E23. Goodbye for Now

Releasing our last episode in this series is a practice of letting go. So many feelings. So much unsaid. One story in one space of time. We talk about the cost and what it gives to reveal one's story late in life when shame and secrets still hold power. We explore how loyalty can live in the same place as humiliation, how joy can be allowed without the guilt, how to separate the past and present when big feelings take over our nervous system, and if a life of reactivity can turn toward knowing one's desires. The world is made of nuance. We love that you have joined us!

Thanks for listening! Feel free to share with others. You can also email us at <sadiegreenstory@gmail.com or send a voice message from any particular episode on our website http://SadieStory.Buzzsprout.com

Special Thanks to our supporters, who have made this podcast possible.

• Lucy Mathews Heegaard: Audio Engineer 
  • with music via Epidemic Sound
• Terry Gydesen: Photographer

• Polly Kellogg
• Kate Tillotson
• Dawn Charbonneau
• Jacob Wyatt
• Molly Tillotson
• Clare Dudzinski
• Julian Bowers
• Wendy Horowitz
• Maggie Kazel
• Pat Farrell
• Lynette Tabert
• Laura Jensen
• People's Farm Collective
• Deborah Copperud of "Spock Talk" podcast

Transcript

Releasing The Story And Facing Shame

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Sadie Green Story about an older adult looking back on her abusive childhood. It's a conversation between Sadie and myself, Pam Colby, her longtime friend. We are exploring how early trauma can affect a lifetime. Thanks for joining us. Hi, Pam. Okay, Sadie, so here we are. We've actually released the podcast, sent your work out into the world. And how are you feeling about feedback and what you're hearing and just actually releasing it?

SPEAKER_01 0:46

It's been surprisingly calm. It hasn't changed my life in any big way. One big feeling throughout is why am I doing this? But I'm doing it and I'm proud of it. For the most part, I feel good about it. One thing that I think has helped, I had a lot of fear in doing this. Exposure was one fear. And one of the things that has happened while I'm doing this is telling myself that maybe if they hear it, they could get out of their shame as well. Because certainly the older ones on some level know this is true. And they too have kept it hidden. My sister has talked about being ostracized because of it. They say the solution for shame is light, put light on the shameful situation to lose its power. I don't know if it's out in the open. Maybe it could help them also. Oh, I know. One thing that occurred to me recently about why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Clearly, I've been compelled for some reason to tell my story and not really clear about why. And recently I thought I was invisible. They deny I don't have a relationship with them. I'm totally separate. So it has occurred to me that I'm shouting to my family. I'm shouting out there. This did happen. We were there. I'm not invisible. I'm a real person here. You've elevated your voice. When I first started, when I was in the cabin at age 30, I think it was catharsis for myself. That time gave me a sense of self that was new, that was more bigger and more meaningful. That happened when I was first writing all this stuff. But now still wanting to do something with it.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

And share it and have have Lucy, our great sound engineer, put music to it and take care of it. And just see how precious it is to other people. Also, you're settling the score. You truth comes out in the end.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

And it didn't used to. People died with secrets a a lot more than they do now. It feels like people do share. So can you talk a little bit more about the feedback you've been getting about the podcast and what that's like for you?

Family Loyalty And Correcting The Record

SPEAKER_01 3:36

I've had a few questions about my loyalty to family. And that's something I can't explain except that it is there. Maybe what Stevie said in the interview about loyalty to family, regardless of what happened, is part of it. I did live with my family for 14 years. And I have fond memories of that one room schoolhouse. I have fond memories of animals being outdoors, the land, and my siblings, even though we were separate in many ways, they were never mean to me. They were not hurtful. Back in 1991, there was a big three-page spread in the variety section of the Minneapolis Tribune. Well known reporter Peg Myers did this story on me. She interviewed me, she interviewed my parents, she interviewed my great uncle, other people, and it was this big story that was all great, except there was one mistake. And I didn't get to see the story before it was in print. So when it came out, the one error said that my siblings hid my clothes, which was not true. And I did contact my sister right away in a letter, explaining that that was a mistake, and I hoped or assumed that she might be the person in the family to let that be known, which was an assumption, and I did not contact anyone else, but it was not true. My siblings never participated in any kind of humiliation or ridicule of me. That wasn't the kind of family we had. It was between me and my mother, and of course my father to some extent, but my siblings had no part in my abuse. Somebody recently had an insight about how when I was in that cabin at age 30, when I was chopping wood and hauling water, putting chains on my tires in the winter, sewing clothes, it built my resiliency and my confidence, which it did. But it also occurred to me that the work ethic, the self-reliance comes from my family, many of my values and the way I live my life. A lot of it I do recognize is because of my family. Someone wanted more about who I have become, having had that history, which is the big question.

Trauma, Identity, And Learning Joy

SPEAKER_01 6:20

It's hard to separate what is personality and what is due to trauma. I can identify some things. The fact that I don't have a history of identifying what I want. I've been very reactive in my work life, in my personal life. And reactive is reading off of someone else. You're responding to someone else's feelings, not your own. And then that gets me to the do I even know my own feelings? And that I haven't. I can be passionate about the big world, about inequality and pain. And my therapist tells me, you have this huge capacity for pain, but you don't have a lot of capacity for joy. And that's true. We went through this whole story. I went to buy a helmet for my bicycle. And I've always been frugal. And this time I bought a helmet that I really loved. It was purple, it had this white rim. It was really about how it looked, and it was comfortable. And the helmet I did have didn't fit, it was really cheap. So I spent $100 on this helmet. And I felt, oh my God, how can you do that? But I also was super happy about it because I just love this helmet. Anyway, I feel like I've I'm grateful. I've been grateful and appreciative of much of my life. But that is different than joy. Joy is when there's something that you really want. Now, when I get overextended, I crave time alone, which is an acknowledgement of something that I want. I have a friend who's a Vietnam vet who's in the hospital right now, and it's somebody I've known for decades. And his whole life is around that painful experience. He's dedicated his life to anti-war. And we gave up everything. He lives on nothing, nothing. Anything is too much. And yet he manages a bookstore and it it uh affects a tremendous amount of people. There's some way that I feel like we have much in common. I am living a much more comfortable life than he is. Where am I trying to go with this? Oh, I went to visit him yesterday and he didn't want anything. He didn't want any treats. He just denies himself any pleasure. Yeah. I think I've done that in way less measures. And I think that happens to us if we don't deal with it somehow. If we don't try and see some value in our life, other than that, that we deserve some comfort. But now I just have everything.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

One of the things just trying to move on to how life is for you in general.

Violence Triggers And Witnessing Limits

SPEAKER_00 9:08

One of the things I notice is when we're in the movies. Like you love going to the movies.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

I do.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

But you have the biggest reaction of anybody in movies that I've ever been to. If there's violence or Yeah, I hate violence in movies.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

And you have a whole body reaction. Yeah, I can't stand it. And I know it's just a movie in my head. People have said, Oh my god, it's just a movie. But I do have a physical reaction, yes. I would think over time, you know, I'd kind of adjust. But I do, I have a visceral reaction to seeing violence. And yet I spent a lot of my life, I felt like it was our responsibility to at least witness pain. I wanted to know about the Holocaust, and I wanted to know I'd go to all these events, political things, where people were being mistreated, or I felt like the least we can do is witness. And that's changed for me too over time. There's only a certain amount of trauma. I don't know, it re-traumatizes you somehow, and it's easier for me to avoid it now.

Breakup Grief And Old Wounds

SPEAKER_00 10:21

So you during this podcast have been going through the end of a long relationship.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

Yeah. That started in what year 1997.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

What year did you legally marry?

SPEAKER_01 10:39

2013. And I do want to respect privacy. But I also want to mention some ways I feel like my history did impact those years. My ex-partner just moved out a year ago in the summer of 2025. What I have not mentioned, and what I don't want to say much about, is ten years into our relationship, she adopted a girl from China. A few years into our relationship, it was clear she wanted to be a parent. And I did not. And we tried working through some compromises. I said I would take in a teenager and then I would take in school age and then uh domestic adoption. And finally I just gave up and said, You're the one that wants to be a parent. You should just do it your way. And we agreed that I didn't have to be a parent. And of course, uh, child does not understand that. We did honor that arrangement. Pretty much. I was always there. I was supportive in the background, doing laundry, giving rides, putting money into college fund, buying groceries, but I was not an emotional parent. We got along fine until she was in school, and they went to China when she was nine. And that was kind of in my head where our relationship really changed. And it does happen to be when things were changing in my own life at that age. I don't know how that relates, but it is something. And what I didn't get over or didn't talk about or didn't reveal is I was really embarrassed to be two white lesbians adopting from another country. I was also very self-conscious about being old. I was 50 when she arrived into our family, and I'm 14 years older than my ex-partner. And I have a birth defect in the middle of my face. So I was very self-conscious about all this. And when she was in school, she went to Chinese immersion school, which is why we moved from Duluth back to Minneapolis. I didn't go to any of her school meetings with teachers who were from China, very significant people to her. I would go to a concert or something if I could sit in the dark, but I was not at all engaged in a public way in any parental figure. And I didn't talk about it. I hid behind it in this arrangement where I didn't have to be a parent. And what happened in that family relationship is I feel like I reinvented my outsider status. She has a great relationship with her mom, and she is doing well. She went off to college, but she doesn't want a relationship with me, which is really painful. And then a year after she was gone, we're living in this duplex. So we moved into this duplex in 2021. My relationship with my former partner was roommates by then. But I thought we were still quite compatible. We had a lot of respect, we had a lot of trust, a lot of love. And neither of us have family. So we thought that we could remain as family. So in 21, we sold our house that the three of us had lived in, and we bought this duplex. And for the first year and a half, it was great. For me, I thought it was great. We each had our own independence, we had our own space, but we still had each other. She was still my person. I was still her person. We'd still go places and do things. We'd run up and down the stairs. We did flirt with other people. Mine was with a man, but she started a significant relationship in early 23, I think it was. And that just changed everything. It blew me out of the water. I had no idea it would affect me like it did. No idea how it would be so devastating to me. What happened was I end up feeling like I'm living in my family's basement. She's upstairs with this person who in my mind has replaced me. Even though it's all understood. I'm downstairs. I'm hiding. I sit in the dark. I listen. I'm just super vigilant. I watch. And I sneak around my own apartment. I can hear them laugh upstairs. I can hear them walking across the floor. And I felt like I was this 12-year-old, this 13-year-old. I was just not in my adult brain at all. And that is where the therapist really came in and helped me understand what was going on. It was also a really important part of recognizing how the body is still involved, reliving that experience, that rejection, which felt like a rejection. And it isn't rational. It wasn't rational.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

And not many people make it through 25 years of a relationship, Sadie. And you did, and it was a positive relationship. You did really well in it. And then you ended. But that is something that is a tribute to you.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah, it was a good relationship in many ways. In the end, that safety, that security, blowing it up and losing it. Yeah. Was really painful. Really painful.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

I witnessed the how painful it was. One of the things is the breakup was really mutual. So the rejection part is from old wounds.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

It is about old wounds, as all loss is. Our loss brings up all the other losses. But it's also the nature of breakup, at least for me. All I was aware of was what I had lost. I didn't think about the ways that we grew apart, all the things that we that weren't said, the ineffective communication. That's not what stayed with me. It was the loss of belonging, of being a part of somebody, of home, of routine, security, or what we think of as security. That is what I did not know the bigness of that. Of course I miss the person. Of course I miss her. But technically that person still exists. I could still call the person. That's not gonna help my grief at this point. It's not gonna fix my loss. My loss is about age too. The fact that I was in my late 60s, it's a very different window now.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

And so at the same time that you recognize the value of what was in it, it's unlikely that I will go into that again. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Or at the level of the way you go into something when you're younger. Yeah, right. And you merge so much. And I think that just doesn't happen again. I mean, some people do do it, they just go all in. But I most people I find are a little more cautious at our age or protecting the independence that you have.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

That you do have, yeah. Just yeah. Been there, done that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

Um or do you have room in your life for all their people?

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Yeah. A lot of big quizzes. Yeah. I'm probably happier now or more myself. But loss is still there and it always will be. And of course, grief is part of life.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

And especially at our age. There's just more and more grief with every day of friends. One of the things we've talked about, both of us are dealing with friends with dementia.

Aging, Dementia Fears, And Grief

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Yeah. Can you talk about how how well what we recognize is both of our friends with dementia, what they remember is their childhoods. Yeah. Or their nuclear families. And how how does that make you feel thinking about not that you will get dementia. It's not a given.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

Yeah, it is frightening. You know, over the years I've told many people, please put me out of my misery somehow. I don't want to regress. I don't want to go back there. I'm afraid of that, and I hope I will find a way out if I know that's the way it's gonna go.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Yeah, yeah. I think what we both know is grief is just a part of aging and being able to talk to each other about it and learn from each other's experience in dealing with grief can be so helpful. And that's why I think people have grief groups and support networks for grief and there's a sense of running out of time.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

That's one reason why I have regrets about not knowing things sooner, is now I here I am at the moving into the last chapter of my life, perhaps. Maybe this time is a time of reckoning. Because we have time, if we're lucky enough to have time, we can look back and learn a lot about our lives or why it's gone the way it's gone.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

I think as we talk about a time of reckoning, one thing I would say is that as a country, as a universe, as a world, whatever, we can all learn from history, like fascism. We can see how fascism came to be in Germany. We can see warning signs now in our own culture. Just like learning from history, we can all learn from our own histories too. And you have so much to teach us from your history and how you've lived your life and how you are continuing to explore the cards you were dealt and how you're playing your hand.

Panic About Family Listening

SPEAKER_01 21:57

I do worry a lot about what people think of me.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Well, yeah, not very many people put out a 20-episode podcast about their life. That is very high exposure.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

It is high exposure. Yeah. It's about shame, worrying about what other people think of you instead of walking in your own self-assurance. That was kind of new information. That part of shame is worrying about what other people think instead of just taking on your own self. Another example of how that younger self lives in our bodies, how our bodies keep the score. A few weeks ago, I got a text from my cousin who lives near my family. And she told me it was possible my family was listening. I was home alone and I just immediately freaked out. It was just this huge emotional thing. They're all listening. They're all gonna hate me. They're all I was in that 12-year-old body again.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

But I called him. Yeah, I remember that call. You were certainly as freaked out as I've probably ever heard you, and your voice was really different. I could feel the fear through the cell phone. And then later after that call. I know I said we should have recorded it because there was some on the nose as to what we've been talking about. Yeah. But your fear was so great, and the only thing I could think to say is the worst thing they could do is send you a mean email.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

And yeah, they could send me a a nasty email and I could handle it now. And I did take myself outside. It was a beautiful evening. And I walked to my favorite bakery and I got myself a treat, which is rare. I also called Molly, my longtime friend in Duluth. Those conversations were really important to me. And by the next morning, I was fine.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Yeah, that's just uh testimony to how much you've grown and learned to take care of yourself, Sadie.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Yeah, and it was another big example of how you relive that old child fear, and I just am glad to recognize it. Yes. For what it is.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

It was one of those roomy poem feelings coming back at you.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

Another thing about doing this podcast when I'm older, why now?

Regrets About Intimacy And Insecurities

SPEAKER_01 24:28

But when I look around me, it's not uncommon to see older people looking back, asking, how did this affect me? I have time now in retirement, and it takes time, and I feel lucky to have that time. But even iconic people, public people like Dolores Warta, can you imagine? And Joan Baez, you know, her comment, something about it's easy to be close to 10,000 people, but not easy to be close to one. That really resonates.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

So after doing all this self-reflecting, are there things that you regret about your life after you left the institution and foster care the rest of your life? Do you look back and have major regrets that you think maybe if I had done this differently, things would have worked out?

SPEAKER_01 25:22

I've had a good life. It's unknowable really on how it could have been different. I just wish I would have known more about intimacy, understanding how to navigate intimacy. There's interesting conversation living in your head. I mean, I lived in my head so much. I still do. I get a lot from that. I have a lot of common sense, a lot of fix it behavior. I can call myself a survivor, but then there's intimacy, and those are different ways of being. My insecurities block me. It's really fear and it's really difficult to get past it. To take chances, to just accept who I am, just the way I am. We all have insecurities. But what a waste, what a waste to be held back by our insecurities. It just limits us, it makes us hide out. It's just a tragedy. We don't have to posture others to see us as. So before we wrap this up, I just want to say I've had a great life in spite of trauma. I've sometimes felt sorry for myself because I don't have close family, siblings. But on the other side of that, I've had a lot of freedom. I'm still learning. And I'm here to tell you one can have a full life in spite of what went before. We have to embrace ourselves, and it can feel really hard. Or numb. But life is good. I'm learning to be self-aware. I'm learning how those old behaviors that we learned when we were little, how to protect ourselves, how to escape, how to hide. They don't serve us as adults. And I'm learning there is so much left to learn. I feel like a babe. We need each other. Neediness is not a bad thing. We are all needy. It's the nature of being human. Embrace who you are right now. Exactly as you are right now. Life is short.

Gratitude, Credits, And Goodbye

SPEAKER_00 27:42

I'm kind of aware that we're really coming to the end here, Sadie. We're running out of time.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

There's an end to everything.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

And we just want to take a moment to say thank you to everybody.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Lucy Matthews Hegard, especially, our amazing sound engineer. I don't know how we would have done this without her.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

She really just saved us.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

And our loyal listeners. Anybody who is still here on episode 23, wow, we really thank you.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

And we thank you for your emails and your clothes. Calls. When you go into something like this, you're just never sure who is gonna find you. And it's been a real inspiration to get that feedback because it really kept us going.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

And we did not do a lot of advertising.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

No, no, we were a little bit in the closet, as we used to say. But anyway, it's been great to find you. Financial support. And our fiscal agent, Phil North.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Yes, thank you. Thank you so many of you for traveling with us.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

Okay, we're saying goodbye, Sadie. Really enjoyed doing this together.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

We have.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

I'm gonna miss Pam in this way. Yes, we will find other reasons to get together. Yes. Okay, goodbye, everybody. Bye, everyone. Thank you.