Preacher's Daughter interview-Elizabeth

all right elizabeth elizabeth oh where'd you grow up where are you from originally i grew up in clayton california clayton is where it is up in the san francisco bay area near walnut creek in the east bay [Music] and tell me about your childhood you had both your parents as a kid yes my parents stayed together until my mom actually passed in 2016 from alzheimer's i'm sorry it's okay how would you describe your childhood really stressful really traumatic and a lot of drama a lot of unnecessary drama my dad he was a southern baptist preacher from texas and my mom was from england a small town in england and how they got together he was in the air force in england and that's how they met um my mom ended up taking the queen mary when she was 21 years old to texas and marrying my dad and i don't think that she really knew him at all she had no idea what she was getting herself into um where shall i begin so they had my oldest brother and then three years later they had uh another and my other brother steve so there was two boys and then there was a ten-year gap and they had me and my little brother my little brother's three years younger than me my dad he was very angry i would say it's it was beyond anger it was more like rage he had a rage issue and he was very physically abusive um and he was a preacher and then my mom she was the principal of the school that was attached to the church so we were the preachers kids and the principal's kids too which was a lot of a lot of pressure especially with what was going on at home uh the the contradiction that i saw as a young child was just i couldn't get over it it it was very confusing for me so you know my dad he would go into a rage over just anything you know for example he would yell at me or hit me for taking my shoes off when i came into the house you know why'd you take her shoes off you know and so i would leave my shoes on and then the next week i would get in trouble for my shoes being on so nothing made sense there was no consistency there was really no method to his madness so what i learned to do as a young child was to read energy so i could sense his anger you know and and either change my behavior or go hide i learned at a very young age to become very small almost invisible and just to have no needs because there was really no room for that in my house he also was sexually abusive towards me i i don't know if he did things to my brothers i can't i don't know i wasn't there i don't you know i was in the house but i don't know they claimed that he didn't uh so what would happen like say saturday night you know i was six or seven years old someone would come into my room it was dark i didn't know who it was and they would be on top of me i couldn't breathe and then it would be over and then the next day i would have to go to church and you know sit in the pew and watch my dad preach and by about the end of the church service i would have such a pounding headache that i could barely see straight and then by kind of the end of the afternoon i would just be vomiting because i don't think that my body knew how to process what was happening i think it was just it was too much for me i was just a little girl and this went on for years and unfortunately my mom you know she she grew up in england during world war ii and they were dropping bombs and you know her life was in danger and then she told me she was raped by a neighbor when she was only 10 or 11 years old and it never got dealt with you know she said i you know this guy man did this to me and she was called a liar you know and so my mom had her own trauma that was never dealt with and i think you know energetically the reason my mom and dad came together it just dovetailed perfectly is because it just continued the craziness um so she was not for whatever reason able to protect us she really she did nothing to protect us and you know i think that there's a lot of men that can you know fly off the handle and get angry and lose their temper and the mother's there to you know kind of stop don't do this you know but you know she didn't do that so i would say the the most painful thing because i learned to also to disassociate as a child like i would just leave my body um especially when my dad would hit me you know they called it spanking but it was like i mean he would beat us till we'd have bruises on our butts and broken blood vessels and you know things like that you know and then that way it was it was a perfect cover because nobody could see it no one could see the bruises you know because i'd have clothes on and but the hardest part was watching him beat my little brother he was three years younger than me and he was like this toe head kid with these big blue eyes and he was just so beautiful he was like a little angel baby and i watched my dad break his spirit like i i witnessed it and it was it was devastating it was absolutely devastating um he would turn blue because he couldn't breathe and my dad just wouldn't stop hitting him and my mom would just stand there she would just watch or she would leave the room you know because she didn't want to see it but i saw it i saw all of it but she didn't feel like she could stand up to him i don't think so i i think my mom never felt like she had a choice in her life you know i think she felt trapped her entire life and and fit into that victim martyr role you know and and that's a very hard role to give up because if you give up being a victim and a martyr you have to take responsibility and i think for my mom if she would have confronted my dad about his behavior she would have had to admit that there was something very wrong so i think it was just easier to to ignore it or to just you know somehow bypass it in her mind so you know my little brother he suffered a lot he took a lot and i i think my oldest brother did too my oldest brother and i we no longer have a relationship because he's just so difficult and i think damaged from you know what he went through as a child so yeah this went on for years and i really i don't know how i survived i think the disassociation really saved my life otherwise i would have probably split and become schizophrenic or something or just you know completely lost my mind so i learned to survive when i was 12 by using drugs and alcohol that's when i was first introduced to drugs and alcohol my oldest brother helped with that because that's what he was using and i don't think he was trying to hurt me i think it was his remedy and so you know he he knew what i was going through and then when i was around that age this these boys moved in next door and one of the one of the boys that moved in next door he was three years older than me and he became a drug dealer so he would supply me with drugs um i you know did lsd it kind of opened my mind i think i saw energy for the first time i realized that there was more than just the physicality of life it was really beautiful um yeah it really it really gave me a lot of strength you know i used marijuana i did you know alcohol and then um i started smoking crack when i was 14. and for whatever reason you know i didn't i liked it but i didn't like it that much i didn't really like feeling that out of control um so a friend gave me some crystal meth and that was home like the the crystal meth was right it was it it made me feel in control i think from all the the trauma in my childhood my adrenals my adrenal glands were just so drained that i had no energy like i didn't have natural energy i was depressed a lot i would want to sleep i didn't want to really do much so when i did crystal meth it was it was like someone turned the lights on i became alive and i wanted to be around people and i had like this inner courage and it was really it was a lot of fun um so i think that's why i didn't become a crackhead the crystal meth was better thank god really um but you know i kind of went in and out of drugs during high school and what's really what i find really interesting when i look back is you know kind of when i hit puberty is when i started using drugs and instead of getting into guys i got into drugs because guys just scared me like i was scared of men i was scared of sex i had my mom you know in one ear telling me you know sex is dirty sex is wrong nobody will ever want you if you have sex before marriage and then you know my dad on the other side of me you know touching me so it was it was i was very confused i was very confused so by the time i graduated high school i think i was just so fragmented i didn't know who i was i didn't know what i wanted you know i was really pretty and so everybody liked me and i looked okay and i think that that was part of the problem um [Music] has been a problem in my life is my outer appearance did not match what was going on inside at all you know i kind of learned to be a chameleon and fit in with whoever and act how i needed to act to get what i wanted you know or to protect myself or whatever so um my first relationship that i actually did get into was with a man named tom and my dad's name is tom and my both my grandfather's names were tom and one of my uncles is named so here was another tom and at the time i was seeing him i was not using drugs i was drinking and i didn't know you know at 18 years old that you could become addicted to another person but i became addicted to him chemically addicted to him to the sex to the horrible way he treated me it kind of triggered retriggered the childhood stuff so there was something about it that felt comfortable even though it was incredibly painful um and that went on for three years and um it ended very badly i actually ended up getting really violent and damaging his home getting charged with assault and battery and i fought the case because he had done things to me and the d.a decided to drop it so i walked away thank god but after that i decided to go to london and live there i was in college at the time trying to be in college i was not a good student there was a lot of learning disorder issues that i had to deal with dyslexia and you know stuff like that because when i was young i remember this is how i know i disassociated i would get test papers back and there would be an f on them and the the test would be completely blank and i would never remember the test being in front of me i was that checked out so that's sort of how i stumbled around in the world during you know my childhood um but when i was in london you know of course i kind of attracted drugs you know started doing ecstasy and going to the clubs and that just felt really good it felt like ah you know like here's a good time here's some here's people that are nice to me and i feel really good and i feel full of love and when i came home it was 1994 and i was just craving more of the club scene so i went to san francisco and started going to the clubs there house music got really into that and then of course the crystal meth use kicked in again and those were some of the funnest times and also some of the darkest times of my life i made some really bad decisions and put myself in very dangerous situations i really don't know how i survived i think that you know god's always looked out for me you know [Music] um are you religious i wouldn't say that i'm religious because you know religion was really shoved down my throat in an unhealthy way growing up that's why i ask yeah but i definitely believe in god i do i i don't think that we were you know created by happenstance i just don't i think that there's a there's a higher intelligence that just creates love and it just creates and it creates and it creates and it helps us create and it never wants to destroy anything no matter how ugly it is or evil it is it just wants to love it and that's that's really that's where i believe i come from you know as i look at myself today in the mirror it's like wow i'm a child of god and nobody can take that away from me no amount of abuse or drugs or anything nothing can take that away from me that's mine what about you have you had you have a family of your own or children or marriages no i um i never got married and i never wanted to have children i was just telling a friend last night when i was living in the bay area in my 30s i joined this dating service and i would you know be on a date with a normal guy and he'd be like yeah i want to get married and have three kids and i would just be like i could feel my heart like like the thought of getting married and having kids was like asking me to run into a burning house it's just like it wasn't happening i was so overwhelmed i was so overwhelmed by just the normal things that most people do that they don't even think about it they just do it and for me it was like oh no no no no kids family first of all i i knew i was fully aware of my brokenness and i didn't want to put another human being through that i knew i wasn't qualified to be a mother or a wife and i was fully aware of that um you know and the other thing is i was just terrified of commitment responsibility you know wanting to stay a child wanting to be irresponsible i think when you have kids you have to grow up really quick or you don't you know some people don't so um yeah and it was really interesting in my in my 20s i ended up dating a drug dealer surprise surprise and i was just drowning i remember one day i looked in the mirror and i didn't recognize myself and this there was this voice that was like you're better than this liz you're better than this so i pulled myself out of it and i moved and i changed my phone number and i stopped doing crystal meth on my own um i was still drinking you know i was out at a bar one night with my little brother actually and a couple of good friends of mine and i met a man and we ended up in a relationship for three years and he loved me he really he did he loved me you know but i had so much trauma that was just like right under the surface i could only go you know so deep with people no matter how much they love me because i didn't love myself i felt broken i felt unworthy i felt crazy i felt unlovable that's the real core of it all isn't it absolutely because i felt unlovable because if my parents treated me like that there must be something wrong with me you know that's how i think i made sense of it so he and i were together for about two years and then i started using drugs again because the intimacy with him really triggered a lot for me a lot of stuff that was under the surface and i broke up with him i ended the relationship and he was devastated and i was devastated and i ended up trying to kill myself um it didn't work clearly but i i checked myself into the hospital and i was there for a week and got stable got on some medication and then went back out in the world and i went back to the san francisco club scene and within a year i was you know doing meth again every day i got to the place where i started to get psychosis when i would use you know i would just instantly go to crazy or paranoid so i'll never forget it was a sunday i was in this apartment in san ramon california and i was looking at this bag of drugs you know this bag of meth and i was like i can't imagine my life without you and i can't keep doing this and so once again there was that exit door you know so i drank like half a bottle of ghb and with some sleeping pills and i left a note i wrote a note you know just apologizing to everyone that i wasn't doing this to hurt anybody but it was just because of my own pain and i woke up the next morning on the floor i had vomited everything up on my side thank god because usually what happens is you know people are on their backs they vomit and they out you know goes into their lungs and that's how they die um and when i woke up i didn't know if i was dead or alive you were trying to kill yourself i was definitely trying to yeah this was not a cry for help this was i'm done and i kind of just looked around and my body was in a lot of pain and i called a friend and i told her what i'd done and an ambulance came and i went to the hospital again and this time i was there for three weeks because they knew if they let me out i was just gonna try to do it again so this friend of mine she contacted my oldest brother and she just said your sister's gonna die like you guys have to help her you know and i had i hadn't talked to my dad i didn't talk to my dad for 13 years i was so pissed at him so my oldest brother showed up at the hospital actually my oldest my two older brothers my brother steve came into town he lived here in la and this was in the bay area and my mom and my little brother they showed up at the hospital and the nurse came and said you know your family's here and i said is my dad here and they she said no. it's your mom and and your three brothers and i just said you know tell them to go away i don't want to see them i was pissed that i was alive i was just pissed i was so angry i didn't i was like i can't even kill myself you know i mean it was like i just felt like i couldn't i couldn't get what i needed anywhere you know so here i am and i'm angry and i just want my family to off so my brother came to the hospital every single day my oldest brother until i would talk to him and finally i talked to him and he was like you know liz we're gonna we're gonna send you somewhere and get you some help we've decided as a family you know you need help so they shipped me down here to newport beach to a rehab and i was impatient there for nine months you know most people go to rehab for like 30 days you know 60 days 90 days and but i literally like i didn't know how to live i didn't know how to just be normal i think my nervous system was so disregulated my whole body was dysregulated and my brain my brain chemistry was just it was just so out of balance so i go to this place is it okay if i say the name of the place okay it's over living by the sea it's still around so i go there and i'm terrified you know i'm i'm 29 years old and i look like i'm 12 and you know i'm just like a deer in headlights um and there's a man there who was my case worker he was going to be my my counselor drug and alcohol counselor and i walk into his office and i look on his desk and there's a dallas cowboys mug on his desk and i was like my dad and brothers were like avid dallas cowboy fans and he turns around and he looks at me and he goes hi liz and i was like oh are you from texas and he was like yes i am and i was like let me guess he used to be a preacher and he goes yeah i was i was like what is going on i was like i was like okay and so i told him i told him the parallels you know and he goes nothing's nothing's by accident his name is david and he literally loved me back to life he did he was like the first man in my life that just wanted to love me and didn't want to touch me or exploit me or you know do anything to hurt me and so for about six straight months i would meet with him every day and you know we would talk about stuff and i remember one day he was like he looked at me and i said what he goes why do you always have to look so perfect come in here with your hair messed up one day you always have to look so perfect i was like okay but i really i really made a bond with him and i i think what it is for someone like me and i'm sure for other people when people are really good to you and you haven't had much of that in your life you never forget those people i've never forgotten him i just spoke to him on the phone you know i'm 47 now i was 29 when i met him i just spoke to him on the phone the other day i loved that man and he was an angel you know and there were so many parallels with him and my dad being from texas dallas cowboys ex-preacher you know it was just very ironic um so after i got out of there i stayed sober for a while and then i moved back up to the bay area started doing hair again i was a hair colorist for 20 years and um i started using meth again and i was like god damn it here we go and i just was like i can't do this again i won't do this again so i decided to go to aa and i know we're not supposed to talk about a.a.a and press radio film whatever blah blah but i'm going to um i think it needs to come out of the shadows stop being such a secret there's nothing shameful about going to a.a it's takes a lot of strength to ask for help um so an interesting thing happened when i got sober that time when i was in sober living by the sea they were always trying to bust me for like hooking up with guys like who are you hooking up with we don't get because i wouldn't relapse i never relapsed because i was really strong like once i set my mind to something i pretty much stick with it um but i never you know i was still really scared of guys but for some reason when i went to aaa i became sexually active like promiscuous and all of a sudden it kind of came out of nowhere i was 33 at the time um and i hooked up with a guy who i didn't really like we didn't belong together and i got pregnant and so at 34 i had an abortion it was actually my second abortion i had a i had an abortion at 23 when i was dating the drug dealer and that was kind of a no-brainer you know i was addicted to meth my life was a mess i wasn't gonna bring a child into this world um [Music] so yeah uh that was really painful i looking back now i feel like that baby should have been here and you know i think the biggest mistake that we make as humans is playing god and i was playing god i i stopped a soul from you know embodying a human existence and i've you know had to live with that and at the same time you know i was just doing the best i could again i was super overwhelmed the thought of having a child i mean the truth is i needed a kid like i needed a hole in my head but i could have given it up for adoption i could have done you know many other things so that was super painful um and then i started just turning to like spirituality meditation i would meditate for hours because i wasn't going to turn to drugs again and i saw things in meditation it was really interesting the spiritual connection that i was able to make whoever was there with me showed me the circle of life you know how we never die it's like we're born and we have this experience and then we leave our human body and become spirit and then it kind of goes again so it's just it showed me that there really is no such thing as death that we you know that we've been taught there's physical death we leave our bodies but there's definitely more than what we we see here and um i'll share something this is kind of bizarre it was november of 2011 and i was working a lot doing hair and sunday mornings i would always just lay in bed that was just like my thing i would lay in bed and rest and i remember it was about 10 a.m and i was you know opening my eyes and closing my eyes and just kind of drifting in and out of sleep and then all of a sudden i heard sort of a static electricity noise like a buzzing like z and i was like what the hell what is that you know and so i kind of went to get up and i couldn't i was completely paralyzed and so i just laid there and the sound got louder and i couldn't move my body and as i i looked to my left side there was some sort of being standing there it had shape but it wasn't solid and it was very very tall and it put something into the side of my head and um i just laid there and i was like what the is going on and then as soon as i kind of like started to you know i kind of was able to move it was over and i ran into the bathroom and i looked at my head and i was like there was nothing wrong with my head and i called a good friend of mine who kind of you know knew a lot about other beings and aliens and stuff like that and she was like oh yeah that stuff happens all the time it's no big deal they were just rewiring your brain i was like okay you know if i tell people this they're gonna think i'm crazy she didn't think i was crazy so i kept meditating and just like astral traveling and going deeper into this other place and it was the end of february of 2012 and at that point i was creating so much stillness within myself and in my life that i could i could hear things not voices you know nothing like that but i would hear like a soft voice that would talk to me and give me guidance and um i wouldn't notice negative things like i can remember being out with a bunch of girlfriends and someone would be rude to me and they'd be like did you hear that you know what i'd be like what are you talking about you know i was just sort of like in this higher level of consciousness it was really beautiful and it was very much a relief and it wasn't drug induced so i'm sitting on my floor in my house and i hear this very soft voice that's like elizabeth call your mom and i was like i hadn't talked to my mom in a year you know our relationship was very difficult and it persisted so i was like okay i'll call my mom i called my mom and we made plans to meet that next monday for lunch and i realized i i had to change our plans so i called the house and my dad answered the phone and mind you i hadn't talked to him in 13 years and he answered the phone and i just said dad and he instantly started to cry because you know i'm his only daughter so he knew it was me and he just said you know elizabeth i've i've prayed for the day that you would talk to me again and whatever i did to you i'm so sorry and so we sat on the phone together and cried for a little bit and i said dad you know i don't know why i'm reaching out to you guys i don't know what's going on and i can't promise you anything but i i want to show up and be a loving presence in your life to the best of my ability and he said i'd like that and so i talked to my mom and we changed our plans and um the next day i went to work and then saturday morning i'm laying in my bed and i get a call from my little brother and he's crying and i was like john you know this kid's he's a tough kid he doesn't cry and he said liz steve's dead and steve was my older brother not the oldest brother but the one that lived here he he made quite a life for himself he became pretty famous imitating politicians for a living and i said what and he said yeah he's dead they found him his housekeeper found him on the couch dead and in that moment i knew what that voice was that that that guidance was telling me you know your family's going to need you and how difficult it would have been to have not spoken to my dad for 13 years and then seen him for the first time because of that and i just said thank you god thank you for guiding me and i was so grateful that i listened that i listened to that voice so i got out of bed and i just said you know what this is your this is your time to get to suit up and show up and i was sober thank god you know i wasn't a mess i was able to to go towards my family and actually be strong for them and losing my brother steve it was a tragic thing but it was also a very beautiful thing he he lived an amazing life and the way he died reflected how he lived he just passed away on his couch he laid down to take a nap and he was 48 years old and he left behind money and he blessed my entire family with money that's why i haven't worked i haven't had to work it changed my life it was like finally i have this space that i can just get to know myself that's what i've that's what i've been doing for the past i would say 10 12 years is just exploring healing you know getting to know other people learning how to love that's been a big thing is learning how to love learning how to be in relationship with others so i i think my brother he was an angel he is an angel he's here right now i can feel him so you know i walked through his passing and then shortly after my mom came down with alzheimer's she couldn't handle you know what had happened you know steve was her her everything and so she lost her mind and died four years later from alzheimer's and i remember my brother calling me saying you know liz mom hasn't had food or water in five days so i think it's time you know so i drove up to the bay area and i wasn't prepared for what i was going to see you know someone who's skeletal who's dehydrated who hasn't had food who's you know gasping for for air and my dad and my brother they left the room so that i could have some time alone with her and for a moment there was a split second where i was like oh my god am i going to end up where she is because she's my mom you know and i just said no you're not because you've chose a different path i've i've chose to face myself and she didn't and this is where she ended up and i just told her i looked at her and you know she was in a morphine haze i just said mom i love you and i forgive you for everything and i just want you to go and be in peace because it's never going to happen here and the next day she passed away so it was a lot it was a lot [Music] and that was really hard for me i didn't really know how to process my mom's death because we weren't close we didn't like each other so unfortunately after her funeral i i became a little bit self-destructive and i went on like a three-day a three-day binge and um about a month after that i became severely depressed i think i was just suppressing all the grief and all the anger and and everything and so i checked myself into the hospital this was in 2016 and um i was sitting there with a doctor and i said i really don't want to go on medication again i've been down that road i'd been off of medication for about eight years and she's like well look where you're at you know you don't you've kind of run out of options um so i decided to go on medication and i take 10 milligrams of lexapro and whatever that is in that stuff it it corrected the imbalance like within a matter of hours i felt better i walked out of the hospital a completely different person and i've been really really stable and and happy since then i've been able to deal with life on life's terms um i'll be honest i'm not i'm not sober anymore i do what's really interesting like you know i think that there was a time there was an eight year period where i was completely abstinent from everything and i needed that time i needed that time to heal myself and to heal my brain and now i'm able to have some wine if i want some wine you know it doesn't it's not like i want to go hurt myself so the way i explain that to people is i had no point of reference of what it felt like to feel good before i used drugs and alcohol so that was my point of reference of feel good and then when i became sober in that eight year period i discovered what it was like to just feel good naturally so now i have that point of reference and feeling good naturally without anything in your body is the best feel good ever like it's the best because there's no coming down there's no hangover there's no guilt there's you know there's no self-destruction in that that's just how god designed me you know all of us we all just want to feel good so in the last five years i decided to go back to school i went to a place called the university of santa monica is the school of spiritual psychology i did their two-year program and when i was there it was so painful i mean i really faced a lot of pain in a different way i mean years before i was in and out of therapy for 11 years and then i did group therapy on and off for seven years but this was different this kind of took it to another level and it it really changed me it made me a better person it made me a stronger person and it taught me how to listen to others and just hold space for other people because really that's all we need is just to be seen and heard yeah it was life-changing it was great in your life what would you say is the most important thing you've learned to accept what is and to love acceptance is a big thing just accept what is accept what's happening and don't try to control it be open beautiful story thank you thank you elizabeth you're welcome thank you very much thanks

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Length: 38min 54sec (2334 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 29 2021