Episode18- Babetta 2

Babetta shares her heartfelt journey of grief, gratitude, and the profound impact of her father on her life. Reflecting on her childhood, family secrets, and the lessons learned from her dad, she explores how love and loss shape our paths and the importance of authenticity.

To reach Babetta on all major platforms - Besidedeathlife

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hey everyone, welcome back to Grief and Gratitude. This is episode 19? 18? I'm not sure. 18. 18. Oh my gosh, Mandy, get what I know. Um this is gonna be our last episode for season one. Um, and I will let Crystal introduce our guests.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

Hello. So we are back. This is gonna be our final episode of season one. Mandy is here in Vermont with me. Um yes, we are very excited to have Babetta back. She was our ninth episode who spoke about a relationship and the grief and gratitude that goes along with that. We now have her back today. Um, Babetta has also started her own podcast, which we highly recommend. It's Beside Death Life. Um, and she's here today to speak about her father. Babetta, thank you for coming back.

SPEAKER_03 1:02

Awesome. Thank you, girls. I love um this new world of meeting people online and creating these friendships across the coast, as far as we're concerned. Girls are on the East Coast and I'm on the West Coast. So very, very good. I am so glad to have this opportunity to talk about my father. Um, and here it is almost Father's Day, and he actually died on Father's Day when I was 21, and I'm 46 now. So it's pretty wild to say that in my lifetime anything happened 25 years ago. Um that said, I've never actually talked about him. Um, and so this is going to be a really special moment, maybe with some tears. I'd like to start back at our relationship because that's where it all begins, right? Um a brief introduction to my family is my mother had me at the age of 17, so she's my biological mother, and I was raised by my maternal grandmother and her second husband, Kenneth, who is my father. So I was raised with by my grandparents, but I did not know they were my grandparents until a little bit later in life. So I had older parents than everybody, and it took me a really long time, and we'll come back to that gratitude piece later, but to find gratitude for a lot of stuff that I felt kind of odd about growing up, like having much older parents than everyone else. Um that said, I had this idyllic childhood. My mother was my Girl Scout leader. She also ran her own business. They were both artists. My father was, they were both commercial artists. My father was a commercial artist, and he, I was definitely daddy's little girl. Like not every day did he come home with candy, which my mother hated, but a lot. Um, and he was his hobbies ranged from auto mechanics to carpentry. So I grew up him teaching me not only how to drive and change a tire and check your oil, but also just like building things. I had a really uh acute memory recently pop up of I wanted to take some weird animal because we always had these like little wild animals that we'd bring in and take care of. I wanted to take one to school. And he's like, and I'm trying to figure out how to take it to school. Let's just say it was a rat. I don't know. And he's like, well, I'll just we'll build a cage. So he would take pieces of wood and mesh and things to make a handle, and of course, I he wanted me to do it with him. So we would, you know, build a cage for this little animal and I would take it to school. But needless to say, he was like my best friend. I learned a lot from both of my parents, but my dad was, like I said, it was like daddy's little girl. I he was my like who I complained to my mother about. I mean, complained about my mother too, and he would say, You shouldn't talk that way about your mom, but he would also listen to me. Um, just to give you a walkthrough of kind of like what this looked like, is I had this ideal of childhood, everybody's around, everybody's doing everything, and then at 11 years old, my mother comes in to tell me at night where secrets are told at in the dark, and she's like, By the way, your dad and I are not your parents, and I'm your grandmother, and he's my second husband, so he's like your stepgrandfather, and your sister is your mom. And I'm like, What? But it wasn't really mind-blowing, it made a lot of sense. I thought, okay, this makes so much sense. You guys are way older than my friend's parents, and um, I was very interested in my biological mother, as in like what she was doing in her life. So, anyway, at 11, that was a really big year for me. I had uh ACL knee surgery, I got my period, and my parents told me they weren't my parents. So there was definitely this shift from this idyllic little bubble childhood to now, and as you know, just like in as as one is maturing, like starting to think a little deeper on things. And it's a lot for a young person to process. At the same time, just to give you some idea of like how I end up having this very conflicted disenfranchised grief now that my father's gone with him, is I was being told stories about my father by my mother of him being abusive to her and to her older children, or my, you know, really my biological mom and and my aunts. So he was an alcoholic um for most of his life. He was 12 years older than my mother. And when I was four, and I have a faint memory of this, he had taken me to Showbiz. You know, what is that? It's like Chuck E. Cheese out here. I don't even know that Showbiz is still a thing. And he had a pickup truck, and it's 1984. So it's a bench seat, and I don't have a seatbelt on. And somebody pulls out in front of him, just in the parking lot. So we couldn't have been going very fast, but I kind of flew forward and busted my lip on the dashboard. And that's the last time he has a drink for the rest of his life. So he stops drinking at the age of four. I was essentially raised by myself as an only child in the house because everybody was so much older. So by the time I was six, my closest adopted sibling was 18 and out of the house. So that just so I'm getting these stories that my mother should have been telling a therapist. You know, instead, she's telling a child and a child that very much loves her father and has a beautiful, amazing relationship with her father. So at a very young age, I am struggling quietly in secret with who this man is. Like, is he this incredible, amazing, beautiful man that I know, or is he this monster that I don't know that I've heard stories about? So at 11, when I'm told that they're not my parents, I'm also told I have to keep the secret within the family. So the whole family knows who I am, and now I know who I am, but I still have to keep up my my adopted position, right? They're my parents. My mom and my biological mother and her sisters are my sisters. It's just like this this whole funky web. And it all ends up mattering because as we move through the years, so from like 11 to 16, I start misbehaving, right? I'm out like drinking beer at my neighbor's house that we steal out of her dad's refrigerator at 12, probably, you know, and I'm smoking weed by 13. So I spend the next few years really self-medicating as a young person, not just because it was cool, but like I couldn't fit the pieces together in my mind of what my what the hell was going on with my family and who I was supposed to be. So I'm having like as I'm maturing into or going through puberty, I'm having an existential, like this identity crisis. And I had been a very, very, very shy child, and I realized that didn't really serve me. So I kind of created this alter ego, this identity of this girl who was like very um outgoing, and you know, I I I searched for friendships and so forth, and a lot of those friendships were made with the crowd of people who were, you know, getting high and drinking and going out and doing risky stuff because that spoke to my, you know, the the chaos that I had going on in my head. And I have a really sad memory of probably probably right around 16, I think I had started driving, and my dad had given me uh like a Valentine's stuffed animal card chocolate something. And I was busy getting high, like I didn't care really about anything, and I had thrown it in the trunk of my car, like maybe it was hatchback or something. I just remember the scene, it's nighttime. And I think I had something wrong with my car. He was always helping me with stuff, and he came out to my car and I opened the trunk, not realizing that I had thrown his gift in the back, and I just watched and felt him like his heart totally sink when he saw it. Like he was he was realizing that their decisions, you know, were really affecting me. And not long after, somewhere around I don't have like the timeline, but right around then, I'm 16, and my mom comes to me and she says, Hey, we're going to have a family meeting. This is not the kind of family that has family meetings, so I was like, Okay, well, it's weird. We sit down at the dining room table and she's like, Your dad wants to tell you something. And I remember him not speaking, so she must have gone on and said it. And she said, Um, your dad wants a divorce, the IRS is after him, and he's dying of cancer. And I was like, excuse me, what? Um, the divorce part did not was not shocking to me, even though my parents did not argue in front of me. I could they were really good about that. But I I had a bedroom upstairs, like I could hear them arguing downstairs. So for, you know, I would say probably most of my life, I could hear, you know, them not getting along. I think they had differing political parties. They didn't, they were both artists that highly, you know, were critical of each other. And and there was a lot of stuff going on in the background, right? Within the family system. So the IRS being after him, it was he had a gambling problem. So I was told a little bit later. Like he would, again, like at night in strange rooms in the city, would be doing like under undercover gambling with kind of these big wigs in the industry. I don't know. He owned car dealerships, he owned furniture businesses, he owned a lot of different things, and he lost it all. And maybe it was around that time they lost it. I'm not totally sure. I also find out a little bit later, just kind of this gives you a picture of his gambling issues and his deal with money, and I'm sure a lot of the tension in between my parents is that I found out at some point while I was in high school, he was a night janitor at my high school. Didn't know it. He was doing a lot of odd jobs just to bring some money in. And this man was like at that point, he had to have been in his 60s, I think. Like late 50s, early 60s. So my mother was a breadwinner. Um anyway, and then the cancer part. So he had he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and um I that was my first, I'd had other people die prior to this in my life, but that was my first lesson in do what you want to do in your life because I could see nobody had to explain it to me, but he got his terminal diagnosis and he's like, that's it. I don't want to live in this marriage for whatever time I have left, even though I have this child, you know, that I love. He wanted to go live his life the rest of it without arguing with my mom all the time or whatever. So that was really interesting. I wasn't mad about any of that, and he was super cool. He's like, you stay in the family house with your mom, and he went and got an apartment up the street, like in the same neighborhood, so I could walk and hang out with him. But remember, I'm 16, I'm loving the drugs and the alcohol, and um, going to visit my dad and hang out was drinking coffee, playing solitaire, each our own game next to each other, and smoking cigarettes. And it was like these are some of my fondest memories. He really, I think, embraced understanding, like grappling with mortality. Unfortunately, a lot of people end up doing that at that end stage of like you get a mortality check, or or somebody's already gone, or you know, you get to the bottom. But I mean, kind of messy here. So, some other things is I was ditching school, I was ditching high school to like get high, and or just you know, not be there. There was so much going on. And he said to me, He's like, if you ever want to, I'll take you to breakfast, you know, if you ever want to meet up or go have coffee. And so I'd be ditching a glass. I'd call him and I'd be like, Dad, you want to get coffee at Jimmy's egg? And you could smoke in this place. So we were sitting there, like he's I grew up with him smoking in the house. And I'm not a regular smoker, I never have been, but I do love to have a cigarette every once in a while. So in high school, here I am ditching class and smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee with my dad. It was awesome. And he, to the very end, I would come in and bitch about my mom, you know, like she's doing that. And he's like, Don't talk about your mother that way. But he would still let me, you know, vent. And then I want to say I was 17. Um, he had gotten me my first couple of cars. When I was 15 in the driveway, waiting for me was a 71 yellow super beetle, and it never ran. Like he never did get the engine working. So by the time I'm 16, I get a 72 high top camper Volkswagen bus. And I know I'm I'm reeling this back a little. Well, I wrecked that bus, like total it one day. That's a whole other story. But anyway, um, he had purchased both of those. He's like, you are going to have to figure out, you know, the next one. Well, I wanted another bus. I worked a couple jobs. I've always worked, and I bought another bus, another 72, but it wasn't a high top camper. So anyway, I had this Volkswagen bus. And I've already been on a couple of road trips. My parents know I love to road trip. And he's like, let's go on a road trip. And I'm like, Well, aren't you kind of sick? I would take care of him, even though he lived out of the house. I would go take care of him at his apartment sometimes. And then as things progressed, he came back to our family home a couple of times, like came back and lived a few times. Um, I'll get to that in just a minute. But at 17, he's like, Do you I'd like to go on a last road trip with you? Okay. So we pile in my Volkswagen bus. This man is like very sick and kind of crumpled over. And we hit all these spots. He takes me to a casino, and I get kicked off the floor, like the first penny slot that I'm putting money into. And uh, you know, I meet him back at the room at the end of the night. Oh, I didn't care. Yeah. Oh, by the way, the greatest lesson though for gambling, even though he had a terrible time with it that he told me, he's like, you you have to pick your dollar amount that you're going to go in the casino with, and that's all you get. It's like he gave me 20 bucks. He's like, that's all you get. That's it. When Salad's out. I don't think that's how he was gambling, though. Um, but so we're on this road trip, we're having amazing conversations, and we're in a hotel one night, and he kind of breaks down and apologizes for the torment, if you will, that the decisions that he and my mother made as far as how they handled everything with me about my adoption and so forth. He apologized for it being such a a mess for me. And that was a really poignant moment. Um there's one thing I forgot to add somewhere around that time when they told me that they weren't my parents. And it was like, they're like, in a couple days we have to go to a lawyer's office so we can adopt you. Yeah, I was like, okay. So I remember this office very clearly. It's like a conference room with a long table, and there's a stack of papers at the end, and a guy in a suit. And the guy in the suit comes over to me. I'm there with my mother and father, and he's like, Okay, we're gonna need you. I need you to verbally agree and then sign on these papers that it's okay for them to adopt you. And I was like, Well, you know, in my mind, I'm like, well, what happens if I say no? You know, do am I word of the state? Do I go back to my biological mom? What happens? So it was just, and I was told that the reason that that happened is because of money and because of my dad. So because he was so much older, at that time he was able to collect social social security, but that he would get more money if he had a dependent under 18. But because I wasn't adopted, you know. So I got adopted so that they could have a little bit more money. And I grew up in like an upper middle class home, uh, thanks to my mother, I guess. Yeah. But it's like it it didn't make any sense to me. And these were things I was being told, right? So it's like there was a lot of messiness going around. So we're on this road trip. He tells me he apologizes for everything. And I turn 18 at the end of my junior year. And because I had been messing around in school, I had some summer school to be doing. So That I could graduate. And I'm in a summer school class, and there's a girlfriend of mine sitting in front of me, and she's passing me a note. It's so cute. Paper notes, what? And she says it, she's like, My mom and I are leaving, you know, after school to go see. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Some chick that looks like Jeff Shop one. I can't think of her name right now. Oh. And I was super jealous. Stevie Nicks. I was like, I was like, well, I want to go somewhere. And so I wrote her a note back. I'm like, hey, do you want to get out of here and go help me pack my bus? And she's like, yeah, cool. So I take this chick with me to my house. Zero plan. I this I got my dog, my guitar, some clothes. This is 1998. I do not have a cell phone. I think I got rid of my drug beeper. I did not have any extra Motorola in uh translucent burgundy.

SPEAKER_04 23:09

So many stories.

SPEAKER_03 23:12

And I take off for Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It's a place that my parents had taken me on vacations, little mountain town, little hippie mountain town. And the last time I had been there was with my mother, and I'd met these hippie kids hanging out in the in the square and made friends with them. Like they took me to the lake. I, you know, went off and had a date. So I thought in my mind, I was like, well, surely I can just meet people and I'll I'll figure it out. But I didn't leave a note for my parents. I left nothing. So I had this very mad at the world. Fuck you guys for lying to me. It was still having to keep my who I was a secret, despite everything, and my dad's dying. And my mother is falling into like this quiet depression. She goes to work all day and then comes home and the television is on between you know, the whole time that she's there, I would go turned off in the middle of the night and wake her up and turn it back on. That's why I haven't had television since my childhood home. I was like, that was so traumatizing to me because I would also like go be like, hey, here is a teenager wanting to talk to your parent. You would think the parent would be like, oh my God, tell me, what do you want? But she would just, it was like better door than a window. Her depression and whatever was very, you know, focused on it being coping in that way. Um, with television and food. She I didn't grow up with anybody drinking in my house. Um, so anyway, I moved to Eureka Springs. I do meet some hippie kids in the square. I do move into this hippie house, and I get a job washing dishes at this Indian restaurant, like in a basement down all of these stairs, and I get my own place, a carriage house. It's all these Victorian homes in this really hilly area. And I have this car. Anyway, at some point the car needs something, and it's I've probably been gone a couple weeks, and I call home. And my dad's like, your mother's furious, she won't talk to you. I was like, Well, dad, my car's forget. He's like, I'll come out and fix it. He goes, but here's the deal. I'll send you what I get for you in Social Security money if you enroll in school. If you're going to stay there, I want you to enroll in school for your senior year, and I'll give you the money. So I enrolled. That's a whole other story. He sends me the money. I'm working this job. He comes out and fixes my car. We hang out. I eventually leave like three or four months later because I was 18 and come home. And my dad has moved back into our family home. He's in need of care. So my mom asked me, she's like, I'm still working. Can you take care of him in the morning, you know, before work, and then I'll take care of or during the day. I'm sorry, can you take care of him during the day while I'm at work? So I said, okay, but I'm going to work outside of that. So I got a job at a coffee shop opening in the morning at like 4 a.m. and I'd be home by the time she went to work. And then um when she got home from work, I went to uh a restaurant job. Because my plan was not to stay there. And they continued to argue and so forth. It was just kind of a hostile environment. So by December, by like Christmas time that year, I said, you guys are choosing this to live like this. And I don't have to. I'm fixing up my bus. It needs some repairs, and I'm leaving. So I left in February of 1999. I would meet who would end up being the father of my children, my husband a few months later. By year 2000, I am pregnant with our first baby. And I come home and we lived there for a few months leading up to my daughter being born. And by this time, my dad, I mean, his it's just declining, his health. He'd lived a lot longer than we thought. You know, he did the chemo, the radiation, and I was driving into appointments. He did all this stuff. His quality of life went down drastically in this last year. He was in the hospital, this a different hospital, same time I'm giving birth to my baby in like a neighboring hospital. So as soon as I'm able to leave the hospital with my baby, I go to his hospital. And I'm so I'm I'm so excited to take her in and introduce her to him. And I walk into the room and he won't look at me. And I was like, Dad, I brought you my baby.

SPEAKER_04 28:23

I want you. And he's like, um I was like, Don't you want to hold her?

SPEAKER_03 28:31

And he said, No, that's your baby. And so he still had this like extreme guilt for keeping me from my logical mom and like all the you know that it has is still like still affects me.

SPEAKER_04 28:49

But that was the last time I saw him, and it was heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_03 28:55

I came out of the room, my mom had driven me there, and I was crying.

SPEAKER_04 28:59

She's like, what is wrong? And I said, he won't look at me and he won't hold me.

SPEAKER_03 29:14

Within a couple months, I moved to Arizona where my husband had gotten a job. Yeah, so that was in May. Daughters were in February, moved in May, and in June on Father's Day, his like oldest son, my dad's oldest son from a previous marriage, called me and told me that he died in hospice on Father's Day alone.

SPEAKER_04 29:43

And I was just nobody. Nobody said, like, are you gonna be home for the funeral?

SPEAKER_03 29:53

It was going to be like two days later or something. I don't remember. It was something ridiculous. I like I had I had driven 95 miles an hour in an old BMW and burned out the engine like 50 miles before my new house. It's a newborn. Like I don't have I can't turn around and come out there. And he's fucking dead anyway, you know.

SPEAKER_04 30:16

Uh but it was just this disregard, like my mother, like I had nobody to call and say, I'm sad about my dad being gone or to talk to about how much I loved him because the other people in his life, including his older children from his previous marriage, he had been a like a bad guy.

SPEAKER_03 30:46

Um to to wrap up the the sad the sad part with like the first little glimmer of some recognition for it is um a couple months before I lost my biological mom, I was on the phone with her, and she said the first time anybody's talked to me about him, it was like you know, 10, 15 years later. She said, he was good to you, wasn't he?

SPEAKER_04 31:13

I was like, yeah, she was. Ah you want to hear the gratitude part, or you have a question.

SPEAKER_02 31:24

But I thank you for sharing. I mean, the amount of life of your life that you just shared with us in 20 minutes, or I mean thank you for in this space sharing that. I think before we can really jump, and I know there is gratitude, um, but jump there, what is is often important too, right, is that there is that space almost that right before gratitude can build, there is that sadness that build within us that we hold in ourselves, in our body. And not to say if it's fully released, we won't still feel sadness telling the story. I think it's important when we tell the story that we really let ourselves as much as we want to feel the depths of that sorrow. Like you went through a lot, and your dad loved you, and your dad, regardless of who he was to some people, your dad is worthy and was worth it and was a human here, and you two had love. And that's so special. Right. Many things can be true, and you know that, and you know the love you had, and nothing he did that wasn't right or that was harmful to anyone else takes away that special relationship you got to have with your dad. Really, you were daddy's little girl. Not a lot, that's really a special thing, and you write down to the one, right? You hit your face at four years old, and someone who is an alcoholic stops drinking for their baby, right? That's who he was to you. So thank you for sharing. Thank you. In terms of questions, I mean, I it's there's so many questions in that that I think right, we can um, you know, some out of curiosity, but also it's just I think you said a lot of really important things regarding a young person, right? Being 11, what what you went through, and also having a parent share negative, you know, information that maybe should have gone to a therapist. We learn as adults and as parents, maybe like, whoa, that was it for me, right? You were you're a small human. So thank you for recognizing that and saying that out loud. Um, Mandy, did you have anything to add or to share before we we get to the gratitude? Um I mean I have questions, but we'll get we'll let that talk and yeah, go on the gratitude train. Let's get to the gratitude.

SPEAKER_03 34:31

So, as I mentioned at the beginning, it's been 25 years, so a lot of life has happened since then. And I've had over and over and like so many points in life where I'm like, oh, my dad taught me that. I can do that, I can change a tire, I could change an alternator car, I can whatever. Um and even the lessons of like don't talk about your mother that way. And so it's been in little droplets my whole, you know, the last 25 years. But just recently, he's shown up really big in a really big way. So I was at this crossroads of like moving from this birth and postpartum world into Death Dool world, and same thing, totally different, and also needing to find some work to do while I build this up. And nothing was showing, I was applying to all kinds of things, like ridiculous. I was getting no's for you know, servers or receptionists at a construction company. I was like, I'm just looking for something that I can do part-time while I so that I can be afforded time to work on this, on this business. And nothing was happening, nothing's banging my head up against a wall. And all of a sudden, actually, both of my parents showed up for me at the same time. I was offered a position to be a program director, a creative program director for the Girl Scouts. But that would be moving back to Oklahoma, and that was definitely my mom. And at the very exact same time, this stuff happens. It's nothing, and then these two things show up, and then the sculpture artist out here, I was offered a position to be his assistant doing restoration and maintaining of fine art, both public and private, here in California. And it was a really, really, really tough decision. I didn't want to say no to Girl Scouts, but just logistically, my kids are out here, a lot of stuff. So anyway, I accept this working as an assistant for this artist, and I I tell him up front, I'm like, I don't know anything about bronze, you know, or like fixing, you know, but I said I was raised by a man who had me do all kinds of projects with him, and I'm quick learner, and I really like hands-on, I really like tactile work, labor, really. And it's now been a couple months since I've been working with this artist, and he's probably, I don't know, 10, 15 years older than I am. Um, so he's not, you know, an old man father figure, but there are these moments every day that I'm working where he's like, okay, can you hand me the vice scripts and the, you know, and whatever, the monkey wrench, whatever, the monkey wrench, and I'm like, oh my god, I know these things. And I know these things because of my dad. And I and he he this person, this artist is like, you can tell he's a really good person.

SPEAKER_04 38:10

He's so kind. And I just feel like because I was, I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna stay out here in California with my kids and again, like I also just didn't want to do anything.

SPEAKER_03 38:25

I really wanted something that spoke to me that just as much as birth and postpartum had like something that was really not necessarily passionate about, but that it was in line with.

SPEAKER_04 38:44

I just feel like this is my dad being like it was my mom and I dad like here here you go.

SPEAKER_03 38:52

Pick one of them, and I picked this one, and I am at for it not having worked through my grief with my dad because I really didn't have a container to do that in. I feel like it's that's what I'm doing right now, and it's so beautiful, so grateful for it.

SPEAKER_04 39:16

Every day I'm like dirty and it's hard and I'm tired at night. Um yeah, that's my gratitude piece. That's that's like I feel like in a really big way my dad has shown up for me.

SPEAKER_01 39:36

So I think a couple things that you have said are really important. First of all, um it must have been so hard as an 11-year-old child being told to keep a secret, a big family secret. That's a lot of pressure. So you're a very strong person for going through that. Um, but you also said um when your dad was diagnosed, he wanted a divorce. And basically he wanted to go live his life as he wanted. And I think a lot of people don't do that these days. Everyone is so consumed with pleasing a person or, you know, doing this or doing that. And like you said, it's not until death affects you or somebody you love, like losing my child, that you really realize how short life is and how important it is to be authentic and tell people what you want to tell them. Um, have real conversations. So I think those are really good points. Um, and I appreciate them.

SPEAKER_04 41:00

When you you were 16 when that happened, right?

SPEAKER_02 41:08

And well, what was interesting, interesting, you got it, right? You even said, well, I'm not surprised about that. And also as a 16-year-old, right? You because 16-year-olds, let's be real, they're very, very wise. I actually don't know really wise they are till my now 16-year-old is really saying some shit back to me. I'm like, huh, girl, you like put a lot together. You you're with it. There's almost um almost a better understanding. You they're almost not jaded by life things, right? So you got it, and also as a 16-year-old, you had to hear someone was terminally ill. I don't know, right? That isn't a a given, right? What and we think until we don't that we all just live until old age. That's just kind of right, the hope and the belief and the way our our brains work in the lifespan. We don't, you know, get there. Um, is there anything you feel you got in how you matured and evolved from how he managed that? From either how you parent or from how you live your life from that.

SPEAKER_03 42:35

Yeah, I think um I think I already was developing this, I'm going to do whatever I want to do attitude, right? But out of defiance. But I have watched that grow in me as I've matured into I'm going to do whatever I want out of love for myself and how I want my life to look. And it I I feel like I've done everything I wanted. I wanted to have kids when I wanted to have kids. I wanted to marry that guy that I wanted to marry, and I wanted to do baby work, and and now, you know, I'm wanting to do this. And it has also followed these arcs of working through my for lack of better term, like childhood trauma. Um, I've had these amazing life opportunities to be gifted. Like here, oh, you have an adopted baby mommy trauma. Here you're gonna be a postpartum and you know, birth, and then now walking to this end. I really didn't want to have anything to do with death doula. Like my mentor had been doing it for a few years and she's much older. She's in her seventies. I was like, that's cute. She's like, Don't you want? I'm like, No, that's for your age. No, I'm good. Because I thought I was like, I've already had so much death in my life. Why do I want to, you know, look into that? And the universe, God, whoever just kept going, hey, hey, come over here, come over here. And I'm here. And it's just been like the same thing that the birth and postpartum world has given me. It's this opportunity, really, and like meeting you girls and getting asked questions and having space and container to actually talk about these things about the the deaths that happened in our lives. That has been so transformative. Like I'm going to have what they say happens after Academy trip of these like two weeks after our conversation of neurons and these synapsies, like firing and and stuff, just for having even spoken it out loud. That's what I found.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

It's funny that I was talking to Crystal about, well, we were talking on when we were coming in here, and I I don't know, people believe what people believe. But I think that when you are your authentic self and you put out in the universe what you want, that it does come to you. You were talking about your vision board and you wanted this office. And I just feel like I've noticed it more as I'm older that I'm like, wow, I really I wanted that like 10 years ago, and here I am.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

It is, oh, it's absolutely a real thing. I would say I do also believe there's privilege within that, right? Um there are absolutely people where I feel like even with all the right thoughts, all the right feelings, all the right, right wishes, it's almost like this isn't the lifetime for them. Yeah. And that's sad. That's what I have a hard time sitting in. Um why do I get to have this vision board and have this belief and see things come to fruition? It right, it doesn't for everyone. We don't get to see it happen for everyone in this lifetime. I think it also makes it more um important and for those that can to do it, right? To to to create it and to move forward and to believe in it. Um, also the universe, the universe is so funky. Like how you're a death doula. Like how, what, why this right? How it's almost like there was the plan there for you, and somehow you kept coming back, right? We're on the train and we go this way and that way, and it's like no matter what, you're gonna land here.

unknown 46:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:50

Why, right? And like, do you feel it?

SPEAKER_03 46:52

Do you I almost feel like then when the right pieces hit, even if you try to avoid it, when it clicks, it's yeah, and that's why I keep having these moments, including where where I'm I even had uh recently some serious multiple deja vu moments within a short span of time, and there are different things to be said about deja vu, you know, scientists like, uh, it's misfiring, you know, and then the hoodoo voodoo people are saying it was like it's it's something you've already done, or it's something you've already future, but just to speak too briefly, which could be a whole other you know episode, is why do some people get things in this life and and others don't? There's a really great um on the Kurtzgott channel on YouTube, there's a great short story called The Egg. They just animated it. It is written by can't think of his name right now, and give you all that stuff later. But it is a story telling kind of this idea of that we're all it you're me, I'm looking at you, you're me, I'm you. Every you pass, like whatever, it's just like this nonlinear, you know, living of souls, if you will, embodying people and getting to go through the lessons until you get it.

unknown 48:22

Right.

SPEAKER_02 48:26

Lessons right, they repeat until we get it. It's like here's the pieces again. Looks a little characters are a little different, but let's see if you're gonna get the message this time. And if not, right, you you get it again if if you're lucky enough. It's pretty incredible to even identify that. Yeah, like oh, this is my turn again. Yeah. Um, when you mention even the two job choices and thinking of mom, right? Because your mom was your Girl Scout leader, and you get this offer of this job, and then you get this other offer coming from your dad. Do you feel like in those moments with this man you're doing the work with, like, do you sense your dad is there? Does it like what does that look like and feel like for you right now?

SPEAKER_03 49:21

I don't know that I sense that he's there necessarily, except that he's everywhere. Like the omniscient, you know, just to use God as an example or the idea we have pervasive in our society of God is like this man in the sky, you know, um, that sees all. Like I kind of feel him in that way. And what's kind of beautiful too is even though I did a lot of like yard work and and gardening and things with him, this artist also has taken this hillside that was dirt and turned it into a freaking jungle of like forestry, I mean fruit trees and crazy plants and everything. And that's something that I did with my mother. Like we super garden, I grew irises and showed them as a gold winner for whatever iris.

SPEAKER_04 50:13

Who does that?

SPEAKER_03 50:14

It shows iris. But I'm also getting to do because I told the artist, I was like, this is a mess over here. I'm gonna help clean this up, like get these planted. So I am getting to do, getting to work with like both my parents, but they they came in. I'm 100% sure of that, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 50:38

It's beautiful, it's beautiful, and both of them, right? Even with the relationship they had good, bad, fighting, all of the other things, they both loved you. Say that's true, right?

SPEAKER_03 50:51

Well, and that's something I had took me a really long time. I had a lot of feelings, as you can imagine. Um angry at my mom, angry, not really ever that angry at my dad. So even when he apologized, I was like, okay, whatever. I'm angry at her, but just a lot of emotions that kept me from appreciating the parents that raised me. I kept thinking in my mind, as adoptees can do, that I wish I would have been with my birth parents because I wanted them so badly. So it took me a lifetime, you know, the second lifetime called adulthood, like, and becoming a parent myself, I'm sure was a huge, played a huge role in that. But really appreciating and finding the gratitude for I thank God now that they raised me and my bio parents didn't. I have such a rich upbringing.

SPEAKER_04 51:52

I am so lucky. I'm so grateful.

SPEAKER_02 51:58

And Cass, so within that family, you believed your bio mom was your sister until you were 11. Correct. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:10

That's a different episode, Crystal.

SPEAKER_02 52:13

Put in all the pieces together. It's like they're kind of there. It's yeah, that's a big thing. And also, Bobetta, who you are, all of the pieces of you today are made up of all of the pieces that were, right? So would you say you I think you said it are grateful that it worked out, even where there was anger, even where there was unknowing, right? Like it kind of makes sense to who you are and where you stand today. Those are all the pieces.

SPEAKER_03 52:50

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I would be a different. I my bio mom, you know, and my biodad separately went on and had marriages and other children. And I just like feel really fortunate that who I was raised by despite having missed out on my parents. But it took me a long time to get there. It really did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:18

Um, as we come on to our hour, I want to just hold space for your dad. This episode was for. If you could just share his name again and just describe him a little bit as as you can, who he he was, either for you or just as a person. As a person in in the ways you remember.

SPEAKER_03 53:45

Yeah. His name is Kenneth or Ken. Kenneth Lee. And he was tall, he was like 6'2. He was bald by the time I was born. You know, he had to be in the 60s, late 50s, 60s. Smoked cigarettes. Um, we had this big leather back wing-back chair in the living room that I remember, and crystal ashtrays all over the house. You know, I don't know that crystals are glass, whatever, but and he kept his pipe tobacco bedside with his his pipes and everything. And he would read me, we had Encyclopedia Britannicas on our bookshelf by the fireplace, and he would, at the beginning of each of the Britannica encyclopedias, are Aesop Fables. And that's what I wanted him to read. So at night he would read me. I had other books, but I remember him specifically to read the Aesop Fables. And Aesop Fables, for those of your listeners who don't know what they are, they're like these allegorical um moral stories and ethical stories, and like how you treat other people and how you do business with people and how you get ahead in life, and um that I think that had a huge impact on and just the way he was. Like you were saying, like, and we don't talk about your mother, and I was raised in the south, and it was manners, and you know, everything uh like integrity, even though they were lying to me. I was raised with you know that integrity was a really, really big deal. And he always wore a button-down shirt and pants or jeans with a belt. There's a little love seat in my parents' room, and his shoes were under it, and he would sit down and put his shoes on, like very old people stuff, yeah. Old school. Um and you know, always coffee in the morning, and who he was someone who taught me how to throw baseball and mow a lawn. I loved mowing lawn. But uh we also had a rental house that my parents always had to redo after each rental, and I would go over with him and you know, work on stuff.

SPEAKER_04 56:12

Like it was very it was very involved parent. Yeah. It was awesome.

SPEAKER_01 56:21

Well, I just want to say though, too. Um, gosh, we could go on forever. Like you you say that they lied to you, but to them, you were their daughter.

SPEAKER_04 56:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 56:34

You were their daughter, biological or not.

SPEAKER_04 56:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:37

Right. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:40

And it took me until a really big uh recent, my uh recent postpartum job with a baby that I was with. Instead of at night, I was with them during the day, and I was with this baby for 10 months. And it was somewhere around month two or three. I'm usually with babies for about three months, but usually nighttime. So I'm spending all this daytime with this baby, and I have for the first time this moment of clarity and aha, where I go, oh my god, they left me. It was possible.

SPEAKER_04 57:10

Because I was like, it's like I love this baby. Yeah. That was kind of a big deal.

SPEAKER_03 57:19

It's all coming together.

SPEAKER_02 57:21

It's taking forever. It feels that way. And also I think there's a lot once it starts coming together, I feel like we get even more closer together. So like the pieces are coming. Um, thank you so much for sharing your story in this space with us. Um, again, Babetta does have her own podcast that I'm quite obsessed with, you know, man as well. You're just a wonderful storyteller and you really bring people in. And anyone who hasn't checked it out, it's beside Death Life. Um, we'll also share it um kind of in the notes. Um, again, grief and gratitude. We are this is our final episode, but betta, it was for this season. It was a pleasure to have you on and for you to complete this season with us as well. We've so grateful to build this friendship and relationship with you. Um, thank you everyone for listening.

SPEAKER_01 58:26

And um we'll be back fall with um season two, and there might be some bonus clips this summer.

SPEAKER_03 58:37

So yeah, we're gonna roll through these this first season for those of you who have missed anything. So, yay, thank you so much, ladies, for having me on again. I love getting to you guys, can't see their faces, but maybe in the fall you will. But I love getting to see these girls and chatting. That's super fun. Thank you. Bye.

SPEAKER_04 59:02

Bye.