The Healing Power of Storytelling and Overcoming Trauma

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Have you ever wondered about the power of the stories we tell ourselves? Marcie Pusey delves into the heart of this question, offering profound insights on reframing self labels, the connection between our brainstem and language, and the profound impact of unprocessed trauma. She shares personal anecdotes and professional experiences, revealing how recognizing and challenging our inner narratives can lead to significant mental well being. But Marcy doesn't stop there.

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She explores the influence of trauma on both children and caregivers, discover how storytelling can serve as a powerful tool for building resilience and connection, especially for young ones who see themselves reflected in the tales that they hear. Marcy Pusey's journey will touch your heart and open your mind to the transformative power of the stories we tell ourselves and each other. Join us for an unforgettable discussion that underscores the healing power of stories and the significance of mental resilience.

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Welcome to grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through. Adversity in this podcast, we will delve deep into the challenges and triumphs of. Grandparents raising grandchildren as we navigate the. Complexities of legal, financial, and emotional support. I invite you to join us on. A journey of exploring thoughts, feelings, and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of child rearing for children who have experienced trauma, and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care.

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We'll discuss how we can change the course of history. Bye.

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Rewriting our grandchildren's future, all within a.

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Supportive community that understands the unique joys and struggles. This podcast was made especially for you.

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Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, your experiences are valued, and your journey is honored.

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When I was struggling with my own sense of identity as a grandparent, stepping into the parental role, the expectations I placed on myself were incredibly high, and I often felt overwhelmed.

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But as I began to share my story, talking openly with friends and other grandparents in similar situations, I started to see things differently. I realized that many of the pressures I felt were self imposed, and this outlet not only provided me with support and new perspectives, but it also helped me reshape my understanding of what it means to be a grandparent raising grandchildren.

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It's profound to think about how sharing our stories, even the difficult ones, can shape our self perception and ultimately our own experiences. And that's why I'm so passionate about Marcie's work and the insights she's sharing with us today. It truly has the potential to transform lives. I hope you'll join us on today's episode, the healing power of storytelling and overcoming trauma. I meet a lot of wonderful people in the work that I do.

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I'm very excited to introduce to you today Marcy Pusey. She has a number of clinical degrees and professional experience in mental health and trauma. She herself is a survivor of narcissistic marital abuse.

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She is a foster adopt mama. She has adopted two children.

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She's a writer, a speaker, an advocate, and an award winning author. So, Marcy, I'm just so glad to be talking with you today and sharing you with our listeners. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for trusting me with them and having me on. I'm really excited about what you do with storytelling. I think the stories about grandparents raising grandchildren are very interesting.

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The trauma, the body's ability to recover from trauma. Grandparents raising grandchildren have become real personal heroes of mine. Everyone that I talk to, every story is different. I want to know how you recommend sharing the hard experiences that they've had in life. Such a great question, and definitely one that I've had to practice personally.

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So while I have education and have read the books and been on the seminars and whatnot, it's really something I first had to experience. And that really was eye opening for me to understand, like, to embody the things that both I'd heard and the things I hadn't heard that became really important in my own journey. So I think that in order for us to be able to share our stories, we have to do a level of internal work with them. And what I mean by that is sometimes we'll find ourselves wanting to tell the story, but we start to lose our words or we start to criticize ourselves for how it's coming up and then judging ourselves. I'm not a good speaker. Does anyone even care about my story? Is it unique? Does it matter? You know, we'll hit, get hit with all of these things. And from a brain perspective, there's a number of things now that I've learned that are going on when that happens. So, for me, when I'm with somebody who wants to tell their harder story and is really struggling, I immediately know what's happening in the brain. There's some work there that needs to occur for them to be able to tell that in a way that they love, that a reader or a listener could sometime enjoy. And what it is, is the work of sitting with that story. So trying to get it out, even sometimes just free writing, more so than trying to make yourself tell a particular story, instead sitting down and just letting whatever stories want to come out first?

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Come out first. And part of what the brain is trying to do is clear the muck a little bit. Like, there's some things, I picture it like. Like maybe a mossy pond, you know, and we're trying to get something that's deeper down. But first we have to skim the surface off of bit. Or I think of that with gardening as well. We want to plant something and have it grow and flourish. But maybe we need to clear the stones and the weeds and the sticks out of the way to get there. And a lot of people will quit at that point in their writing. Like, I must not be good enough, all the stories that come up.

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So what's important for the brain is to get to experience the hard things that we remember, but from the safety of the present.

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And as we revisit those harder memories, but we are safe right now. Incredible amounts of healing can occur. But simultaneous to that, our brain is saying, stay away. That was dangerous. It has a hard time distinguishing between past, present, and future. So when that memory comes up, it goes, oh, I'm back there. I'm unsafe again.

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And so there's a real importance around being able to stay grounded in the moment and say, I'm going to choose to remember and not forget that I am right now, safe where I am, and allow the feelings to come up that come up and keep pushing through. So that is part of the work of telling our hard stories and how it becomes therapeutic without even realizing it. I think a lot of people, again, will just quit. But if, you know, this is the process, you've got someone who can kind of guide you through it. You get to move through, and then that unlocks the parts where the brain has been stuck with some of the unprocessed parts of it to tell the story beautifully. It will then begin to flow. And then I, from a, you know, perspective of looking at someone's brain, go, okay, we've experienced enough healing. Work with it that now the story can come out and be shared. So if I were to sum that up, it's essentially we have to, with our own hard stories in a healing way first before we can ever share them with anyone else. And so instead of judging or questioning ourselves, it's really an invitation to sit and just be a little more present with those hard things. Patient, gracious, and allow ourselves to just see what needs to be said or heard first before trying to force a particular story to be told.

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Why have you chosen to focus on the impact of story for children? Yeah, you know the first answer is, because when I got into professional writing, I was a new mom. And the only other person I knew doing anything professionally with writing was also a young mom who was writing for children.

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So, professionally speaking, I started where I knew someone doing it. But looking back, I've always worked with kids, been inspired by kids, saw not just potential for the future, but what they can add to it now. And as I studied more and more trauma and resilience, I learned that the saying we have, that kids are resilient is not true. Resilience is based on life experience, and children don't have much of that yet. It's the, I've experienced a hard thing and I overcame it. And then that taught me that I can overcome hard things. So the next hard thing came along, and I overcame that, or I didn't, but I learned from it, right? It's the. It's the built upon life experience of overcoming. And kids don't have that. What they do have are two things. They have very strong survival skills, which allow them to adapt and flex as needed in hard things. And they're still very much in touch with their play. And this is something that adults are taught to lose, to be perceived in a particular way. And yet, forms of play are the most healing activities that we can do. It's how we can best listen to ourselves. And so by play, I mean body movement, dance, music, art, any kind of those uncensored things that kids do that we stop doing, they still have. They have survival skills, and then they have this ability to heal or process through hard things differently than many adults still have.

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But that showed me that adults often put a lot of expectation on kids to not be impacted by hard things, often because we are drowning as adults, and it makes us feel really good to believe that kids are resilient, and so they'll be okay while I figure out how to be okay. I even think of this going through the pandemic, right?

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Everybody was shocked and impacted, and it just felt good to be able to say, well, thank goodness kids are responsible, resilient. So, to your question, my focus has become on children because they are the least resilient, although they appear differently, but also because we can actually give them resilience without having to go through all of the hard things we've gone through. When we receive story, whether it's through media or a book or stage presentation, whatever we're experiencing story, our brain lights up almost 100%. It's like 90 something percent. If we're listening to a PowerPoint presentation, it lights up about 7% tremendous difference in the engagement of the brain when it, when it is interacting with story. And that is because when the brain hears story, it's expecting to be able to learn something that it can add to the survival toolbox. So in order to pique your curiosity and drive your attention towards that story, it will release dopamine, adrenaline, endorphins, like all these really feel good hormones and chemicals to cause us to pay attention. Because maybe in that story, in that zombie apocalypse story, I will learn something from my survival that's really important. And our perceptions are unique to each of us. And so what our brain, where our brain might be looking for survival, can look different. We're looking for it. And back to the point about our brains not distinguishing between past, present, and future. At least our bodies don't. Our brains can go, that was the past. But our body goes, well, that feels like right now. So they kind of, our body, I should say it better that way, doesn't experience the difference when our brain is thinking about past, present, or future. So when we give story to kids, their brain is lighting up as though they are living that experience, and it's tucking away what they're learning and putting it in a place of resilience in their little bodies without them actually having to go and do the hard things. This is powerful and important for two reasons. One, wow, we have this incredible responsibility and opportunity to develop and build resilience in our kids and spare them a lot of the hard things, or at least prepare them differently for a lot of the hard things. And I have a whole TEDx talk on that specifically. The other piece of why that's important and powerful is because if we're not careful with the stories they receive, then they're engaging stories that could be harmful, right?

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Or could ill equip them, so to speak. And so that, again, can be dependent on each brain and how it responds to the particular story. But I think this is where you've got people who feel concerned about certain video games that are played or certain music that is ingested, that what is the embodied effect of receiving these stories all around the world? And so I then say that we are stewards of story, that I have an opportunity in my home to both share my story but also be a gatekeeper some ways of the stories at different ages developmentally as well, because I really want to support their resilience in a positive, life giving way and not just let their brain get that excited about every story that exists. If that makes sense. So that's it answers the question, actually, that I faced with my grandson this morning week.

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We let them watch YouTube kids, and somehow the app went away.

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And I put him on stuff for kids on YouTube. But he got into a video that wasn't horrible. It just activated him in a way that I could tell was more violent. He was acting more violently that day, and I immediately realized what had happened, and we were able to get the app back and control more of what he was seeing on YouTube. In other words, according to what you're saying, he heard a story that activated him in a way that I didn't like. And I think the way I can better help him is by saying, this is what that story was, and this isn't healthy about that story.

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So you're saying that he can absorb it better that way, because they hear lots of stories from people. We can't control everything they see and hear, but he can understand why that could have activated him to become more aggressive that day. Yes. I talk in a second. TEDx talk plugs about three animals that I use to represent the brain.

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And I'm currently working on publishing a children's book that can help further sort of visualize the animals. But basically, the reason one kid can watch something and be fine and another kid can watch that same thing and not is that our survival mechanisms are based on perception, and each person's perception develops into changes through life. But there's an internal story that we tell ourselves, and that's where our perception can be formed.

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Right? And so our team, our survival team, our brain is looking for ways to survive, physically, for sure, but also emotionally and emotionally comes through our sense of connection and belonging. And we often don't recognize that as a kind of safety that our brain is responding to, because we just think of, like, physical safety. Am I about to get run over by a bus or. Not yet. Most of the time, our brains are trying to provide safety for us emotionally, again, through our belonging and connection, through relationships. And so, again, I'll mention the COVID pandemic which said that in order to keep ourselves physically alive, we had to separate, and we created a different kind of traumatic experience through the isolation of people, through the isolation of kids than the physical. So we tried to preserve the one, but at the cost of the other. And really, that's just ignorance. Right? And I'm not trying to, like, solve the world problem that occurred, but I remember watching that going, oh, wow, we're gonna have a very intense mental health after effect of our response to this because we're prioritizing the one but sacrificing the other. And hopefully, you can recover from physical illness, but the mental health aspect takes a lot of time, and people need to even begin to recognize it. So in that regard, each child, each brain, human as well. But each child is coming to these stories, and if their brain has already perceived that they don't fit in, they're not like the other kids, and people don't want to be their friends, and they watch a show with a character they can resonate with, and that character is handling it in particular ways. Their brain might, because of their perception, say, oh, that's a tool for my toolbox. Whereas another brain that doesn't have or hold that same internal story can watch that play out and not see it as a survival skill that it needs to pick up. So it'll keep paying attention, but it may not be activated. I love the language you're using with activate. So that's where, again, the stewardship language that I like to use here is really about being so present to each person, and especially in the case of raising children, each child, and not expecting every kid to react the same. And. And yet to be mindful that the brain is the brain, but why is your brain activating with this and hers isn't? And so what do you need from me, from a place of care to help you reinterpret the story? And I love that you said that, like, if we just sit down and go, let's look at this story, and why might not that be a tool you want in your toolbox? Did that work out for that character ultimately, you know, and help their brains really tell a truer story and change where we can to shift the perspective of their survival needs so that it's looking for healthy ways of surviving and not just any way of surviving. I can understand by what you've been telling me. What motivated you to blend storytelling with. Mental health and resilience? It's so clear now, right? I couldn't figure it out for the longest time, I had this mental health world, and I had this writing world, and I felt called to both. And so in that sense of calling, I would say, God, I'm pulled in two different directions. Am I supposed to pick one or what do I do?

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And then as I began to study more and more resilience and post traumatic growth and trauma, I couldn't unsee the ways that our stories are such a huge healing aid.

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It's huge. And so now I kind of chuckle at myself that I couldn't see it then. But it's so clear how they go hand in hand.

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And so my publishing clients aren't thinking about how they're going to go through therapy, so to speak, to tell their stories and get it published. But I'm aware of the journey, and likewise, my therapy clients aren't expecting story to be such a big part of their healing journey, but it always does turn that way. I just talk about it more through the lens of the stories we tell ourselves. Is that a true story? Where did that story get picked up, and how can we replace it with something better if it's not serving us or functioning? So now it is funny. I feel like the person who's kind of got the gleam in their eye where they know more than they're letting on. I kind of feel like that in both sides. But, yeah, it all ties together, and it's very similar work. Now, you've complicated my interview because I've got. One part of my brain is thinking psychology, and the other side is thinking writer. Mm hmm. Yeah. Sorry. But, yeah, that's my life. Welcome to my brain.

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Well, let's address the issue of storytelling for those listeners out there that might be interested in trying to share their stories with others. It's difficult, if you're not naturally a writer, to begin getting your story out.

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So what do you think? Are some of the major barriers or obstacles that you see people trying to get their message out there in the form of a book? Yeah, that's a great question, because the answer is the story we tell ourselves. You know, I think it's so easy when we get started, to immediately start labeling everything about the experience we're having. So maybe I sit down and I'm staring at a blank page, and I want there to be words on it, and they're not coming out. And so then I start to label that.

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Well, because I'm not a writer or I'm not good at this or whatever. Right. Instead of, huh. This must be part of the process.

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Great. What's the next step in the process? And instead just being curious about it as opposed to labeling it. So I think a lot of people will come to the experience ready to label all the things and quit because they've decided whatever they've decided, when in reality, your brain, if it matters to you, it matters to someone else in the world. I believe this. You're not in a silo, and your brain has special ways of communicating that we're not used to listening to. So words comes from a part of our brain that comes from our prefrontal cortex, our ability to make meaning of language, and comes from the PFC, which we want to use to make good decisions and prioritize and cause and effect and delayed gratification. Like, all of our higher level thinking happens there, and so our language happens there, too. But our traumatic events and memories are in our brainstem. They're not up there with the PFC.

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So when that. When the brainstem wants to speak, it doesn't have access to the language, to words in the same way. So when I want to sit down and I want to write my hard story and the words aren't coming out, and I go, that's because I'm a bad writer. Marcy comes along and says, no, it doesn't. It means that we need to listen to your body in a different way because your words have. Have turned off for now, because we're stepping into a different part of the brain, and it speaks through play or through our body.

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So, a lot of we taught here, we hear this, right? The body keeps the score. Injuries or illnesses or aches or pains or whatever can be our body trying to tell us it needs to address something. And so, in that case, instead of having someone make an outline and give themselves deadlines and force them to write out their outline, I would say just start free writing or free speaking. Record yourself free speaking. I know we're using words, but we're not using censored words. It's an uncensored, present part of our body. And so I will have someone start with writing or saying, I don't know what to say. Nothing is coming out. I really want to leave my story behind. I believe it's important.

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It's a legacy. I want to impact kids, but I'm sitting here struggling to say what I want to say.

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What I do know is that I want you know, and before you know it, someone has found a thread in their system that can speak and can begin to end up in a flow. You get to delete or trash anything that you've written or said that you don't want to keep. And that's another thing, is people will think it's all gold.

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I can't delete it. Yes, you can. It's okay.

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So, one would be creating that space to release the expectation and pressure from it, needing to come out a certain way and just start writing what you know, which is, I don't know what to write or speaking if writing isn't coming. But there's other things you can do to fill the that tank and sort of prep it to be able to step into that space, like going for a walk first and really just kind of thinking through, mulling over, being present with nature, with the sounds, giving yourself a grounding experience, like, oh, I'm safe. It's okay to start to think about and remember these things because I'm okay. You can do that in your house, not on a walk. Right. You can have a nice drink of cold water and prepare a bubble bath for after you're done so your brain knows, oh, good, we're gonna have a spa day after, or go hang out with friends. So it's really just considering the expectations and not allowing them to label your experience and creating a kind of groundedness for you through any kind of, when I say, play again, uncensored activity that allows you to be really present and feel the safety of your momentous so that your brain goes, okay, we can remember and start to process this because we're okay.

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That would be like a snippet. Yes.

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Which is taking me into all these other tangents that makes me realize that. I need to do a whole podcast.

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Just on writing and storytelling with you. Let's do it.

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A whole bunch of ideas came. Came up as we were talking. So I'm looking forward to talking to you more about that. Let's talk about trauma, because we know that the reason that we have these children is usually because something traumatic has happened to them. They've gone through death of a parent, their parents have been incarcerated. They've experienced mental illness or addiction, or parents have been deployed and are going to be away for a long time, and that's traumatic for them. And many of us experience different kinds of trauma as young children, but we, as grandparents, are not only dealing with children that have experienced usually quite a. Bit of trauma, or they wouldn't be. With us, while also coping with our own traumas of our lives being changed 180 degrees.

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And as we were speaking about earlier, I don't think we realize when we started taking on this job of caretaking what we were really getting ourselves into.

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So we're trying to balance our own lives out.

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How does trauma impact. Impact the narratives that we tell ourselves and others? You did speak a little bit earlier about the brain and how we process that information, and it keeps us from communicating our story as well. But maybe go into that just a bit more. How does trauma affect story itself? Yeah. Well, I'll first start with what trauma is, because we do say that word a lot. And. And really, what it is. Is unprocessed trauma.

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So we can have two people in the exact same traumatic event and one person come out with unprocessed trauma and the other person not. And again, this is a lot to do with the perception of that person's brain and how they interpreted the event. Granted, there are going to be some events that are so vile that probably everyone walk away with unprocessed trauma. But basically, unprocessed trauma means that your system tried to engage the fight or flight. So fight, flight, fawn, or freeze, and couldn't process through. So it could be that it tried to fight and it lost. It didn't. It didn't overcome the obstacle, whatever that might be. It tried to run and it couldn't outrun it, it tried to please, it couldn't be pleased. And so anytime that our system activates to engage our survival and doesn't, like, succeed, so to speak, then that becomes stuck as unprocessed trauma in a part of our brain, as well as if our brain determines without even trying, that none of those things will work, then it just goes straight to a freeze state, which is a kind of unprocessed. It didn't process through the trauma either. So the way that can impact our story is that it colors the narrative, right? So there's the. The facts of the event, but then we, with our unique brains and perceptions, bring our interpretation of those facts, both externally and internally. And so this, too, is why you might have multiple kids raised by the same parents. One can come out saying, I had this incredible childhood. It was so lovely, and I. Someone else could say, I had the worst childhood, it was awful, and they relatively experienced the same things. But if one child's perception of the things they experienced was if they loved me, then they would do this, and they didn't do this. Therefore, there's a threat to my sense of connection and belonging, then it's going to color the other experiences they have and how they tell that story. If another child has the same treatment but goes, wow, that's so loving, I feel connected and belonging, then that's the lens through which they're going to tell their story as well. And so that leads to probably lots of other kinds of complicated thinking around what's true and what's not true. I have a client right now who's asked me a number of times, like, is it helpful for you to talk to other people in my life to know if they have a different version of the story than I do? And I say, no, it doesn't because it's your perception that I need to work with. It's your storytelling that is going to be the most impactful change for you. Your story isn't just going to believe someone else's story without some work. And so it doesn't matter what I think. We're working on what you think. And so I think we find this both in how we communicate our parenting for a while. One of my stories that I told was that I was a bad mom. Like, I had adopted these kids with really great intentions and a good heart and some noble, you know, motivations, and they weren't healing. And then. And then spiritually, this was an impact for me, too, because I believe that God's love is unconditional and his love heals, but they weren't healing.

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And I was the only thing I felt between his love and their healing. So something wrong with me. So my perception, the meaning that I assigned to my experience, was because you aren't living the healed life that I imagined an adopted child who'd been rescued from their family would experience, then I must be the problem. And that actually made me almost a codependent parent. Like, I would do everything I could to make them happy, because their happiness might look like a level of healing which would reward me with a sense of, okay, I'm okay. I belong in the world of parents. I'm not the one misfit or the fraud or whatever. That's part of it, right? Once I heard that story, and I really felt like it was a spiritual awakening for me to realize I'm not a bad mom. Nobody would look at a parent with a child in a wheelchair and say, gosh, your kids not walking, you must not love them enough. I kind of got that image, and I realized, oh, man, I've been putting that pressure on myself with these kids. If I loved them enough, they'd stand up and start walking. No, that is not how love works.

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And so I was able, by the grace of God, to take on a new story. That I am a good mom, that I'm doing the best with what I've got, and that how my children choose to respond to that is really more about them than it is about me. And I can learn from that and continue to shape how I parent them. But my job isn't to make them happy and healed, to behave a certain way. My job is to continue to be the best mom that I can be in a healthy way and allow them to choose to engage that or not engage it. And that's like, another whole story. But it was so freeing, and it impacted my own self narrative about it, but also how I talked about it. And then that realization made me realize, oh, kids have stories, too. Just because their story that they're telling others or themselves is different than my experience with it doesn't mean mine isn't true or valid or that, you know, if they think I'm bad, that I'm bad, like, they have a perception that's going on in their brain. And so it actually, like, freed me to see them with more compassion, even once I began to apply that to myself. So, I know it's kind of a long answer there, but, no, no, it's impactful. It is. And it makes me want to ask you, how do we change the stories we're telling ourselves? Because I do believe you're not the only mother out there that's telling themselves that story. Yeah. So there's something called metacognition, which is our ability to sort of hear our own thinking or pay attention to our own thoughts. And it's really hard to do. But I would say first step would be try to slow down and pause and catch any story that you might be telling yourself. They're happening. All we look in the mirror, we hear a story, right? Somebody looks at us or doesn't look at us, says something or doesn't say there's a story, he's mad at me. I must have done something wrong, or, ooh, he's looking, whatever. Like, there's always a story.

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So if we are able, in any one of those instances, to slow down and say, huh, why did I respond that way, either in my feeling or in my thought or in my body? What was it?

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And it's easier if we had some kind of response, right?

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So, silly little example that I share with people. I was one day making eggs for breakfast, and I really wanted to have three eggs.

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And I was wrestling with whether or not to do it because I felt a little shame. Now, this had happened every time I'd ever made a breakfast or eaten a breakfast. I didn't realize it, but in this moment, I was like, shame. What is this funny feeling of shame I have connected to whether or not I want a third egg? And so I just paused and I listened, and I followed a trail in my mind, and I went, oh, my gosh, in my mind, if I have three eggs, then I can't excuse that I'm fat or ugly or unlovable or any of these other stories that I have, right? Then I deserve those labels. Because three eggs, in my weird, twisted perception, was the equivalent of, you've crossed the barrier and now. Now you're just all those things. Whereas if I only had two, then I could say, no, I don't know why I'm fat, ugly, unlovable, all these other things. Because I only had two. Ate two eggs. I had no idea that I had such. In a deep self worth connection to the number of eggs I ate until that moment when I stopped to recognize the feeling of shame instead of just letting it flip by, right, as it had done every other time. But this time, I could stop and go, that's actually ridiculous. And I stopped to ask myself other questions, like, what if I had two eggs and a donut? Am I okay then? Because it wasn't three eggs. And there was a part of me that was like, yeah, you're fine, as long as it's not three eggs. And I shared. I've shared this in a few different places. And I remember one person looking at me and they were like, marcie, I have five eggs every day. It's never even, like, crossed my mind that that would warrant somebody's, like, being fat or not fat or whatever language, right. That I was putting to it. So.

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So saying it out first, recognizing it was so, so helpful because then I could test it myself and go, that's actually. I don't think that's true. I actually don't think that's true. I think this is one of those stories that I need to work on. And then telling the story over and over and having other people respond to it has been so helpful because then I go, see, it is ridiculous. Look at all these people. Like, with the dog tilted head at me, what is it about three eggs? I don't even know how old I was when I picked that story up. But somewhere in my life, that became a thing and it impacted how I chose to eat breakfast. Now I purposefully have three or more eggs just to fight the story. I mean, depending, you know, but so now it doesn't. Now I don't have that. So that's the example of, like, if we can first recognize it and then if we can take the next step and begin to talk about it. And for some of us, that does require just some therapeutic help or someone to come alongside and help at first by listening and asking about the story. So I get to do that a lot with my therapy clients that they're just talking. And I say, oh, I heard a story in there. I want to pull on that one. Let's let's dig at that a little.

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Good. It brings me back to community and why I began this podcast because when women began to tell me, and it unfortunately is mostly women that share their stories with me, but sometimes men do. But when people are sharing their stories with me and they record it and go back and listen to it, they suddenly realize what amazing people they are. When most of the time we spend our time judging ourselves for the fact that we think we're not doing enough, or we criticize ourselves for processing those stories and actually believing them, and then we beat ourselves up over it emotionally, over and over and over again. But when I've had so many women that record their story and then say, it felt so good to play it back and hear it again. Yeah, because I think we do. I agree with you. I think there are a lot of stories we tell as well. I love that. Honestly, Marcia, I really want to go into talking more about storytelling, but I think we have to make that a whole other episode because we've opened more than three eggs here.

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Well played. I'm looking at eating six or seven right now, and my. My busy mind tells me that I need to pull back from doing that. Valuing your story. Let's talk about that. What would you say to someone who feels like their story isn't good enough or isn't big enough?

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I have a value around that standby strongly, and that is that every story matters.

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It's a bit trendy now to say your story matters, but I fully believe that it does. For all the reasons that we've already talked about and more, I genuinely think that the part of our brain that wants to experience that belonging and connection and feel safe in community will do so in the company of other stories. And so if we are left to think that we are the only ones, like, if I'm left to think I'm the only one that thinks three eggs qualifies me for a bunch of names, then I will continue to live that way in shame, quietly, and not grow or change or heal. I will stay stuck there. But if I say it out loud, then someone around me gets to say, oh my gosh, that's crazy. Or, oh my goodness, me too. And suddenly we've got a connection, regardless of their answer, right? It's the vulnerability. Now we've got a connection, and I can revisit my story and go, oh, okay, yeah, that is kind of crazy. Or we can bond around it. And so I think no matter what your story is, it has a place in the world with somebody else who needs to hear it. And I honestly don't care how or where you tell it. I help people publish their books, but I'm all about turning it into an interpretive dance or coming on a podcast or sharing it with somebody, your neighbor, over tea or a puppet show. Like, I think there are so many ways that we can give our stories that are in alignment with how we are wired and communicate our stories that are equally as important. So even trying to force it to, like, come into the world a particular way, I'm not a fan of that. I think we get to talk about the ways that you get naturally excited to connect with other people and figure out how to tell your stories there. Some people compose music and songs. We've got a whole industry of people telling their stories through lyrics and music. So I. I think that if you think your story isn't big enough or you don't know if it's good enough, that I'm telling you it is. I'm telling you it is because you are a unique person with value who has overcome things in life, who has also not overcome things in life and learned from that. Not overcoming that.

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Not only the generations behind you need, but your own generation needs and the generations ahead of you. I'm constantly inspired by kids younger than me and people a few steps ahead of me, and it helps me to feel like I'm gonna be okay, because we're all gonna be okay, but I can't know I'm gonna be okay if you don't tell me your story of how you got to where you are. So, I think that my work as a story coach is sometimes to help people develop that story that they want to tell in a way that can be the most impactful for the brains. And so I love digging in, but if someone comes to me and says, should I tell the story or not? My answer is always yes. Now, let's just work together on how to make it the best version of itself that someone can receive. Like, they're not.

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They're going to struggle with the textbook version of our lives, right? But they're not going to struggle with the emotional storytelling version of our lives, however, we can put that out there. And so, yeah, that's. You can tell. I get a little passionate about that value that I think every story matters.

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And how grounding that must be.

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Just as women have told me that. Hearing their own story has been very powerful for themselves, how grounding that must. Be to go through that process of taking your story, your emotions, acknowledging them getting past the ones that you don't want to listen to, rewriting them and being able to present that to yourself. As well as your children. What a legacy to leave your grandchildren.

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I can't imagine anything more powerful than a grandchild who you have raised to grow up and look at a dance or a song or a story that your grandparent wrote and really see who they are through this creative message. It's incredible. And I think sometimes we expect people to value it more than they do in certain seasons of life. But I do believe that just about every person will reach a point of valuing that, right? As a little kid, I didn't care where any of these countries were. Now that I'm older, traveling, I'm like, oh, oh, now, now. I like geography. As a kid, I didn't care. Same with.

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With old photographs, right? Growing up, they're showing me black and white photos. I have a memory of telling my mom, I'm so glad I wasn't alive when you were alive, because everything was black and white. I didn't realize that was film.

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I just thought her world was black and white, and so I wasn't interested.

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But now that I'm raising kids and I want a legacy for them, I want more pictures. I want more videos. I want to know who these people are in the pictures. And if it wasn't recorded, I don't know. I have about four pictures of an uncle who passed away and he killed himself in his twenties. It's very tragic. And I, like, go on the Internet through ancestry.com, and I'll find photos of him from yearbooks, like, wherever I can, and I just hang on to those. And I wish that I'd had family who'd been willing, conscientious enough, empowered to leave their stories behind for me so that I could leave them behind for my kids. And they could leave them behind for their kids because they are all part of the tapestry that we are. And I have huge gaps in my tapestry. And so my kids won't have nearly as many because I'm now sharing the stories that I do have, getting them down to pass on, but I'm adding mine to it. And I just think it's so, yeah, we all reach an age where we just want to know, where did we come from? Who are these people? How have they impacted me? Positive or negative? Right? Like, just, what. What is this? What's the rest of my tapestry? And what's my part in it? And how can I move forward in my unique way to pass on my parts of it. And so, again, I get passionate about this. I think it's so grounding and so important for all the reasons and others. And from another perspective, I just thought of how powerful it would be to help our grandkids that have gone through all of the trauma they have to put their stories down, how empowering it would be for themselves. I've helped a number of kids publish and tell their stories, and this is where our story matters. But it's not the only story that matters, right? I have a book called Parenting Children of trauma. I write it from the perspective of a fostadopt mom and a therapist, and it's impactful. People love it. It sells all the time. But I can't tell the story of an adopted kid or a foster kid. So when I come across one who wants to tell a story, I become their biggest champion. Because I need your voice and your experience to tell your own story. I can help, like, push you out into the world, but I need your voice to tell it. And so, to your point, yeah, let's leave our stories behind for our kids and our grandkids. But let's empower them to tell their own stories, too, because the same healing journey is going to happen for them. The same sense of connection and belonging. Because when they put their story into the world, however they put it out and they get any kind of feedback, they're not alone anymore.

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Right? When they see a story that represents them, they feel connection.

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I have another one called Speranza's sweater that is a foster adopt story. But again, it's like through my lens, so kids, very young kids, will see it and go, ah, that's me. And they might be the only foster kid in their home or the only sibling of their birth unit that's in a home. But suddenly they feel not alone because they see themselves in story. So we can give that kid. We can give that gift to kids, but kids can give that gift to kids, too. They're still so in touch.

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I just thought of a girl Christmas present for my grandchildren to take the story and put it into a soft cover book and give it to them for Christmas.

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Part two of our interview will be an episode specifically on writing and how we can either be encouraged to write our own stories or help our grandchildren do that. What a great project.

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Can you tell our listeners where we can find more of your work and access your books and resources? Yes. So you can go to marcypussy.com. and my TEDx talks are there, my counseling services are there.

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My books are listed there. You can also go directly to Amazon and search my name. They'll come up anywhere books are sold. So if you just search my name online, you know, if you prefer to go to a Barnes and noble, you can order it there, whatever you'd like to do, but they're all listed. I have eight children's picture books, a memoir, a few for foster and adoptive families, a number of different things. A young adult book on a foster adopt story. Clearly it's the thread in my own brain as I'm processing life. It comes out no matter what I'm writing, it becomes a theme and I. Will put a link to your website in the show notes. Perfect so that everybody can access that information. What a great interview and I'm so thankful for you and your time and your insights. And you've opened up a whole nother world for me too. That's very exciting. So thank you. Thanks for having me again. I know it's a lot to take in, but I think you can hear my passion. I get excited at different points, especially to empower the everyday person to believe that their life experiences matter and to understand a little more about why we are the way we are, but that also we can continue to grow and heal. And so thanks for sharing with me your platform to do that.

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Absolutely. Thanks so much for joining us today for another episode of grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity.

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I encourage you to share your challenges and your successes with us. Your story is undoubtedly one someone else needs to hear. You can submit your stories to the links provided in the podcast information. Your contributions will enrich upcoming conversations, creating a more supportive community in which we can learn and grow together. If you enjoyed this show, please share it with a friend that needs to hear. And if you love the show and you're listening on a broadcasting platform like Apple or Spotify, just scroll down in your app and please leave us a review. Join us next week for the heart wrenching yet hopeful episode as we sit down with a foster mother who has navigated the complex and emotional landscape of fostering and adoption with three biological children of her own. She and her husband decided to open their hearts and home to foster children a decade ago. Their journey took an unexpected turn when they welcomed a 13 year old girl with a history of abandonment and severe behavioral issues into their lives. Tune in to hear how she balances her demanding career, continues to support her husband, and nurtures her biological children who face their own physical and emotional challenges.

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This episode is a raw, honest look at the resilience required to foster the immense love that caregiving entails and the urgent need for systematic change. Don't miss this compelling story of compassion, strength and unbreakable bonds. Thank you for tuning in to grandparents, raising grandchildren, nurturing through adversity. Remember, you are not alone. Together we can find strength and hope in the face of adversity.

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Peace be with you, and I pray. That you find some time this week to listen to your inner wisdom amongst the noise and the pandemonium of this world.