Adverse Childhood Experiences Can Be Connectors to Joy | Martha Londagin | TEDxDicksonStreet

[Music] how often in your daily life do you actually stop and look around to see if you're experiencing joy if you do feel that emotion of joy how often in life do you stop to think about from whence it came we see lots of feeds on social media and workshops and books that tell us to seek joy to find our joy and there's one going around now about how to declutter in life you should go through your house and touch every object if it doesn't spark joy you should rid yourself of it great there goes my vacuum cleaner there is an ancient biblical writing in the book of James that says consider it pure joy brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of many kinds so can pain begat joy the idea I proposed today is that painful life experiences traumas our experiences that form connectors with other people which form relationships we might never have that bring us joy my path to this idea to this discovery began five years ago when at the age of 47 for the first time I went to a mental health therapist because to the outside world I should have been a really happy person I had a decade's long marriage to a good kind man I had a happy healthy successful teenager in college I had a good job fabulous girlfriends and all the money I needed but I was miserable nothing was ever good enough I never trusted anything I rarely trusted other people I felt that people always judged me that I wasn't good enough and so I had to do extra I was often called a perfectionist type-a and I was starting to make others around me miserable so I went to therapy at the end of my first therapy session my therapists pulled up a list the official list of the United States substance abuse and mental health services administration adverse childhood experiences the Aces a list of 10 physical abuse sexual abuse emotional abuse physical neglect emotional neglect witnessing the violent treatment of a mother mental health issues in the household substance abuse in the household separation from parents divorce incarceration of family members she went through a list with me about halfway down I can starting for a skip okay we're gonna skip one one of these will not apply to my childhood I will tell you for the first and only time in my life I was a perfect ten my aces journey began in the fall of 1964 when my mother a high school cheerleader student council representative and beloved baby child of a wealthy family was expelled from Salem Springs High School and told not to come back because she was pregnant with me my conception was my first adverse childhood experience my teenage parents were quickly married exiled to western Oklahoma to hide out with relatives and allowed to come back to Siloam Springs only after my birth we're in I replaced my mother is the ador baby of the family this is me with my mother's parents and my father's parents my mother tried to be a housewife in Siloam Springs Arkansas and she was miserable and after witnessing the world events in the news of 1969 she divorced my father packed us up and moved us to Fayetteville in the summer of 1970 thus began my relationship was Dixon Street we lived in a duplex a block off Dixon Street where the Harmon Avenue parking garage is now I was enrolled in miss woods kindergarten and then Washington Elementary two blocks off Dixon Street my mother enrolled in the school of art art department as they called it then at the University of Arkansas this was the plan she had at age 17 she was in classes all day she would take me with her to classes in Old Main she was at the Art Studio on Center Street at night she worked part-time jobs and I became a fayetteville street rat kid alone many many hours almost every day of the week I spent hours at the Fayetteville Public Library which used to be on Dickson Street playing songs on the jukebox by the door at the bullseye pub three for a quarter across the street at the Rock Bottom comics food oak store originally on Dickson Street and often in the late afternoons when I wasn't home watching The Brady Bunch alone I would ride my bike to George's majestic lounge where my mother would meet up with her friends she had friends now who were artists musicians writers Chuck black friends and Jewish friends and gay friends and they would all hang out at George's and Mary the bartender would let me sit on a stool by the door and there were lots of nights when I fell asleep on the picnic tables in the beer garden that used to be outside with a giant tree in the middle fast forward my mother remarried YES on Dickson Street and she had my baby brother she graduated from art school and after a disastrous attempt at trying to be a public schoolteacher she divorced her second husband an abuse of an unkind man and at the behest of my grandparents enrolled in the School of Law at the University of Arkansas this began a parade of more boyfriends and their friends and drugs and my mother to fund her life in law school became a drug dealer we had weed screens and weights in the garage baggies full of speed pills in the bathroom and I was often sent with her boyfriends to deliver drugs into South Fayetteville because a little blonde headed kid in the car is good cover we go to Rogers wreck on Dixon and I would play foosball well they sold drugs and drink beer they also started an art and antiques theft ring very creative they would go to unsuspecting rural antique stores and get me to get the owners attention in the front or in the back and they would take things out the door and then traveled to Kansas City and Little Rock in Tulsa and sell them my mother walked at graduation at the school of law and I was her little hippie kid running the streets of Fayetteville look at that hair and three months after walking at graduation at the School of Law this is my mother in the back it's a beautiful long brown hair unit one Cummins women's prison Pine Bluff Arkansas I went back to Siloam Springs and I rotated amongst the homes of my mother's parents and my father's mother and my dad and my stepmom who now had three children under the age of five I was happy to be there clean sheets air conditioning food in the fridge before school I was not welcomed by a lot of the kids was not allowed in their homes even though my grandfather was a wealthy Baptist deacon at the Baptist Church I was the druggie hippie convicts kid but due to the love of family members there and incredible high school public teachers I did well in school I started having a series of part-time jobs McDonald's drive-through mowing lawns for my dad scrubbing toilets and cleaning house and I got attention from my bosses I was hardworking I wasn't scared to work hard unlike some of the kids who had Mike and Carol Brodie his parents it was during this time I began to hear a phrase in spite of your childhood spite of that mother of yours theirs girl you should go to college you're gonna make something of yourself I thought this was a good thing and I began to have these badges of I'm gonna show people you think you know who I am I'm gonna show you who I am as Ford I during this time in high school still snuck over to Rogers wreck it was also during this time that I met a quiet good-looking athletic farm boy driving a 1967 Corvette I was very drawn to his quiet normal farm family I enrolled at the University of Arkansas went to college graduated during this time a few years before that my mother had been paroled from prison and yes only my mother could pick up a man in prison penpal so after her parole she went to the East Coast I was forced to live with her during her parole but then she was gone and I came on to college graduated married that boy in the Corvette was a public high school teacher I then went to the School of Law at the University of Arkansas and yes I graduated at the Walton Arts Center from law school with my baby son the light of my life by this time in the early 90s me and Dickson Street had cleaned up our act our dirty violence colorful paths we're disappearing Dickson Street because of the condemnation proceedings to build the wall Art Center those of you who moved here after the 90s don't know in 1982 81 there were three violent murders on Dickson Street - which were never solved and lots of the buildings had rats sounds like a great story fast-forward back to therapy five years ago my therapist in my second or third session had me make a list of all the places I had lived before the age of 12 when most of the worst abuse of my life had occurred and I don't give you details of the abuse you've all read memoirs you listen to NPR I know you've done those two things because you're at a dead dog we counted up that I had moved 14 times before the age of 12 14 different bedrooms beds cots she said no wonder you're always gunning for the future and trying to be perfect and worrying about everything for everyone else you don't trust you have to learn to let people love you but during this time that I began to see that living in spite of anything is poisonous to my soul if you're living in spite of something from the past you're living in the past you're not seeing the joy in the present if you're constantly worrying about tomorrow that things are gonna go bad was always worried about my son what if something happens to me will he be able to take care of himself he needs good grades so he can go to college I was making everyone crazy I was tired of being supermom and super lawyer and super volunteer and super granddaughter I began to enter group therapy instead he's spiritual writings I had been to church my whole life but I finally began to listen to the writings about the love that God had for me the moment I was born no one else on this earth wanted me to be born but God loved me and welcomed me I was finally able to rid myself of shame and embarrassment and love others and through that I began to see the joy in my life I had been missing for years in my professional life there's a great story I was a business and banking attorney in Oklahoma and I had a friend who was an adoption attorney in Arkansas and she said well you run up to the Ottawa County Jail in Miami Oklahoma and get this woman to sign an adoption consent she knew I would go because I had visited prisons many times in my childhood I said sure I go up there I go in the room this young woman's brought in orange jumpsuit or handcuffs and then I lay out the consent I tell her don't sign it biggest mistake of your life you'll never see your kid again she cries she signs it I'm about to leave easy job don't know this girl nothing like her and lights and sirens go off the jail was in lockdown 45 minutes in a room with this girl in an orange jumpsuit so we talked nothing else today her mother was a drug addict her parents were divorced her mother went to prison and we talked and this girl that I thought I had nothing in common with I had everything in common with and when I got up to leave and she was putting her hands behind her back to be handcuffed again she looked at me and she said thank you for talking to me like a real person I'll think about getting that GED I've never forgotten that and that brought me joy in my work today is a small business banker and formerly as a business consultant I often come to Dickson Street in the streets around here and I work with artists and writers and musicians about boring sterile things like cash flow analysis and profit loss statements and I connect with them because I want them to have the chance to be funded to have art as their passion because I wonder what would have happened to my mother she could have made a living as an artist at an early age she did go on to the East Coast and sort of make a living as an artist in 2009 she passed away back here and I helped care for her toward the end of her life in my personal life today I'm a member a central United Methodist Church on Dickson Street but I serve mostly at its outreach Church in South Fayetteville the same streets I used to ride in cars with my mother's drug dealer boyfriends and there every Sunday you'll see me this Sunday we greet people who own nothing but a backpack on their back people who are fresh out of rehab and I take care of their babies in the nursery so they can go worship I served four years in Oklahoma at a camp by the Episcopal Diocese of Tulsa for children of the incarcerated or children from all over the state are brought to summer camp to just be kids and be with people whom they can connect with the people who understand what it's like to love and to hate a parent inside we know what it's like to be proud of their parents for making it but be so ashamed to the outside world and my work with those kids and my work with the people I do today bring me joy I no longer wish that Mike and Carol Brady were my parents I would not have their relationships and the people in my life that I have today living in spite of something that has given me connectors to other people has given me joy in my life I've in recent years applied those principles to my physical body as well as my spiritual no more anger no more alcohol no more self-pity no more cigarettes no more shame no more sugar I live in joy and gratitude every day and I look for it and I see it of course I don't wish not glad that neither things that happened to me happen but they're not going away they're part of my story the great writer Bernard Malamud American author has one of my favorite quotes which is life as a tragedy full of joy and this past week I've added another quote to this talk from the great American rock poet Tom Petty baby you don't have to live like a refugee as for me and Dickson Street you will still see me many mornings in the dark running on its sidewalks writing my road bike down its streets my husband that I married and I'm still married to after 30 years this summer was part of the original bikes blues a barbeque group the year before it had a name me and that baby brother the my mother lost custody of our still close he lives out west and yes the husband stayed and the 25 year old son speaks to me again and we get along as well as any 25 year old and 52 year old can I come here and have brunch with my girlfriends and dinner dates with my husband and me and the D are doing okay thank you [Applause] you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 121,861

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Childhood, Mental health, Mindfulness, Motivation, Peace, Recovery, Success

Id: 0yMmJoRxxUY

Length: 18min 18sec (1098 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 25 2018