until then, keep finding your way forward.