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heartsofstrangers · 6 years

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What has been one of the most challenging things that you’ve experienced or are currently experiencing?

“I think the dismantling of my life. A couple of years ago, I was going through a lot. I watched my dad die of cancer, I was raped, and my husband left me within a three-month period of time. It was a major dismantling; it kind of knocked me off my feet and, since that happened, three years ago, that dark spot was the darkest. You feel like you’re in one place, and when you lose everything, it takes you to a whole different place in life. All your dreams are gone. The lessons learned through all that were super hard, having to take a really good look at myself, to accept things about myself, and to accept my heart in some things were really hard. I would say that that was the time that, if I were to ever believe in a mental health diagnosis, it would be PTSD. I suffered. I suffered so hard with that, days of not being able to get out of bed, having children that you needed to take care, having two other children in whose lives you didn’t even have the energy to participate, because you couldn’t participate in your own life. Those are some of the things I went through during that dark period.

“Picking up and moving across the country, thinking that the door is wide open from that point on and really even going into darker despair and being isolated because I didn’t know anyone here. Having to fight through that fog of just getting up every day. If I got up, the day was really good. I felt that it was me fighting myself, more than anything. It wasn’t me fighting the outside world. It was hard to exist for me. It was all inner stuff, it was these battles on the inside and seeing patterns in my life and recognizing that (I don’t have multiple personalities) there were multiple ages that were just going on in my body, and I had no control over that. Knowing that you cognitively know how to handle a situation, yet you don’t know how to implement that anymore. For example, parenting kids, even going to pay a simple bill, or going to check your mail—those are normal stuff, but I couldn’t put pieces together to even do that. It was really hard. I never gave up. That was one thing, I didn’t give up. When all that happened with my dad, I felt like my heart and soul had been patched together, through all the extreme traumas that I had experienced in life, which is a whole long story in itself.

“I’ve been through hell and back. Things that happened to me are things I did to myself unconsciously because my body lived on that. Going back to that time, looking at it—it’s like my soul completely shattered and I couldn’t get the shards back. It’s almost like sifting through those pieces, really literally. A couple of months ago, I went to a shaman and she had to go to this certain wall and get a piece of me back that I couldn’t get back. I learned so much from that experience. I needed help. I don’t look at what I went through as a mental health issue. I always thought it was a soul issue. I’m an empath anyway, so I feel everything around me, and that makes me ultrasensitive to everything. Then, when that happened, it was like tortures ripped in my body and I was sucking all these energies around me. It may not have been just a rip, but maybe more like a slowly starting rip and then those last couple minutes, just wide open, and all that energy got stuck in me, which just kept circulating and keeping my body in active crisis mode, and my body hurt so bad. All the shit I had been through, I never felt it; I had to suppress it, and then I felt it all at one time, this lifetime of stuff. The issues settle there and it took all that stuff to happen for it to surface.

“There is a silver lining. As painful as that shit was, I should have never gone through that stuff or even what I did experience with my father going through that process, the things I learned and actually healed for the first time, looking at the pieces. So, that rip was just constantly open, this wound that was just oozing. The ‘little people’ would take over. It was like when I moved here, it was almost like I went to infancy. Literally, I had to be taken care of, my kids had to fend for themselves; they went through this process with me. I could hardly take care of myself. I continued to do therapy. Being so disconnected, I enrolled myself in a parenting class because I needed to stay connected and try to relearn some things with them. My nine-year-old came out, and I had to tend to her and look at her and see where she was hurting, and then my fourteen-year old came . . . So, between nine and fourteen was the piece the shaman had to go get. Then, this 22-year-old came out and I had to look at him and know about these little people that are inside of me. I can never explain it because I feel like the trauma that I experienced, that during those times, I had to create another world to go to. Since this is kind of a retreat, it’s hard work to retrieve it. So, my transition from this ego-based world where I lived before into really recognizing that I wasn’t a bad person. All the shame—who knew I carried all that in my body? Oh my goodness, the shame I carried in these last three years, where I couldn’t even talk to my neighbors, I couldn’t look people in the face. I didn’t think I deserved to live. I didn’t think, even at a point, my children deserved to be in this world. It was a scary place to be. I had to check myself so much. Just not thinking that we were worthy to do simple things like shopping or go to a birthday party. It’s so sad, but that’s literally what I had to feel and go through.

“Fear, paralyzing fear, of success, of even just living or even going to pay a bill; that means I had to be responsible. Oh, the paralyzing fear. I think I was describing to someone not too long ago that, in the suffering, I felt almost like Moses with the parting sea in a way. On this side, I had the real-life responsibilities, the mom stuff, I really thrived in well before all this stuff happened (things I really needed to tend to, but I couldn’t), and then I had the spirit world over here, saying ‘you need to come visit me,’ but I was stuck right here. I couldn’t move because I was afraid to go either way. I didn’t feel safe to go to the spirit world for a while and learn the things I needed to learn to come back here and take care of them, because there was no safe container for that. When shit like that happens, they take your shit, you end up in the hospital, they put you on medication, and it had taken me a while to trust that that wasn’t going to happen to me.

“Coming over here, just connecting, because I was afraid that I was going to hurt people. I felt like I always just hurt everyone around me, and I was; I was hurting. Hurt people hurt people. I was oozing. So fighting this thing. I thought about giving my kids to another family, because I thought they were better off. These are the things I went through for so long. Thank goodness it gave me incentive. If I had not moved, I’d be dead today or maybe, I don’t know; that’s horrible. I’m a very loving, kind, nice person, and to lose my senses was like raw human behavior, the basics. It was almost like having that loser brain, nothing was charging. I survived, that’s the thing. I survived this and then moving here, having the faith. I don’t even know how I could hear my intuition through all that chaos that was going on, but I knew the moment that I visited here and saw this community, that I had to be here. I knew this is where I had to be from the moment I visited here to the moment I left. I visited here at Thanksgiving in 2015 and I arrived here January 10, 2016. So, that quick a decision and how pleased I was to do it. Getting here and having faith that week. I really believe in the peer work, finding my own support, my own community, trying to make my own path, and I don’t even know what that looks like. At the same time, trying to let go of the ego stuff, the stuff that I’m supposed to do. I have two kids back home in Arkansas, and I’m not able to be a mom right now, and I had to let that go and say there’s a purpose for all that and not fight that anymore, and not live under the umbrella. What a beautiful thing that I even created that I’m allowed to bring into this world. I had to find those little pieces to have the purpose in everything, and look at the losses that I’ve been through, and give it to that heart, but I didn’t let it go easily; I have a closet with all of it. I always feel like I’m in my head when I think about some of that stuff. I feel like I’m standing tall, but there’s a layer of shadow that’s pulling it behind, there’s this light that’s pulling me to the light. That’s how I felt with this transition. I did some major spiritual stuff. All the things I’ve learned along the way to have my own understanding of my creator and how that works in my life, learning how to not judge myself or other people, getting back to the core basics of authenticity and of love. Oh the love that’s in there that I didn’t think I had anymore. It’s little things, it’s people who just dropped in my life. At one time, I only had one friend here, and I had a boyfriend who was super busy all the time. I initially had one friend I could depend on, and then it slowly grew from friendships to people I would call family today. Today, I know that if I have to go to that other world, I’m safe, with so many different communities of people that would support me.

“These children, how different their future is going to be. My daughter is going to have the opportunity to walk in a spiritual path early on of what she chooses. I was raised, of course, in the south, so there’s a church on every corner. The religion we were engrained in was of Christian faith, which I totally believe is a beautiful thing, but I had to find something different for me. So, when I found the rooms, I had a sponsor who came along and talked about a different spiritual practice, which ended up being a sweat lodge. Who knew in little rinky-dink Russellville, Arkansas that people were practicing in a sweat lodge every Friday? I had the honor of sweating with these people; I can remember yelling in this lodge, the tears, just being there, holding me through that, and the community meeting afterwards every Friday, my people, we did it. That was the beginning of really seeking healing outside of just surviving. There have been moments in my life where I had had an easier time. There was a year I can recall that was really wonderful.

“I think my spiritual journey started a long time ago through everything that I had ever been through. My awakening started in 2010 when I went through a psychosis and went to an altered world and, somewhere in that, I came out a completely different person. I had some time there, went to college, excelled at everything I did, and everywhere I went, the grass was green behind me; it was such a beautiful time. I felt I was coming alive, seeing life in a different way. Then there’s the death, the death phase of feeling all those old layers that no longer served me, and now growing, being in touch in a different way than I ever have before, knowing my intuitive skills that I have, like being able to read a person. I see peoples’ auras; I’ve been seeing them my whole life and didn’t even recognize it. It’s taken linking into not just the trauma part of me, which very much exists, but to that spiritual part. I feel like that’s why the healing came, not in that medical wise that our society has, that pushed me.

“I was in the mental health system at nine years old and had my first hospitalization at age fourteen. Viewing from that lens and being trapped in that cycle to seeing something completely different—people don’t live this way. People don’t talk about this as a spiritual journey. It’s amazing how we live in society; we don’t connect with people anymore. I feel like we’re starting to wake up. People are starting to connect more than we ever have in years. I think our whole everything is awakening, seeing things through perspectives. It’s an amazing time to be in, and how people are recognizing how to support one another through our dark nights of the soul through these communities that have popped up just for that, and we didn’t have that before. When you went through something, you were an outcast from society, you had this label to where everything that I’ve ever been through, there’s meaning behind it and I’m able to teach other people and live in my own truth and not to keep secrets anymore. I can live openly, consciously, honestly, and compassionately. Honesty is the biggest; we’re so not honest with people, like ‘ouch, that hurts’—we don’t tell people that; we just let shit keep happening. You should be able to stand up and say that this hurt me, this is what I went through, this was real for me, I really wanted to jump off a bridge, this was real for me; sorry that you never experienced that, but can you please hold a container while I tell you about it. People don’t want to hear it because it has to touch that inner side of you.

“I was telling someone the other day that part of how I live in this world and how I am is that I touch that stuff that’s on the inside, and it’s so hard in ways because there’s a fine line, and I lose people because of that love. It’s just me bringing out the wounds that need to be healed. I can’t help it. It’s not that I point out people’s stuff and say ‘this is in you and this is what you need to fix.’ I, innately, through conversation or relationship, bring that stuff out, but some people are brave and they want to see it, are grateful, and you can have dialogue about it. How healing is that? Even just to be able to talk about stuff, how healing is that? So, that’s been my journey lately. I’m finally putting all the pieces together, participating in things I never thought I would, different ceremonies and healing modalities. I’ve tried a lot of stuff before I found what works for me. Out of the medical model, which I honor because I still have a therapist I talk to, but it’s almost like she’s a part of my tribe as well, in a way. She was crying in the office the other day because of something that we had to work through together. To see the growth and the healing in that, to see my therapist cry because I touched her sadly. Connection, right? We are changing all kinds of systems. I can remember seeing a therapist when I was younger, and it was nothing like that. Going in, and just be-bopping in, not really understanding why I was there. Things worth talking about, things I didn’t want to talk about, or not being able to tell the whole truth about stuff, that was a big one. I got a lot of horror stories from the hospitals as a teenager. You can only imagine the things that we went through there, seeing so much beautiful creativity be squashed.”

Tell me a little bit more about that time in your life you mentioned a lot of trauma, your father being hospitalized, and getting into the mental health system at an early age.

“Basically, I was born a secret in a way, and was raised for a while by a single mom. That was a little outside the box for the family. She was one of the only ones to have children out of wedlock, and that was a big thing back then. Then, she met my stepdad. Being a single mom, she put me in situations that were very harmful. Her not knowing was out of ignorance, just being desperate to have help and support with us. From age four to twelve, I was raped and molested by five different people, family members, which is a whole other story. There are reasons behind that. I don’t condone what happened or anything like that, but I’ve really made peace with it.

“My stepfather was very verbally abusive. He had his own trauma history. So, this is like generational trauma that I inherited. I basically was handed other people’s shit in my lap, was the product of their pain; at least I can see that. Of course, there are a lot of years of resentment towards a lot of that. He was a narcissist. I don’t like labels, but that’s an easy way to say what I experienced. The gaslighting—I was told I would never amount to anything—extreme punishments we had to go through, extreme poverty had a lot to do with it, and we didn’t have to be like that, it was just lack of care, I guess. I don’t know. These really shaped me for a long time. I remember when I was in high school, I was afraid to put my make-up on before I got on the school bus because I knew instantly in the morning, I woke up in fear because I was going to be in trouble for something that happened the night before. My mom had to go to work early, so my stepdad would wait in the morning, after she was gone. Ron, Tosha, Keista, now, snap his fingers, and we had to be, within a minute or two, even if we were still in bed, right in front of him, and we would get drilled and pounded with questions. I would know what I was trying to say, I would defend myself; so, at some point, something great came out of that. I knew how to defend myself. I know how to read people because I had to read ahead for so long. He had my mind so twisted by the time I got on the school bus, my behaviors would come out at school. I was extremely smart; even at 35 years old, I have a 3.76 GPA. So, that tells you that I can apply myself to something; I am extremely smart; I’m not dumb. I am something. I am something today.

“I went through that and, on the sidelines, I was molested by a couple members of the family. One side of the family, we just buried it, we didn’t talk about it, my mom didn’t even believe me, and I tell you this because I want to show you where the change in behavior was. I thought what I went through in life was normal. I had no idea that other kids didn’t go through what I went through at home. My first suicide attempt was in second grade. For a long time, I didn’t realize what that was, but now I realize that was what it was. The behaviors came out in school. I could hardly make a friend, I was so emotionally up and down. Our behaviors tell. I look around me and can’t figure out why any of the adults didn’t do anything about it. My mom didn’t believe me. I was about thirteen when she came out with that and, at thirteen, I was sexually active on my own, so I had those behaviors. I was going to friends’ houses and drinking. At fourteen, I had all these altered worlds I had to deal with. I ended up in therapy at age nine because of the sexual abuse. I had another molestation at twelve, and we went to the police station and because I used big words, instead of saying he put his fingers in me, I said he inserted his fingers in me, they didn’t believe me because they thought I had been coached. We came to find out, that same uncle had been raping my cousin, who was five or six years old. So, nobody did anything about this shit. Behaviors came out, and I ended up in a hospital at age fourteen, the first time being in an institution, and really it was like a vacation away from my family. I was there for however long my mom’s insurance covered it, until they didn’t cover it anymore, that whole cycle, right? They put me on my first medications and forced me to get a birth control shot.

“When I got out of the hospital, I went to school and met this school resource officer (my hero), who is still one of my best friends to this day. Now, he looks at me a little differently because I’m older, but that’s a whole other story. I was there and apparently the medications that they had put me on, my first time ever experiencing this—impurities, doping my body up, not to mention that I’ve been living on hormone-induced Tyson chicken my whole life, so you can only imagine everything that’s going on there. I’m in his office and apparently I start self-harming, but I started fading out and blacked out by this point. The next thing I know, I wake up in the drunk tank in the detention center, shackled. This was just a couple of days before my fifteenth birthday, maybe even the day before, I can’t remember, it’s been literally twenty-one years ago; it’s insane. I’m not that old. I can remember my parents screaming at me the whole way down ‘why the fuck did you do this? How could you do this to us? blah, blah, blah’; I’m just being blamed for everything.

“I end up in this other hospital. Insanity happened in that hospital. First of all, the first night I’m there, I go in and they didn’t have a bed for me, they don’t have a room for me, ICU where they can have the camera or a glass room where they can look at me. I’m literally in a hallway, my bed is against the wall, under these fluorescent lights. I’m sitting there, crying, because my birthday’s coming up, all these feelings, my parents yelling at me, I feel like a total fuck-up. I’m crying, it’s not loud, I’m not disrupting anything, but the nurses’ solution to that was no comfort, no ‘Tosha, it’s okay, you’re safe’; it’s put a shot in the ass and knock me out, that’s what happened to me that very first night there. I’ll never forget it. It’s amazing how I can remember every detail of those trauma memories, I just never felt it bodily. My fantasy world was romance novels. I loved to read, not as much now because I’m older and all of the responsibilities, but that was my world, and they took my books away, all my comforts away. I had this male nurse come in and give them back to me, getting all this extra attention, and then he took me to a room and tells me (I was fifteen years old), ‘I can’t stand to be here without putting my hands on you, blah, blah, blah.’ I have a sexual trauma history and here I have a male nurse; I could have easily been put in the hands of another predator. That’s when I changed; I knew the power of sexuality, which I learned to use later, that’s where I learned that. I had sex with another teenager in the hospital—these are the things that happened there, and they’re pumping you full of the meds. There were other teenagers in there, there was a voice in there with me, and seeing the fear that she had of the nursing staff; it was just horrendous.

“I got out of the hospital and went from this little, petite, teenage girl to blown up with the weight (stretchmarks galore from that). I’m not very vain, but these are things I remember from this. I had disappeared for a couple of weeks, went back to school, was ostracized in my social circle, and started fist-fighting people. It was a couple of years of good fist fights at school, either beating ass or getting my ass beat, that’s where I learned all that. Simultaneously, I’m trying to have a normal teenage life, playing softball or gymnastics. My poor parents, even though they were part of the abuse, they were hurting too, trying to deal with this teenager. I have my resentment towards them for that, so I can see a little bit different.

“I was out of the hospital for three or four months and I got in trouble. I had this one teacher that I used to butt heads with, plus, he was my bus driver. I did some property damage to the bus so he kicked me off the bus; it was a big huge ordeal. I was so afraid of the trouble I was going to get into. I remember calling my stepdad and he said, ‘You’re dead, Tosha. When you get home, you’re dead.’

“My parents had gone somewhere and had left us home. The same antidepressant (I think it was Paxil) that was prescribed in the previous hospital, I took as many as I could with sweet tea, and I love sweet tea. For years, I couldn’t drink sweet tea. I blacked out, bits and pieces that come and I feel like I remember trying to talk and my tongue feeling big. Does that make sense? I have a flash of memory and think it correlates with that time, and I think there was a moment that I can remember hearing my mom going in my ear ‘ssh, baby, ssh.’ I woke up in the hospital with a catheter, oh my God, I remember that experience. My stepdad was there, saying, ‘What did you do? Oh my gosh, they found PCP in your bloodstream.’ Apparently, I had done drugs at school that day.

“My mom, to this day, won’t tell me much about it. The only thing she’s ever told me about that experience was there were several doctors and nurses that had to hold me down, I had this inhuman strength. I think what made me come to was when they were putting the tube down my throat. So, those were memories I had of that.

“I ended up back in the same hospital that I was in before and, that time, I was proactive for myself. I said I didn’t want to go back home, I don’t care if the insurance runs out, I need long-term care. So, I advocated again for myself. When I think about it now, I realize that I was advocating for myself back then. I ended up on the long-term unit and was there for four and a half months, crazy stuff there with other people. They go through similar stuff that you do, pumped full of medications, had to earn rights to get off the unit, all these things; it was tough, but it was a break away from my family—that was the source of it. I wasn’t a crazy person; I was a traumatized person; I was going through trauma daily.

“When I came out of the hospital, my parents were strict for a little while (a couple of months), but then I turned sixteen, was able to get a job and had financial responsibility. One good thing, even through all of the trauma, at least my parents did teach me to be responsible. I was a mechanic, wonderful memories of mechanic shop—taught me how to drive standard, how to work on my own car, and how to change a tire. So, there were good things in there. I started getting freedom. I fought so hard with my stepdad, and then he basically started leaving me alone. So, I got to kind of be a normal teenager at sixteen. Normal teenager to me was sneaking around with boys and partying, going to the backwoods parties, drinking and smoking weed, all these things, whatev, that was teenage stuff back in the redneck country days.

“At age sixteen, I moved out, for four or five months, with a girlfriend, and then moved back home. By seventeen, I met my high school sweetheart and ended up marrying at age nineteen. That’s what I thought I was supposed to do. I met him in a little pool hall. His name was Rocky, country, drove a 1975 Firebird. I was so in love. His idea of a woman was she’s in the kitchen, she takes care of the kids, I go to work, I take care of everything, we’re going to have a garden, we’re going to burn shit all the time, clear that land, that’s what we do, right? It was good times when I look back now. Of course, I didn’t know who I was, and he had his own trauma history from his childhood. Who knew how bad that would affect him? We had all these dreams, and then I had several things happen in a row, plus, still being so engrained in my family, that sick stuff that happens underneath.

“I had a baby, Elijah Tiller, four generations, middle name. I had a C-section and he had jaundice, things I had never experienced before. It was stressful, and my husband was on the road. Just newness, a lot of new things. I was basically a single mom. We had been going to this Pentecostal Church for two years, I had cut my hair, wore skirts to my ankles, the whole womanly epitome thing. My favorite aunt in the whole wide world, Aunt Susie, was always there for me. If I ever could pick a mom, she would be my mom. She died in a car accident, very traumatic. I’ve learned since, if I hear details about something, those are the little things that send me over the edge. If someone dies, I can maybe handle it, but when I hear details about it, for some reason, I feel that and take it internally. I have this vision of that, and I don’t do well with it.

“I just started slowly unravelling, trauma history and hormonal stuff going on. If you wanted to put a label on it, it could have been what is considered postpartum depression. I had this baby stuck to my tits—six months of breastfeeding; it was just so new, all these things. Then I started getting off into the drug world, had an affair, coping mechanisms that I learned very early on, which has probably ruined most of my relationships. Along the way, I learned early on, never could explain why that could be, it could be more than trauma history. I started to explore whether I’m really a monogamous person or a polyamorous person. That could be some of what was going on, too. I never would have thought to look at that. I thought I was this horrible person because I function that way. It could be because I wanted to please my little people, right? I don’t know. That happened and we divorced. I remember looking at my husband, thinking that I was the problem. Of course, not knowing how the trauma affected me at that moment in my life, and I learned so much that I knew that I wasn’t right. His father made more money than I did, so it was not a hard fight to go ahead and let dad take those reins, I didn’t know how that ever would affect me. You just have tunnel vision when you’re going through shit.

“I had a whole mess with the divorce and going through that. Then, a couple of months later, he ended up on methamphetamine. Meth is very widespread in the South. Heroin up here is the scary drug; meth, down there, is the scary drug. Was anyone going to take care of my son? He had just gotten involved in a whole other system, horrible system, oh my goodness. Our systems don’t serve people in the way they need to. I did everything they asked me to do, parenting classes, outpatient drug treatment (honestly, the biggest drug I was addicted to was marijuana). In the South, come on now, there’s so much more major stuff out there, and that’s always gotten me. I had this love affair with Mary Jane, but, of course, I was trying to maintain some balance of normal, that was my crutch to help cope with this world, and I have my own theories about all that.

“During the outpatient rehab thing, I got pregnant with my second son. I think if I ever had more shame than anything is when I met David Quionones through shadow prison. He had been in there for thirteen years; he killed someone when he was eighteen. He was definitely institutionalized. He looked into people’s souls, maybe it was because I didn’t want to look at my own shit still or was afraid of the responsibility (I was close to getting my older son back), was pregnant with the second one, and the agency involvement. Of course, I can’t be with a man who’s from shadow prison and killed someone, but at the time, I felt like the rest of the world was against me and at least someone liked me. I went through that process and have my own big story I could tell.

“I ended up not with my oldest or youngest child. I ended up with this man two months after I lost custody of my oldest and my second child, and married this man. He was abusive, beat the shit out of me, bit my face. Shortly after that, I got pregnant with Jamian. He beat me so bad when I was six months pregnant that I told him that I would call the police; I can’t do this. My family didn’t understand and turned their back on me. They were willing to take my kids and help them, but they weren’t willing to help me, and they were the fucking source where all this started. Come on, I’m expected to make all the right decisions and know better.

“Living in this house with about twelve people, with crack dealers all hours of the night, knocking on the windows. There was no gas. His mom and I were the only two people working. I could barely feed myself. I worked at a nursing home, twelve-hour shifts, three days on and three off. I would eat there, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so that I wouldn’t starve to death. So much shame. I had to file and register for the baby’s food and imagine, after he was born, during his first check-up, I put the carrier down and the registrar calls on us; so embarrassing, so embarrassing. Since we didn’t have any gas (because no one paid the bill), I literally had to take Jamian’s bottles and heat up water in a crock pot and give him his bath and clean his bottle in that. Take a pan back to the house and go to a friend’s house to take a shower, but I survived that, and ended up in a different town for a little while and just kind of floated. Shortly after, I got pregnant again.

“Ten months later, we were visiting people and, again, he went off and beat my ass (I think I was four weeks pregnant with her), beat me up and down a street, literally. I was trying to run and he would grab and snatch me. He had this habit of taking my stuff (cellphone, keys, money, food stamp card), anything he could so I wouldn’t go anywhere. His family wouldn’t take me in, so I ended up having to walk ten blocks to a gas station and called my mom to have her get me; she had the kids (Jamian and Darian) the night before. She came to get me early in the morning and we went back. He wouldn’t give me my stuff, so I decided that I was done. He wouldn’t do it, so I called the police. The police took one look at me, started taking pictures, and said that they were pressing charges, I didn’t have to, and he went back to prison.

“I was pregnant with Keana through that whole time and I divorced him while he was in prison. I think this is where my compassionate heart comes in: I didn’t write him off and say he was this horrible fucking person, because I know about his trauma history. Our wounds talk to each other, and that’s what we get; we hook up with where our wound is. I wrote to him, sent him pictures, encouraged him, and said, ‘You can be a good dad.’ I went to his parole hearing. I guarantee the reason he got out was because I looked at the judge and said, ‘You know, he lived a lot, but he deserves those kids and those kids deserve to know their dad.’ So I was a big, strong advocate even for him. Through this process, I met the man who would become my third husband. We were young, the man loved me and the kids so hard. It was the first time I ever felt loved, but I couldn’t stop the patterned behaviors, the cheating and the drugs. He was six years younger than me, so he was in that phase of partying, so I don’t even know how I managed to raise children.

“I had a brush with the DHS Foster Care System for four months, but I had a wonderful case worker who was able to see through a lot of the stuff. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t know . . . she was the first person to tell me that I was super smart, that I got this, I could do it, I was a wonderful mom who made a small mistake. I never heard of a person who got their kids taken away for failing a drug test and got them back in four months. I did it. Parenting classes, I had already been through it, and I knew. I love them, but as soon as that case was over, back to partying. It was different because I had a community. How I met Chris: through the process of my ex-husband beating my ass, not having a place to go, having a baby and pregnant with another one (a beautiful little girl), I ended up moving to this itty, bitty town called Ozark, Arkansas, where the Beverly Hillbillies are from; I lived in that town. It was such a small community and through my job as a CNA, I started building community there, and it just grew. I met Chris and we were happy, even though we were doing what we were doing. All the people we knew were doing the same. We were moms who smoked weed, got together and did fun stuff like taking the kids to the zoo.

“Once their dad got out of prison, I allowed him to be part of their lives until he screwed up again, but I allowed him to be a part of their lives. During that time, I was getting in with my family. I was seeing my two boys every weekend, and had my little circle. I would drop those two off with their dads, go see my other boys, or I would have all four of them for a weekend at my parents or they would come up. It was a really beautiful time, starting something really good, but we got far out with the Xanax. It got me. I had gotten one prescription from a doctor, and I learned how to buy it off the streets. That was a whole cycle. One of my girlfriends and her mom would go to different doctors and different pharmacies (they have a system set for that now, but this was several years ago), until they finally got caught. Xanax, hand over fist, they were buying them, taking four bars a day. I had all this baby weight and it literally just melted off of me in four months. When I finally asked for help, they didn’t know if I was on meth, but knew something was going on.

“When I look back, I think that was the first time life was good for me, and I didn’t know how to handle it. It clearly showed the underlying current my body is still on that system, me trying to juggle everything—it doesn’t ever teach me what I was going through. Four bars a day and my partner, Chris, looked at me and said, ‘Latosha, you have a problem and you have to do something about it.’ My way of doing something is push those people out. Instead of going back to my hometown, at the same time, going down and getting big quantities of weed, bringing it back to this little community, and getting rid of it within days, that’s just how it works. I was doing too much, working full time with two infants. It was chaos. What amazes me with Jamie and Keana and having them—first of all, they were babies, they didn’t recognize all that stuff. In the end, I had a community that kept me kind of grounded to do the things I needed to do for my parenting. Honestly, the impact had been going on. I had been working in these nursing homes for ten years, and I was taking on all of these people’s energies. No wonder I was just going like I was. I remember giving all of my effort to all of these elderly folks, and by the end of the day, I didn’t have enough for my kids, so I felt the Xanax was doing it for me. My idea was sift those people out of my life and start therapy back up. I heard the word titrate, and tritrate meant cut in half, for me at the time, I know what it meant.

“When I made that conscious decision not to do Xanax anymore, I had two bars to last me for two weeks. I did it, and somewhere in that process, I started losing perception of time. Things that happened yesterday, I thought happened three days ago or two weeks ago. I finally cracked the first day without any Xanax in my system whatsoever. I went back to my hometown and got all this weed. Everybody was waiting for me to get off of work so they could come to my house, and I could do my second shift basically. If that day was split in two, a couple days before, which I thought had been two weeks before, my friend’s husband killed himself. Being the community that we were, working at that nursing home, she called my phone that day and said, ‘Tosha, I just want to see my baby,’ and she was talking about Jamian, because she was always attached to him. Jamian is kind of mean and didn’t really like people. But, for some reason, he liked this crazy woman, and I don’t know if she’s aware, she was fun. Somehow that day, I remember working my ass off at work, a bunch of us from work, with our kids, ended up over at her house, the same house where this man had just shot himself, although it had been cleaned up. I can remember, I will never forget this, that rift was there because I could feel everything. I remember walking through that threshold and I could feel there were spirits there. If you go by the Christian faith, and the way I was raised in the Pentecostal faith, when someone has those type of things, there’s demons and stuff like that, and I kind of believe that to a certain extent. They have no vessel to go to when that vessel that they’ve entered dies (at that time, I firmly believed this), so they attached themselves to whoever was in that vicinity afterwards. This was going through my head, and she was telling this crazy story about how his hat was over here and it was moved over here when she woke up. I don’t think she was in her right mind either. I can remember getting up, having to be busy, and making people drinks because I could feel it. Mind you, the lack of the substance (Xanax) in my system was trying to push me into that other world.

“I go home, somehow she ends up at my house, smoking a joint, and all these people were coming into my house to get their weed. I literally thought whoever was in that house carried a spirit away with them that day, because all of our lives fell apart that day in one way or another. I convinced myself of this. Chris was away at some training, I was home alone with two kids (infants and then toddler phase), and when I laid down at night, everyone was gone, I started hearing shit and my muscles started to spasm; I thought I was about to have a stroke or a heart attack, and my two babies were here. It was two o’clock in the morning, I’m not getting any sleep because I’m spinning and hearing stuff. I called into work and talked to a night shift nurse for almost an hour, because I was afraid of all these things. I made it through the night. I remember I was like a skeleton, pulled my pants on and my hair was a mess. I used all the strength I had to get my kids to daycare and get myself to my job, even though I called in. I walked into work and said, ‘I need help. —I have a problem and I need help.’

“They found me a bed in a hospital, and I got to pick where I went. I wanted to be someplace close. So, I get in this hospital and start the process (I was seeing stuff) of really titrating me off the Xanax. I remember taking a shower the night before, and my hair was standing on end (natural curly hair). So, I come out, it was a Friday, nurses don’t look like nurses, they’re in their street clothes. It’s casual Friday at work. I said, ‘Excuse me, I would like to have my make-up and my hair straightener, please,’ and she said, ‘Ma’am, you can’t have that here.’ I said, ‘Why not?’, and she said, ‘Because it’s a safety issue.’ I told her I didn’t come here because I was suicidal, I came here because I want to safely titrate off of medication, and I would like my hair straightener and my make-up. The nurse said, ‘Ma’am, we can’t give that to you,’ and I said, ‘Well, fuck you to,’ and I went back to my room. The counselor came into my room and tried to get me to go to group therapy, and I said just because I feel like I’m crazy, I don’t have to look like I’m crazy. I want to look decent; it makes me feel good. I had to fight for that and fought for it all day. Would you have your nurses come in here looking like some hoodrats, straight off the street, but I can’t look like a decent human being? Are you kidding me?

“Then, the charge nurse comes in and we have a conversation. She says that it looks like you have natural curly hair, if I got you a can of mousse, would that be a compromise, because we can’t have the hair straightener, it’s not you we’re really worried about. She really explained stuff to me, it’s the other people, whatever, try to compromise, you can let me have my hair straightener and watch me, I don’t care; I want a razor to shave my armpits. You all can watch me, I don’t care about that, and she said, ‘No, it’s a safety issue.’ I compromised with the can of mousse; no one else gave me that that day. I got my make-up and got to feel decent. Through that process, going to the other world and coming back, I was a completely different person. I saw things differently, kind of what I’m going through now. I didn’t lose friends, and my boyfriend stayed through this process for the first time. Every other time I went into the hospital before, I lost everything. They loved me regardless, my community loved me through it.

“When I got out, I took about three weeks off of work. I was back to work for about three days and came home bawling, crying, because it was so stressful. I didn’t realize I was that stressed out. I have a very low tolerance to toxic stress. I can handle emotional stress; I can’t handle toxic stress, and I was definitely under toxic stress. I came home and told Chris about it at lunch, and he told me to quit and he would support me. At the time, I loved my independence and having my own money. I gave my two-weeks’ notice and ended up staying three extra weeks. During this time, I wasn’t going to just sit there, I enrolled in college, 28 years old—never thought I could do that, with having kids, but I did it.

“During that space of not working and going to college, I was new to Facebook and had this girlfriend, who has since died of suicide. She posted on Facebook about this guy, Dr. Dan Fisher, who was coming to speak at my hometown college (45 minutes away) about Empowerment and Recovery from a Mental Illness. I had already felt empowered, but I had never heard of recovery from a mental illness. When you have something and you get tagged, you have it forever. For some reason, my spirit was telling me I had to go. I traveled down there, and when he came into the room, I had never seen a person engage the audience like that. People usually speak at you, but he was engaging us, and the things he was talking about, kind of like what I was speaking about earlier, that fracture, how in trauma it separates our mind and our heart. I had never heard anyone put it that way, and how they need to be reconnected and realigned. I remember feeling like I was in a really weird place because I didn’t belong there because he’s famous, well not famous, but he’s an author and has been on Oprah. I raised my hand in the middle of it and said, ‘Where have you been? I can’t remember everything I said. The words, this is what saved me, at that time, was ‘it’s not what’s wrong with you, it’s what happened to you.’ That phrase, I had to say something. At the end of it, Dr. Fisher asked if anyone wanted to help with a nonprofit (I had no idea what any of this was), if you want to volunteer, sign up right here. I signed up, a whole slew of us did. We did a meet and greet, the whole nine yards, and then I left.

“I was over at my sister-in-law and brother’s house, hanging out, and I got this phone call from Dr. Dan Fisher. He said I sounded like someone he could use in our state to help advocate and talk about this nonprofit, it’s peer-run. I didn’t even know what the hell this meant. He explained that it was people who survived the mental health system, and I said, ‘I’m in; I’m in.’ He invited me to come down, check it out, and see if this was something I wanted to do, like I was important. You know what I mean? So, I went outside of my box and told Chris I was going down to Conway for three days to sit in these meetings. I really had no idea what it was all about. God bless his heart, he was probably a young, dumb redneck who loved me so much, he was going to let me do anything. Those three days changed my life. I hoped this was the beginning of helping to build their peer-run nonprofit. So, I started that process, meetings of these great minds, people from the state, these people are like forever family, just watching this thing that you have building and growing, all this knowledge I’ve gained.

“I got to travel through that experience. Six months later, I took my very first plane ride to Anaheim, California to attend the Alternatives Conference, with 1,000 or more people who have lived experiences through the mental health system, with a higher purpose, being one of two representatives for the state of Arkansas. How exciting is that? This little country girl, never thought about anything beyond that. You should have seen me, I was carrying 50 pounds of books, because I couldn’t put them in my bag, since they would charge me more. Me and my partner, running across the Chicago airport with all of these books; it was horrible. It was an amazing experience and I’ve opened up. Not only am I going to college, I’m thriving in college, doing things I would never had done in high school. I was the secretary for the Student Government Association and I was the PVL President. Like I said, where I was walking, the grass was growing green. I started feeling better and my life was great. I say great, but the underlying current still actively participating in that wild lifestyle. Me and two girlfriends called ourselves the ‘bad girls club’ because we weren’t good to our men at all. In the long run, I got found out. That man loved me so much, he gave me another chance. It hurt, and those wounds started hurting people. It was almost like I was doing stuff that my fourteen-year-old would do—come out to play for a moment, do a little dirt and come back, so that she could be normal. That’s what those fragments or infractions are.

“Chris and I moved back to our hometown, and I was no longer a part of that little community that helped me grow and thrive. Friendships were finding their way out the door and the ‘bad girls club’ started doing dirty shit to each other. That’s what happens when you keep dirty secrets, right? But, I loved those women, I learned so much, they taught me so much too, sisterhood, and how to be yourself. For the first time in my life, I had these women who loved me no matter what. And then the unraveling started to happen. I started the custody battle for my oldest son, my brother was in active addiction, PTSD, had his kids taken away, and I was trying to support him and my parents in that process. My parents ended up with his kids. I was feeling like I wasn’t living up to my full potential. At least I had gotten my associate’s degree and had started online classes for my bachelor’s, my husband was on the road, tee-ball coach, soccer—just so much, spinning plates, that’s what I do because I don’t know how to sit still and be still, just doing what I thought I was supposed to do, the know it all American, and then I started cracking and the fractures started coming in.

“The way I look at it is I have this history of trauma in my life that I don’t want to feel. I think the creator allowed something very unfortunate to happen. I was raped again (I went to go buy some weed) by someone I knew for fifteen years; he was way off on something else. I firmly believe had he not been so fucked up and far off that would have never happened. I had just lost my dad, oh my God, I didn’t realize how long I had made this man my fucking God, and you don’t have that no more and you don’t have that expectation. That’s a whole unraveling, right? After I had been sexually violated again like I was, I started shutting down. I started going to NA, that’s when I entered into the rooms. My husband didn’t understand as I kept it a secret from him, because I was so ashamed of being in that position in the first place. All those feelings from childhood came bubbling back up with it, but then I started talking about it and took on the responsibility for what happened. I started talking to my girlfriend about it, and told her what happened and how disgusting it was, and she told me that I was raped, and that was the idea of that.

“I couldn’t face the reality of going to a meeting with my nonprofit. All I could do was literally just lay on the couch, hardly move, and sleep. Thank God it was a peer community. Then it all came out, and then we left. Of course, all the history of the rest of the stuff before, I was accused of sleeping with him because that couldn’t happen because he knew me, you all had history, we were friends, yeah, we were at one point, but he was so fucked up on those drugs. I told my whole family I just slept with this man, so guess what my family said, the repeated pattern, it didn’t happen, and they supported him in a new relationship not long after ours. They did a total betrayal. I can remember my mom saying that I didn’t want to be part of this and didn’t want to rock the boat. In the meantime, she was over here hooking him up with someone else, keeping it a secret and still having a relationship with my ex-husband. I was totally ostracized and shut in the dark and, the day he left, all of these goals and dreams—being a mother and homemaker, trying to get custody of my child back, and going to fight for my next one next—all these dreams gone, just swiped, and I couldn’t function. Imagine football season with three boys, and I did it. Then with my daughter, gymnastics and dance. These things were so important to me, and it was gone and I couldn’t get it back.

“I had sense enough to enroll myself in college. That human being was still there, even though I was living in that fractured side. I had a choice. I lost everything and had to go on housing, food stamps, and the whole nine yards. The outer appearance looked totally perfect, but was total crap on the inside. I could have totally done the factory thing, work at Tyson and raise my kids on Tyson chicken, but I couldn’t do that. I had taken a semester off, maybe a year, when my dad was dying. I enrolled myself back in college, and I remember my mom telling me how dumb I was and I said, ‘No, I’m not doing that. They deserve to see something different.’ When I was on housing, I had sense enough to utilize it. I can remember sitting in class and hearing ‘wonk, wonk, wonk.’ The only thing that saved me were PowerPoint and having to physically concentrate on writing papers. I was totally disassociated with so much weight loss. It was hell. I was fighting with my ex-husband for a year because we didn’t know how to let go. He was so hurt, and he had every right to be. I was so hurt, and had every right to be. Two kids were in the middle of it, and I was becoming a person I didn’t want to be. I had a conversation with my ex-husband not too long ago because after all that, when I moved and taught for six months, we had to have that much space. He got remarried and had babies on the way by that time. I told him that he was such a coward because you can’t hit on my unraveling and you have two kids. When I say, ‘We’re raising each other,’ we’re literally raising each other. The traumas that you don’t want your kids to experience (the losses, the hurt, the pain), they’ve experience it. So, that’s my story to where I’m at today.

“I probably have to look at my shadow self. Through all of that, if you look at what I went through as a child and all the things that happened, I believe of having that feeling of being other than my whole, not because I’m being narcissistic. I’ve always seen things in a spiritual way, no one in my life looked that way, just going through all that, the generational trauma—the forces I’ve been dealing with aren’t just my shit, it’s all of that—my grandmother, my great grandmother. A little bit more of my historical story is my family is full of pedophiles. My great-grandfather literally molested all of his granddaughters. He was way older, his wife was thirteen years old, and had her first child at fifteen, and went on to have eight kids. He isolated her way up in the country, while he would go to the city, make his kids work and, what I heard, was he would spend his money on the horses. There’s that side.

“On my father’s side, my father had a stepfather who molested all of the girls. One of the uncles ultimately moved on to molest me. My biological dad is an alcoholic. Me and my brother are the only two of our generation who had been sexually traumatized. My brother took it hard because whatever I went through, he was right there beside me. He was out there homeless. I know the feeling; I went through it. The Creator definitely gave me people and communities that loved and support me. It’s only because, no matter through the dark circles and fog of it all, the ultimate end of it was love, and my brother just can’t find that. He doesn’t understand that part of it. I tried saving him, but that’s his monkey barrel.

“I feel like with this generational sickness that’s happened, the buck stops here with me. That little girl and that little boy in there, never ever have they been touched, and they will never be in their life, because I know that my birth, through all the hell I’ve ever been through, was to heal that tear. They’re going to carry their own traumas, and they’re going to carry their own healing. When you have traumas like that, it takes seven generations to get it out, and when you heal yourself, you heal seven generations past and seven generations forward. So, they’re going to carry the burdens of their own traumas that they’re going to have to focus on their lives to heal, so they can be the healers that they’re meant to be, because we were born to be healers. I think everybody has it in them, but people aren’t awake to it. The Creator has woke me up to it and gave me the keys and the healing modalities to do that. I had to go through the ups and downs, the tunnels, the dark nights, and be at that desperation point in order to do the work I feel I’m meant to do and the next generation is meant to do.

“I think it’s sad that my older two kids cannot. If you went by society terms, my kids still go through shit, not normal stuff. How rich are they going to be? My daughter can pick and choose what she wants to do. She’s not bound by this anymore and I’m healing that and I’m breaking that for her, she gets to go out and be her creative self. They’re not expected to go work at some factory or become a mechanic. They are all valid trades, but the evolutionizing, they’re meant for something different. My two older kids, our journey will start when they can come to me and we can talk about our paths. That’s okay, too.

“So, making meaning of all that, when I say society says with mental health, you’re broken, you can clearly feel that way, but for me, the journey is spiritual. It’s not that physical. It’s our spirit, right? So, that’s where I’m at.”

It sounds like a beautiful place to be at, putting those pieces together, and that you’re finding value and meaning in all of these painful, traumatic experiences, but that there’s light, love, and purpose; you’re human.

“True healing, not sweeping it under the rug or covering it up with other pretty things. I’m doing the nitty, gritty, messy, all-over-the-place healing, and the Creator is providing every step of the way, even through all of my fears. This is never how I envisioned my life to be, still holding on to that fourteen-year-old romance novel reader. No wonder why I had this magical boy meets girl false hope, because that’s what helped me survive. If I’ve learned anything in the last three years, it’s to just let it go; we have no control. We can make decisions and have goals, but, ultimately, in the end, it’s our Creator that has that control and He or She molds us in a way that we’re created to go. We don’t know what our life is going to bring us. We’re all one accident away from some kind of crisis, mental health issue, spiritual crisis, or even death, just one moment away, and how the human spirit survives that, not just survives, but thrives, and gets to the other side.

“I’m a single mom. It’s tough a lot of days. I do two shifts in a day basically. My car’s got issues. At one time in my life, I had a four-bedroom, two-bath house with a backyard, and I loved that. Now, I’m in an apartment, far away from my family and anybody I know, but I’m right where I’m supposed to be. This is how it unfolded for me, and I’m happy right where I’m at. My job—I get to wake up every day and do what I love, which is to hold space for others. I have compassion, share love every day, and there’s no reason in this whole world that I should be able to love the way I do. Every obstacle I had hit me in my face, but there’s that innate feeling. There was a flame there, and it told me there’s something better and that we’re beautiful. The simple little things, like my single mom neighbor I can go to and talk dirty shit, you know what I mean? That’s so beautiful because that’s so human, right? Or, my grandmother who will call me randomly, or I’ll call her—it reminds me where my roots come from. That’s so beautiful. Or, my neighbor, Louis, who just died two weeks ago. He was an addict, and was the best neighbor I ever had, because he taught me how to dig my car from underneath the snow, something that I would never know. We looked out for him and he looked out for us; how beautiful that is. Or, my relationship with my ex-partner. We went through some stuff, we’d run out those title sides on one another, but how beautiful, on the other side of that, I had one of the best relationships ever. My very best friend, Ron, who is wheelchair-assisted and has immobility in a lot of ways, and how he inspires me every day and has held my hand. There’s so much beauty in everything. Seeing my kids struggle through things because they’re learning and growing.”

For anyone who is reading this and can relate to a multitude of things that you’ve shared, what message would you want them to receive?

“I think my theme lately is standing your own truth. Speak your truth to power. We can survive and then thrive. I guess that’s really it. It’s so worth following your dreams, so worth it, because I’m living my dream today.”

So it sounds like what you’re saying is talk about it, move forward, and don’t give up on your dreams.

“Don’t, and do whatever it takes for you to move forward. If that means you have to have that pause moment and bury yourself under the covers, that’s part of moving forward, because you’re doing the real work, you’re grieving and feeling things. So there’s value in that. Even in your darkest moment, there’s so much value.”

What are some of the things that work for you today? You talked about this being a very spiritual journey for you.

“For me, connection is a huge one, whether it be from my wings or from a different place, it’s what helps me. Yoga, although I don’t have a steady yoga practice now, has been one of the steps along the way for me. Not being part of the mental health system as far as medication and all that; I am totally not doing that route. I’ve seen a spiritualist, and that has definitely helped. I’ve participated in some very intense ceremonies, let’s put it that way. Those are some of the things, and I’m also still learning too. I’ve had these really unhealthy patterns for so long, I’m learning to pay attention. My diet is not healthy by any means, but that’s something I couldn’t see before, but realize this does affect my body, so I’m slowly integrating things like that.

“Learning how to nurture and love myself—that’s my biggest thing right now. Not too long ago, I participated in a ceremony about self-love. Through that ceremony, I found that love. I had never felt such intense love in my entire life, and it was like reconnecting with my self. I feel like if you have that, you have a base. You find that and then you have something to work with. Since I’ve recently found that, I’m starting to do the real work, even though before it was work, it was more like sifting through it. Now, I’m able to give love because I’m self-loving and self-caring. I’m able to give love to my children again and connect with them and give love to other people. I’m able to allow people to support me on this journey and support other people, that’s a big thing. It’s the little things. For example, six months ago, I could hardly get out of bed and work to living my dream job—there you go. It’s so part of me and who I am. I held on to living my passion, and I do it every day. Those are the things that help me and I’m going to learn more.”

You said previously you’re still learning, and I think that is important. Is there a quote, a mantra, or piece of advice that someone has ever shared with you, or you’ve come upon, that resonates with you?

“I think as a life mantra: when people are seen, valued, and heard, they grow and they thrive. I think whenever I was seen, valued, and heard, I grew; that’s it! I was sitting here thinking of quotes. One day maybe I’ll read the invitation to you, that’s really important to me, and I’ll put that; it’s beautiful. I guess that’s it.”

It seems that to be seen, to be heard, and to be valued are human basic needs besides Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs (shelter, food, and all that stuff). I think that’s where the healing starts, when you feel safe, you feel heard, and you feel valued. I think that’s huge in integrating people back into community, and you touched upon this a lot—the system. The system is not rooted in seeing, caring, and valuing people; it’s about medicating, labeling, and disconnecting people.

“Making money and being a cattle call. Our systems don’t work, they just don’t. Finding that sense of community has always been a big thing for me. I’m 35 years old and I’ve lived probably five lifetimes in that 35 years. I’ve always been trying to not reinvent myself, but there’s always been these collapses along the way and so many lessons to learn. However, for the first time in my life, here and now, I feel like I’m doing the real work. Hopefully, I have another lifetime or two before I go to that other world permanently.”

How has it felt to talk about these experiences and feelings with me today?

“It feels good. I feel valued, seen, and heard. I feel great about it. I’m grateful to be able to tell my story. It’s such an honor. I think our stories are the most powerful thing a person has. Nobody can take that away from us. It’s ours, it’s mine, it’s yours, our collective stories together. No one can take them away from us. I’m so honored that you would allow me to tell my story. I hope that someday it resonates with someone, like when I heard Karen’s story.”

You mentioned, before we started this interview, that you were feeling anxious and a little nervous. Did you notice when that dissipated? Did it at some point?

“Oh, yeah, it definitely dissipated. I think a little nervousness is good, right? Once we started, I just bit the bullet and didn’t think about the nervousness, and it’s not there now at all. It’s cool, and to do this process with you was very helpful. Like I said, we’ve known each, but to really sit down and get to see your compassion, the tears—connecting—it’s helped.

Thank you. It helps me too.

#healing #resilience #mentalhealth #recovery #hope

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I Think You Should Leave Season 2: Ranking Every Sketch

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How on Earth did we survive two years without new episodes of Netflix’s brilliant sketch comedy series I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson? The first batch of six episodes premiered on April 23 of 2019 and proved instantly iconic.

Contained within the season’s roughly two-dozen sketches was absolutely hilarious and essential comedy that provided ample memetic kindling for the internet’s conversational fire. For the focused enough mind, it’s entirely possible to communicate with one’s friends exclusively in I Think You Should Leave memes. Lord knows, I’ve tried it.

Thankfully, ITYSL season 2 has finally arrived on Netflix after its COVID-19 delay. It features 28 sketches that range from “pretty funny” to “I can’t stop laughing. Oh God, I can’t stop laughing. It hurts, surely this is the end. Surely, I will die.”

Check out our rankings below and then begin yelling at our chances like Spectrum is dropping your network.

28. Credit Card Roulette

If nothing else, Tim Robinson and I Think You Should Leave co-creator Zach Kanin are incredible comedy scouts. Through two seasons, the show’s sketches have been a who’s who of up-and-coming comedic talent, like the wonderful John Early who is featured in this sketch. Unfortunately Early is not served well by the material here, which doesn’t rise to the same ludicrous heights as season 2’s other sketches. The best moment is Early’s immediate resolve that he’s not paying the bill, but the sketch doesn’t go too far after that.

27. Dave’s Poop Double

The sketch that serves as the cold open of season 2’s final episode doesn’t get things off to the best start. The concept of Tim’s “Luka” hiring a guy who looks just like his coworker Dave to take monster shits every time he gets up is certainly fun but missing an important layer of added absurdity. Luka is probably the best name for any of Robinson’s random characters yet though.

26. Little Buff Boys Pt. 2

Season 2 features many more callbacks to previous sketches than the first season did. This followup to Little Buff Boys is the worst of the bunch but still quite funny. Perhaps the only thing more absurd than a Little Buff Boys competition is someone being proud of running “one of” the biggest LBB competitions in the Greater Cincinnati area. This sketch also passes up an easy Cincinnati Chili joke in favor of creating the truly vile “cherry chuck salad.”

25. Detective Crashmore Trailer

This trailer for action thriller Detective Crashmore is funny enough on its own but doesn’t reach another comedic level until the AOL Blast interview two sketches later. Still, I unironically want to see an action film with a lead character whose main quip is “Eat fucking bullets, you fuckers. You fucking suck. You fucking SUCK!”

24. I Should Have Got That

I Think You Should Leave deserves a big spread in AARP magazine. No other sketch show revels in the talents of older comedians quite like this one. After 81-year-old comedian Ruben Rabasa stole the show in season 1, season 2 ups the ante with many more sketches letting old folks shine. It’s Bob McDuff Wilson’s turn this time around and his child-like obsession with his student’s burger kills right up until the shockingly dark kicker.

23. Office Surfing

“I almost killed myself, Jullliieeeeee” is one of the best line-reads of the season. The sketch it’s built around isn’t too remarkable but man, does Robinson knock that one out of the park.

22. “No, I Don’t Know How to Drive”

This is a quickie but a goodie. Robinson’s characters break down in tears quite often this season and this is one of the better occasions. How far have Tim’s characters come – from reveling in the existence of four-wheeled motorcycles to looking at the inside of a car and weeping “I don’t know what any of this shit is and I’m fucking scared.”

21. The Capital Room

Speaking of top tier comedic talent, thank God Patti Harrison stopped by another season of I Think You Should Leave. This time around, we get two heaping doses of Patti. This one, the first of the two, is the inferior but still quite great. In the span of roughly 30 seconds, Harrison unveils the saga of a woman who A. Got sewn into the pants of the Thanksgiving Day parade Charlie Brown float, B. Hates all bald boys, C. Sued the city and won a fortune, D. Is now helplessly addicted to wine, and E. Is tragically self-aware that her money will run out soon.

20. But It’s Lunch

Just like last year’s opening sketch, “But It’s Lunch” (this is probably a good time to mention, that I’m naming all of these things myself. You could very easily call this the Hotdog sketch but that would confuse it with last year’s hotdog sketch) sets the perfect opening mood. The sight gag of Robinson’s Pat trying to stealthily eat a hotdog is wonderful, and the fact that things so quickly escalate to hotdog surgery and puke is just sublime.

19. Carber Hotdog Vacuum

The follow-up to “But It’s Lunch” occurs a full two episodes later and proves to be a hell of a pay-off. Robinson’s unnamed character (who is obviously Pat) very quickly reveals that there is one very specific reason he made this hotdog vacuum invention and you’ll never guess what it was. We all make mistakes. We shouldn’t be fired for them.

18. Insider Trading Trial (Stupid Hat)

This sketch somewhat mimics the experience of trying to explain what I Think You Should Leave is like to someone who has never seen it. “So, this guy took too small a slice of toilet paper…” or “…and then he has to have to have sex with his mother-in-law.” “Insider Trading” rotely describes the bizarre behaviors of one of Robinson’s deeply strange characters, Brian, as it’s being read into the court record. Brian and his stupid fedora with the safari flaps is in attendance to provide a visual aid. As are some hilarious flashbacks in which Brian attempts to roll the hat down his arm like Fred Astaire and instead encounters only wheelchair grease.

17. The Ice Cream Store is Closed Today

Before he was a criminal lawyer, Bob Odenkirk was one of the most legendary sketch writers of all time. It’s only fitting that he stop by ITYSL season 2 to provide his comedic blessing. Odenkirk is great from the get-go but this one doesn’t really get rolling until the end when Robinson finds himself truly immersed in the fictional life of this sad old man. “His wife’s sick but she’s gonna get better” is a shockingly emotional moment amid pure farce.

16. Barbie and the Blues Brothers

This is the sketch that climbed the most in my rankings upon a second viewing. What first seemed to be a waste of Conner O’Malley’s manic comedic energy became a semi-classic once I submitted to its strange vibes. I don’t even know what to call this one but Robinson’s character refusing to stop dancing as Barbie the dog melts down is hilarious. O’Malley is better served by last season’s “honk if you’re horny” sketch, still he gets some bangers in this time around like “She thinks he’s a whole new guy because of the glasses and the hat” and “it’s her house, she’s doing what’s right!” Robinson once again closes this nonsense out with some well-earned tears. “It’s just me, Barbie. I’m not the Blues Brothers.”

15. Jaime Taco (I Love My Wife)

“Jamie Taco” is a prime example of just how rapidly (and how well) I Think You Should Leave is able to veer into pure nonsensical genius. At the top, this sketch comes perilously close to making an actual statement about how men are too quick to pretend like their wives are horrible nags. This sketch, however, has its sights set on something much dumber…and therefore better. Our hero (played hilariously by Richard Jewell’s Paul Walter Hauser) loves his wife because she helped him through his darkest moment, which just so happens to be when snotty young actor Jamie Taco refused to let him say his Henchman lines in a play.

14. Comos Restaurant

All hail the return of the great Tim Heidecker! Heidecker, of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! fame, is one of the few comedians with a strange enough sensibility to be reasonably seen as an I Think You Should Leave forerunner. His season 1 turn as a walnut-obsessed jazz douche is a classic and this one reaches similar heights. This time, Heidecker’s character, Gary, and his lovely date, Janeane (Tracey Birdsall), have good reason to be annoyed by their date night at the sci-fi cosmos restaurant being interrupted by some hacky jokes. Of course, they use this opportunity to reveal that Jeannine’s mom used to drink puke for the Davy and Rascal radio show to pay for school supplies. It’s oddly refreshing to have a Heidecker character given a game partner and Gary and Janeane make one great team.

13. Detective Crashmore Interivew

While the Detective Crashmore trailer is the setup, this interview with AOL Blast is the punchline. Detective Crashmore is played by Santa Claus, because why not? Actor Biff Wiff’s gruff, nasally Midwestern timber is the perfect accent to accompany this lunacy. This is a Santa who in one breath demands to be taken seriously as an actor (Billy Bob Thornton-style) and in the next admits to seeing everyone in the world’s dick.

12. Sloppy Steaks (I Used to Be a Piece of Shit)

From here on out, it’s nothing but absolute homeruns. “Sloppy Steaks” could very well have been number one on this list and few would have batted an eye. The setup here is amazing as it gives Tim Robinson a reason to essentially have beef with a baby. The baby cries because he knows Robinson used to be a piece of shit. But don’t babies understand that people can change? That’s funny enough to begin with, but the real gut-busting moment here is the reveal of what “being a piece of shit” really means. In this case it means slicking one’s hair back and dousing the steaks at Truffoni’s with water to make sloppy steaks.

11. Johnny Carson Impersonator

Just a quick rundown for those who are confused…

Johnny Carson = Can Hit. George Kennedy = Can’t Hit. George Bush = Can’t Hit.

10. Driving School (Her Job is Tables)

This is the rare I Think You Should Leave sketch that actually provides an answer to all the lunacy. As Robinson’s character’s Driver’s Ed class watches Patti Harrison’s actress in some dated videos, they can’t help but wonder what she does for a living. “Tables,” Robinson answers over and over again. This would be funny enough on its own but the reveal that Harrison provides tables to Monster Cons is a rare and valuable moment of “Ohhhhh that’s why” for this show. Equally as valuable is Harrison, who really sells that those tables are her lifeblood.

9. Claire’s Ear-Piercings

One has to wonder how much time goes into choosing the perfect “order” for the sketches in I Think You Should Leave. Two seasons in a row now, the show has selected pitch perfect opening and closing sketches. This closing number is oddly melancholic as the Claire’s orientation video for girls who want to get their ears pierced somehow gives way to one 58-year-old man named Ron Tussbler’s existential dread. If we really get to see the “highlights” after we die, forcibly fake laughing every ten minutes to make the voyeuristic experience all the richer sounds like a good strategy and not sad at all. Hang in there, Ron.

8. Little Buff Boys Competition

What. A. Crop. It was a virtual certainty that ITYSL season 2 would feature a spiritual successor to the classic “Baby of the Year” sketch in season 1. Thank God “Little Buff Boys” is up to the challenge of replicating that magic. This one has all the right elements to be another hit: Sam Richardson (in a wig this time, no less), a grand pageant hall, and some precocious youths. Troll Boy also joins the canon of young ITYSL characters who everybody instinctively hates alongside Bart Harley Jarvis.

7. Tammy Craps

There’s something weirdly nefarious about this commercial for a poisonous doll that doesn’t have farts in her head anymore. It’s a criticism of late stage capitalism crossed with the cursed nature of the Annabelle movies…while not being like either of those things at all. In reality, this is just another absurdist concept sprung from the terrifying inner depths of the writing staff’s mind. It also happens to be a particularly great one. The girl weighing her clothes down with rocks so she can hit the magical 60-pound threshold to safely play with Tammy Craps is one of the best gags of the season.

6. Karl Havoc

“Little Buff Boys Competition” and another upcoming sketch are likely to produce the lion’s share of memes and quotes from this season of ITYSL. But the one quote that’s stuck in my mind most aggressively comes from this hilarious episode 1 clip. The sight of Robinson’s Carmine Laguzio posing as the dead-faced freakshow Karl Havoc and muttering “I don’t want to be around anymore” is quite simply one of the funniest things I’ve ever witnessed. This is a marvelous, unnerving, utterly hilarious sketch. That there are somehow five better sketches speaks to how strong this season is.

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5. Dan Flashes Pt. 1 (Office)

I Think You Should Leave is now two for two in introducing the most cutting edge items in men’s fashion. Season 1 featured the arrival of the highly practical TC Tugger shirt. Now season 2 ups the ante with the stylish Dan Flashes. This sketch succeeds because it takes a simple question “Why is Mike laying down during a business meeting?” and divines the most outlandish answer possible. Mike isn’t eating because he’s spending all his money on Dan Flashes shirts.

4. Dan Flashes Pt. 2 (Hotel Menu)

It’s one thing to introduce a hilarious concept, it’s another thing entirely to put it into practice. This second entry into the Dan Flashes canon is amazing. Back in part 1, it seemed as though the intricate patterns on the Dan Flashes shirts have a hypnotic effect on men who look exactly like Tim Robinson. Seeing the reality of that – pasty men battling one another to get their credit cards to the cashier before the other – is truly hilarious stuff.

3. Coffin Flop

This is the second sketch of the entire season…the second! And holy shit, does it set a strong precedent for what’s to come. This impassioned message from the Corncob TV CEO for Spectrum to save his network and its precisely one television program is a masterclass in shock humor. Watching body after body busting out of shit wood somehow never loses its grim luster. Somehow, in a sketch that features dozens of naked corpses flopping to the ground unexpectedly, it’s Robinson’s monologue that hits the hardest. “This world is so fucked up. And people are mad at me because I showed a bunch of naked dead bodies with their spread blue butts flying out of boxes? Really?”

2. Calico Cut Pants

Every episode of I Think You Should Leave season 2 features five sketches save for episode 4 which has only three. And that’s because episode 4 is dominated by a near 10-minute epic called “Calico Cut Pants.” In many ways, Calico Cut Pants is the platonic ideal of an ITYSL sketch. It takes place in a nightmarish world where every bizarre action only leads to an even more bizarre reaction. Nothing ever cools down. There is always something stranger on the horizon.

In this instance, Mike O’Brien (longtime SNL writer and the creator of the terminally underrated comedy A.P. Bio) plays an office drone who enters into a living hell merely because his co-worker helps him out of a mildly annoying social jam. Robinson’s character introduces him to a website that advertises pants with piss stains on them. That’s all well and good but once you know about Calicocutpants.com you Always. Have. To. Give. It’s like PBS, but more demonic. This remarkable sketch includes everything that’s great about this show, right down to characters with inexplicable idiosyncrasies like Tim Robinson’s adamance that doors must always be held open for him.

1. Ghost Tour

The funniest moment in ITYSL season 2 (and maybe the funniest moment in the history of the world) occurs in this sketch. Tim Robinson’s character has been admonished for his potty mouth during a ghost tour over and over again. The tour guide even said he’s ruining his job. But this poor man sincerely cannot understand why he’s in trouble. This is a tour for adults and he’s following the rules by using adult language. Like any good Robinson character, he truly believes that he’s the sane one and it’s the rest of the world that’s taking crazy pills.

So in his darkest moment, the man musters up his strength through tears and delivers the following query:

“Not trying to be funny. Not trying to get a laugh. I don’t want anybody to have the worst day at their job. But. Do any of these….fuckers….ever blast out of the wall and have, like a huge cum shot?”

Cue: riotous, damn near apocalyptic laughter. What a treasure and blessing this whole show is.

I Think You Should Leave season 2 is available to stream on Netflix now.

The post I Think You Should Leave Season 2: Ranking Every Sketch appeared first on Den of Geek.

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