D.I.D, Generational Trauma, and Choosing a different path. Amy’s Story
Amy: [00:00:00] you’re not going to be able to solve all of your generational traumas in one lifetime. But if you can stop one thing from repeating, you have done a good job.
Carling: welcome to the, I did Not Sign Up for this podcast, a weekly show dedicated to highlighting the incredible stories of everyday people. No topic is off limits. Join me as we explore the lives and experiences of guests through thought-provoking, unscripted conversations. And if you enjoy this show and would like to support this podcast, consider joining my Patreon.
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I’m your host Carlin, a Canadian queer identifying 30 something year old, providing a platform for the stories that need to be heard Amy, good morning.
Amy: Hi.
Carling: It is an early morning.
Amy: It is, but we’re here. We’re queer. We’ve got coffee. And [00:01:00] uh, what else could you ask for?
Carling: yeah. I feel like we had a reasonable recording time scheduled and then I was like, hey, I forgot about all these things and now it’s 8am on a Sunday.
Amy: But I mean, that’s, it’s par for the course. It’s, you know, life happens and you gotta make your work sometimes. Go around
life.
Carling: Yeah. Well, thank you. I appreciate it.
Amy: Yeah, no
probs.
Carling: And I feel like the last time I had you on the podcast, we just had this like little baby podcast in 2021 and we didn’t quite know what was happening or what we were doing. I still with a caveat, don’t always know what I’m doing, but now I feel like, I don’t know, you’ve got, you’ve done so much since we last talked.
This thing has changed so much since we last talked.
Amy: Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s that of growth. It’s crazy how things kinda just shift and change and if you follow the breadcrumbs in [00:02:00] your life that sometimes it leads to something bigger.
Carling: yeah. yeah. So we’ll, so an update. So you were on, I don’t have the episode number because somehow Apple stopped showing me episode numbers, but it,
70
something called Heart Mama, Amy and Artie’s Story, and you came on to talk about your little guy, Artie, who was born with a heart defect. Is that the right thing to say?
And it was incredible, but since then, you’ve gone on to I don’t know, just start a little organization and do a bunch of talking
Amy: Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s been a pretty wild journey, that’s for sure. Um, you wouldn’t expect, giving birth to a kid with a serious heart defect, that you would end up using that to change other people’s lives. So, you know, the one little guy has definitely changed the course of the world, which is awesome.
I took a public speaking class with the Pride and Joy Foundation, which was very insightful and, because I knew that I wanted to [00:03:00] talk about Artie’s story, but I didn’t have like an end I didn’t know why it was important. And so that class taught me how to do that. And once I figured that out, I started public speaking. And now I have spoken to over 2, 500 medical professionals across the world. And I started a nonprofit called tiny hearts can foundation working to increase the prenatal detection rates of congenital heart disease in infants, because one in 100 kids have a heart defect and half of them are not detected.
Which is awful, because if you listen to that story, my son would not be here without knowing prior um, to his birth.
Carling: And how old is Artie now? My
Amy: He turns three next month.
Carling: God. And he was just a, like a tiny little nugget when we first, I
Amy: Yeah, little baby Bean. I mean, not that he’s ever been terribly small, but yeah. He’s a much larger man. You have to call him a big man. He’s not a small man.
Carling: That’s [00:04:00] incredible. Wow. So I just loved our conversation so much. And then you recommended me to do the pride and joy foundation. And I loved it so much and I’m so excited To I got to wrap my head around this idea of finding opportunities to speak
Amy: yeah, that’s, that one’s hard like, who’s gonna listen It’s a huge, constant battle, but that’s a lot of internalized stuff, which we will probably get into later today.
Carling: Yeah So I just asked you if you would come back and share another piece of your life and you were so kind to say Yes
Amy: Yeah, my whole life is a, is a story in and of itself, so, uh, yeah. lots to dig into.
Carling: So what are we digging into?
Amy: Um, I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to navigate this so that it makes sense to people. So I have a lot of childhood trauma. And because of that like, I kind of imagine my childhood like walking down a street and window
[00:05:00] shopping. So a lot of my memories, they don’t always make sense. And they’re, like sometimes the glass is frosted. So I can’t quite see it, but I know that there’s parts in there that make sense. And also they’re not necessarily chronological.
and so it’s kind of like bits and pieces.
which makes it hard to try to tell a chronological story when you don’t have a chronological memory working in that way.
Carling: I love that analogy though. That summarizes a lot of my own experience
Amy: yeah. Sometimes, you know, the door to the shop is open and you can walk in and take a good look. Or sometimes it’s locked and you’re like, I have no idea what is behind this window display. So, I, myself, am second youngest of six kids.
Carling: Wow.
Amy: I know, right? There’s a ten year difference between the oldest and the youngest, two boys and four girls. The boys bookend everything.
my parents split when I was very young. I have no memory of them being together. I think I was [00:06:00] probably two,
maybe three, so my mom she was mostly the single parent and then we would go to my dad’s place on the weekend. I’ve been learning being a parent that uh, like, yes, parenting is hard and trying to keep other people like, emotionally regulated when you are not regulated yourself is a huge challenge.
But I think the biggest challenge for me when it comes to parenting is that you, you want to decide like, what kind of parent you want to be. And in doing so, you reflect a lot on your own childhood.
And I did not expect to be reliving my childhood and navigating all of these childhood traumas again. I had kind of made this assumption that I was over it. I see it, I acknowledge it, you know, this is what it was, and that’s fine, right? But like, no, healing is never ending, and it’s ongoing. So, yeah, just reliving all of those traumas, [00:07:00] and life, and… Thinking about how I want to do things has brought all of this stuff back up to the surface.
Carling: What was childhood like in a word, you know, what was it like growing up?
Amy: chaos. , I am good at living in chaos and so finding peace feels uncomfortable.
So we shuffled back and forth between my dad’s house and my mom’s house. there was always like, a lot of tension between the two of them. , I think I was about eight years old. I don’t really know.
my mom went into the hospital because she was diagnosed with what is now called Dissociative Identity Disorder or Multiple Personality Disorder.
So she was not mentally able to take care of us. I remember being taken into the basement by my older siblings and telling them, you have to wait here. You’re not allowed to come upstairs. Don’t come upstairs. And watching an ambulance come and then leave with my mom on a stretcher. I had no idea what was happening.
I was one of the younger kids, so like… [00:08:00] My older sister, especially Christy, she worked really hard to protect us from all of that. But as a kid like, knowing something is better than knowing nothing, or at least it would have been for me. It was just that she was sick. Like, why is she sick? So she was in the hospital for a year I’ve been told that my dad was unable to gain custody of us. So we had no parents living with us for a year.
We had a social worker, a home care worker, come and live in house.
Carling: Wow. So your house became like a group home. That’s the way I picture it. With a professional looking after you.
Amy: so that was a lot when I look at my memories I don’t see parents.
Carling: Right.
Amy: I like to think of us or I imagine us as like just feral children, running around, doing things like the games we played were really rough, we would jump off the deck into piles of snow when it was a tall like over six foot deck, or grabbing sleeping bags and going tobogganing down the stairs constantly you know, the more kids you have, the rougher the games get, or at least that’s kind [00:09:00] of the mantra that we were all told, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily the case in all homes. There was a lot going on for that because my sister, Christy, she didn’t trust our home care worker or other people to take care of us.
So she took on the role of mom at 14 years old.
And would like, do the cooking, and make sure that we were bathed, and do all of that parenting kind of stuff. But as a 14 year old, you’re not equipped to be a parent.
Carling: yeah,
Amy: And there were a lot of things that I learned from her, which I understand and I do not fault her for.
But like, you can’t talk about what happens in our home. Because otherwise Child Protective Services is going to come, and they’re not going to find a home for six kids.
Carling: yeah,
Amy: Don’t invite your friends over to the house, there’s no, nobody’s allowed to be here. It’s just us.
tell people that it’s because you play really hard. Like, you’re not being abused, you’re just playing really, really hard, ? there’s all of these, all of this messaging that I got as a wee little elementary student that made sense, because that was normal in my [00:10:00] life.
Carling: yeah,
Amy: But didn’t necessarily set me up for success as an adult. And it’s been really fun to try to peel away at these layers as an adult to a young child. And I’m like, oh, people want to come over for playdates? That’s weird,
Carling: yeah,
Amy: Other kids don’t come into our house. And so just trying to like navigate these two things and kind of go like, okay. This is one situation, this is another,
Carling: It’s so hard because you’re right like, it wasn’t your sister’s fault. A 14 year old shouldn’t be in charge of five other children. based on your mom’s mental health, she probably, you know, wasn’t the most regulated, well adjusted 14 year old either. So she was just probably parenting, you know, things that she experienced.
Amy: Yeah, so, and I did talk to my mom, and she said that she’s okay with me sharing parts of her story as well. And I imagine she’s going through [00:11:00] exactly the same thing that I’m going through, but to a much larger degree for herself. Like I said, when you become a parent, you’re trying to figure out how to do all of these things, given your own experience.
My mom, the reason why my mom and my dad split up, is that she is queer. She identifies as a lesbian, and I always joke like, after popping out six kids, I’d be gay too.
laughs
Carling: Yeah.
Amy: But she realized this at a young age. My grandparents they grew up in the Lutheran church and they had some very firm beliefs on how things should go. And , instead of supporting her, which is 60s anyways they decided that the best route was to have exorcisms. So she was in the church, and she tells me that she was like beaten with Bibles,
doing awful things to her. And the way that she responded to that was to dissociate.
If you are [00:12:00] somewhere else in your mind, that’s your brain trying to protect yourself.
Carling: Yeah. And how old was she?
Amy: I don’t know specifically, I would imagine it was as a teenager.
Carling: Yeah.
Amy: They did a lot of that, and then she kind of just left it. random events would start happening, where she would like, wake up wearing these very expensive shoes, and she’s like, where did these shoes come from?
And it turns out that she would have… This other personality come out, drive to a store to get the things that this personality wanted, and then come back, and then she’s like, I can’t afford these, then she would go and return them. And then she’d have a time when she opens her eyes again and they’re back.
So she’s like, don’t let me buy shoes. If you see me again like, don’t let me buy these shoes. But like, she’s not in control of, of what’s happening. So, like, like, full personality switches.
Carling: Yeah. And did anybody else recognize this? Did she disclose this to anybody that, hey, I don’t know, sometimes I wake [00:13:00] up and some things happen that I don’t remember.
Amy: I don’t think at that time she did. I think it kind of, like, for a while. my dad and my mom met at Bible college because, you know, that’s what
Carling: That’s what you do. Yeah,
Amy: so the church was always a part of my life as well. I grew up in the Lutheran church and all of the, all of these messagings, like it’s supposed to be a safe place, but you don’t really realize that there’s this generational trauma that’s following your family.
Carling: yeah,
Amy: But Once all of these kids are here you got six tiny humans running around. That’s a stressful situation first off, even if you are of sound mind um, to be dealing with and then it kind of just pushed it all over the edge. I think I, I’ve seen a couple of the personalities myself personally, but it just got a lot worse because in her mind she, she says it’s like sitting in a room with like a whole bunch of TVs on and all of them are talking and sometimes one will grab your [00:14:00] attention and that one comes to the forefront.
So it’s like, who’s driving?
Carling: that’s gotta be terrifying.
Amy: Yeah.
Carling: And so she was in the hospital for a year. And I imagine she was quite young
Amy: , probably mid 30s when she was in the hospital and we were kids. So, probably right around my age.
Carling: I know, I think of young differently now. I’m like, she was probably my age, so young, and
Amy: look at me!
Carling: Yeah.
But it’s weird to think of your parents experiencing something at the age that you are now.
Amy: Yeah, like the whole experience of just like, you assume that adults know what it is that they’re doing and then you get to this point and you go, oh wait, no, nobody knows what it is that they’re doing.
You’re just kind of doing it and hoping that you’re, doing the right thing.
Carling: yeah. I tell my stepkids all the time, I’m like, listen guys, this is our first go around too. We don’t know what’s going on. Just like you don’t know what’s going on.
Amy: I think also there’s been a huge shift in how we talk about life and things too, right? [00:15:00] I don’t think I ever heard my parents say, I don’t know what it is that I’m doing.
Carling: Yeah.
Amy: Or having that ability to be like, let’s learn together.
I think that’s a big generational divide in being able to share that we are faulty humans who make mistakes and that we can apologize for them, own up to them and make a change to do better. I feel like that’s not, that’s not something that other generations have done, so it’s, we’re also navigating how to have honest, authentic relationships with our kids.
And how much is oversharing and how much is not.
Carling: yeah And I think it’ll be interesting this like I feel like we’re like, what do they call us elder Millennials? But I think this next generation that the elder Millennials are raising are really It’ll be really interesting to see because we are owning our stuff and going to therapy and unpacking the generational [00:16:00] trauma,
Amy: yeah, and I mean, like even just reflecting on my mom’s experience and how because of her being queer, she was beaten with bibles, and coming out for myself wasn’t easy. I still experienced a lot of challenges within that, and I can see the pattern of like, internalized homophobia. And just, not something that I’ve ever like, knew that I had that, because it’s internalized, right? But, when my mom came out to me when I was… She’s like, yeah, so , I like women. And my first said, the first thing that I said to her was, so does that mean you’re going to hell?
Carling: of course, that’s, yeah,
Amy: right?
And digesting all of that. And then it took me a long time to figure my stuff out.
Carling: yeah.
Amy: date people throughout junior high or high school. I’m like, ah, I don’t know. I just, one day I’ll be interested in
wearing makeup. And I’m like,
Carling: Ha ha ha ha ha, yeah. Yeah, just like waiting for it to happen.
Amy: [00:17:00] yeah. And thinking to myself that, you know, like, oh, Sporty Spice, I really want to be her friend.
Carling: I wanted to be Sporty Spice. I didn’t understand my obsession with her was not that.
Ha,
Amy: Yeah. Those high kicks, man. They were very
impressive.
Carling: yeah. Yeah, with the amount of celebrities that I just had a friend crush on, I would say, or like, I just want to be like them. No, I was super gay and super into them.
Amy: Xena, right?
Carling: Oh yeah, that princess warrior she was.
Amy: Very, very talented. Yes.
Carling: Oh
Amy: it’s just interesting looking back and like, I don’t know if it was the internalized homophobia that was keeping me from realizing my own stuff, or if it’s… Just that, you know, the expectation of friendships between female presenting people is that you’re supposed to [00:18:00] be affectionate.
You’re supposed to be touchy, you’re supposed to share your feelings, but like the way that we process that is different. Is it infatuation or is it friendship?
Carling: Yeah,
Amy: So that’s always been a fun thing to kind of, digest, but like sorting out that internalized homophobia, and even for myself, once I figured myself out, I’m like, okay, well now I can cut all my hair off, and that’s
okay, right?
But I had, I had hair down to my elbows graduating high
school.
Carling: My god, we’re gonna have to share photos because I had elbows. I had elbows, obviously. I had,
Amy: them! Not
Carling: I also had elbows. My hair would like, was so long it would get stuck in my armpit. And I wore like makeup for days and like high heels
Amy: it’s that expectation that you need to do these certain things.
And I think the, I mean, as awful as the pandemic has, slash, was, having that time away from socializing with other [00:19:00] people, I think, gave a lot of individuals, myself, thinking, like a thinking of myself, to really digest a lot of relationships.
Because I have always, I realize now, lived in this state of anxiety. of constantly being on edge, something awful is going to happen. I mean, I talked to you in my last episode about everything that’s happened since pregnancy. With my daughter, we had four family members pass away when she was six months old uh, within the span of nine months. And then like, my sister, Christy, she died too. The one who ended up doing all the, all the raising. She died in 2010 of a random heart issue. unexpectedly, right before Christmas. And so, like… I’ve got all of this stuff, all of these really traumatic events that have just kind of been following me and I don’t think I ever realized that I was in this heightened state of anxiety for my entire life.
Carling: yeah,
Amy: once I had the chance to just sit at home and not talk to people, I [00:20:00] learned what not having that state feels like what, what peace can feel
like.
Carling: yeah, that’s
Amy: going out. It’s weird. I would think about going out and visiting certain people. And I’m like, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to go there.
But before I used to just assume that everybody felt that way,
Carling: yeah,
Amy: that you go and you do these things and you visit with people that you don’t necessarily want to. What if I just don’t do those things that make me feel super anxious? Like, if I’m feeling that way about visiting with this person, is this a healthy relationship? time to process that, but also like, parent your kids and try to sort through all of these like, falling dominoes of different things. Yeah, it’s just that the healing and it would be really easy to kind of just put everything in a box and move it off to the side and ignore it and then just like feel your feels without knowing why
Carling: Yeah,[00:21:00]
Amy: I like to dig and figure things out. So yeah, it’s just been it’s been a lot of a lot of healing and a lot of picking apart my own past experiences and Trying to do better. And within that, like the, the keynote queers, , taught me how to advocate for myself.
And becoming a parent, it’s really easy to advocate for your kids because it’s not yourself.
Carling: yeah.
Amy: And then being able to see that there is a difference, that if you can advocate for your kid, then why aren’t you setting an example and doing that and showing your own boundaries and saying, communicating what it is that you need with your own adult relationships.
Carling: yeah I’m like a fierce advocate to so many things, but then like when it comes to myself, I’m like, oh, it’s okay. Like I’ll just internalize it and deal with it myself.
Amy: Yeah, it’s a lot easier to, to do that for somebody else, right? If, if a friend is feeling sick, I’m like, [00:22:00] okay, you should take the day off. Go, put your feet up. I’m gonna buy you some noodle soup. I’m gonna get all these things. You have a rest and I’m gonna take care of you. But if I’m sick, I’m like no, right?
Carling: I must go on. Yeah.
Amy: Yeah, so like, why aren’t we treating ourselves with the same care that we treat other people?
Carling: Yeah.
Amy: It’s really interesting
Carling: yeah. And I do think that comes from that generational trauma. I don’t think people put enough stock in evaluating the patterns that have repeated themselves through families, through generations and how it’s created like the people today, even if it happened, you know, five generations ago.
Amy: Yeah, I read this thing, and it said if, you’re not going to be able to solve all of your generational traumas in one lifetime. But if you can stop one thing from repeating, you have done a good job.
And I felt a lot of pressure in myself to try to stop all of these things [00:23:00] from happening in the future.
But knowing that even if I just stop one, that’s still really good.
And that’s okay.
Carling: Yeah.
Amy: everything in one go. I mean, you can try, but, like, give yourself some credit. Give yourself some credit. So, like, my mom, I remember as a kid, she’s like, I stopped the cycle of sexual abuse. And I’m really proud of myself for doing that.
Carling: And what a huge impact, yeah, to your fan, your generation.
Amy: Yeah, like that is huge and I give her a lot of credit for that because like That’s not an easy thing to face.
And so now it’s like, okay, how do I stop the cycle of like religious trauma and not measuring up within, like just being as a queer identifying person, that who you are is okay, no matter who you.
No matter what shape that turns out as, you are enough.
Carling: yeah,
Amy: So stop that. And then also like trying to work on regulating myself trying to stop those cycles of just all of these patterns and trying to do better. [00:24:00] It’s not an easy job, especially as a parent, right?
Carling: yeah.
Amy: not an easy job regardless, but
Carling: yeah. And I imagine like in a two parent household too, like your partner also has, patterns and beliefs that came from generations , that don’t serve your family, right? So,
Amy: you’re marrying literally two people’s lifetimes
Carling: yeah.
Amy: Into one household and trying to figure out how to pick those apart and create healthy relationships within your own family and like my poor wife has gone through So much, even in just the last six years she found her mom deceased of her medical issue and finding a deceased body of somebody that you care about.
Like that’s traumatic. That’s hard. And, you know, trying to deal with all of these things dealing with estates, we’re very good at planning funerals.
Carling: Ha ha Ha. It could be a side business.
Amy: Yeah, actually,
what’s kind of funny slash not [00:25:00] funny, because you gotta find the humor in the trauma, is um, so like, Three days after her mom died, her grandmother died, and we went back to the same funeral home and we’re like, can we get a bulk discount?
Carling: Do you have any sort of deal pay for three, yeah, oh wow,
Amy: Yeah, they were very kind. They’re like, I’m so sorry. We’re like, thank you.
Carling: ha.
Amy: You gotta take it for what it is.
Carling: So the year that your mom was in hospital, you had a social worker living with you, did you eventually move to be in full custody with your dad?
Amy: Oh, that is an excellent question. Okay, so I believe what happened the, the home care worker’s name is Josette, and apparently she still like, checks in on us on social media every once in a while, but I haven’t seen her. In that year, no parents. I think my dad did end up coming and living in the house with us
afterward. So, but I now know I’ve seen the research on it that not having parents and [00:26:00] having that time away Really does affect your relationships with adults
Carling: Interesting. Yeah,
Amy: and there’s been like this Overriding fear of abandonment in my life.
I wonder where that
Carling: can’t imagine why. Yeah.
Amy: So, like, the relationships that we have with our parents, I think, since that time, they have all been affected in different ways for all of us, just because we kind of hold people at arm’s length.
And I really noticed that this was a problem for me when we found out that Again, jumping timelines back and forth, when we found out that Trump was taking children away at the border
Carling: Hmm.
Amy: with their families and just hearing these parents like trying to get back to their children trying, trying, trying, I’m like, these kids need support and I just sat there and I cried.
I’m like, why am I having such a huge reaction to this? Oh, I’m reliving my childhood.
Carling: Yeah.
Amy: Cool. So, like, even though [00:27:00] we did have parents come in afterward, it’s never the same. Like, why couldn’t you be here? And even if you have that answer, it doesn’t stop all the, rewiring that happens in your brain.
It doesn’t stop. the, the fact that don’t trust that they’re not going to leave again, Was it something I did? Am I not being good enough? Like there’s a lot of stuff that you, especially as a child.
And I know that stuff isn’t true, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t still come
up
Carling: Yeah, because your brain why it was wired to think that.
Amy: And then also don’t talk about it because Child Protective Services isn’t going to come.
Carling: Yeah.
Amy: the public speaking class it’s, it’s like, okay, your story does matter. And it’s, for me, it’s been figuring out parts of myself because I was trying to protect my family.
But now that I’m an adult, who am I
protecting?
By not talking about these things, by not acknowledging them, yes, those things protected me then, but it’s okay. You are safe. You don’t need to hide these things. It is part of your life. It is part of your [00:28:00] story. And by not talking about our experiences, how can we do better if you don’t acknowledge that they even
existed?
So, you know, just trying to figure all that out.
Carling: Yeah, well raising to well adjusted Contributing members of society.
Amy: Exactly. How do you do that in a responsible way? Acknowledge it and then try to do better.
Carling: Wow. And do you and your wife I don’t like the only term I can think of is call each other out, but you know, push each other to acknowledge those and confront those things.
Amy: Totally. I mean, we spend a lot of time just like, before bed, sitting and talking about whatever. And most of the time we giggle at nothing. But like, if something comes up, You know, I had a really hard time with this today. And she goes, do you think maybe it has to do with like the fact that you were super poor and, you know, you’ve had food insecurity?
I’m like. Oh, yeah, that probably makes sense, right? So we, we [00:29:00] do that back and forth or for her, like she tried to, my, my brother in law is in kidney failure. He needs another kidney. So Sam went through the whole process of seeing whether or not she was an eligible donor to donate her kidney. And she is a 99%
match.
Carling: Is that good enough? Do you need to be a hundred
percent?
Amy: he needs a 100% match because this is
his second kidney
Carling: Oh, no.
Amy: So she felt so defeated , she was having like these nightmares and I’m like, you know that it’s not your fault that you’re not a match, right? like it’s so, it’s such this big thing and I’m trace it back to her mom because she felt a lot of guilt that she didn’t check up on her mom the day before, but it wasn’t like, okay, your mom’s death is not your fault you not being a match is not your fault.
You are very caring. You have done more than the average person ever would. You are okay. You are enough. [00:30:00] It’s not your fault. You are not responsible for these people’s health. So we address it. And then once you can see it for what it is, it’s a lot easier to process it and go like, I see it. You are not serving me. I’m going to work to challenge this internally. And then you can put it off to the side. But again, as I continue to parent and grow, I realize that putting it off to the side doesn’t mean that it’s gone.
Carling: I wish. Hahaha.
Amy: like I just came back from a fundraising conference. And I’m like, okay, I need money for my non profit so I can save babies. And they go, okay, so let’s challenge your own views on money. how did you grow up and what are your perceptions on people with a lot of money or people with a little bit of money?
I’m like, oh crap, here we go again. It just keeps popping up, right? And who [00:31:00] knew that trauma and your entire lifetime Will literally affect every single aspect of everything that you
do.
Carling: all your core beliefs and how you approach, literally everything.
Amy: everything go. Oh, okay The reason why I have a hard time asking people to donate to my nonprofit is because we were taught not to ask people for money
Carling: Yeah,
Amy: So now I have to challenge that
Carling: yeah,
It’s a lot
Amy: It’s a lot.
So it’s just, you know, to everybody out there like, it’s okay not to have your stuff sorted. Nobody has their whole life unpacked and sorted and put into the right places.
Like, those get mixed up all the effing time.
Carling: Yeah.
Amy: you’re gonna find stuff in those boxes that you thought were sorted correctly and go, oh wait, no, this is now gonna go over here.
Carling: Yeah. But I think it’s it’s, you know, those of us that are confronting it and acknowledging it and making space [00:32:00] to, yeah, to do that sorting, is gonna make such an impact on these next generations.
Amy: Yeah, and I’m totally okay with when my child is older and able to digest these things being like, Okay, let’s unpack this box together so that you understand me a little bit,
Carling: Yeah.
Amy: It’s a process man It just, it’s ongoing, and kudos to all of us for just like, truckin through.
Carling: I mean, truly though, especially with the added layer of queerness, you know, to unpack. I appreciate you so much. I feel like I want to take this conversation in 400 directions, but that’d be like a 17 hour conversation.
Amy: mean, we definitely need to go out for like real coffees and hang out because I feel like we would be good BFFs.
Carling: Yeah.
Amy: In real
life, too.
Carling: And I feel like the last time, no. Yeah. When you were in Calgary last time, you brought some delicious scones. [00:33:00] I feel like they were they
pumpkin?
Amy: Yeah.
From my garden.
Carling: Yeah. And I feel I don’t know, I need to bake you and your family something.
Amy: Yeah. I’m down. We like treats.
Carling: Amazing. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you, like I said, waking up extra early on a Sunday, the morning after your pride party,
Amy: It was a lot of
fun.
Carling: to talk about generational trauma.
Amy: yeah, like you do. It’s just a regular Sunday morning conversation.
Yeah.
Carling: Yeah. Well, I’ll let you get on with your day. I will tag all of your stuff in show notes and social media so people can find you and hopefully you’ll come back again.
Amy: Yeah, absolutely. We will chill and hang out and we will Toodles!
Carling: Yeah. Amazing. Well, enjoy your day. Thank you. We’ll see you later.
Amy: Bye!
Carling: Bye!
Thank you so much for joining me on this episode. I hope you found our conversation informative and entertaining. [00:34:00] If you enjoyed this episode, please don’t forget to follow me on social media. Share this podcast with your friends and leave a review@ratethispodcast.com slash I did not sign up for this.
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I Did Not Sign Up For This- Podcast 