How to Dismantle a Tough Bitch - A Swedish Kitchen Manual

I've faced rapists, addiction, strangulation, betrayal. 

None of them broke me.

A Swedish woman humming while doing dishes? Absolutely destroyed me.
Her name was Vera. She gave me a felt troll. I kept it for 40 years — not because it was special, but because it was proof. 

Proof that love without violence exists.

This is how one quiet woman in a kitchen showed a damaged child the capacity for true, unconditional love.

⚠️ Real story. Real survival. I'm still here. This podcast contains discussions of childhood sexual abuse, addiction, violence, death, and trauma. It also full of profound love, transformation and hope. Listener discretion advised.

Transcript

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How to Dismantle a Tough Bitch: A Swedish Kitchen
Manual

We landed in Stockholm in the spring. My brother and I waddled off that plane like little Pillsbury doughboys stuffed full of every high-fructose invention America cooked up in the seventies—Kool-Aid, Ding Dongs, Frankenberry. We were basically lab rats with cavities. Twelve in my mouth alone. Twelve. Because the dentist wasn't exactly at the top of the survival checklist when you're just trying to make it through another day without getting hit or forgotten.

At the gate there they were—my grandmother, my great-aunt Vera, and my great-uncle Bertil. And just like that I wasn't a stray anymore. Someone actually wanted me.

Someone herded all the cousins into a line for a photo. Seven blond Nordic kids, tallest to shortest. Then me. Tallest and darkest. Grinning like the imported cousin from a different planet.

Welcome to the land of Swedish stereotypes—ABBA, IKEA, and cinnamon buns. Though let's be real, most Swedes are actually brunettes. But my family apparently missed that memo and went full Viking blonde like they were auditioning for a tourism poster.

But you know what? It didn't matter. Nobody treated me like an outsider. People were curious. They wanted to know me. And for the first time in my life—the very first time—I felt safe. Loved. Full.

And that may sound small, but when you've spent your childhood hoarding scraps and scanning for danger, when your nervous system is permanently set to threat detection mode, safety is a fucking miracle.

Vulnerability doesn't even register until you stop bracing for the next hit. And slowly, so slowly I almost didn't notice it happening, I cracked open. I let myself be loved. I started to believe that maybe the world wasn't just waiting to destroy me.
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I had no idea then what I was building. Had no idea that this foundation—this love, this safety, this sense of belonging—would be the only thing standing between me and complete annihilation when everything came crashing down later. When my brother Eric got murdered in 1986 and the ground opened up beneath me and I had to choose between surviving or disappearing entirely.

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Vera was at the center of it all. She and Bertil had married straight out of childhood and never had kids, so we became theirs. And she was fierce and tender all at once. The kind of woman who could ski through a snowstorm, make cinnamon buns that could heal your soul, and then tell you to stand up straighter in the same breath.

We lived on Lidingö, a picture-postcard island outside Stockholm. From the front window you could see the city skyline. From the back there was sea and forest stretching out forever like the world had decided to show you what beauty actually looked like when it wasn't afraid of taking up space.

And then there was the summer house—ten hours north, tucked below the Arctic Circle. And while most of my family vacationed in the typical European destinations like Mallorca and the Canary Islands, my immediate family wanted to enjoy the pristine Swedish nature. So that's when they bought this house in the late sixties. It was rustic but very cool. Everyday was like camping.

Where rustic wasn't cute, it was brutal. No running water. Just an outhouse that could freeze your ass off in July.

And twice a year, Vera—sixty-something years old—would march out with a clothespin on her nose and a shovel in hand, plastic sled behind her, and dig out that outhouse and haul it across the tundra like some twisted Santa Claus of shit.
A mile away she'd bury it, then come back and make dinner like she hadn't just performed a task that would break most people half her age. And that was Viking blood for you. That was the stoicism embedded in Swedish culture—you don't complain, you don't make a production of suffering, you just do what needs doing without drama or self-pity. Which is probably why I learned early that falling apart wasn't an option. That