Michael Part 2: Truth as a Mechanism for Healing

Eden:

Previously on Keep the Mess:

Michael:

Clip 1: I never really inhabited for myself a sense of maleness or a sense of femaleness.

Clip 2: I think really, what I want people to know about me is I care very deeply about the world. I look for ways to contribute. I'm often afraid that I do not have ways to contribute.

Clip 3: I harmed a child in my care. My conviction was child molestation in the first degree.

Clip 4: I know what it means to be considered a monster…and yet I have found ways to live meaningfully.

Intro Music

Eden:

Hello, I am Eden, and this is Keep the Mess: Messy Conversations with Messy People, where we have conversations about how we relate to our bodies and go down whatever rabbit holes we find. I started this podcast because I am a bit obsessed with this topic. I struggle with embodiment myself and wanted to learn about how other people live in and out of their bodies. I figured if I’m interested in these things, chances are that others are interested as well, so welcome fellow obsessives. In this episode I speak with my friend Michael.

This was recorded on May 7 of last year and December 17 of this year, and it’s the third interview I did.

This is the second half of my conversation with Michael, so make sure to listen to the first half if you haven’t already. While the first part focused on Michael’s experience with the criminal legal system, this centers on their feelings of loss, their strong belief in telling the truth, and their longing for healing and wholeness, not only for themselves, but for others.

As I said last time, this is likely the earliest of the recordings I’ll be sharing, and as I was still recording on my phone, the audio isn’t ideal. A transcript is attached in case you need it.

Content Warning for talk about sexual abuse, rape, and suicidality.

And lastly, I want to remind people that just because I have someone on this podcast doesn’t mean I agree with them on all matters, or even many. These episodes are not about facts or saying things perfectly, but about peoples’ stories, their experiences, their processing. Connecting and communicating with ourselves and each other is a messy affair, so I ask for a listening ear and some grace.

Alright, here is the second half of my interview with Michael.

Main Recording

Michael:

There’s this fear of, you know, the monster that just just can’t wait to get their hands on another child, and at the same time they don't even understand what actually ends up happening to those very children. I was a primary caregiver of the person I harmed, and I have these stories that I remember. My wife at that time was telling me about my daughter. And like, she just had no idea where I went, what happened. Gde Papa (Russian)? Where’s daddy? Looking for me to show up. Knew I was out, that was it, right. And I don’t know, like there's a lot to say about…and I get this, I get this as being a very sensitive thing to say about like: “oh, well she didn’t know.” I don't think, I really don't think she did. Just knowing the nature of my actions, like it wasn't an overt action that I had taken and at her age—she was two—at her age I don't expect that it registered.

Interruption

Eden:

Hello there, sorry for interrupting here, but this is the part where Michael talks about the act the actions that led to their conviction, and we decided separately that this was neither helpful nor necessary to listen to so I have cut it out. So here I am, just letting you know. And now, back to the interview:

Main Conversation

Michael:

I was like, whoa, that's messed up. And I sat with that for some time. And realized that I don't know, you know, try to think through it (?) and I realize, you know, I have some danger here. This is not just going to go away. I have to actually like face this, or like, who knows, right? I mean, who knows what's next? I was really concerned, you know. And I thought about a lot of things at that time, but what I wanted to do. Was I going to commit suicide, right? Take myself out of the picture. Was I going to run away, flee, hide, you know. How do I deal with this right? I decided to do what I thought was the right thing and I'm like, okay, I’m going to seek help. And I knew, like OK, I can't talk about this to a therapist and not be reported, like this is just going to happen, so I just jumped in with two feet, like okay, let’s just tell the police, right And uh, that wasn't that wasn't very smart. I say that because, okay, so I removed myself from the situation, but my daughter was still in danger. I sort of understood that much later. I don’t want to throw around accusations, but I really have some concerns about the situations my daughter was placed in since then and her safety. I think I'll leave it at that for now. But once I identified myself as a problem I no longer could be an advocate for her. I lost that. At the time I really could only worry about myself, like that was so much in my head and myself. And like oh, I'm a problem, here's what's going on. And since then I feel like I've gotten a lot more understanding and perspective and I don't think I did what I needed to for my daughter. But I don't know. What I would have done, I still don't have a better solution. I don't think there was any goods solution for such a shitty situation. I struggle to see what she got out of it. I don't wanna be…I want to be really clear: I needed intervention. I needed to not be in that house. I desperately needed some years of intense therapy and working a ton of shit out right, I needed some accountability, I needed all those things. The system though, is brutal and absolute and uncompromising, and absolute and uncompromising, and for the longest time, you know therapy was really advocating for supervised visitation, you know, with my daughter. DOC didn't want to do it. Again, this is liability concerns, I guess. Now, when I say supervised visitation, I just want to be clear, this is with the therapist watching me, right? Who knows about me. They’re for protection of the child. And like we did lots of debriefing afterwards about like how things went and, you know, how do I show up in a way that's healthy, yeah. As far as I know, my daughter still doesn’t know. As far as I know. She may have been told. I know when I had visitation with her, which was five years or so after I had offended, there was no indication of her having knowledge of any of the context of what was going on. Some idea, you know, like okay, there's something going on, but… yeah, I haven't seen her for a long time, since my ex remarried.

Eden:

So you did see her after conviction then?

Michael:

Yeah, it was about a year or so where we had a handful of visitations. Originally it was in a therapist office and then we had some outings and things. We went once to a lunch. A couple times to, uh, just some parks, went out on walks, the arboretum. Things of this sort. It was great. I still have drawings that daughter had made for me. You know she’s like…let me just get the year now. So she's 16, she’s gonna be graduating not too long from now, yeah…but yeah, these drawings she made when she was like 7 or whatever, I still have them in a drawer. But like I was just talking a little bit about that fear that I have, I'm like oh, no, DOC’s…It’s permitted, and I was allowed at the time, but you gotta realize almost 10 years have passed now. Who remembers that I even had that permission to have these things? So now I'm like, oh, they're going to discover this thing and forget that this was even a thing I was allowed, and they'd be, like, what is this and it's going to be a huge problem because people forget after a while right? Not like somebody wrote it down.

Eden:

What was the reason given? Why you were not allowed to see her anymore?

Michael:

Oh, um…

Eden:

It sounds like you were about to see her at for five years.

Michael:

Yeah, yeah. Well, her her mother said that she didn't want to continue. I mean, I respect that opinion, I respect the wishes, and partly because I have to. But also. I really don't know what's going on. I can make. Up some stories. I know that she started seeing someone else at the time, my ex, and I imagine that could have had something to do with it, right? Like that person could easily be: “What's this about? Why would you, you know, do this?” That's an obvious one. Also, if those sorts of conversations are going on, you know, like my daughter could easily have been asking questions like, “why do we meet Dad like this, what's going on” and it could be really, I don't know, like that's, it's going to be a hard conversation to have with a kid and who knows how my daughter even did perceive it or could perceive it. I guess and I assume that they stopped having meetings to avoid having a difficult disclosure, that's my guess. Could have been a disclosure, my daughter maybe was like: “Oh I don’t want to be with somebody who hurt me.” And that also…like I understand that, right? Like that makes a lot of sense too. I have no idea. I'm just at a place where I can kind of envision and think about different cases that could have. I only know that I haven’t seen her. I hope to see her, for her sake. I…kind of going back to my childhood a little bit, my relationship with my father…I realized how important one’s relationship with one parents are. If only, I mean…I never really had a relationship with my parents, uh, either of them. Like really, very disconnected so I can't talk a lot about what, uh, like day-to-day relationship with parents? But I could talk about it in a conceptual way, right? Like how I think about my parents. And I recognize the importance of having good story about parents, right? And my father, how important, or rather I’ll say, how damaging a story I had with my father was. My father, the monster. And what does that mean about me, right? Like it's that's inevitable, right? And in this case, you know, I was raised male, so like I really associated with that, you know, I was like oh wow, okay, so I'm the, I'm the little monster, right? But I also recognize that even if you don't directly associate, you know it gets so intertwined with how you like relate with people and stuff and…I want my daughter to be whole. I don't know how to give that to her, but if I can meet her and I can give her a good story, I’d really like that. I mean for her sake, right? Like, so she, she has. Something that she can live with. Right like? Something that is not some kind of torment to hang over her, right? That's what I think about a lot about, what are the ways I can do that? You know, I need to get off my ass and do this. Like, I want to write, I want to give her a literal story. But also, it's weird because… Let me tell you, like contact... It is, it is really construed very broadly sometimes. There’s this whole this of like, not just direct contact, there’s third party contact and direct contact, and like having a picture is contact or you know learning something about somebody is contact, like God, are you kidding me? It's like I, I don't even have to like talk to somebody or you know, somebody can just say something like, “Oh, I saw on Facebook…” I've had to shout people down, starting telling them: no!

Eden:

Wow. About…?

Michael:

Yeah. Like, don’t say anything!

Eden:

Don’t say anything about someone I want to [know about].

Michael:

Yeah, but you know so then again, OK, so let's say I start writing this story or some story and it’s like oh yeah, this is for my daughter. Oh my God. Like do I go to jail for that? I don't know. Like it's scary. That's part of why, like, I haven't done like…What am I even allowed [to do]? like I don't know, I don't know like it, it's so cut off, right? I, I can't tell you how much, like it’s so hard. How do I how do you I ever, like, how do I ever get my daughter what she needs?

Eden: Yeah… I’m just thinking about how beautiful, I think this conversation is. And how beautiful I think you are? I don’t think it’ll ever cease to surprise me how beautiful people are. And how sad I am about all of these blocks to wholeness. What you want for your daughter is wholeness.

Michael:

Very much so.

Eden:

And I'm sure it’s something you want for yourself too.

Michael:

One brings the other. Making my daughter whole makes me whole.

Eden:

I remember when I was telling you I was nervous about doing this and I felt very protective about your story and…you said it much more gently than this, but this is like how I have it in my memory, it was basically, this isn't about you and you being good at this. And I'm so thankful for it because it not, it wasn't about me being good at this and I think the idea of being, being good at things isn’t super important. It's about presence. And I feel honored. And I want, I want wholeness for your daughter. And I want wholeness for you. Did I never tell you this story of what led me to do this?

Michael:

I don’t think so. Go, go for it.

Eden:

So I was in grad school, and I was finishing my internship. And I worked with people with severe mental illness and I never expected to be doing that work or enjoying that work, and the last day that I saw clients, my last meeting with a client was this guy that I had been working with and he just, he had just learned that he was dying. He had a couple months to live, a month maybe, and he was dying of liver cancer, I think. He was an alcoholic, and he was part of this harm reduction program where he was drinking far less than he ever had in this life. And he was a writer, and he showed his poems before, and he'd always wanted to publish. And I remember him looking at me and saying: I wanted to leave my mark, and I'm never gonna be able to do that. I remember saying: Now, I'm not gonna sugarcoat this, you're never gonna be able to publish anything, that's true. But, you have left your mark on everyone around you. And I didn’t say it in some trite, stupid way, it was true. We all loved him. And everyone around him loved him. He…like our whole community was grieving the fact that and he was crying and holding my hand and I was about to cry and it was this beautiful moment. But then I, I left since I didn't want to cry in front of him. Later, my supervisor said, it would’ve been okay for you to cry with him. And I wish I had, I really regret that. And I wish I could have done this with him. And I thought that because I get this sense from you of wanting to leave a story.

Michael:

Yeah, I mean. There are things that come to mind about with what you're sharing there, and I definitely experience that a lot to, you know, wanting to leave my mark, yeah? Have some impact in the world. Some positive impact. The story thing and what I was talking about is very specifically about giving my daughter a story, giving her some way to know me, and to conceive of me. But a story that she can have. And hold in a way that is not, no… it's, it's very much about legacy, right? And it's very much about my experience with my father and understanding like how my having no story about him or my having a story of him as monster, and like the impact that it did on me, right? And let me just something for the record, that I have something very different with my father now, right? I have a relationship now with my father. I would like to connect more with him than I can. Right like there's, there are barriers there that I think I’m never going to get past. I have something of a different story, maybe just because I've aged so much. I mean for me that was, I feel like so damaging. I guess even I can say for my mother, right? Just like understanding stories with my parents and the lack of some sort of a positive way to relate to them. My wish, my deep wish for my daughter is to give her something…I’ll take it back to something I was talking about earlier: to hang her hat on, right. A way to think about me and to understand me that is, we could say like psychologically palatable, but like I said, I don’t, I don't like putting it that way. But [a way] that she can, she can bear, right? Which means like there's a lot of things in that right, like, which means me showing up in a a certain way right. Like, however that ends up being. But also my being ready to, and doing what I can. Well, I mean, I mean like 1. Very much just like working on myself, right?

But also there's a lot of aspects of this, I mean one is like being able to give an account myself, give an account of what I did. Not trying to be cute here, but like there is very much something about that being accountable, right? Like, there's the telling. And and really understanding the importance of the telling. And what that could mean for somebody? Right, simply asking: Why did you do this thing? And having an answer. I mean it's a hard like it's a huge answer that I think takes a long time to tell, maybe a lifetime, but I also, like, I have a lot that I could actually give in that respect, but also just being ready to present myself, right, in my wholeness and a sort of understanding of the wholeness complexity of us, right, of being a parent, right? I have a relationship with my child, even if there's no contact. As she goes and conceptualizes herself, she derives it from everything around her, relationships, the way she relates to people. And if the relationship is solely her father molested her when she was two, she doesn't have a lot to go on. All she has is trauma. And what I'm saying is I want to give her more. The story can't stop there. I mean for her sake, you know, and I know and and I know I can't force this, right, like there's no way. But I want to be available for it, and also I’m really sad about Not knowing if I even, like I was talking earlier, I was like can I even prepare for this? How is that perceived if I try to get myself ready, like: OK, my daughter, might, you know, reach out to me at some point in her life. Like this could be a thing, you know, like, children do this. You know, you're 25 and married like: I want to know about my biological father. What the heck, right, like this is a thing that happens. Like how do I prepare for that eventuality? And how do I do it when my preparing for that eventuality is actually looked upon with suspicion and concern? And as it is, like it, it can only kind of be in my head, but like I was mentioning about wanting to write it’s because I think of myself as a writer. I say I think because I don't write much. But if I think about the kinds of stories I would like to write, I would like to write something, I would like to write a story for my daughter. It's partly because I feel like nothing reveals another human being more than writing, right. [It’s] very much is in my head you know, it's like it's my thoughts, right? I mean I was gonna say it's possible that this is very selfishly motivated. I mean like, sure, I guess I would like to be accepted. I question, like, how much? How much of that comes up? Or approval, like, yeah, I’m a good person.

Eden:

See how I’ve grown.

Michael:

Yeah. Maybe. I don't think that's it though. I mean a lot of this is formed by the pain I had growing up, right? And that's the easiest pain for me to understand, and I could project and imagine that this could be for her. And I don't know like it's, also hard like I haven’t, I don't know my daughter, really, do I? I don't know what she's like I Don't know what she struggles with, I don't. In fact it mostly feels unreal to me, I'm like, oh I have a daughter? And it’s been like 14 years since I’ve lived with her, you know, and [I’ve] only had five conversations since then, maybe, right? So it’s, you know, like I know it but not. Really like it’s, it all seems kind of unreal.

Eden:

Yeah, in what you were saying earlier about, you know, you can't do anything about this now, but you are preparing or you know, wondering? And all this it actually brought to me the last line of the poem that I read earlier today in our reading group: We grow through dreaming,” something like that, an Audre Lorde poem. I'm just imagining you growing and figuring things out and then preparing for your daughter in this sort of dream aspect.

Michael:

Yeah, I think it's very accurate, yeah, because these are so, so disconnected. It's interesting. It's real, but like…yeah, I like the sense of a dream in that way. But also, like the other sense of it being a dream, is, like, it's very aspirational.

Eden:

Out of my own curiosity, I was wondering: How do you feel towards the person who raped you?

Michael:

Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm gonna kind of beat around the bush a little bit and then I'll get to it, but yeah, how do I feel? I'll be sure to talk about feelings. I'm gonna talk about how I relate for a little bit. So I, as an adult, was doing some immense work and this person had come up. I'll actually go ahead and use her name, I think it's appropriate: Trudy is her name, and I’ll also say I also witnessed her molest her son, and I believe…well, I also had knowledge her about some sort of sexual assault with my brother, so like I know of at least three people, these three children that she had assaulted. I also knew that she was, her study was an early education. She was working in preschool or something sort, right? It's really like OK, like what am I going to do with this? You know, like how do I show up in this situation, what does this mean? Where I arrived that was I reported the offence. So this happened in the Air Force Base. It happens that in the Air Force there is no statute of limitation for this, and and so like it's actionable, right? And yeah, so, I met with a couple investigators Air Force, I went down to talk with them. And this is not where this individual is at, she's off to another place in the country, but, so yeah, I mean I reported it and I talked with them and nothing really came out that right. I mean they were polite and he took down everything and they said they would follow up and they would let me know, and that’s the last I heard from them. I was a little, like I'm disappointed by that. Like I, I'm a little bit bitter I'm like OK, really Like I can name 3 victims, and she's [works] in the care of children and nothing. I don't know. Eden: Like she's still doing that work?

Michael:

Yeah. It's still active it, that's why I talked. That that's ultimately why I came to, it was like, OK, my action here is to break my silence, because she is actively like she's still, she's still Like that's like a, I don't, I don't know, I think… she's working on preschoolers, right? This is dangerous. Yeah, so I don't know. Like partly there’s some resentment, partly I'm like OK like there's some real gender stuff going on here, like. Not as worried because she’s a woman, right? Um, I don’t know. I really don't.

Yeah, I'm not sure really what they could do with just my word either. I don't know. Uh, I would have liked it to have heard back or say hey, like we asked a little bit, yeah nothing came out and just even just telling me that would have been really helpful. I, uh. I mean needless to say like there was a huge impact on me, it really hurt me. Uh, in particular I felt responsible, right? That was that was hard to deal with. And, uh. Yeah, actually that you know it. It could directly relate my rape to the loss of my faith. Yeah, I was raised Christian. I very clearly like, I remember, time in my bed and when I realized—Oh yeah, I’ll go ahead and give this story. So yeah I had been raped and actually for me, like, because of my home experience with what was going on I felt very unloved and this woman, as she was, well, the term we use is grooming, as she was grooming me and she's talking a lot about love and about this being an expression of love. And I really latched onto that. I, like, you know, I felt so unloved at home. And so, like afterwards, I was very elated, right? And sort of living in dreamland for like period about 2 weeks. And I will say my Mother asked me hey, did anything happen when you were over at Trudy’s? Because talking with my brother, a 14 year old boy is wanting to go back over there. I think this is weird, right? And I denied it. No no. Nothing happened. And then, So that was it, like we had that conversation, and then afterwards I was like oh and then I just crashed right? Went off a cliff, emotionally And my mother was very ashamed around sex and sexual topics, like anytime sex is brought up and movies or whatever like she always visibly cringed and sort of exclaim about how wrong that was.To be fair to her, she did get, she was pregnant at 15, and you know, so she had some trauma around that. And, yeah, but she talked a lot about, you know, how wrong sex before marriage was, and to never do that and God really doesn't like that, it’s bad. And then I had this dawning when we had this conversation, like oh, that was sex. Like this is when it hit me, like I didn't quite know it beforehand, but oh that was sex and I did this horrible evil thing that I'm never supposed to do before marriage. And I was devastated, like: Oh my God, how could I have done this terrible thing? Uh, yeah, like, I cracked like, part of this was, like, I lost my faith, right? You know, I was out of God's graces, I was a terrible person. Really like a lot of things at that moment started a lot of my psychological traumas, I would say. You know, a lot of my self-hatred, and self-abuse, some acting out behaviors. Yeah, like it is pretty obvious and clear for me to draw that connection. This happened so suddenly, like 2 weeks after I had been raped. Yeah, I took the responsibility on for that and I coming back to gender questions, right? Like I took their responsibility because it was, you know, I was being identified male, sex is my responsibility. Right, this is my fault. That's very much how I interpreted it, right? So yeah, I lived with that for a long time, 'cause I loathed her right? I was disgusted by her, though she was gross, yeah? I locked this out of my memory for some time. And I know like I was really iffy for a long time, I was like: did this really happen because it came back to me like, in a flood when I was 17. Oh, this thing really happened? Uh, nothing really triggered the memory. Like I wasn't a therapy or anything. It's just like, I recalled this and then had some conversations with my mom and my brother and I was like able to piece together, like enough, supporting things, and I was like: holy shit, this really like, oh that really happened, and oh we really had that conversation. OK. Like, alright. So, I was disgusted for a long time. I don know, I mean what do I say, like I don’t…again, she's kind of unreal to me, so like I kind of really don't know her very well. I don't wish her ill, right? Partly because I can understand, right, like, doing things that harm people. I wish there was some accountability, like you know there isn't any. People don't seem interested, which is disappointing and alarming. Partly I, I don't know, like I make up stories about that too, it's like, well is it because I'm not credible? Like, with my background, I’m not a critical witness. I don't know. I'm not sure. Like I, I don't really harbor anything against her, because I think I’ve processed it, I’ve dealt with it. This is something I was able to really process a lot in therapy, and coming to understand that I wasn't responsible for that as a child.

But also like it's interesting, yeah, I mean these things are very sticky for children, right? Like, why it's so damaging is because so much of, you know identity, personality, and, like, so many things are being formed. Like every little thing that she said, I latched onto, right, as a kid and they loomed so large for me. They were so important, you know, like the fact that she had disparaged her husband and like you know, her disgust there, you know, like what does that mean, you know? And these things just, they end up in my beliefs and expectations of how, you know, relationships between people work out, so yeah, it's really, really impactful. I'm scared for people that she's in contact with, right? I don't think that she's ever been held into account or ever gotten any healing or help or anything. It's just, likely, I mean, there's a pretty big jump from like, single to like multiple victims, and like, I’m just saying like, I’m really worry about her being, like, I don’t know what she's doing right and and, so yeah, I have a lot of concern about that and I wish there was something I could do.

Eden:

I was wondering, was part of the reason that you turned yourself in, so that you wouldn't jump to multiple-

Michael:

No, I don't, no I don't, you know, the concerns around that I was really worried about were about the safety of my daughter. Honestly, my feeling, my understanding of things where they were at that time, that's like, that I hadn't crossed boundaries, right, but I was in the risk of crossing boundaries. And just to be really clear, looking at it, I mean, just looking at a very legalistic definition, things are clear that absolutely I was convicted for exactly what I plead to, absolutely. I posed great, very serious risk to my daughter. And, I wasn’t, my worry was that I had no control. Like that became evident, it's like, oh, I can't, I feel like I'm unsafe. For the longest time it was was like oh, you know I'm safe or if things got bad enough with all this stuff and like, uh, I would never hurt somebody. I mean I would kill myself first, really, keep myself in check right now. It's like I'll kill myself before I hurt, and it's like, well, no, actually like that's, you know, that's not true. I can't rely on that. That became obvious and evident to me. And then, I was like I'm, I am going to hurt my daughter…you know, I knew that. I could not stay in this situation. And her not be devastated. And to be clear: I molested my daughter once. But to put it in another way as well: I molested my daughter. Right? And it's interesting, this is, again, this is kind of, it's hard to talk about these things, right. And I think a lot about how my words land, like what am I minimizing right? Like, it was just one time. And there's a lot of, how do I speak about this with clarity? I think I fall into, as you say, it's clinical language. I molested my daughter on one occasion. And, I'm not kidding, it's absolutely my belief that I would have done it again, probably continued to have done it had I not intervened. And that that was my desperation and realizing that I had to talk to somebody, you know. I talked to my spouse at the time, and then a social worker, and then the police, and then a judge and all sorts of people. Yeah, that was my way out, because I acted in ways that were horrifying to me. I couldn't account for like why am I doing, you know, why did I do this? Why do I have this, you know, I experienced…it was really bizarre to me and I experienced some compulsion to do it again. It's like, this is not something I want to do. It took a long time to understand unpacking that too, everything was going on with that and conversations for another time, I guess.

Eden:

Yeah, the last thing is, you know, we've used language monster and you just used the word horror, and I'm just wondering what language would you prefer to be used about you and Trudy, and, you know, these past actions, and also your present. I guess that’s a big question.

Michael:

Yeah, you know I was working for a little bit on doing some blogging around this, which it kind of stopped because, so this is some of that fear I had around the Department of Correction stopping me, right, and to writing directly about these things. But anyways, like breaking it down and thinking about monster, like, really, what came up for me around monster, the conception of monster, like a monster is really something we can’t bear. It's gone outside of our experience, and we sort of lose touch with reality. And one thing we resort to is monstrous right? It’s a thing that’s broken us in a way, right? Like it's too much, we can't do anything more here, except just you know, it's like so walling off what we can't see. So, you're asking about language, what language I want. It’s not really about language, it’s more about experience. And what I want is for people to be able to sit and see this stuff. It’s hard, but it's also vital. Cause I think as a society, we're fundamentally broken around our sexuality, right, and these things happen, we don't talk about them right? We don't have the capacity to deal with them. I didn't have the capacity to deal with this horror, right? what happened to me as a child and I suppressed my memories. That's what I could do in that moment is explicitly, and I actually, I remember like making that decision, actually it's like I'm just, I'm never going to think about this, right? But I think we have to do better. We can't heal when we can't talk about it, we can't name it, right, when, all we have are the words monster. And we can't sit with the reality of what happens, these things that happen to people all the time. We can actually do something. The opposite of monster is human, right? Humanizing language is a language, right? I mean language is important and linguistics are helpful. That's not what I would stress. I'd really stress: sit through discomfort. I mean, sometimes asking: how can I help? I mean for me this is a question I ask a lot. It's like, hey, what can I do? How can I show up? How can I help? As it in these contexts, you know, ask it, and, there are horrible things going on in the war right now. How can I help? What can I do? You know it's... Yeah, well, that's a protection mechanism as well, right? So I can't sit and stare at the war, but I can move into action and I can find out how to move forward, how to help someone else move forward, right? Yeah, so language is important. But really, it's a, I said attitude or it’s a way of being. I want to see more healing in the world.

Eden:

This is truly my last question.

Michael:

Sure.

Eden:

Earlier you said that it was appropriate or important to say your abuser’s name, Trudy, and then you also, before we talked, you wanted your name, connected with this. Can you expand on why the names are important.

Michael:

Yeah, it's interesting. I've been told by people really to be careful about my story, telling my story and even recognizing that my story is not just my story, it's other people stories as well, right? I used my name. And then I say, yeah, I abused my daughter then I'm also putting my daughter’s story out there, right? And I think that's true. And I think there's a lot of care to be had, like this is real, right? It's quite possible my daughter has no idea, and that something like this could actually inform her and inform her in a very surprising way. Could also inform her friends or whatever, right? At the same time, I'm very worried about, it’s like, what ends up happening is, there is yet more silence. We are so afraid of how people out there, well, how they're going to take a story and use it against people that we never say anything. Right, like my daughter might actually not even know what happened to her. And it's hard. And again, I'm going to stress, like this, so much care that needs to be taken. This is a precious vulnerable thing. I also don't want to let that lead us into this fear of never letting the truth be known. And good or ill, I've always been very beholden to that concept of speaking the truth. I believe in that a lot. I believe in the power of truth. You know, whether or not my daughter knows what happened to her, she feels it in some way, right? I'm not in her life, like, that is felt some way, like, it's showing up.

Not speaking truth is adding confusion, right? Just looking at it, you know, a very broad social perspective. People never know what's going on like, oh yeah, we're supposed to deal. Right, how we just deal with it, like, I don't know it…So I believe in the truth as a mechanism of healing, I very much believe that without truth, there's always some degree of, I don’t know, some vestiges of leftovers like, you never quite get to, you know, what's going on? But also, yeah, I was, in that moment, am I gonna mention Trudy's name. I very much, you know, thought and considered, like, you know, and, like, okay, you know what am saying, am I looking to protect her story, right? I'm not commenting on the appropriateness of this at all, but I'm just saying this is not what I'm doing: I'm not naming and shaming her, right, it's just a decision that I'm making on how open am I being right now, right? Like how much do I want to speak [about] what happened? And that also that includes who, right? I don't know. Yeah, I want to stand by my story. Uh, I think it's important for me and myself. Partly because it so rarely happens, right. I want to treat these things with care, but I don’t want to hide.

Eden:

Well, thank you for sharing your story with me.

End Note

Eden:

,: 2022

Michael:

Thank you Eden, I really appreciate being able to just add a bit of context to our quite long conversation we had. I’d like to thank you for giving me the chance to share about myself and to do so in depth. That’s not something one often gets to do in their life. I mostly just wanted to say, but I also wanted to leave this acknowledgement. I imagine most all of your listeners have a story of their own, of pain, of triumph, of uncertainty, whatever it might be. And I wanted to say that I wish everyone the opportunity to tell their own story in their own manner. I don’t think there is a greater opportunity for the world to heal and connect than this. Healing is what I most desire for the world. Thank you, Eden, for creating this space and for the example for me to do the same.

Eden:

Thank you. I’ve really appreciated not only the interview that we did but also all the conversations we’ve had as well, so thank you again, Michael.

Michael:

Thank you.

Outro Music