Ep 1 - Mandi's Ordinary World & Threshold (part 1)

[00:00:05] Hi everyone and welcome to the Monomyth Diaries, a bi-monthly podcast where ordinary people get to share their hero's journey. I'm Mandi, and I'm Karen, and we'll be your hosts. Each episode will feature a hero who will share their journey of growth.

[00:00:20] We'll hear stories about forgiveness, survival, determination, and much more. We're glad you're joining us because we all have a monomyth to share and someone out there needs to hear it. Welcome to the Monomyth Diaries. Today's featured hero is my co-host, Mandi.

[00:00:38] Who's going to share about her tumultuous journey towards embracing change? So tell us what was the environment you were born into? I was born in a small town in Ohio. I had a mom who was super nurturing when I was little. She used to make cookies.

[00:00:58] She made all of our clothes. I remember her washing and drying my hair. I remember her reading us stories when we were very, very small. I'm tucking us in. However, I did have a dad who drank a lot.

[00:01:17] By my definition, I would say that he was an alcoholic. There was a lot of fighting between my parents. Sometimes they would fight so badly that my mom would throw all my dad's stuff out on the front porch for everybody to see.

[00:01:35] So my dad would sometimes live with us, sometimes he didn't live with us. We really never knew when he was coming and going. When I was in about third grade, though, things got really, really bad. My dad left and moved in with his mother, my grandma.

[00:01:55] We became watch-key kids. So my mom was raising us and she went back to work. Then as I aged, at some point maybe when I was in middle school, my dad came back into the picture because I had gotten sick.

[00:02:16] He was spending a lot of time back at home. Somewhere in there, and I don't remember the exact timeline, my mom starts drinking. At this point, my dad is back but my dad is sober. My dad's not drinking, but he's literally like a dry drunk.

[00:02:34] He didn't drink, but he was still really, really angry all the time. My mom's drinking got worse and worse as I aged. Really by the time I got into high school and college, my mom was what I would call a blackout drunk.

[00:02:50] She would drink so much that she would just pass out. She would forget new places. There would be no food in the house. We couldn't wake her up. It was really crazy. At that time, my dad was working for the river, but he was gone a lot.

[00:03:05] Sometimes he'd be gone for a week or so at a time. Really, I was there on my own. It was a super, super unstable, chaotic, unhealthy environment. I felt really abandoned by both of my parents because there was just never any stability.

[00:03:28] You just never knew what you were going to get with either one of my parents. So I'm happy. Wow. Going on, building on that, how would you say the relationship between your mother and father shaped your perception on family dynamics? Definitely my parents' relationship.

[00:03:52] There was this sense of duality all the time. There was this idea that they loved each other so they were going to stay together even though there was so much turmoil and that love coexisted with turmoil. So I thought that that was normal.

[00:04:08] There was constant conflict and instability. I didn't have any sense of security. I always had the fear of abandonment. It really caused me to cling to relationships even when they were unhealthy. Okay, wow. So having come from this whole background, what would you say were some stand-out moments

[00:04:30] from your past that were turning points for you? Oh gosh, turning points for me. I would say that one of the biggest turning points of my life was in high school. You know, everybody starts talking about college, right? What you're going to do after high school.

[00:04:50] And somewhere I decided that college was the answer to my problems. And although the turmoil going on, I thought if I could just go to college and get a college education then that's going to make my life better. So that was one.

[00:05:07] So I worked and worked and worked and worked and got straight A's in high school and got myself into college because my parents couldn't afford to help me with that. I had to do it on my own. And so I paid for college all by myself.

[00:05:21] But the reality is that didn't fix my problem. I also thought that maybe having a relationship with boys would solve my problem. You know, the white night someone's going to come in and save me and take me out of this bad situation.

[00:05:36] And that's a repeated pattern for me. I had a lot of relationships, a lot of bad relationships where I was really hoping that someone would save me. Another turning point was I moved from Ohio to Texas.

[00:05:52] And once again there was a boy that was part of that equation in there, but I thought a geographical solution getting away from all of the crazy people in my life would be the solution. But really I just took all the crazy with me.

[00:06:07] So you're going to see this as a pattern for me. And I was always constantly looking for something outside of myself, an external solution to my problems. Okay, you mentioned though you worked really hard to get to college, but it didn't fix your problem.

[00:06:28] But would you say that it was kind of part of your trifle cycle? Like you were kind of building muscles? Like you, you know, it fixed one problem that got you into education.

[00:06:39] And it also, I would just say that it gives you some confidence to take the next step? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, all of these tried, like you said, trials and failures. I gained a lot of valuable experience from all of these experiences.

[00:06:56] Definitely, you know, getting an education definitely did help. And it definitely got me to Texas. So I can definitely go back and see this, you know, this situation led to this situation which led to this situation.

[00:07:08] So it was all part of my past and part of my journey in order for me to get to a place where eventually I'm going to realize that there's no external solution to my problems. Yeah, for sure. Let me ask you this.

[00:07:23] Do you think if you presented in that moment when you were thinking about going to college and if you were told like the real solution is an internal life? You think you would have been strong enough to face it at that moment? No.

[00:07:37] I think I needed to have enough bad situations and enough experience to finally figure out that an external solution isn't going to be the solution that I needed. Right. Yeah, it's going to have to come from within, right? Totally.

[00:07:51] No, I would not have been able to do that back then. Okay, so going back to your home environment, how would you say it affected your sense of trust and security in others? Wow.

[00:08:03] Yeah, so I grew up in so much chaos that I felt like chaos was just normal. I didn't like to be alone and I didn't like quiet because that was just never... I grew up in a house where there were three siblings plus three from my mom's first

[00:08:24] marriage, so sometimes there'd be eight people living in this little bitty 1100 square foot house. So it was loud and chaotic all the time. And also between my parents fighting, that just felt normal all the time and I carried that into my adulthood.

[00:08:39] And so I feel like times that were sort of peaceful, for example when my dad moved out and it was just us kids with my mom, there was some peace in the house. But those times of peace caused me a lot of anxiety because I was always waiting

[00:08:56] for the other shoot or drop. I think bad was always going to happen. And it just... That chaos and that sense of insecurity and feeling unsafe all the time really was a giant role in shaping all of my relationships moving forward with co-workers, with friends,

[00:09:18] with romantic relationships because I constantly seemed to surround myself with unhealthy and unsafe people because that's all I knew. That was normal. So of course I attracted that whole phrase of where energy goes or what is that phrase where you focus your energy, that's what grows.

[00:09:40] And so if I'm focusing on the unhealthy people, that's what I attracted. And so I had all these unsafe people in my life. I had a sense of abandonment. And I was so afraid of people leaving because that's what they did.

[00:09:55] My dad left all the time, my brother left for college and he was such a rock when I was younger. My mom, even though she was present, really wasn't because she was drinking so much and passing out.

[00:10:08] And so because I got this sense of abandonment, I would lose my voice. I would sacrifice myself and I would compromise my own moral compass all the time to keep people from not leaving, if that makes sense.

[00:10:28] I would cross boundaries of what I thought were right and wrong just so that people wouldn't leave, that they would like me. Yeah, and I also realized too in all of this that I couldn't really depend on people

[00:10:42] because I picked unhealthy people to be part of my life. Let me give you an example. When I was in high school, I got pregnant and I did eventually end up having an abortion and I had this really, really good friend.

[00:10:59] She was supposed to be her best friend and I confided in her that this was happening to me. And sadly, we're in high school. It is what it is. At the time, she told somebody else, maybe a couple other people I don't know.

[00:11:16] And when you're in a small town, that spread like wildfire. Right? Everybody knew it and what I realized was that I couldn't confide in anybody. I couldn't trust anybody. It's heartbreaking. Fortunately, she and I were able to mend that relationship and we're still the best

[00:11:34] of friends today because she did apologize and I was lucky enough to forgive her and know that we were high school kids. We were all doing the best that we could. Yeah, I don't know if that answers your question but... I should have.

[00:11:49] Please reach me to my next question. So you're talking about this sense of abandonment and thank you for sharing the story about your friend in high school and getting over that major conflict. Can you share another particular instance where that sense of abandonment is going to

[00:12:04] impact your decision and your relationships? So I had a tendency to stay in bad relationships. Like I said, I didn't want people to leave and so I would stay in really bad and unhealthy relationships.

[00:12:26] I started a little bit to show that I had gotten pregnant when I was in high school. I was dating this boy, let's call him Joe. And you know, I was so head over heels for him when I first met him.

[00:12:42] He was just tall and handsome and charming and funny and paid attention to me and I loved that of course. We had a really good relationship in the beginning but somewhere in that relationship

[00:12:56] he would get what I would have called overprotective and he didn't like me talking to other boys and he'd get really jealous of my other friends and so I eventually stopped having friends and my whole life revolved around him.

[00:13:16] And sometimes when we would fight, he would get abusive. I remember one time when we were driving. Well that's what people did, that's what I all I saw. He put his hand on the side of my head and smashed my head into the passenger side window.

[00:13:34] Oh my gosh. Yeah, and that was a common occurrence, those kinds of events where we would fight and he would get physically aggressive. And I stayed in that relationship for years thinking that was normal because when I thought

[00:13:48] it was normal, that's what I saw happening between my parents and I just was so afraid to be alone. Wow. So coming from that and having had that kind of experience, what would you say was the catalyst that would begin your transformation?

[00:14:05] Because you're not in that kind of relationship anymore. No, definitely I'm not. And I think that's the beautiful part of what we're doing here. I get to tell this story of how different I am than I was when I was younger.

[00:14:21] If we fast forward from high school and past college into my 20s, I'm married at this point to my first husband. Right. And it was not a good relationship. We were married for about four years and my mom passed away.

[00:14:39] And when I was going up there, because at this point I'm living in Texas, and I know she's dying because she had cancer. And my ex-husband literally told me right before I went up there that he didn't want to be married anymore, which wasn't a shock.

[00:15:04] But again, bad relationships and not wanting to be alone in that sense of abandonment. It was trying to handle that at the same time as my mom knowing she's sick, knowing she's going to die and really wanting him to be present for that process.

[00:15:22] And so I got on a plane and I went to Ohio and he stayed in Texas and then he disappeared. I couldn't get ahold of him. I had no idea where he was. And it was just really bad.

[00:15:36] And then I go up and I'm thrown back into the chaos of my family of origin up in Ohio. There's a lot of drinking going on. No fighting or anything at this point, because my mom passed away. So it's just my dad. And he's angry.

[00:15:53] Oh my gosh, my dad was angry and he drank and then he'd be sad. And the whole situation was crazy. And at this point I had been working with this really, really lovely woman, Diane, for years. And I admired her so much.

[00:16:13] She just always behaved with such grace and dignity. And she had this lovely relationship with her husband. They were so cute. I mean, they were just so cute. I mean, he would come into the classroom with us and help us paint things or hang

[00:16:28] things on the wall or fix things. And they would just go out to dinner together. Yeah, they were just super cute and so nice to each other. But again, she lived with a lot of grace and dignity.

[00:16:38] She always was calm and collected and had a lot of wisdom to share with people. And so surely after my mom died, I was sitting on the front porch of my childhood home and she called.

[00:16:53] And I was telling her all these woes about what's going on with my dad drinking a lot, my mom passing away, and my ex-husband misbehaving. And I didn't know where he was. I'm just sobbing to her on the phone.

[00:17:05] And she says to me, you know, Mandy, did you ever think that alcoholism is your problem? And of course my answer was no. I hardly drank. Why would that be my problem? Right. And my ex-husband, I hadn't really seen him drink a whole whole lot.

[00:17:22] So I was like, I don't think that's his problem either. So then she went into her story a little bit with me. So she shared a very, very personal story. I became very vulnerable with me. And I did get permission from her to share this.

[00:17:39] She had married a man, grandpa Pete, and he was an alcoholic for probably the first 20, 30 years of their marriage. And it was really bad. So she shares this story about what her life was like when he was drinking and how much turmoil there was.

[00:17:59] And they were raising their kids like that pretty much the way that I was raised. And that he had gotten into a program, a 12-stop program called AA. And that she had gotten into a program which we call the sister program, which is called Al-Anon.

[00:18:16] And Al-Anon as she explained was for people who were married to somebody who's drinking bothered them or had been raised in alcoholism. And so it's a program designed to help mitigate the effects of alcoholism.

[00:18:37] So she was lovely and she shared this whole story with me and I hung up the phone and thought, that's not my problem. Like I just couldn't see it yet. Does that make sense? But at the time it planted that seed, right?

[00:18:52] That she has something that I want. But I just didn't think that was how I was going to get it yet. If that makes sense. So that's what I would say was for me the catalyst that really sets me on my journey

[00:19:10] of realizing that all those times that I was looking for an external solution that I'm going to learn that I have to do it from within. So that's, yeah. Wow! That's incredible. So can you share a little bit about when you finally accepted that was the effects

[00:19:29] of alcohol in your home environment? That was the problem. What did you do next? Yeah. So if we fast-forward from that point of that phone call between Diana and I six months later.

[00:19:43] So six months later my ex-husband and I, who wasn't my ex-husband at the time, he and I decided that we're going to try to work things out. So for those next six months life continues to get crazier and crazier and crazier.

[00:20:00] So I'm trying to work out this relationship with a man who is just as sick as I am really. And when I say sick I just mean like, I don't have the tools. I think chaos is normal. I think fighting is normal.

[00:20:15] I think all of this is normal. But I didn't want it anymore. Like I didn't want to feel like this anymore. You know I just had reached my breaking point where I was like, God this is awful. And he had disappeared again. I didn't know where he was.

[00:20:28] I could not. I mean it had been a couple of days since I had talked to him. And so I called Diane one night and I'm just crying. And I said, I will try anything.

[00:20:43] And she said I will pick you up on Monday and let me teach you about Alamedan. So that was just the beginning of me realizing like it is going to be the effects of alcoholism that shaped me.

[00:21:00] That shaped all of my experiences and all of my decisions and everything I had been doing were decisions based. I was doing the best I could with the tools that I had but I didn't have very good tools. So okay.

[00:21:16] Well that's all the time we have for today. Join us for our next episode on Monument Diaries where we're going to cover that language for journey. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time. Thank you for joining us today.

[00:21:27] If you enjoyed this episode please share, hit like, subscribe and follow us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Feel free to email us at monamutediaries.com with your monamut and keep the conversations going. Until next time heroes let's journey together through stories.