Hollywood’s Go-To Stuntwoman on Abuse, Trauma, Healing & Hope: Kimberly Shannon Murphy

26:06We don't, you hide when you're hurt in our business. At least then it was kind of, you know, you do what you're supposed to do. You don't complain. It's part of the business. It's how I also grew up. And I looked in the mirror and I had like cut my lip really, really bad. I had like a chunk of skin off my nose. I cut my head and I cut my eye like from right under my eyelid, like straight down, just missed my eye. And I was like, grabbed a bottle of peroxide, like poured it over my face, got a bunch of band-aids, put them on. And the coordinator's like, you need to go to the hospital. I was like, I'm not going to the hospital.

26:39And I stayed for about five hours. I did it three more times. And the reset of the window was like an hour and a half. So it was a really long time being there. And I just kept doing it. Hurt. So there's one way to look at that, which is you're a total badass, you know, for showing up and toughing it out and saying, let's do it again. The flip side of that is a less healthy sort of perspective on why you decided to stay and continue to do it. Can you talk about that? I don't think I realized how dark that was at the time. It did register for me, but not like it does now. I grew up in a household where, you know, my dad was a Marine in Vietnam.

27:27He was a minesweeper. He went when he was 18. And he had four girls, and he was really tough on us. And it was like we didn't cry. It was part of just how I was raised. And then going through, I was sexually abused by my maternal grandfather my entire childhood. He died when I was 11. And I just think that there is some correlation between high intense sports and trauma. I just do. I think when we, for me, like pushing my body, like seeing how far I could push my body, pushing through even when I was like bleeding and cut and hurt and kind of enjoying it or kind of feeling some sort of satisfaction around that.

28:10To me, there's something that ties back to our childhood. It's almost as if on the pain piece, we find the medicine that works for us. And it's almost as if being a stunt person was like a glove that fit very well, because it allowed you to not only put yourself in these heightened, high-risk environments, but then when you experience that pain, as you say over and over again, like the pain of your insides would match your outsides. And that felt like home, but also allowed other people to see you the way that you felt about yourself. Yeah. And having people ask me if I was okay was something I didn't realize I needed so much.

28:57So for me standing on the movie set, being injured like that, having one person after the other, of course they are, because they're all probably looking at me like, I'm nuts. Like, why are you not in an ambulance going to the hospital? And I didn't even have an ambulance take me to the hospital. I had transpo take me, which is also insane. You know, enjoying that, you know, merry-go-round of people. Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay? Yeah, I'm okay. I'm okay. No, I'm not okay in any way, shape or form. Is it also about trying to feel something? Like when you're in that kind of environment, like you're so out on a limb, right?

29:31If you're unconsciously kind of numb to your own life, that allows you to have, you know, kind of a very visceral, you know, kind of connection with something that makes you feel like you're alive. Yeah. When I was growing up, I was a cutter. I mean, after my grandfather died, I started cutting myself. And, you know, I speak about this in the book. I wasn't a cutter who like hid her cuts. I did them. I cut myself with a razor on my face because I wanted - Above your eyebrow, right? Yeah. Like right here. Because I wanted my mom to notice that there was something wrong. And I think that there was also something that felt really good about being in pain for me because it was something I could make sense of or connect with because it was outwardly happening instead of the pain I was feeling on the inside that I could not make sense of.

30:20That was so confusing and almost unbearable. I just couldn't connect with that because of everything that was still happening around me. And when you were feeling physical pain, does that mute the psychic emotional pain? Like it overrides it. A little bit, yeah. Yeah. Now, much further along in your healing journey, like how does that change your relationship with being a stunt woman? Like, are you still able to do it and push yourself in the way that you need to, but in a healthier way? Like, what does that look like? I'm the boss now. So I do a TV show in LA and I coordinate it. So I'm kind of choreographing this stuff.

31:01I'm putting everyone in place. And yes, my relationship with pain has definitely changed. Although I can't say that there aren't times that I can totally go back there because I can. And I think that will probably be that way forever. I've sort of not given up, but I've sort of accepted the fact that this is something that's always gonna live inside of me on some level. Sometimes it's gonna be a lot more heightened and other times, but it's something that I think is always gonna be with me. Mm-hmm. In the way that a drug can do, right? Like with substance recovery, you know, you can just be abstinent, right?

31:37But if your job is to do this, like it's sort of like having an eating disorder, right? You still have to eat. And so how can you do that? So you're not triggering yourself or you're kind of rewiring your brain so you can have a different kind of relationship with it. Yes, exactly. Yeah.

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37:09Let's kind of go back. Let's go back to the beginning. You already mentioned your grandfather. father, maybe paint the picture of your very early childhood. My maternal grandfather was, I now say, a sociopath, which is kind of what he's been diagnosed by, you know, the doctors that I've been around now. And he, I don't know what his childhood was like, but he abused his children and then abused me from the age three, when I was three, started when I was three, and he died when I was 11. So horrific. Yeah. I'm so sorry. It's really hard at times to read your book, but you were very conscious and careful to not write it in a way that is salacious.

38:01Like you're telling the story, but you're doing it in a way that, because I know you're writing for an audience of people who could be helped and empowered by this. And so obviously you have to steer clear of unnecessary gruesome details that could be upsetting in a way that's not helpful. Yeah. So you're kind of alluding to these, you're telling these stories and you're inferring and alluding where it's very clear what has happened, but without, you know, the gory kind of blow by blow details of it all. Yeah. And that was my entire goal of the book. And I wrote it like a film because I want to make it a film.

38:43There are so many people that are suffering from incest and nobody really talks about it because it's such a painful thing. Because when we come from families like this, where it's living inside of the family system, it feels like if I'm going to talk, then my family is going to be ruined. And there's so many people that aren't ready to deal with it or don't want to look at it. And it takes a lot to come out and speak about it. and I just know how many people are in pain from it. And that's why it's so important to me. And I didn't, I wrote the book for survivors. I wrote it for people like me.

39:21And I know that I don't want to sit down and read a book that's supposed to be helping me and read details of someone's abuse. So that was obviously done on purpose. And I don't think anyone needs to know, you know, the details in order to know the story and to kind of go through all of that with me. Three years old. Yeah. it's just, it's unimaginable to me. But it wasn't until you were 15 that you started having memories. This was all repressed for a handful of years. Yeah. But leading up to that, there's a unconscious awareness. So like whenever you're around this guy or you smell Old Spice or, you know, there are these kinds of triggers where you're like, this isn't right.

40:05I need to move away. But you just don't have the maturity or the awareness or the, you know, frankly, the brain development to really process and understand what is actually happening. Well, that was my brain development. Yeah. Was being put into this situation with this man who was supposed to love me. And instead he was abusing me every single chance he got. And every single adult around was doing nothing about it. And some of those people were aware and also had been victims. Yes. Yeah. So it is systemic. It's intergenerational. It is a family system. And, you know, there's sort of this umbrella of Catholicism hanging over the whole thing.

40:49And that comes with, you know, a certain way of, you know, dealing with emotions. Yeah. Or not dealing with them. That's what I mean. Yeah, right. Like we don't talk about this. Everything's fine. Everything's fine. Show up and, you know, put on the happy face and, you know, it's all perfect. Yeah. My grandfather was a pillar of the community. He was an architect, which come to find out, because I did so much digging after he died, I became sort of like I just wanted to know all the things. I wanted to try to figure out how he was created and how he could do the things that he did. And what I found out is he wasn't actually a real architect.

41:31He had worked for an architect on Long Island. And when the guy died, he assumed his license and worked as an architect, but he actually never got his license. Oh, wow. So his whole life was just one big lie. And his wife, your grandmother, lionized this guy and really, you know, did everything she possibly could to protect him and his image and was absolutely immune to having any kind of confrontation over like his behavior. Yeah, she was just as bad as he was, if you ask me. I mean, to know that your children and your grandchildren are being abused and she did know and not to do anything about it, you have to be a really sick person.

42:19from three to 11, this is going on. It's not one or two occasions. It's an ongoing thing. And then you have this experience when you're 15, when you're watching a movie on television with your mom. Can you explain that? I was having flashbacks for, I don't know how long before I actually told my mother, probably a few years. Sometimes I don't actually know if I ever forgot. And sometimes I don't I don't know if I actually never told anybody. Explain that a little bit. I think that there were times that I told my mother when I was a child. There were things that my mother saw that she didn't do anything about.

43:04Sorry. I don't talk about that in the book because those are very new things that have come out, like, through my journey work. so he you know had basically groomed everybody including his wife or she was like his accomplice it was just one big sick system that was just operating under this abusive man who had you know groomed his children from the time they were little and so they were in a place where they were just terrified of him and no one said anything and then he was doing the same thing with the next generation And it's not like this guy lived in Florida. He was around, right? So he was very much a part of your life consistently throughout.

43:52Did the same thing to your mother, to many other people. But in the book, you're watching this movie and this scene is playing out that you identify with. And you finally say to your mom, like, I think that happened to me. And your mom recognizes that and says, you know, it happened to me too. So it's more complicated than she's resistant to this. Like she had already, you know, done what she could in her limited capacity to try to heal herself. And obviously it's her worst nightmare that this happened to you. Yeah, that's been a really tough one to unpack now that I've written the book and been doing the work I've been doing.

44:37When I was a child, I feel like the really confusing thing for me was that my mother and I almost felt like we were in the same boat, but we were in very different boats. You know, she was my mother at the end of the day. And it wasn't until I had my daughter and I realized what you're supposed to feel for your child, that everything really went south for me in the way that I knew that I couldn't stay in relationship with these people anymore. Meaning like a sense of betrayal because it was her job to protect you and she didn't do that. Yeah. And why do you think that is? Why was she incapable of doing that job?

45:20I think she was still being abused by him. If not sexually on some level. You know, with someone like him, it's not only the sexual abuse, it's the emotional, just the power that he had over everybody. So he was still abusing, I believe, my mother and her siblings way until he died. I mean, you don't just stop doing something like that when you're the person he was. You have this experience when you are talking to your mom about this, where she says, well, there was a confession letter and there were all these Polaroids. And she seems to think that she had already told you all about this and it was news to you.

46:04those things ended up being burned by her wife, your grandmother. So you never actually saw them, but I'm trying to understand like how she could think she would, obviously if she had told you, that would be something that you would never forget. No. Right. I think when you've been abused to the level that we were, you disconnect from your body, right? And there's actual science behind that now that in order to be able to survive what's happening to you, you literally leave your body. And that's what it feels like. You're hovering over the situation, watching it happen. And I think my mom disconnected so much from her body for so long that I could literally see her do it in front of me.

46:45If we'd be in conversation, that would get too hard. It was like she just disappeared. And it was kind of a blank slate in front of her. And I could tell she wasn't absorbing what I was telling her and she wasn't actually hearing me. Yeah. You have experience with that yourself, right? Like you talk about New York and being in the kind of club scene. It seemed like that sort of was your version of that. Yes. Yeah. What do people not understand about this experience? You know, because so many people, if they haven't had this experience themselves, have somebody in their extended family or someone they care for who has experienced some version of what happened to you.

47:28that it's a lifelong process of healing and it's not something that just goes away it's not like it happened to you and you can just move on it always finds you if you try to be that person that's like okay I get it it happened like I'm just gonna move on it doesn't work that way it comes out in a million different ways in a million different forms I feel like I wasn't truly in my body until after my first journey. The next morning I came outside and I heard the birds for the first time in my life, literally. And I could feel like wind on my face. And I remember saying to my husband, like, do you hear the birds all the time?

48:07He had a very normal life. He's like, what are you talking about? I'm like, do you hear the birds? And he's like, yeah, I hear the birds every day, Kim. And I was like, I, and I talked to Gabor about it. I was so disconnected from my body my whole life that I, there was so much internal noise happening constantly that the simple outside things were completely foreign to me. This disassociation is like a defense mechanism for survival, right? It's so painful to live in that reality that you have to create some kind of wall or barrier in order to just function. Is that what the essence of that is?

48:44And so I would imagine, there's all these people in your family who are doing some version of that themselves, right? And if they're doing that, they're not able to help you because they're disconnected from themselves. Exactly. And in order to get up in the morning and just function themselves, they have to pretend like everything is okay. Yeah. Yeah. And it seems so unimaginable that this kind of dynamic could exist and persist and be passed on generation after generation, but this is an unfortunate reality. And it's a reality, I think it's more profuse than people realize. Yeah. I remember one of my family members said to me, when I was just sort of pushing, because I was always the one to be like, let's talk about this.

49:35I want to understand something that I'll never understand at the end of the day. But then I was trying to make sense of something that was senseless. And one of my family members said, I'm afraid if I go there, I'll never come back. And I think it's quite the opposite. I think you need to go there to come back to yourself. When I speak about this in the book, I felt so disconnected, obviously to myself, but to my inner child more, you know, more than anything. And I would see pictures of her and feel just anger and just like, why didn't you fight back? Why didn't you tell somebody? Why am I here?

50:14Why am I in this situation? And, you know, at the end of the day, she was the strongest one and I wouldn't be sitting here without her. And when I was able to connect with her again is when I was really able to start healing. Yeah, the idea that it's so scary to look at it. It's such a threat because if I look at it, my whole life is gonna unravel. And so what happens, and I know this personality type, this archetype, these are people that tend to be anxiety riddled, but very controlling. And they keep their lives small and they're very afraid of, you know, kind of the outside world or anything that would threaten their ability to just kind of like, I have everything under control.

50:59It's all, it's everything's good. It's like that, right? And they're the most resistant to help because it is a mortal threat. They literally feel like they would die if they had to look at this truth. Or like fall to addiction or suicide. That's what I feel like a lot of my family is afraid of. And so writing this book and speaking openly and publicly about this, there's very real people involved in this. Like this is a high stakes affair for you. And there's a lot of benefits. There's a lot of healing as a result of doing what you're doing, but there's costs as well. Yeah. Yeah. I lost everybody.

51:37Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah. It kind of happened slowly. It happened slowly. And I remember, I don't know if you're familiar with Dr. Perry, Bruce Perry. He does a lot of trauma work. He wrote the book, The Boy That Was Raised as a Dog. I've heard of that book. And he wrote What Happened to You with Oprah Winfrey. I don't know that one. He endorsed my book as well. And I spoke to him early on too. He does a lot of work with trauma survivors, with children that have seen something really horrific. His team kind of goes in to deal with the kids instead of the police doing it. He's got people all over the world.

52:14And he said to me when I was writing and chatting with him, he said, you know, Kim, you're probably going to lose everybody in your family. I said, no, I don't think so. Like, I think, you know, my mom was supportive of the book from day one. She wanted me to do it. So was my dad. One of my sisters, as soon as I got the book deal, hasn't talked to me since. And everyone slowly followed suit, but it was all for different reasons. And, you know, I'm sure if you were to ask them, it wouldn't be this reason. Yeah. I mean, what would they say? Well, it's interesting. My father, he like just passed away like a month and a half ago.

52:52And we've struggled in our relationship from the beginning. but my dad and I were also very much alike in a lot of ways. And just something happened with my daughter where my family was involved that they excluded her from something because I was excluded from it. And she was really affected by that. And that was really hard for me. And I saw how it was going to play out if I stayed in relationship with everybody because everyone's mad at me, then my daughter gets, you know, the little silly things that don't, it's like the big thing no one wants to talk about. So like these little like unhealthy behaviors are happening between the family.

53:34And my daughter said to me, you know, why don't they want me there, mom? Like I didn't do anything wrong. And it was in that moment that I realized that if I didn't do something about what relationship I showed her moving forward, like if I'm going to tell you, this is how we show up in the world and I'm in relationship with people that don't show up in the world like that and I'm putting them in your life, then I'm not doing my job as a mother, as a person, as a human. That situation happened. You know, my dad just couldn't hear me. And I think a lot of it was just because if he did, he would have to look at the fact that he failed me and that he didn't protect me.

54:14And my dad was a Marine. So that was his job. Like he was over in Vietnam protecting his country. So to think that he would come home and have children and not protect them, I think was for him just impossible. It's also on top of that, like a little bit world shattering for him because your grandfather was a veteran also, right? And he kind of revered your grandfather. So the idea that your grandfather, you know, perpetrated this incredible harm was something that was impossible for him to hear. Impossible. And that just sort of continued through my adult life. And when I started really doing the work and writing the book, which my dad was really supportive of me writing the book as well, the more I would come at my dad and be like, we need to talk about things.

55:03And he just couldn't do it. And I just couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't keep trying to show them, to convince them, all the things. It was getting exhausting. and I just needed to walk away. And so when he died, like nobody called me.

55:23My sister's husband called my husband. I wasn't welcome at the funeral. I didn't even, like I had to find out from the lawyer when my dad was buried.

55:35That's hard. Yeah. I'm really sorry. When was the last time you spoke with him? Well, on one of my journeys, actually. It was really interesting because I had this ketamine retreat with Dr. Schwartz planned for a year. And my dad died and the retreat was coming up three weeks after that. So it was just super interesting. And I wasn't sure I wanted to do the retreat. And then I went. and one of the days, one of the sessions and Dr. Schwartz was sitting with me at the time. I'm like, oh my God, my dad's here. And Dr. Schwartz is like, what is he saying? I'm like, he's saying he's sorry. He was like, I'm so sorry, I get it.

56:16I'm so sorry, I get it. And then he said to me, can you tell Dr. Schwartz, thank you for being there for you in a way I never could.

56:29It was really powerful and I have felt him a lot. Like, I know it sounds like really like woohoo, like psychedelic world, but I feel like unless you do it, you don't know. And so sometimes when I talk about it, I feel like, oh my gosh, Kim, you've officially gone crazy. But it really is incredible. Had you not had that experience, would you feel as if there was something that you wish you had said to him that was unsaid? It's one thing to, you know, I wish this guy would apologize or at least see me or recognize, you know, his part in all of this. Short of that, like, did you feel like there was something you wanted to express to him that you didn't have the opportunity to?

57:14I tried to. I knew he was going in the hospital and that he wasn't well. I wrote him a message and I was like, Dad, I really want to talk to you. Like, I really, we have a lot of things that are not said that I want to say. And he wrote me back and said, I can't right now. And that was kind of the last correspondence we had. Because it's just too hard, too hard for him to confront that with you. I mean, he died because he drank and smoked himself to death. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of drinking in the extended family. I wasn't clear whether alcoholism was playing a part here or is it just, you know, this is just a big Catholic family doing what they do.

57:56Oh, yeah. Everybody had a drinking problem at one time or another. And I don't know if you got, there's a letter in the book that my aunt Pat had wrote to the family where she speaks about the fact that alcohol is our mighty suppressor. And she writes, alcohol is our mighty suppressor. It keeps us away from the truth. Right, because the truth is yearning to come out. It's so uncomfortable to sit on those truths or to be amongst the people who have all these secrets, et cetera. But alcohol helps. Oh yeah. Alcohol helps you just like, it's cool. Yeah, we're good, we're fine. And my family completely used it for that reason to just keep pushing everything down and pushing everything down, but it always finds its way up.

58:46And if it doesn't, then you get sick, you get cancer or you get some other sort of immune disease or something, yeah. Have you been watching The Bear, a TV show? No, no. It's really all about this. Okay. It's about trauma, it's about alcoholism. I mean, it's about the restaurant world, et cetera, but really the core of this show is really about unhealed trauma and addiction in many ways and the way this extended family is trying to process the suicide of one of its members, but I think you would find it compelling. Yeah, it's interesting. And even Gabor had said to me, And, you know, there's obviously there was trauma on my dad's side too, because his brother died of heroin overdose when he was 32.

59:30And so, you know, there was addiction on both my mother and my father's side. My grandfather was an alcoholic and my dad's father was an alcoholic and he stopped drinking later in life. And my dad was an alcoholic and yeah. It's making more sense now. Lots of drinking. Your mom, after you guys watch this movie and you kind of say, hey, listen, I think something like this has happened to me. She takes you to her therapist. And it's this surprise that she actually had been seeing somebody about this very thing. It doesn't exactly take for you. But this is the real, like this is step one. Like the healing journey begins here.

1:00:12And it's a very, very long and nonlinear one. But, you know, maybe talk a little bit about what that experience was like, why you weren't ready to trust that person or talk openly about it and what had to happen before you were ready to kind of crack open and look really openly and honestly. Yeah. At this. Well, you know, my mom threw me into the room with this woman and she's like, she's my therapist. You can trust her. And I'm like, every adult you've brought into my life has hurt me, literally. And so, no, I don't trust anybody. And now I'm just going to completely shut down, which is what happened.

1:00:55And I remember then her therapist had said to her, you should get her her own therapist. She really shouldn't be seeing me because I'm seeing you. And then my mom sent me to another therapist and I just didn't speak. I think I went for a month or two and I just refused to talk. And they didn't really try to help me. Like I remember the woman being fine with just sitting in the room with me and me not speaking. Like she didn't try to play any games or, you know, do anything that you see real good therapists do with kids that have been through trauma. So I just didn't speak. And then my dad got so mad and didn't want to pay for me to go to therapy and not speak.

1:01:32So I just stopped going. Do you think that if you had had the right therapist at that time, that it would have made a big difference? Yeah. And that's such a huge problem in our world now. I mean, like I was saying earlier, the fact that I didn't know who Gabor was or Dr. Schwartz with what I've been through is shocking. Yeah. Yeah. You were trying to figure this out, right? It wouldn't have taken long to stumble onto either of these guys. I think I was being held back by my family. And when I say that, I don't mean that they were actually holding me back. But a part of me wanted to stay where they were because I think I was scared to, even though I was really brave and wanted to get help.

1:02:20I think there was a part of me that knew that if I did that, I was going to surpass everybody. and ultimately what all has happened would have happened. And I think for a long time, I was terrified of that. Meaning it would just end your relationship with your extended family. Yeah. Because you grow too much and then you can't be around people that are not growing, especially people that have experienced the same situation as you have in the same family. It just doesn't, it just doesn't work. Are you able to conjure compassion for these people? Yeah. you've talked about forgiveness. There is a trope in therapy and in recovery, like forgiveness is for you.

1:03:02It's not for them. So share a little bit about your understanding and your relationship with forgiveness, with respect to your grandfather, your mother, your dad. I feel like I've come to a place of acceptance where I can accept that this is my life. This is what happened to me. And also look at all the things that I've done because of it. And I know that's really backwards, but it's true. I don't think I would have been a stunt woman if I hadn't experienced the trauma I experienced and I wouldn't have written a book and I wouldn't be sitting here. So, you know, there's two ways to look at it.

1:03:42And I've never seen myself as a victim. I've always wanted to be someone who's overcame something and help people and do something positive with my story. And I really feel like I'm doing that and will continue to do that. I struggle with the whole thought of needing to forgive my grandfather in order to heal or move on. I don't think that that's necessary. And I think that there are some things that are not forgivable. And I think, you know, molesting a child is one of those things. I watched this interview with Marilyn Murphy. Do you know her? She's like 87. Her story's pretty insane. She's a psychiatrist, but she was, she was abused when she was eight by soldiers.

1:04:31And her life was obviously never the same. And she speaks about that. And she went on to become like an art dealer and she made a bunch of money. And then she went and started, like, she started going to school to become a psychiatrist and she started working in the prisons and working with sex offenders. And when I was watching her speak about this, it was so I had like so many feelings about it because it, you know, one part of me was like physically ill because I can't imagine myself sitting in a room with somebody who is capable of doing the things that were done to me. But she had a really interesting way of looking at it, which was that she saw them as all really wounded children.

1:05:11I don't think I'm there yet. I don't know if I ever will be, but... What about forgiving yourself? Forgiving myself for... Not that you did anything wrong, but as a result of this experience, you kind of were acting out in ways that were creating your own suffering, right? Yes, completely. Yeah, I don't... Probably have not fully forgiven myself, if I'm going to be honest. Maybe a different way of looking at what I'm getting at is like compassion for the inner child, right? Like being able to like see that young version of yourself and to provide the love for that little girl that you didn't receive.

1:05:56Completely. I always say like she lives with me now. For a long time, I felt very separate from her. And now I feel like we're one and I feel like I'm kind of raising her as I raise my daughter. Which is why the book is called Glimmer. Yes, because it's my inner child. But also with that said, I didn't know that glimmer was the opposite of trigger. Do you know that? That your glimmer is the opposite of your trigger, which I did not know when I named the book. That was like a thing? Yeah, it's a thing. It was a phrase that was coined by Dr. Deb Dana a really long time ago. Walk me through that.

1:06:31I'm trying to understand how, so the inner child, the glimmer is the opposite of the trigger. So if something's triggering you, So the glimmer is sort of the antidote to that, like kind of focusing on that. Exactly. So your glimmers and whatever they are are the opposite of what triggers you. Yeah, it's interesting.

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1:08:35There's a difference between compassion and forgiveness, right? Like you can be compassionate for these people. And it's easier to be compassionate when you can kind of see through them and understand all of the life experiences that they had that led to this inevitability, right? Like, well, this happened to this, all these things lined up. So, of course, they end up, you know, the way that they are. And it has nothing to do with you. they inherited it from somewhere else and somebody else. But that only gets you so far. It's sort of like having incredible self-awareness of what happened to you and why it happened to you and because this person was like this and you can have the whole blueprint in front of you and you can read all the books and know all the acronyms and the diagnoses, the attachment disorders and the enmeshment, like all of that stuff, right?

1:09:28But that's very different from doing the work or engaging in the healing. And I find myself at times in that space, like I'm like, oh, I can see why I'm this way because of what all these things, right? But then how do I connect that to actually resolving some of these recurring character defects or malfunctions that I have that are a result of things that I just inherited or were bred into me, you know, at a very young age. Yeah. I think the attachment that we have to our parents is always going to be there. And I think that's why it's such a struggle, right? Because you can sit outside of it and say exactly what you're saying.

1:10:14Like, I know why my dad couldn't show up for me because he didn't have a great childhood. And then he went to Vietnam at 18 and watched his friends get blown up in front of him. And then he got married young, all of the things, right, to bring him where he was. And I could look at my mom and say she was abused from, she had the same life probably worse than I did in the sense of it was her father. And so all of these things, and I can see that for what it is and I can have compassion for them, but it doesn't take away the pain. And I don't think anything will ever fully take away the pain of what happened to me and them being part of that.

1:10:54So what is healing look like then? I think it looks like being able to recognize that two things can be true, that my parents failed me, but they were also really damaged and really traumatized people that were raising children and they raised traumatized children. I mean, those are two very true things and I can have compassion for them and for everybody else in my family. And I can also know that they all really fucked up and it wasn't okay. And I can have both of those things in my life and in my space and that's okay. Because if I don't have both of those things, then I'm not really being honest with myself about what my journey has been.

1:11:41You know, if I go to a place where I'm just like, well, they were just traumatized, it's okay. It's not okay. I'm not at peace with any of it. but I can see that side and I can have compassion for that side. And I can also have compassion for me and be able to take care of my little girl inside of me and say, yeah, we know that they were traumatized, but I'm gonna protect you now. And this is what me protecting you looks like. There's a healing perspective that's kind of more in the spiritual realm that goes something like this. Part of becoming whole is recognizing and owning that on some level, like from a multidimensional or perhaps past life perspective, that you chose this experience for the purpose of your own growth and evolution and healing.

1:12:41And all of these things had to happen so that you could be the person you are today to show up for your daughter, to interrupt this cycle of generational trauma and be this voice, this advocate that is healing for other people. I completely agree with that. And so with that perspective, it softens the blow of what happened to you. And I think it does open up, it cracks the door open a little bit for perhaps more compassion than feels natural for the people that harmed you. I do believe that we choose our life. Like you're saying, if we're talking on a spiritual, that we do choose our life and that this is the life that I did choose and that my mother was a vessel for me to come into this world.

1:13:27And if all of these things didn't happen, like you're saying, I wouldn't be speaking out, obviously. I'd have a very different life. And if I could go back and choose again, I'd choose exactly the same. That's beautiful, actually, that you can say that after everything that has happened. Yeah, because I wouldn't want to be anyone but me. So after this short-lived experience with therapy as a young person, I mean, there's a lot of adventures and misadventures in your life. You end up in New York City. There's a whole partying phase and, you know, there's lots of things that happen. But I want to get to the part where you decide it's time to get serious about looking at this and, you know, taking care of yourself.

1:14:09Mm-hmm. You know, and the hard thing about that is I couldn't do it until I started making money, really, because you have to pay for therapy and it's expensive. And you're in New York City. Yeah. When this is going on. Yeah. And so therapists then were, I think it was like 150, which was a lot of money. I could definitely not afford that before I was doing stunts. So I had been seeing this dear woman who was amazing. She was like 90. She must've been through looking back on it, something similar to me. And she felt very connected to me. So I would go to her apartment. She saw me for free. She fell asleep at every session.

1:14:45Like she'd start snoring. And so I was like, well, at least I can just talk and, you know, maybe she'll catch some things. And that was her. And then when I got into stunts, I got like an actual therapist. Not that she was an actual therapist. I think she just outgrunt Understood. Yeah. And what was different about that? Even though I hadn't really done the work yet, I was very in tune with myself and I didn't want to sit across from somebody who wasn't smarter than me. And so when I sat down with her, she started saying things that I had never thought of. And that to me was very just new and different and comforting.

1:15:22So I was like, oh my gosh, she's going to teach me something. She's going to show me something that I haven't thought of or looked at. And I was with her for a really long time, like right up until my book came out, basically. So almost 20 years we saw each other on and off, like when I would travel and stuff, but yeah. Were there any important inflection points that opened up portals or allowed you to see yourself in a new and different way? Like I'm trying to get a sense of the stepping stones or kind of benchmarks along this path towards healing for you. Well, when I went to see her, I was married before my husband now, and I was married to a man who was just like my father.

1:16:01Of course. Yeah. And he was a good man, just like my father, but he had a drinking problem and it was not a good relationship and it was super unhealthy. And I didn't even realize how unhealthy it was until I went to therapy. And she started asking me questions that made me kind of think and realize and see. And because my family system was so unhealthy and everyone was operating in a really unhealthy way, I just kind of fit in. and that was my normal and I didn't see outside of that, you know, and she wasn't somebody that like pushed anything down your throat. I think any good therapist is like that.

1:16:40Like she was just, you know, would sort of say things and I would go home and be like, yeah, why am I doing, you know, and then I just sort of was connecting the dots. And when I was seeing her, I wound up leaving him and I met Casey and he was like the healthiest man that I'd ever been with in my life. Like literally, I basically dated like my dad after my dad, after my dad, after my dad. And he was just not like that at all. And I think that if it wasn't for being in therapy with her, I would have never been able to even be open to having a relationship with my husband because it would have felt way too foreign and way too normal for me.

1:17:21What would Casey say to someone who's listening to this or watching it about what's important to understand And for somebody who is in partnership with somebody who has survived something like you have. We've gotten really good at, especially in the beginning when my flashbacks were really bad. And I have one every day, I would say still, but they're a lot softer. Like I can move through my day with them where when we met, they were really harsh and really painful for me. And so I would get into instances where I would just like be in the bathroom on the floor crying. and in the beginning he would just like grab me, which was the opposite of what I needed because it just felt too jarring and I didn't want to be touched.

1:18:05And so I think having an open communication with your partner about when they are in that situation of what you need to ask, like, what do they need? And we got really good at, like, he's like, do you need a hug? Do you want me to leave the room? Do you want me to just sit here? Like, what do you need? And so it was, you know, very short words, like, can you leave? like I need a hug, whatever it is. It's just really important to be able to communicate that because when you've been through something like this, when we are in those situations, we feel very exposed and very frightened. And even someone you love touching you can be actually really not a positive thing in the moment.

1:18:47Right, the instinct isn't always the correct move. Yeah. And that becomes confusing for somebody who loves somebody who's suffering and they want to go towards them or they're looking for like, how can I make this better? Yes. But unclear on what that is and isn't. Yeah. Because they can't make it better. That's the thing, right? So it's being able to sit with your partner and recognize that I can't actually make this better, but I can be with you through it while you figure out how you're going to make this better. Because no one can make it better for you. You have to do it yourself. Is that something he instinctually understood or had to learn or did he, he's going to his therapist.

1:19:28And I mean, how is this working? No, he doesn't go to therapy. He's very just, he's always just been connected. He's very, and you know, he like gardens and does all sorts of things I don't understand. I was like, what are you doing like out there for so many hours in the dirt, like garden? He's like, yeah, it's really good for your soul. I've gotten better. I've like, I've really gotten better. Like through all my journeys, I've connected back with the earth. I don't think I ever was connected with the earth. That was a problem. So no, in the beginning, he would just instantly hug me or grab me, which was the opposite of usually what I needed.

1:20:00So we had to work through that. And he would come to therapy with me sometimes if I felt like I needed to express something to him. Or he just did better hearing from the doctors what was happening actually in my brain and why it was happening in my brain. That was easier for him to understand. Harder for him to be in the moments with me with all of those feelings. and then easier for him to check in and say, oh, okay, like this is why, this is what's happening to her is happening because this is how her brain developed and she went all of the things. So that was helpful for him. Yeah. There's a joke or maybe a sitcom in this idea of stunt people in therapy.

1:20:41I've never seen it. No, I'm just like, okay, stunt people who go to therapy, you know, like, I don't know, it's interesting because it's such a alpha endeavor, right? And these are people like, I don't need therapy. Like I'm a superhuman, right? Yeah, probably like the same as UFC people in therapy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. What have you learned about what works with therapy and what doesn't? Because I think it's easy if you don't have a good therapist or maybe you have some resistance to actually doing the work to just go to therapy forever, talk about stuff, develop all this self-awareness. And if you're not doing the work, then it becomes about like blaming other people for what happened to you or being a victim.

1:21:24And that's a form of just being stuck, right? I think there are a lot of therapists that haven't done the work themselves. And so how are they gonna teach their clients how to do the work if they haven't done it themselves? And I've found that a lot of people who aren't ready to do the work will find those therapists and stay with them for a really long time because they just go and they can say I'm in therapy and they can talk about all the things, but they're not being challenged or they're not being, their therapist isn't making them self-aware, isn't giving them, you know, before I met Dr.

1:21:57Romani and Gabor and all these doctors, I didn't have the language. I didn't know what enmeshment was. I didn't know what a toxic family was. I didn't know what a narcissist was. I didn't have that language. And I know that language is really changing now and people are becoming more aware of it, but I didn't have any of it. And so I remember Dr. Romney telling me, you know, your family is like an enmeshed family system. I was like, what is that? And when she sort of broke it down to me, I was like, yeah, that's my family. She's like, I know that's what I said. But having a therapist that can give you the words for what you're going through and talk you through all of that, not everybody does that.

1:22:36To really press you and then give you assignments, right? There has to be action here rather than just, oh, I never thought of it that way. And then you leave and then you come back next week. Yeah. Or just to, you know, not enable you. I think my mom, you know, because I went to therapy with my mom as an adult for a long time and all of her therapists were enabling her and not pushing her at all. And maybe it was because they saw that my mom couldn't be pushed, which I think is a really strong possibility because I don't think she could, but there was none of that happening. Like I would go to therapy with her and it would be like so frustrating for me because I was doing so much work and I'm trying to sort of help her and show her and, you know, her therapist just weren't doing that for her.

1:23:28Just affirming her saying, oh, that must be really hard. Tell me more. How does that make you feel? That kind of thing, Nothing like, okay, how are you showing up in this situation that isn't helpful for your daughter? Like, how can you show up differently? And, you know, things that actually will change the course of your behavior instead of just making your behavior okay and you continue the same behavior. When you say doing the work for somebody who's watching this or listening to this, who doesn't understand what that means or isn't innately familiar with therapy, do you think you could give a few examples of that?

1:24:06I mean, I'm thinking of contrary actions like I used to do this or I generally do this or my instincts are to do this, but now I need to do it this way. I think doing the work is different for everybody and it all depends on what you've been through in your life. I do believe that. For me, doing the work was needing to do psychedelic therapy. For me, that doesn't mean that's what that means for everybody else. But for me, that's what it meant. And I didn't realize until I did it that that's what it meant. And it's not like I do it all the time. I've done it maybe five times in the last three years.

1:24:39I maybe do two a year, if that. But the way I like to put it for me with psychedelics is that it allowed me to see things for what they are instead of through the lens of what I wanted them to be. You realize you're like, you're pushing me towards this world. I don't know. I feel like the universe like does things. I'm just saying. So I wrote my book for my 15-year-old self because I always say if I had a book like I wrote when I was having my flashbacks, it would have changed everything for me. And it would have given me words and dialogue and resources to help me figure out what doing the work actually means.

1:25:23And for me, it's like, you know, I didn't have YouTube and all of those things growing up. And now you can go on YouTube and you can watch Gabor, you can watch Dr. Schwartz, you could look at how the parts work is done. And even if you can't afford therapy, you can at least do that. And you have so much material. That was the biggest thing when I wrote my proposal for the book. You know, you have to find like comps when you do the proposal. Like there's this book was out there and it did this well. We couldn't find any, like zero. And it made me realize how much this was needed in the world. And what has the response been from that audience that you're trying to connect with?

1:26:02Overwhelming. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So many people. Emails and people reaching out to you with their version. Yeah. Uh-huh. And I spoke actually in Arizona at, do you know who Joe Polish is? I spoke last week at his network, Genius Network, and it was live. And there was a bunch of people there and he like got the book for everybody. And that was a transforming experience for me because I've never sat on a stage and been interviewed in front of, you know, like I went on stage with Gabor, but it was totally different. There wasn't one person that didn't come up to me. There wasn't one person that didn't come up to me and say either that happened to me, that happened to my wife, that happened to my child.

1:26:47And there wasn't one person that wasn't crying. And it made me realize or just reconfirm that this work is so important and trauma affects so many people. And, you know, we see it in our world. We're living in a world of just traumatized people. traumatized people are running our world. Like, you know, it's, and it all comes back to connecting with yourself, to figuring out what happened in your childhood so that you can move through the world in an authentic, real way. And to me, that's the only way to move through the world. When somebody emails you or you get a DM on Instagram and it's a young person who says, I read your book or I heard you speak, or I watched this video that you were in, this happened to me, I don't know what to do, you know, where should I go or who should I talk to?

1:27:40Like, what is the advice that you give in a general sense for how someone might begin this journey for themselves? Well, first I'll say I haven't gotten any of those messages. The messages I get are, thank you so much for writing your book. Thank you so much for speaking out. I've never felt so seen in my life. I didn't even realize how painful this, you know, keeping it in has been, or you gave me the strength to tell my husband, I've been married for 20 years and he had no idea that I was abused by my father. I've gotten a lot of those, like maybe not that exact scenario, but similar. So no one's ever asked me like, what can I do?

1:28:22It's just thanking me for, you know, I'm, I've watched every single one of your interviews and you're, you've saved my life. Just feeling seen and validated, right? And it gives permission for other people to open up or confront this. And I'm gathering, you know, that the reluctance to do that or the historical inability to do it is rooted in shame. Shame. A lot of people that were abused by a family member, the family member is still alive. And in most cases, they have a relationship with them. I hear that more than I could even tell you. Like my father abused me, but I'm still in a relationship with him.

1:29:01So it's really complicated. And I can't imagine. Yeah, to confront it is to disrupt the entire system. That's a lot to ask of someone. Yeah, because to confront it, if you go back to what Gabor talks about with attachment and authenticity, which we're doing an event together in October in LA, just on that alone, the return to self, navigating attachment and authenticity. because if you do speak the truth and you are coming out as your authentic self to your family, then you have the chance of losing the attachment. Right. It's very threatening to them because it unravels all of it. Everything.

1:29:40Yeah. But I will say, and it was terrifying for me too, and I've been going through it for the past few years, but losing my attachment as painful and sad as that was, I'm really glad that I chose the path I did. Do you have hope that at some point there will be a reconciliation or you're at peace with it? This is the way that it is. I feel both ways. I think if my family is going to show up in my life in a different way, they'll show up in my life in a different way, if that makes sense. And if that happens, I'm open to that. And if it doesn't, that's okay too. Your daughter is 10? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

1:30:26So how has this informed how you're parenting your daughter? Well, I had to like figure out how to be a parent, literally. And I didn't realize how much I needed to figure out how to be a parent until I had her. Because the first like few months of her life were terrifying for me. I thought she was going to die. I like literally took a shower with her like stroller, right? Like my shower door open. I mean, I have a big shower, so I wasn't like suffocating or anything. so I could just see her like chest move up and down. I ordered like this insane heart monitor for like$4 ,000 and it showed up at the house.

1:30:59And my husband was like, what the hell is that? And I'm like, well, that's a heart monitor. And he's like, that's going back. Our child is not sick. We don't need a heart monitor. But I had this intense fear that I was going to lose her

1:31:14because for once I was like given something good. you didn't have a role model of a healthy mother. No. Your mother didn't protect you. So even though you're lacking those skills because they were never modeled for you, you know enough to know that you're gonna have to parent in opposition to the way that your mother parented you, right? So how do you begin to understand what a healthy parent might look like. My husband's really helpful. Yeah. Well, he sent back the heart rate monitor. He did. He did. That was, yeah. How did he take to the stroller by the shower though? He never saw that. Oh, okay.

1:31:58Well, he knows now. Yeah. Yeah. He knows now. But yeah, and he had come home, he was on a film and I had like, I had hired the CPR guy to come to the house and he literally walked in the door from being out of the country and I had like the doctor and me and my night nurse and like a bunch of like baby dolls. And I was like, sit down, we're learning how to like save her life. And he's like, you know, not that it's not good to know CPR for your child, but it was very extreme for me. It was very extreme. I speak about this in the book because there were two things that happened when I got pregnant with her.

1:32:34My grandfather gave me herpes when I was young. So, but I've had it for so long. I don't really get sick anymore. But when I was pregnant, because of the hormones, I think I was just sick my entire pregnancy, which was devastating for so many reasons, but mainly because I couldn't have her naturally. So I think, you know, I went into pregnancy being reminded of him again, like every day, and then having to not be able to like have a choice to just have my child the way I wanted to have my child. And then when I started breastfeeding, which is something I think is so important for women because I did not know this and I Googled it and it's an actual thing that people that have been abused as children, when you breastfeed, it could bring back like massive flashbacks because it's like a sensory thing.

1:33:21And it started happening like right away as soon as I started feeding her. And I was like, so mad. So I Googled it and sure enough, like all this stuff came up and I was like, no one talks about this stuff. Like how many survivors are out there feeling like they failed their child because they cannot breastfeed their child? I would get so many flashbacks. And when I would like put her on me, it was like I had so much, obviously, anxiety and so much was happening. And I could literally see it on her face. Like I could see it on her face. And I was like, I'm not doing this to her. So I started pumping instead.

1:33:57The flashbacks still happened. But at least I was like alone in my room and I could just push through it. and then I felt like I was at least able to give her milk. But in a culture where breastfeeding has become, obviously it's extremely important and it's become something that women can get a little pushy about, I would just like to say there are a lot of women that have a lot of struggles that you may not see and just because they're not breastfeeding doesn't mean they didn't want to. Yeah, I mean, I definitely would not have known that. But obviously all of those semi-neurotic or control impulses, this is not good for the child, right?

1:34:38So even though you're going to make sure that you're going to interrupt the generational pattern of abuse as you experienced, short of fully healing or being engaged in that healing process, there's going to be all these maladaptive kind of behaviors that you're going to unknowingly or unconsciously pass on. Yeah. I think a lot of that was happening too, because I didn't feel safe around my family. I literally didn't feel safe. Like my nervous system did not feel safe around my family. And I brought my mom to like the area I live in to help me with my daughter. And she helped me for like five years with her.

1:35:20And she had a great relationship with my daughter They were, you know, they had a great relationship. But I realize now that I was in like a hypertension, like I was always anxious around my mother. I couldn't settle. I couldn't, I didn't feel safe. I just didn't feel safe. And it wasn't a good feeling. And I just didn't want to feel that anymore. And that is part of why you had to put up a boundary there. Look, I think at the end of the day, it was really hard for my mom because she split between me and my other siblings. and my other siblings, I think there's safety in numbers. And my other siblings are doing things the way they are doing them.

1:35:57And I'm doing things the way I'm doing them. And they're very different ways. And I think my mom just couldn't show up for me. She can't show up for herself. So she couldn't show up for me in the ways I needed her to as an adult. And I just wasn't willing to put that on my daughter. My daughter is way too magical for that. and so what else are you doing to make sure that the parenting is healthy I mean my daughter kind of parents me she did yeah it works that way right yeah yeah she's like mom this you know I mean we learn more from them than they do for us and that's a hundred percent true I mean she's taught me what it is to be a kid I realized by having her I never knew what it was like to get on my knees and like play because I didn't have that and it was really uncomfortable for me.

1:36:47She'd be like, mom, just play with me. And I'm like, oh, like it was just so triggering for me. And it took me to be like, talk to myself, like sit down and play with her, Kim, like grab it all and just do what she's doing. Like literally I had to say that to myself. Just having a young little girl who is the age that you were when all those things were happening to you, that in and of itself is so powerful, right? Like that could just bring up all kinds of stuff. Yeah. Especially through her. Yeah. And now too. But I think when she turned like four or five, it was really, really hit me because, you know, you're looking at her body and it's so little and it's just so impossible to wrap my brain around that.

1:37:35And just how free she is. Like she's always, you know, she's a very free kid and she, because she feels safe and that is so beautiful and I feel like I'm not the perfect mom. I'm sure she'll be in therapy later in her life for things I did, but she's safe and loved. One of the things in your story that really struck me is the fact that all of this was taking place in social settings in which everybody was around. I think there's this idea that abuse takes place in dark corners when there's no one around and nobody's sort of bearing witness to what's happening. But in your case, it's like these are all happening at big family gatherings and parties and there are moments that occur like down the hall or in the bathroom or in the basement.

1:38:28But there's this sense like there are people at this event who know what's going on, right? And I would suspect that this is not uncommon. No. I think in a family like mine, when everyone's upstairs, it's Christmas, it's whatever it is, they're all upstairs, they're all drinking, they're all having a good time. And especially back then, it was like, kids, just go away, go play, go play, go play. And that's what we did. But this is what was happening to us in the basement right underneath everybody's feet. And nobody came to check on us and nobody looked to see where we were. And so that's the one thing with my daughter.

1:39:08First of all, we don't, I don't think I've ever been in a setting where there's been that many people around us. I always know where she is. There isn't 30 seconds that goes by that I don't have my eye on her or know exactly where she is and exactly who she's with. And, you know, 90 % of sexual abuse happens with a family member or somebody the family knows, a neighbor, a cousin, you know, whatever. So you always need to know where your children are. The fact that there were people who on a conscious or semi-unconscious level like knew what was going on with you, that must make it very difficult to trust people in general, right?

1:39:45These people let you down. You were trusting them. Your life was in their hands and things went terribly sideways. How have you learned to trust again? And maybe even more importantly, yes, you want your daughter to be aware, but you don't want your daughter to be somebody who can't trust people either, right? Well, I never trusted them. I didn't ever have a sense of safety around my family and never a sense of trust where I think you would think that, you know, this is my mom, this is my dad. But this was happening to me from such a young age. And there was nowhere that I ever went with anyone where I didn't feel unsafe.

1:40:28so I always say to my daughter not every adult is safe and people need to earn our trust and just because they're your teacher or they're your coach or they're somebody who you're supposed to trust it doesn't mean that you just trust them because they say you should someone has to show you and sometimes that can take a really long time and that's okay and I think it's giving our kids permission to make their own feelings or decisions about an adult. And they know more than we do. Their gut feelings are like Capri will be around someone and she'll say to me, I don't like the way that person moves or she won't say that exact word, but I don't like, I don't like that mommy.

1:41:08And I don't ask her why, or I don't, well, I will ask her why, but I don't question her like in the sense of, oh no, he's fine. Like it's okay. I never do that. I say Capri, I trust you and we won't be around that person ever again. Give Paulie a hug. Give Uncle Paulie a hug. Come on. Totally. And that's how we grew up, right? And it was like, if you don't hug them, it's no, if my daughter wants to hug you, she will hug you on her own. And I will never tell her to hug anybody or give anybody a kiss or, you know, any of that. We don't do that. Yeah. We've come a long way in terms of education and awareness around these things, but I think there's still a long way to go.

1:41:48Well, because a lot of parents are sitting so deep in their own trauma that they can't get out of and then they have children. And if you don't deal with your trauma, you're going to pass it on to your children in one way or another. And that might be as simple as you go to a party and you just want to relax and have a few drinks and just let your kid do whatever. And that could be the moment that changes their life forever. that's the biggest instigator in terms of looking at your own stuff and trying to heal it like it really is the greatest gift that you can give to your children because you are not only helping yourself you're interrupting this pattern and you're sparing them what you had to survive yeah it's it's hugely important and so for people who think that therapy is indulgent it's really this incredible act of service for the people that you care about most because trauma unhealed spills out in toxic ways and affects everybody that you care about most.

1:42:51It basically is like this, you know, infection that colors and characterizes all of your behaviors and your perspective. And you can't really overstate the extent to which, you know, the profundity of the whole thing. So if you think it's like, oh, I got it. You know, it's over here. It's cool. Don't worry about it. Like I got it under control. You're not really dealing in reality because it is spilling out and affecting people in ways that you probably have no concept of. Absolutely. So what do you say to somebody who's reticent to, you know, unlock that chest and start looking in because it is so scary and so threatening?

1:43:33I literally have it tattooed on my arm. Yeah, what does that say? It says the only way out is through. So if somebody's hearing that and they're thinking, yeah, but what does that mean? It means you can't go around the trauma. You can't jump over it or under it. You have to go through it. You have to live through it. You have to tap into those memories. As hard as that is, like if you don't do that, you don't have an understanding of what happened to you and you can't move through it. And I tell this story a lot. So my daughter is like this. I was telling you, magical being. So she loves plants and she's like, you know, never wants to wear shoes.

1:44:10And she's just so foreign to me, you know, and I've always hated indoor plants. Never understood them. I've always like, why do we bring dirt inside? I don't get it. Like, aren't we trying to bring the dirt outside? And when I met my husband, he had quite a few and I got rid of all of them. And she said to me a few years back, she said, mommy, I want a plant in my room. And I was like, absolutely not. And it just came out of my mouth. And I was like, oh my God, Kim, like, why would you, she wants a plant. She's not asking for like, you know, like a dartboard or something. And it was coming up to me doing a journey.

1:44:42Sorry, I keep bringing up the journey thing. Don't apologize. And I was like, I need to like investigate like where is this coming from? Like why am I having such a reaction about this? Because I have the power in this moment to make my daughter feel like what's important to her doesn't matter to me. or I have this moment to give her what is going to make her happy, which is a plant. So, you know, so I went into my journey kind of with one of that being my intention. Like if there's something around and I always go into my journey saying anything my inner child would like to show me, I am here to see it.

1:45:21Like anything you need to get out, anything you want to show me. And it was pretty immediate in when I started like feeling the medicine where I was like in my grandparents' house and I was on the top of the stairs, which is where we played a lot. And my grandparents had this like massive cactus in the corner. And my grandfather was coming down the stairs and he like pushed me into it. And I actually remembered always having cactus in my body, but I never remembered what happened and how it got there. And my grandfather was the person who, he was very meticulous. He like used to put model airplanes together and just sit there for hours and do that.

1:45:58And so he was the person that if I were to tell my parents, like, hey, I fell into the cactus, they would have put me in a room with him and a tweezer. And so I stayed quiet the whole night. That's interesting. With that in my body, with the cactus in my body. And we all know how painful that is. And it was down my whole back. Wow. And when I came out of the journey, I was like, oh my God, now I can connect. Okay, this is why you're having this reaction to having a plant in the house. It has nothing to do with you or her. And now I can heal that wound, which I did. And I think the next day, Capri and I were at the plant store and I like bought them out like $2 ,000 worth of plants delivered to my house.

1:46:42And she's got like a, like a whole garden in her room. Right. But if I was to take that away from her, I'm basically spilling my trauma onto her because I'm like, oh, your authentic self is like, I just want to plant. And your mom's like, absolutely not because of my own stuff. What's so interesting about that is you don't have to be somebody who has survived sexual abuse to have something that happened to you that sets in motion or anchors some weird semi-unconscious narrative or story that just loops in your mind and plays out in the real world in terms of behaviors. And on some level, we're all like out just basically telling our stories and doing what we're doing without a real strong sense of why we have the opinions we have and - Where they come from.

1:47:38Yeah, and why we don't like this and like this. And to have that experience and to connect that allows you to cast that story aside and tell a brand new story. So that is the interruption of the cycle in a nutshell, right? But with your case, what you survived was so horrific and very specific. What do you say to somebody who perhaps isn't like a sexual abuse survivor, but they grew up in some level of dysfunction, right? There's strange emotional behavior going on. And there's nothing that that person could point to and say, this is the source of my X, Y, or Z. It's harder to look at that and say, I've suffered some trauma or, you know, is this my family?

1:48:31Yeah, maybe I've inherited some of this stuff, but is it trauma? Like, I don't know. I don't think so. Maybe I don't really need to look at that. Like things are cool. Yeah. It's interesting because I feel like a lot of people say that to me, like, well, what happened to me isn't anywhere as bad as what happened to you. Or I wouldn't even compare. A lot of people will start the conversation with saying that to me. And I say to that, it's all the same. I don't believe in putting our trauma in categories. I think it's actually the opposite of what we should be doing. Because I think it takes away from your experience as a human and what you've been through.

1:49:09And just because your experience wasn't like mine doesn't mean that you weren't affected or traumatized by what happened in your home growing up. It just means that my story is different than yours. But in the end, it's all the same because we're all affected by things that happened to us in our childhood. And we all have to go back and heal those traumas or we don't get to move through. You know? So on some level, like we all need to do this work. I think so. Yeah. On different levels, of course. I mean, mine is a lot of a bigger bag of work. But I think everybody needs to work on themselves.

1:49:45It's the best gift you can give yourself and everybody around you. And I think if you're still living in your pain, whatever that is, and to whatever level that is, you're not ever going to be able to live in your true authentic self. We all have a pain body of some sort, right, that's driving our behavior. We've all had experiences that have probably neutered our development in one way or the other that, you know, we may not even recall or recollect. And I think summoning the courage to kind of really look at that is important. You don't have to be somebody who got strung out on drugs or had the experiences that you had to benefit from that.

1:50:32Or to care about yourself enough to look inward and do the work on yourself. And I think even if you come from a dysfunctional family, maybe no actual sexual abuse or violence happened, but, you know, your dad was a drinker or whatever the case may be, that there's things that you are going to need to heal from from that. And we all deserve to have that healing. Sure. The healing is the most important piece here though, because short of that, it's very easy to weaponize small doses of therapy and use that to blame people or explain away bad behavior. Like it can be used as a sword. And I know you've thought about this.

1:51:19Like, can you share a little bit about that? Because you do see people, oh, well, I was traumatized with this. And they're angry people who are just pointing fingers at other people, but they're really not looking in the mirror and taking responsibility. I think that that is a lot of shame that you're carrying. And I feel like people need to be braver and know that they have it within them to heal themselves. And, you know, the tricky thing with people like that, because a lot of my family is like that, is that you can't do the work for them. They have to do it for themselves. And I've learned that the very long, very difficult way, because I feel like I've been saying that to my family for my entire life.

1:52:02Like, you know, especially when I met Gabor, I'm like, hey, I brought my mother to a seminar he did called Fresh Start, which is what he does with his son. And it's like healing adult children and adult parents and healing together. And I brought her there in Canada for four days, hoping that it would open up the floodgates to us getting on another level together. And she just simply wasn't ready. Didn't take. No. Then it's about your attachment or, you know, around expectations. You can't do the work for anybody else. Yeah. And that's the hard thing. And then when you really do, you know, do the work on yourself, and I say this a lot, like you show up at, you know, whatever it is, pick up or whatever it is when you're around other people, you can really feel the people that haven't done the work.

1:52:52And it can be a bit lonely at times. What have you done to replace your family of origin? I mean, you have a daughter and you're married, et cetera, but you're somebody who grew up in this Catholic thing. There are lots of people around, right? Like always family members all around you. So there has to be some sense of loss also in there that might make you feel like you need to replace it with a new version of that. I have so much space now that I never had. And I welcome it with open arms. I had to show up as somebody different to every single one of my family members. I'm going to call this person.

1:53:36I know I have to act this way or I can't say this thing or I can't make myself too big. I have to, you know, downplay what I'm doing because they're going to feel a certain way about it. And it was like that with every single person in my family. And it was exhausting. And now I don't have to do that anymore. And I'm really grateful to myself for knowing that I'm worth that and that I deserve to live in peace for the rest of my life because I've had a lot of chaos. What does the therapy routine look like these days? Yeah. So doing the work does mean asking yourself hard questions and also just sitting in the pain when things come up, when I have flashbacks is being able to sit with them and have a conversation with my inner child and let her know that she's safe and that I'm, it was amazing once I sort of feel like I connected back with her and I was in the shower one day and actually completely freaked me out because I looked down and my feet were like my tiny feet.

1:54:40I was like, no, I'm like really losing my mind. And I was not on any medication. I was completely, it was the morning. And I texted Gabor right away. And I was like, okay, I think I'm losing my mind because my feet are like little and it's like my feet as a child in my shower. And he said, that's not uncommon. When you connect with her, she's going to start showing you more. And that's exactly what happened. And so just being open to those things when they come at me and trying to deal with them the best that I can in the space that I'm at is something that happens on a daily basis now. Yeah. That's wild.

1:55:18You actually saw your young feet. How often does that happen? Not often. I think that might've been the only time, matter of fact. That's a common thing. But he also was saying like just the memories, which I've had more memories in the past two years, three years than I did. More clear memories, I should say, like start to finish. In the beginning, they were very jumbled. Like I'd have a flash, I could see something and then it would jump to something else and then it would just go black. And I couldn't put the story together in my head where now I have full like beginning to end memories. And is it helping to fill in the gaps and make better sense of the whole thing?

1:56:02Yes. Yeah. Because for so many years, the really, really hard thing for me was how did nobody see this happen? Like I have literal scars on my body from where my grandfather like actually cut me with a knife, like literally. And I remember those situations as well. And so it was always just like I just couldn't understand how did nobody see anything. And then I remember that my mom did. And as painful as that was, it really helped me. because it made me realize that, yes, people did check on me and my mom did see. And he had that such a power over her that he was able to say, get out. And she listened and that that was the family dynamic.

1:56:54And that was what was happening in my family. And it made me look at everybody for the part that everybody played in my story, not just my grandfather, because he was not the only one who hurt me. You know, everybody played a part in what happened to me. And in dysfunctional families like mine, everybody plays a part except for the children. It's insane. There's so much insanity. But you get a sense of how trapping it can be. Yep. To raise your hand is to threaten, you know, to capsize the entire thing. And so it's no wonder no one comes to your aid, right? because everybody's so invested in a certain status quo and making sure everything looks okay.

1:57:39Yeah. And I spoke to my grandmother's sister before she passed away. I was very open about just kind of calling people and just trying to wrap my head around anything. Give me any information. And he also had that part of him where he would expose himself to people. And she's like, he would do that on Christmas all the time to me. And I was like, what? Like what? Like your sister's husband and you never thought it was important to let anybody know? She was actually the first person to get the confession letter because he left it for her daughter who was house sitting for them. And he had written it and left it for her.

1:58:15And she, I've talked to her about it and she read it and she brought it home to her mom and her mom got rid of it as well. The confession letter is its own form of insanity. On some level, he's copying to a certain extent of his behavior. But there's also a weird, I don't know what you would call it, like justification, or it wasn't that bad because I didn't do this, but here's what I did. How do you make sense of what his motivations were in writing that? I think he got a lot sicker when I came into the world, like after he raised his kids. I think his alcoholism got worse. I know he went on medication for, it was like a pill he was taking so that if he took, if he drank, it would make him sick or something like that.

1:58:59I don't know if you've heard of anything that exists like that, but he was taking that, but he was still drinking on it. I mean, maybe a part of him wanted someone to say something. Maybe he had pushed the envelope so far with people seeing and not doing that he just was going to explode. I would like to think that that's what was happening inside of him. Well, it was going on in front of people. So maybe there's an argument that he did, like he wanted to get caught. Yeah, totally. I do believe that towards the end of his life that he probably wanted to get caught. Wow. I want to end this on a helpful note for anyone who's caught up in some version of this who feels stuck or somebody who's just coming to terms with memories like yours.

1:59:45what are some of the resources I mean obviously your book but professional resources that you recommend people reach out to Dr. Gabor Mate is great just to go on YouTube and watch his videos about trauma and the way that he views it and feels about it there's a Dr. Judith Herman who is in her 80s now and she's written quite a few books on trauma trauma and repair she's written a few so if you just look her up And then Dr. Schwartz and internal family systems is incredible. All the parts work he does, that's been, I actually did therapy with him the past few years, like just him and I. And that was extremely powerful for me.

2:00:30And Dr. Bruce Perry, who's written a bunch of books and Marilyn Murray, who's also written a bunch of books on trauma. So all of those people, if you seek any of them out and get their books or listen to them speak, I think is massively helpful. Another resource is Dr. Romany, who's been an amazing human in my life and has helped me so much. She was one of the first people to interview me and she's absolutely incredible. And she's obviously really talks about narcissism and has written a ton of books about it, but she also is very knowledged in trauma and she's incredible. Yeah. And if you're a parent who has a young person, what are some of the signs to look out for, like warning signs, like that something is not going well?

2:01:17Well, I developed asthma, but that was after he died. And I think that was like a panic for me. That was almost like he was gone. And what was my life going to look like when he was gone? Even though that sounds backwards, I think that was part of what was happening for me. I think if your kid is getting like anxious or fearful, I read something that was really hit home for me, which is when, and I went through this where I like thought my parents were going to die. I had this like intense fear that my parents were going to die. Someone was going to break through the window and like take me. And it would always happen at night when I was going to bed.

2:01:53and a doctor said something like it's when your attachment is in jeopardy or you're not feeling connected to your parents in a safe way or something's going on in your life a lot of times those will be the signs like you'll and I became like an obsessive cleaner like I needed everything to be have its place like that was my way of controlling my environment around me I'm not saying that's the way every kid reacts but that's the way I reacted to it but I think if you're really in touch with your children and you have a really honest relationship with them and you have these hard conversations about these are your private parts and this is what they're called and we actually call them their name and nobody touches you there and if anyone tells you to never tell your mom I'm the first person you tell you know all of the really obvious things that I feel like especially for me obviously we're not spoken about but I also think it's a generational thing that back then it wasn't conversations that parents were having that you should be having with your child, you know, as soon as they can comprehend it.

2:02:55Yeah. What does the next chapter look like for you? Well, I'm, you know, doing a live event for the first time in my life. So we'll see how that all goes. And I really want to make this a film. That was my, really the thing that I wanted to do from the beginning with it. You actually have screenplay format in the book for a certain section. Yeah. Yeah. Any interest there or is it being dangled about? It's being dangled about. There's some interest. It's a weird time in our business, so we'll see what happens, but there's been some talk and conversation about it. Yeah. Yeah, can there be a superhero in it basically?

2:03:36Yeah, at the end. I'll play myself. There's the stunt woman. It's like the woman's version of the fall guy, but a very different story. Completely. Yeah. And I feel like it's something that - It's like an A24 movie. Yeah, and there's a way to do it like I did in my book that isn't a graphic situation, but tells a story of, you know, trauma and triumph. Yeah. Like, you know, as cheesy as that sounds. Amazing. Thank you. I think the work you're doing is really courageous and important. Thank you. And I appreciate you putting yourself out there. Thank you. It can't be easy, but your book is amazing.

2:04:14It's called Glimmer. Pick it up, everybody. and for people who want to know a little bit more about you, where's the best place to direct them? I literally only have Instagram because it's all I can like handle. And it's, yeah, it's Kimberly Shannon Murphy stunts, which is like the longest handler on the planet. Very cool. But it's not about stunts anymore. Yeah, it's all self-help. Let's just start posting some stunts up again, give everybody a break. If you want a trauma bond, this is where you go. Come to my page. I just noticed you have mushrooms on your shirt. Do you? I do? Aren't they? I don't see that, Rich.

2:04:50I'm just saying. No, on the green. No, on your sleeve. On your right sleeve. Is that a mushroom? No, it's a fan. But it's interesting that you saw a mushroom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What does that say about me? I don't know, Rich.

2:05:03Well, maybe we'll find out next time. Profound and very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

2:05:14Thank you.

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2:06:32Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. portraits by Davey Greenberg graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis and thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management and of course our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt and Harry Mathis appreciate the love love the support see you back here soon peace Namaste

2:07:13Thank you.