Rabbi's Daughter interview-Chasya

all right asia where did you grow up where are you from originally originally from california oh really los angeles but you're living in new jersey now until it was three and then we moved to brooklyn lived there till i was nine and then we moved to new jersey to lakewood new jersey so you tell me about your family and how you grew up well because my parents were extremely religious the first fault i would say for all of us as children in our family growing up was the belief that birth control was a sin and that every child that is granted and every pregnancy that is granted is a gift from god so my mother was procreating at an alarming rate and she was pregnant a total of 13 times and as messed up as it sounds thank god only eight of us survived because they weren't financially in a situation where they could take care of eight kids they weren't mentally regulated and mentally stable enough to take care of eight kids and as a result my family life was pretty terrifying pretty scary pretty nerve-wracking and never feeling safe so your family's religious background you get you're acidic we're both ultra-orthodox and there's also hasidic in the family as well so there's both in the family but their spectrums of ultra-orthodoxy and their spectrums of acidicness so there can be people that are ultra-orthodox that are even more religious than hasidics so it's almost like it's a contest who can be more pious more devout more restrictive and more cultish is it is it almost competitive it's a mold and the mold is one way of being and if you're not going to fit that mold unless you surpass that mold to an unnatural state of sinless behavior your goal is to always fit that mold and if you're not going to fit that mold you are desecrating the holy name of god again when we're kids it is drilled into us we are god's chosen we are to be a light unto the nation we are hated because we are god's chosen people and as a child that's not something i wanted to hear that i was hated you know what i mean i wanted to be liked i didn't want to be hated and i didn't want all this pressure and i would say as a child we learn a lot of very bloody paganistic things in our religion that no child should ever witness for example there's this holiday called rosh hashanah where it's like the day of atonement where we um repent for our sins and in order to repent for our sins there would be a bunch of live chickens and the girls would be in one group and the boys would be in one group and they would pick up the live chickens and they would weigh them over our heads and see these blessings and i remember we'd all duck terrified that the chickens were gonna poop on us and i remember very young girl in brooklyn watching the chickens get slaughtered running around in circles with the blood shooting out of their necks and you know we were told that all those chickens were going to go to charity and feed the poor but you know in the name of religion we were just exposed to things that most kids i know nowadays are not exposed to and it sounds like it didn't really fit into who you wanted to be you were you were uncomfortable with that whole i think that anybody who feels restricted is not going to feel happy if you are doing something any religion anything you do that you feel forced you feel restricted you feel obligated and pressured there's not going to be any love for it and it always came in a way of fear in a way of you're going to go to hell you're going to get an early death there would be all sorts of things being told to us at the age of three i wasn't allowed to walk more it's called for anybody who's watching this that wants to question it's called dalit ammo we're not allowed to walk a certain amount of feet until we wash our hands in eagle vosser which means we wash off the impurities of our sleep at age three already i have to perform this ritual and we're taught that the water that we use is so impure that if we were to drink it shade him which our demons will come and attack us so like we're learning very uh crazy things as children and having that as your foundation if you're a strong-willed child like me who's gonna question and not necessarily just follow you're going to have a hard time and that was the kind of child that i was i none of it made sense i was always somebody who cared about fairness and justice and i didn't see any of that so i remember like you know even just this might sound really stupid but just having to in the summer dress in all those layers would be so hard for me that you know when you know i was you know in camp i would always roll down my socks or do those little things and just you know just show like it was so bad and so sinful and i was waiting for that lightning to come strike me down and i remember even as a little kid like being terrified of my mother because like she walked into the pool area and immediately i can demonstrate for you what i did because i realized my socks were rolled down how dare i in 90 degrees have my socks roll down and i immediately clutched my stomach and i bent down and i had this big dress which immediately covered my bare legs mind you i'm still wearing my thick socks that are you know rolled down and i'm like oh my stomach hurts you know so that she wouldn't hit me you know cause that's what she did she was a hitter you know she reacted she didn't respond and you know she was just looking back now i can understand that in her mind being the most pious and being the most religious was her badge of honor and her daughter her not seeing me as my own human being and as a branch of her you know that was punishment and that was not tolerated and at a very young age i realized i didn't belong and i was going to have to fit in and that just never sat well with me i never could fit in i had too much of a big mouth i had too much of a mind and this is not a circle where individuality is praised it is absolutely terrifying to be an individual you need to be a penguin you know they all wear the black and the white you need to be part of the tribal penguin community apologies to the community for saying that but you know that's what it felt like you know everybody's you know in the same clothing and i feel very much like i am an individual and i'm not somebody that you know i am a black sheep you have to think for yourself also what i learned is being a black sheep makes you no less valuable it just makes you a different color sheep we're all the same on the inside if we're different on the outside it's just the outside we all are the same but unfortunately when you're in these super duper secluded closed off elitist communities i was watching that episode with the klansman and i feel like my father is exactly like him extremely separatist extremely elitist if he would see me speak with someone of another the race would threaten to send me to the to israel um extremely homophobic extremely the klansmen had more open mind than my father i feel like in these in they they've internalized the holocaust where i live it feels like the ghettos of warsaw they the women are shaving their heads when they get married the boys are getting their heads shaved why are women getting their heads shaved that has nothing to do with religion it has nothing to do with modesty it feels as if like they took this trauma of all being told that you know they belong in ovens and they really kind of internalized it and in leekwood it feels like you know they just never they dress the same they look the same like in europe it's almost like they even say things like they have to procreate as much as possible to make up for all the jews that hitler murdered they say crazy things you know they don't drive german cars they carry the grudge the dna has switched up and if you dare want to go outside you're a trader you're you're 100 a trader you they'll say things to you like your people died because they were jews and you're willingly going and marrying a non-jew how dare you they'll shame you and use guilt and shame to major major manipulation tactics to keep you so what kind of things did you go through as a child as a teenager you know what you you must have at some point started to break away from your family so i would say the first core traumatic memory for me which started me really having a huge issue with covering up and having a huge issue is we lived in a two-family home in brooklyn and there wasn't a lot of supervision and because there was nothing ever to do in our house we would always be downstairs and there was teenage boys downstairs and they would torture me now that i think about it always running their bikes into me pretty horrible stuff like at parties stealing my candy that i would collect and stuff like that but one time we were downstairs and i obviously didn't understand what was happening at the time you know now i i do understand but you know like people have those washing machine and dryers where they have those sliding doors so me and the girl the young girl the sister of the teenage boy he put us on top of the washing machine and dryer he closed the doors and he violated us and the mother of the downstairs neighbor walked in pulled open the doors sauce naked and screamed she violently slapped her daughter chased her son away and told me to go upstairs to my house now that night i didn't think anything of it you know that night i remember being yanked by my hair in my sleep out of my bed and being dragged from my bedroom all the way down there was a long long long hallway and it went through the living room the dining room the kitchen the bathroom the closets all the way through the whole house my mother was dragging me by my hair she lifted me my hair threw me face down on the bed and yanked my pants down and she began smacking me over and over again really really hard and she began to scream don't you ever ever ever be unsweetest again which means a modest and then she took me and threw me off the bed go back to sleep and um sobbing hysterically not understanding what the [ __ ] just happened but my mother was a very violent woman and when my mother would enlist my father when she would just she was always hormonal and pregnant and if i come across as i'm defending her it's more that i'm trying to understand her now as an adult versus being a victim so like when my father hit us would leave marks bad ones like pop blood vessels in her eyes and swollen cheeks and i was the kid who went to school and would say things like i walked in a door and my mother was the kind of woman who like if you just like tapped her in the wrong place she would flip around and just slap you really hard because you were just trying to get her attention she was extremely full of rage and anger and just always resorted to violence which terrified me because i'm somebody who doesn't walk on antels so like i'm such a gentle person so that type of fear resulted in me you know till this day you know having heart palpitations and gut issues because you never knew she was just so unpredictable like if you said you didn't like dinner she would do things like force feed us put a timer on and if you didn't eat she would make like stuff like buckwheat what five-year-old wants to eat buckwheat like kasha and she would put a timer on and if you didn't finish that food she would send you to bed without dinner you didn't get your homework done and you would tell the teacher sorry your homework wasn't done and signed she would do like crazy crazy weird ass things that are not normal because it didn't dawn on her that maybe her kids had sensory issues and didn't like certain foods um there's just such weird things like if i would accidentally there would was a snowball fight that we had and i threw a snowball on my brother and not realizing there was like a shard of ice in it and i caught his head open by mistake i got such a beating my whole side of my face was so blown up and bloody that my father actually apologized to me my parents never apologized for hitting us even if they made a mistake my mother would say well god must have felt you deserved it if i hit you things would be bad to the point where i remember going paddle boating on a lake and i remember lifting my skirts like right above my knees and you know i'm 50 russian so i have the pale skin but i also could tan so i got really bad burns and i was too scared to tell my mother because i knew my mother would say well why were you a modest of course you're going to get punished anytime there was a sexual violation or an assault it was what did you do what were you wearing it was always it's your fault there was always the victim blaming always it was never let's not invite the creep over let's make sure you cover up more it was always your fault not he's an animal he's a monster he's a demon he's broken and the excuse was when i was confronted my parents about this was we didn't know any better but my friends kind of grew up in the same type of situation and their parents did change and did get help so i feel like that's just a cop-out i feel like it's an excuse because if you really want to know better you will so kids make excuses adults make changes you know there's only so much denial i can take before i realize like certain people if their brain is broken it's healthier to just separate and that's another thing that i strongly advise people to do is if your family is not committed to healing get away if you can use religion as an excuse to harbor criminals you know you have to question what your religion is and i say that to the people that are doing that right now and know who they are um it's a very sad thing that you know in a lot of very religious cultures there's i'm going to get religious on all of us for a second there is a song we sing on the sabbath and it's called asia's heil and there is a line in it that says which means that we glorify lies and we uglify beauty which means let's say we think that when someone abstains from promiscuity that they're prude and that they're bad because they care about sexual health and they want to be celibate and they want to have meaningful sexual relationships you get scoffed at for that but somebody who goes and makes 50 million dollars off of porn is going to be praised so in the same right in our religious culture they're going to take the ugliness and they're going to hide it they won't necessarily beautify it but they're going to hide it and the beauty of the people who have the courage to speak up those people are going to get punished those people are going to get cursed those people are going to be found dead those people are going to be found blackmailed because there's like a whole underworld going on in these super religious circles where they have their own police they have their own if there's uh even the landlord uh abuse there's organizations they have like their whole there's a whole underworld going on loaning and getting people out of trouble and lawyers and it's good but it's also bad because let's say if somebody it's very hard but you know i think it's important to speak about it because not everybody goes through it so there is no test and testimony so if you love someone and you have a sibling you have no idea is mentally ill because they didn't harm you they didn't choose you as a victim and you're told one day that this person is going to jail for 10 years because they're a pedophile you actually do go into denial you can't believe it at first because this is this is your blood this is your family this is your protector this is someone who took beatings for you this is somebody and you know i can even understand like not to go off on a tangent like why nicki minaj would defend her brother because there's this you can't accept in the beginning that this is actually the truth you can't it's so mind-boggling but you then find out hey there was pedophiles in the family already this person was a victim there it's already been going on and what's so [ __ ] up is these songs that they're singing and they're you know being all religious they're just all living a lie because they're not outing these perpetrators they're not outing these people they're protecting them they're hiding it instead of saying you know what this person is broken this person needs to be put the [ __ ] away this person needs to be put away from society not quickly run off to another country or keep it a secret or be angry at the people who outed them and you know as the famous saying goes if you enable an abuser you are an abuser and in the beginning when i found out that i was related to the worst sort of human i mean even murderers aren't treated as horrible as people who harm children and it's like something you just you die you die how do you come back from that how do you how do you heal how do you heal and i kept quiet because i was so ashamed i kept quiet and i didn't see anything and everybody just keeps quiet but it's time to [ __ ] speak up it's time to you know you keep doing the same thing over and over again as the definition of insanity so we need different results you know because it's gonna keep happening what's so crazy is that i had mentioned that you know we repeat cycles so um when i met my i was very young very naive and this was obviously before i had any awareness that pedophilia was in my family uh premarital sex is not acceptable in in our culture you're a virgin i mean you're terrified and if you're you dare you don't get to come home you know what i mean there's a lot of fear there's a lot of emotional intimidation and emotional manipulation at a very young age and you feel fear and hatred because you cannot love what you fear so shockingly for me like when i hit puberty i did not turn to men i turned to numb myself like well everybody was running to go hook up and have their first kiss i was going to well what i had to do was my parents just didn't give a [ __ ] that i was slowly dying so i started to self-harm i started to starve myself i started to you know anything to get their attention that i wasn't okay and this started when i was about 13 years old and it was like getting to high school time because i was just so alienated and so hated in the schools and the teachers were constantly sending me to the principal and what's insane is the principals would call my parents and say what's going on with her was she molested and they would say no no and meanwhile i wasn't gotten beaten for it and of course i was acting immodest like that was my biggest crime was that i wanted to fold up my sleeves and that i wanted my top button opened and that my skirt wasn't four inches below my knee or four inches above my ankle like it can't be too long and it can't be too short like i mean they literally pull out the [ __ ] rulers when i see a cult i'm not kidding it's really and they'll do it in front of the whole class so it's almost like i had a reverse reaction to that when i was five six years old it was like no i don't want to cover up no i don't want to walk around like a [ __ ] nun no i want to express myself i want to be an individual i want to be like it almost felt like everybody was afraid of me and weirdly enough i did have a certain power over my class like sometimes i would tell them stories and the whole class would be crying and then i would get sent home for three days and then i would come back and everybody would have balloons and cards for me because like sometimes like my pain would be so palpable that i would have the whole class crying because our town was so small and i wasn't accepted to any high schools so like everybody had a place to go not me and my parents weren't wise enough at the time to realize she doesn't fit in we can't instead of them saying okay we need to send her where she belongs we're going to bring in our our um our credentials [ __ ] what she like needs because we what we come to the table and our dynasty and where we come from holds way more weight than what you are and they said you need to take her and they would bring up all these religious rules and laws about why they have to take her and when you're being put into a situation where you know you're hated you know you're not wanted you know your very core is despised how are you supposed to go to that place how are you supposed to go where your core is hated and you know it because they said you're not accepted so i began to self-harm as a cry for help so i got shipped off to memphis tennessee which was a complete culture shock so going to the south was i got introduced to for the first time this is going to sound shocking and i never knew that i was even remotely decent looking or was pleasing to the eye until i was shipped off to boarding school because all of a sudden i was in a boarding school and everybody was disgusting to me because again there was individuality we could dress to a certain extent you know i was still was in you know it was like for you know kids like me who didn't have anywhere to go but they still wanted to keep us in the gates in the walls and the institution but with a little more leeway you understand my parents just couldn't deal with me the schools weren't taking me it was they were forced so i'm this young little girl in memphis and that's when the bullying starts and that's when i'm exposed to being hated for existing again for just being who i am and i just was an innocent good little religious girl like didn't grow up with the tv internet nothing and immediately the rumors would start i would get called to the principal's office again the cycle would start uh they said that you were on the swing and you were spreading your legs open i basically couldn't handle like being around like all the bullying so i left early and i went overseas to israel and i went to another school for children at risk and like that's when i like really got locked down like if i did something wrong i would be locked in the house for two months not be able to leave um it was it was crazy car bombs would be going off i was 16 years old almost felt like my parents were hoping i'd die you know but anyways that's when um you know i met my first boyfriend and experienced you know what it was like to in my own way you know experience a man that but it was terrifying for me and i couldn't be healthy so that relationship could never be explored in a healthy teen manner so uh when i came back from israel i was pretty young and met another person another guy who was you know about eight years older than me who was more established had a home and i was obviously miserable coming back from israel where i had all that freedom because i was in israel for two years so the first year yeah i was in like a lockdown kind of military at risk type of school but then the second year i had freedom so i was able to do whatever i wanted and i was able to party and explore and actually be and you know be a teen so when i came back i needed to get the [ __ ] out of my house because you can't go from having freedom to going back into you know basically being in jail to like a crazy degree where you can't even read books that are secular it's called secular like we would only be able to read jewish books and not even all jewish books so i met a guy and according to jewish law if a guy's mom is jewish he's by law a jew but in our circles he would be considered an ignoramus uh half-breed not considered anything up to par for what my parents would accept long story short my ex went to israel to prove to my parents that he was serious about me my ex was a serious conqueror at the time i mean i was a virgin and i mean that's unheard of you know that was like a treasure to him and he also like my mom would like try to set me up because in religious circles like you go on like pre-arranged dates and it's a quick process like my niece was engaged for she got like she was probably dating at 17 she was engaged at 18 when she got engaged within two months she was married so like her frontal lobe isn't even fully developed and at 18 she's married and she's going to immediately procreate and her life is going to be about serving a man having babies and never discovering anything about herself unless she has a wake-up call one day so my ex he came in the form of everything that i had ever dreamt of beautiful tall handsome more financially stable than i was and wasn't religious so you know this was jackpot for me but this was unacceptable for my parents obviously because you can't live in a man's home not married so i was forced to get married to him and our wedding was insane we i mean i was so messed up at my wedding i was like a sheep led to my to the slaughter at my wedding it was a religious wedding which was crazy because my ex like his he has like most of his family's not even jewish so like he you know completely different culture shock and of course my parents like in the religious world everybody has to bow to them everybody has to bow to their mythical beliefs it's like you know the person who's allergic to the peanut you know every nobody can bring the peanut around them so it was a super religious wedding i had like everything uh so damn now it gets to the crazy part so when you get married there's something called nida which is one of the most dehumanizing degrading things that a woman goes through we're told that we're impure when we have our periods we are not allowed to be touched we are not allowed to have sex a man is not allowed to hand us anything they have to put it down all right let me get into how degrading this this this thing that we have to do so when we get our period um we're deemed impure so once our period is over you have to then count seven clean days after your period if you're unsure if your period if you can start counting the seven clean days and wait i'm gonna jump ahead and why is that because if you think about the math when are you ovulating you ovulate at that time so it's to have babies if you think about how it's set up it's totally set up so that the woman gets pregnant so for whatever reason i'm sure it comes from paganistic beliefs they believe a woman is considered impure when she bleeds so um i know this because my mother's a mikvah lady so they have something called a mikvah and men go to it once a week before the sabbath and the women go when they're married before their wedding and they go to it every single time they have their period and it's a way for also like for sexual coercion because it's like they claim it's a commandment that you have to procreate with your husband once you count your seven clean days you then have to go to it's these hidden buildings you have to pay a fee you have to go in you have to do a whole ritualistic bath you have to have your nails have to be cut down there's like a whole list of things like a long list of 30 steps that you have to take then the woman comes in and inspects you from top to bottom and then again makes you go over the list and then you have to like take another one another shower and then this is the funniest part they take you to a chlorine-filled pool that's filled with pubes and filled with nasty disgusting everybody else's germs after you've just been cleaned and scrubbed to the raw bone of your skin like i'm saying like the laws are insane like you cannot have a knot in any of your hair you're not allowed to have any nail growing out or a cuticle like the laws are so rigid and strict they're insane so what happens is that you take off your robe you're naked you go down the stairs into the small pool you have to make a blessing and then you have to dip three times and the lady looks and she you have to do like a special dip a certain way and she says either kosher or not culture and then you have to do it again and then after you do it you come out and the woman puts the robe back on you and you're deemed pure again and you go home and you go your husband gets laid so imagine being told because your body works and because you're healthy you're impure if there's anything more insulting that you cannot be touched that you cannot be loved on also when they have babies for like those eight weeks you can't be touched like the baby has to be put down there's like all of these insane crazy rituals that are going on so when i met my ex i told him about all these things and he swore to me that i would never have to fear that this would happen that he would protect me and we would never we would have the best of both worlds that we could have all the the the foods that we loved and we could have all the traditional foods but we would also have our american life and we would also have tv we would have hbo we'd have cable we would go to the beach we'd do all the things eat pork do all the things that you know i didn't get to do growing up but what's crazy is is that my ex decided that he wanted to become religious and one of the most insane things is he would start telling the rabbi's daughter that she was the bad you talk about repeating cycles so all of a sudden my clothing that he loved about me weren't acceptable anymore my nipples were sticking out why are you dressing like a 12 year old girl why are you looking like that no you can't go out on the sabbath i'm taking your keys away no you can't go to your bachelorette he would start doing crazy of control crazy so like that's when you know like the irony of the psycho repeating itself but that wasn't enough so our marriage started to disintegrate because when you're going one path and you're going another path you're growing apart you're not growing together so my ex is basically would say to me the reason why our marriage isn't working out is because we don't have a kid we don't have a [ __ ] kid that is why we're fighting all the time if you just gave me a kid we would we would be happy and me being young dumb ignorant and naive you know everybody knows a child doesn't save a marriage you know therapy was never something that came to mind i went to therapy but he you know the one time he did him and the therapist got into a huge fight immediately so that you know so i got pregnant and i remember thinking me the hopeless romantic that he was gonna come home and sweep me off my feet and swing me around in a circle and have a big bouquet of roses and he was on the phone for 30 minutes on a business call he didn't even look at me my pregnancy was vicious and my pregnancy i didn't know that i had rights to my body i didn't know that i had to have someone who despised me baby i didn't know that i was you know being reproductively coerced and i realized when he came home and grew like didn't even acknowledge me that i had finally given him a baby that he had waited so long for that we were all [ __ ] and this wasn't the answer so when i was pregnant i i prayed for miscarriage i did because i was terrified for my child i felt guilty i was doing to my child what my mother had done to me but after a vicious pregnancy and a horrible labor when my baby was put in my arms the mother in me was born the mother of me was not born when i was pregnant the mother in me was born when she was born and that is when the lioness came out and that is when the courage came out and i would say it's such a great story i don't know if you know the yom kippur is the holiest day of the year in our culture it's the day of fasting we start the night fast my daughter was around one and a half years old and i had already let my ex know you know i'm not fasting i'm gonna be watching tv i'm gonna be breaking the fast and i let him know and my ex was somebody who's like in laker jerseys and tims and like you know we listen to dipset and like he's coming in with his like big prayer shawl like it was like literally a stranger like it was like my dad walking in you know what i mean like so he comes in and the tv is on and i must probably have like love and hip hop on or something and he's just like my dad in the klansmen type of way very republican very right wing and he becomes furious and he had just repented for all his sensum kippers about cleansing of the soul repenting and he violently kicks my daughter's toy right because he doesn't want to kick me so he violently kicks my daughter's toy and it goes sailing right by her face and it literally like a half an inch from her face and for the first time in my life i know it's a holy day my religion is always going to be in me it's wired no matter what that spirituality is there and i'm like you know what i picked up my daughter and i went into the garage and i held her in my arms and for the first time in many many many years i prayed and i said one thing to god i said god get me out of here get me out of here and within two months we had separated and my faith had been a little bit restored i'm not gonna lie you know like no matter how much i had doubted whatever whatever powers that be it's you know a lot of people say do you believe in god and i can't answer that question because i do feel whether it be the holy ghost whatever it is i do feel it i feel a protection i feel a spirituality and a deep connection but leaving unfortunately did not protect my daughter as a result if you leave the community the power is going to always go to the person that stays in the community so my daughter is still stuck in the community my daughter like there's a lot of pros to being in the community my daughter uh first of all like being that my daughter's father is now a single father he's gonna get taken care of very well by all you know it's a very tribal thing which is a very something that we are missing nowadays that you know very religious communities do have and i admit that a lot of people are reclusive so there's a lot to be gained for him to be in the religious circles they're gonna always you know make things cheaper for him because he's the single father keeping her in the expense of religious jewish school there's just so many scams and there's just so many ways to prey upon religious people and there's so many benefits i know because i'm from it i know that there's a lot of really good things that come with religion as well why because it's commanded so the fight is still going because my daughter has expressed so many times how much she hates being forced to pray she's forced to pray she's in a religious school where she has to wear skirts and she has to do the same things the sleeves don't have to be till here but they have to be till here so it's a little bit less but the same people that are running the schools i were in they're running them too so we are in this battle of not a battle a journey it's called a journey because we're going to make this a journey and we're not going to make it a battle we're in this journey so that my daughter doesn't have to feel fear course of control manipulation and intimidation and i'm not sure how that's going to be and i don't have all the answers but i promise her every single time that i see her that it won't be like this forever and that she won't be forced to fit in and that she will be in a place where she belongs and that is my promise to her and that is why i came here today so that if she ever doubts ever that this journey isn't about her she is the biggest blessing that i didn't want and she gives me courage and she is the reason that i find my inner power every single day and without her i don't think i would be alive so this journey is for her so that she has the freedom of choice to have a fulfilling life without triggers without fears without beatings without getting slapped for turning on a light on the sabbath by accident so that she doesn't have to know that so that she can have choices and that she can have options what i was born into i would get sick before i would have to go to functions i would have to be on things and i would show up shaking super duper hard i you know my mother would loudly be like why are you shaking so hard you know and at the time i didn't realize because the environment was sick and it was making me sick so it took a little while it took repeating the cycle you know marrying i didn't just marry my mother i married my mother and my father and in our culture you know i did something which is completely against the rules which is you know i found someone that wasn't in our circles and we're constantly taught that marriage is very hard as it is so you're supposed to find someone as close to you as your background as possible so that you can at least understand each other but what's so interesting is i was always around my family we all came from that background and my family couldn't stand me and was ashamed of me and you know what i mean so there was just a huge contradiction with that and what i learned is blood is not thicker than water i learned that the bonds of the heart and soul are way way stronger than the bonds of family you know i've seen that dogs show more love than humans you know we grow up where we don't have animals they're deemed impure they're dirty and you know i didn't know what it meant to love until i got a dog because as cesar milan says you don't get the dog you want you get the dog you need and i thought i was going to get me and this will tell you about my personality the first dog i got was a pit bull and i didn't know what i was getting myself into and i thought i was going to get me a cute little dog that was going to sit on my side and was going to be a couch potato and oh she was a hellion she i i hated her why because i was selfish and i didn't realize you don't get the dog you want you get the dog you need so i remember watching a lot of dog whisperer and started learning about putting her needs before mine discipline exercise then affection well it's really exercise discipline and affection and what was amazing is through that relationship through a dog was for the first time i learned unconditional love i learned you don't have to look a certain way you don't have to dress a certain way you don't have to be perfect you don't have to be anything you can just be and i learned through dogs you don't need to speak because love and loyalty doesn't need words it's through action my favorite line is dog is god backwards you know i felt that i had missed out on just such basic necessities that human beings don't realize that they take for granted i remember when i would watch my first disney movies till this day i love to watch disney movies like i never got to be a child when you're one of eight kids and i was the middle i was number four so the older kids dumped everything on me and i protected my younger siblings and i was also an easy target because um i am neurodivergent so i blurt things out i like i don't know how to sometimes shut the [ __ ] up you understand so that's gonna immediately get a slap in the face um and that's another thing for people who suffer with neurodivergent whatever whatever severity you are on the spectrum i do believe that you know we do get along better with other neurodivergents more than we do with neurotypical people and my humblest opinion unless neurotypical people are going to be committed to understanding that our brains are spider webs and not staircases you know and i feel like a lot of people are afraid of labels and they're afraid to get diagnosed and you should not be afraid of labels because if you get diagnosed and you understand that your brain might operate a different way you can then live your life according to the way your brain operates if your brain is a scattered deck of cards you can then learn how to hack it but you know in our culture there's like this big stigma and there's this big shame with therapy as well and something that i'm so proud of is that i'm so pro-therapy and if i could because focusing is something that's hard for me one day if i could become healed enough in my own trauma that i could heal others because humbly there isn't anything that i haven't been through in my journey to where i am today so what will make me feel fulfilled in life i've searched when you are told you are chosen and you are special and you don't feel it and you go out on your search and you search i think that what is most fulfilling for me has always been to give and to heal and to be a student of life and to always to grow and to be humble in my lack of knowledge and to be around people that won't belittle me but will educate me when i make mistakes and i really know that there are so many people in this world that are so misunderstood and are being punished for their pain because they're misunderstood and i really hope that there will be a time that my own brain will be regulated that i could go back to school and get out of the beauty industry because you know that's like another thing like when you're in a cult your external appearance is everything you have to look the part always that mask has to be on it doesn't matter what's going on behind closed doors what's not nice we don't show and i want to embrace being around people where we talk about the dirty stuff that's what attracted me so much about your channel is that we're not masking we're not pretending this is reality this is what's going on in the world and all the children that are being born are being born to the people that you're interviewing and we have to break these cycles because these children are all going to end up dead because all of my friends are dead i should be dead so we're punishing people for being in pain we're punishing people because they've had to learn to adapt to being in situations that they didn't choose what is adhd tuning out we develop it as kids because we have to adapt we have to learn to tune things out and we grow up and we become adults and it goes into adulthood addiction i don't believe we're born addicts i believe addiction is the symptom of trauma how are people who don't have coping skills learn to cope healthy the first thing that they're gonna get that's gonna quiet their brain that's gonna help them sleep that's gonna quiet the pain they're gonna run to we have a system where we're punishing people for being in pain we're punishing people for being in trauma and we have nobody to stand up for these people instead we're throwing them in jail they're getting a policy number they're being thrown in rehabs and rehabs jails and funeral homes are never going to be going out of business until we change the system and somebody is brave enough to speak up and say enough we have to be okay with other people not fitting in and making choices for themselves as long as they're healthy and they're not harming people we have to stop this coercive control with religion because it's destroying lives and i see it just constantly the cycle is getting repeated again within my own circle and that's why i know that if i fear that we'll become a victim to what i was that's what will happen so i have to not be afraid i have to come with courage and with determination and with belief in my own self that i can heal and that i can face my triggers and that i can raise my daughter so she doesn't have to feel unwanted because my mother was reproductively coerced through religion she was in her mind she was told she was doing the ultimate good deed she's bringing life into this world even if she wasn't mentally capable of doing it financially capable of doing it in her mind because she was so religiously indoctrinated and coercively controlled through religion she was reproductively coerced and i understand that and that's why therapy is so important is that you don't have to forgive but you can start to understand and become at peace and i strongly believe that people are terrified of therapy because therapists a lot of therapists suck but that doesn't mean that gives you an excuse not to go and get help it means you have to keep searching for the right therapist just like not every doctor is a good doctor just like not everybody in their field should be in their field if you are committed to getting help that is what makes you strong and i'll give a perfect parable a lot of times we go to the bathroom to take a crap right and we sit in there on our phones and we're scrolling and we don't realize how bad the bathroom smells because we're sitting there right after we finally get up and get out we open the door and we get out of the bathroom you smell the fresh air for the first time we're like how the hell was i sitting in that nasty bathroom that's what therapy's about you're basically sitting in your [ __ ] you're sitting and wallowing in your ship finding band-aids to put on yourself when you can go and yes it's terrifying it's so scary at first to be broken and to feel that pain it's so scary but nobody ever died from crying but people are going to die from putting needles in their arms and you have a choice do you want to take this one life that you have and do you want to make it something fulfilling or do you want to keep running from your pain and i know it's not easy as you get older i know it's not easy it's so hard because all the systems are designed to keep you hooked in whatever trauma induced coma you are in whether you're in a religious cult whether you're in the throes of addiction prostitution you're institutionalized and you know your institution and you got used to smelling that [ __ ] and you got comfortable in it but you don't know that if you open that door that ear is so beautiful and so pure and so clean and so fulfilling and so healthy and that's the journey that i'm on right now i ran i tried to run but there is no running it catches up with you and there was something inside of me that didn't want to be controlled either you know when you want to run away from your pain you're going to be controlled by whatever it is that you're using to numb the pain whatever it is so i want to feel not in control because none of us are in control we are only in control in our mind we are a slave to our circumstances as always at the end of the day but what i would like to do is i would like to have control of my mind i would have would like to have a regulated mind where i respond i don't react or i can work through my triggers where i have that inner power and that inner peace and that is my journey and a journey that i'm eager to embark on even though it's scary because you have to be broken for it but i'm here for it because what i can say is the rat race of chasing the band-aid is never going to end but there is a light and the light it doesn't come at the end of the tunnel there's cracks of it that come while you're going through the tunnel and you see it and you feel it and it's so beautiful and every time you see that crack of light that gives you that push to get towards that end it's so rewarding and it's you thank yourself for your courage and your bravery to get through the pain of giving up the band-aids it's not easy though but nothing worth having ever is what would you say is the most important lesson you've learned in all of this to forgive myself for the lack of awareness and the lack of understanding for the situations that i was in to not have the regret the resentment and the self-pity that i harbored all right asia thank you so much for sharing your story thank you so much for having me beautiful thank you very much you

Channel: Soft White Underbelly

Views: 1,789,005

Keywords: soft white underbelly, swu

Id: fzLtyqje3DY

Length: 63min 5sec (3785 seconds)

Published: Sat May 21 2022