Adriene Caldwell: Foster Care, Abuse, Suicide Survival, and the Power of Hope

[00:00:06] Hey there, listeners. Welcome to Shit That Goes Under Our Heads, the podcast where we normalize conversations around mental health. That's right. I'm Dirty Skittles and alongside my amazing co-host, G-Rex, we are here to share stories and tips from our incredible guests. Each episode, we deep dive into struggles and triumphs of mental health, offering practical advice and heartfelt support. Because no one should feel alone in their journey. Join us as we break the stigma and build a community of understanding and compassion.

[00:00:35] Tune in and let's start talking about the shit that goes on in our heads. Three! Welcome back to another episode of Shit That Goes On In Our Heads. I'm here with the awesome Dirty Skittles, my amazing co-host. And we have a very special guest today. We have Adriene. Adriene, welcome to the podcast. Welcome!

[00:01:00] Thank you so much for having me. Thank you both. It's truly a privilege to be here. Oh, you're kind. I am Adriene Caldwell. I am the author of the book, Unbroken, Life Outside the Lines. It's the story of my life from early childhood to early 20s. And during this time, I was either the witness to or the victim of the sexual assault of a young girl,

[00:01:26] the drowning death of another child, emotional and physical abuse, extreme poverty, mental illness, homelessness, horrifically abusive foster care, bulimia, drug and alcohol addiction, pedophilia, death, suicide, and incest. Wow. Yeah. Wow. We've never done that in unison before.

[00:01:55] You can record something now, like an album. Well, you are not recording an album. Welcome, Adriene. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story and your journey. And, you know, one of the greatest things about this podcast is every time somebody shares their story, we unlock somebody else's prison. So, welcome. Welcome. Thank you. And I'm going to let Dirty Kittles. Dirty Kittles. Dirty Kittles. Dirty Kittles.

[00:02:25] Dirty Kittles. Dirty Kittles. Dirty Kittles. Whatever your name is today. Go ahead. What do you got? Yeah. I'm first and foremost a very inquisitive person. So, if I ask anything where you're like, uh-uh, too triggering or I don't want to talk about it, let me know. My very first question is, Unbroken. Why that as the title?

[00:02:46] So, if you look up Unbroken in the dictionary, there are two different, not distinct definitions, but there are two ways you can interpret the word. So, unbroken can mean not damaged, not falling apart, something that's no longer working. That's one way to view it.

[00:03:09] The second way, and where I really like to view it, is not trained for service. Wild. Not conformed. Think of a horse, a horse that, you know, they have to be broken before you can ride them. You basically have to break their will, break their spirit.

[00:03:33] And for me, that unbroken really is at the heart of who I am and my message. So, that's why I'm unbroken. Okay. When would you say you realized you were unbroken? Around five years ago. Circumstances occurred that led me to start writing. And originally, the title was going to be Broken People.

[00:04:03] And it just didn't sit right with me. Just something about it. And I realized it. It was like a light bulb going on. Wait a minute. No, I am not broken. I am unbroken. And when I looked it up in the dictionary, I was like, yes, that is me. So. Okay. All right. Where do we begin?

[00:04:31] Like, you've given us a very high level of like, where you're coming from, which I very much appreciate. At what point, I guess, in your life did you realize what was happening either around you or to you was wrong? Sure. So, and if you want to pick from the list, and I can share a story as well. I'm happy to do that. I realized, or just continue with the questions. They're great. Love them.

[00:04:59] I realized that there was something off about my mom when I was around four years old. And I would later learn that she was developing schizophrenia. As you ladies probably know, schizophrenia doesn't really occur until late teens, early 20s. That's where it bloomed, if you will. Horrible word. Wrong word choice. Horrible word choice.

[00:05:30] So she had me pregnant at 18, had me right at 19. So she was really starting to exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia around the time that my memory was starting. And one of the things that I remember was sitting at the table with the plate in front of me and there were beans on it, but it was like breakfast.

[00:05:56] And my mom was telling me, you have to eat beans with every meal, Adrian. You have to eat beans. And my grandmother, the entire family lived in first a rental house and then a two bedroom apartment. It was my grandmother and her four children, which included my mom, obviously. My grandmother stepped in and said, no, we're not going to do that. Adrian, you don't have to eat beans with every meal.

[00:06:25] And that's when I kind of saw, I was like, okay, this is my grandmother managing the situation here. And she did that for me. My grandfather moved the family from North Carolina to Houston and then abandoned us. Like he left for his mistress of 20 years.

[00:06:49] And in fact, in a letter he said, you know, let me wait until my children are out of school and I will leave my family and go be with you. And that's exactly what he did. But my grandmother, so she stayed home while my mother and her two brothers worked and tried to fill the financial gap from my grandfather leaving.

[00:07:15] And my grandmother was my shield. She was my guardian. She kept me safe and away from my mother's oddities or quirks or, you know, as she was, as the schizophrenia was developing and she was getting worse and worse.

[00:07:37] She was spending hours laying on the floor in the bedroom and then eventually days where she wouldn't come out and there was no engaging with her. So my grandmother fulfilled that role for me of guardian protector until she passed away when I was seven years old. And that's when my world got turned upside down, truly turned upside down.

[00:08:07] Losing her changed the trajectory of my life completely. I would not have the story today that I do if my grandmother had survived. And she actually, she died from an aneurysm and she had the aneurysm because she couldn't afford her blood pressure medication. And she didn't want to ask her then boyfriend for the money.

[00:08:35] And he had proposed and she turned him down. So he, he would have happily given her the money. So that just makes the loss that much worse that it could have been prevented. Yeah. That has to be so hard as like a seven year old and like your entire life just crashes around you. Like, I don't even know how you handled that at that age.

[00:09:03] So if you go on my website, Unbroken Caldwell and go to photographs, this is kind of weird, but so is my family. There's a picture of me at seven years old and I have my hand on the coffin. We're out in the cemetery and someone took a picture of me with my hand on the coffin. And when you look at my face, you can just see the loss that I was feeling.

[00:09:32] The, I mean, it's to this day. So my grandmother was not perfect. He made many mistakes. She herself was physically abusive with her children, but she was my world and losing her just derailed my life.

[00:09:55] So I don't know who brings a camera to a funeral, but somebody did and they took a picture. So at seven, you were able to identify she was your protector? Yes. Like you knew then? Yeah. Absolutely. By the time I was seven, I was the witness to the sexual assault of my best girlfriend. And I had seen a girl drown.

[00:10:22] So at a very young age, I knew that little girls are not safe in this world. And I had that epiphany just from external circumstances. Those two events alone for many people are traumatizing. Yeah.

[00:10:42] So I knew what losing, well, I can't say that I knew what losing her was going to do to me, but I knew that things were going to change and it was not for the better. Yeah. So you lose your grandmother, you're staying in the same house with your mom and her siblings. In an apartment and after my grandmother passed, what happened?

[00:11:11] And by then my uncle John had met Aunt Rose and my other aunt, they actually worked together. So my future Aunt Rose and my other aunt worked together at, I think it was at Del Taco. And there was a new, a new grill guy, a new cook and my aunt called Dib on him basically. She's like, oh my God, he's hot.

[00:11:41] He's mine. And Aunt Rose was like, no, thank you. But when my aunt took Aunt Rose home, that's where she met Uncle John and they became, so I had two couples of aunts and uncles that my mother and I, and eventually my brother, we bounced between their houses. And we got to go back and forth. So my mom didn't have a vocation, a career.

[00:12:08] She, you know, she was working minimum wage as much as she could, and we just could not afford to live on our own. And it wasn't until we went through being homeless, intentionally homeless, so that we could get a government subsidized apartment that she lived on her own. Well, with my brother and me, it was not good. Were you, were you going to school during this time? Yes. Wow.

[00:12:37] I have gone to 13 schools by the time I graduated high school. Wow. Wow. Wow. I got really good at meeting people and being chirpy and, you know, making friends, but it was always surface level. And I kept the conversation about them, never about me. Yeah. So.

[00:13:11] And did you have like any teachers or anything, anybody in your life at that age that was willing to help you out? Yes. Good. I have had a few teachers in my life that have just been amazing. So my third grade teacher, Dr. Ann Weiss, and that's her name. I had her for third grade. And then fourth grade, we lived with Aunt Rose and Uncle John.

[00:13:41] And then that summer we were homeless, Salvation Army, Houston, downtown. And then fifth grade, we had the government apartment. And it, it was in a completely black apartment complex. And so we were literally the only Caucasian family there for the first year.

[00:14:04] And Dr. Ann Weiss, we were poor and not your typical poor. We couldn't afford toilet paper. So we used wash rags. We couldn't afford toothpaste. So we used baking soda. Couldn't afford the laundry mat.

[00:14:25] So we washed our clothes in the tub with a detergent that we used also for our shampoo, our body wash. We couldn't afford these things. These things aren't covered by food stamps. Paper goods aren't covered by food stamps. So we couldn't buy them. And Dr. Weiss, looking back, like she risked real, really, like if you look up the apartment complex, it was Haverstock Hill apartment complex.

[00:14:54] If you look it up and look at the Google reviews, it'll say, there are only occasional killings. You know, if you mind your business, you'll be fine. You know, ignore the drug deals, keep your head down and you'll be fine. And many reviews saying, I got out of there as soon as possible. And when I was there, it was 33 years ago.

[00:15:18] So now they have a police station on site and monitor the gates. It wasn't like that back then. And Dr. Ann Weiss would come and she would bring me the little travel size shampoo, conditioner, body wash, body lotion. Whenever she would go to conferences and stayed in hotels, she would make sure to save the amenities for me.

[00:15:46] And she would come bring them over to this apartment in this very seedy side of town. Just bluntly, white people don't go there. No business going there unless they're looking for drugs. So that was Dr. Ann Weiss. My senior year of high school, by this point I was awarded the state.

[00:16:16] I had been in foster care. And I received a congressional scholarship to do a one year foreign exchange to Germany. And I came back, I turned 18 September 7th. So I was living with Aunt Rose and Uncle John. And I knew that I wanted to go to college. But I knew, and we didn't talk about college in my family.

[00:16:46] I come from a very blue collar family. And it felt like almost me wanting to go to college, it felt like they took it. Like I was saying I was better than them or that they were inadequate. It just, I knew it rubbed them the wrong way. So I never talked about it. But I would go in early to school every day, early.

[00:17:13] And Mrs. Newton, I don't even know her first name. She changed my life. I don't know her first name. Mrs. Newton was an English teacher. I actually had to take English three and English four because my 11th grade year, none of my German classes counted towards my 11th grade year.

[00:17:32] So Mrs. Newton teaching English three, she was the executive, was married to an executive from Exxon. So she was a teacher who taught for the love of teaching, for the passion. She was absolutely the hardest teacher I had ever had in my life. She was demanding and unapologetically so.

[00:18:00] She pulled the best out of her students. So she didn't need money. She wasn't teaching to get by or as a profession. She was doing it out of love. And she was wealthy. And she purchased. So bear in mind, this is 1997, 1998. She purchased four computers and had them installed in her classroom with internet.

[00:18:26] So every morning I would go into her classroom and I would look up scholarship applications. And then I would go, and once I have the address, I would go and type a letter. I bought a typewriter specifically so I could have typewritten. And I would type a letter saying, please send me your application. And I would mail it.

[00:18:50] And then they would send the application and I would type out the application and mail it. So even though we had internet, you know, I want to give contact for any of the younger viewers or listeners that it was not like the internet of today. But near the end of that school year, I walked in one morning and she just looked ashy and not good.

[00:19:20] And I asked her, I was like, are you feeling okay? And she said, no, I'm really not. And that's the last time I talked to her. Wow. She was hospitalized. It turned out she had stage four, I believe it was pancreatic cancer. And within six weeks, she was gone. Wow.

[00:19:45] And I had asked at the school if I could come visit her in the hospital. And the response I got was no, she doesn't want you to see her that way. She doesn't want you to see her in the hospital. So she's in the hospital dying.

[00:20:04] And she tells her husband, I find this out later, she tells her husband, make sure to give one of those computers to Adrian so she can have one for college. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. I love that you had that in your life, right?

[00:20:27] You had these people that were really watching out for you and, you know, making sure that you were going to be okay. Yeah. And like, took you under your wing. And you know, we don't give teachers enough credit. There's some really good teachers out there that can change a person's life. Yes. And I'm glad you had that. I had it sporadically throughout my life.

[00:20:55] But the people that gave it to me, they were transformative. They were amazing. And I used their real names. I was, should any of it ever get back to the families, I want them to know what their family member did for me. And at her memorial, everyone expected me to speak. But I'm not that way with my deeper emotions. I couldn't talk. Yeah.

[00:21:24] And from that experience, have you taken lessons from them and like paid that forward in some form or fashion for somebody else that's in need or somebody that just kind of needs a guide? That's what I'm hoping to do with my book, Unbroken, Life Outside the Lines. Yes. That's the entire reason for the existence of the book. Yeah.

[00:21:51] So I know what those women did for me. And I mean, physical endangerment, you know, I have to draw the line there. I'm like, no. And they didn't. They went above it. They went beyond it.

[00:22:08] And of course, you know, third grade or fifth grade, you don't realize that, you know, that they could be that they're in danger just by coming to where you live. But yeah, they were amazing. I have a question. How it sounds like you've gone through like a lot of hard stuff.

[00:22:35] And I know that your grandmother, you know, was there and protected you. And you've mentioned this teacher now. But in between that, how did you not just fall from the difficult times like you were able to keep moving forward? And you had a goal to to get out of there, it sounds like, or to go to school, to go to college, to just keep pushing forward. Like, where does that drive come from?

[00:23:05] So my schizophrenic, physically abusive mother, the last beating I took from her, she beat me with, you know, the clothes rod in your closet that you hang your clothes on? And that's what she beat me with. But during one period of lucidity, she just looked at me, just deadpan. And she said, Adrian, school is your way out of this life.

[00:23:35] Getting A's will get you out of here. A's will change your life. And that, it just, it stuck with me. And I always excelled in school because I knew the rules. I knew the expectations. I was good at it. I was always teacher's pet. I was definitely a brown noser.

[00:24:00] I thrived at school because my home life was so chaotic. And I was struggling terribly. I remember in fifth grade, after getting beaten, that my mother would send me to go take a shower. And in the shower, I just sobbed and said, you know, why, God? Why am I going through this?

[00:24:31] And why do I have a crazy mom? And thank God I don't have a father. You know, how do these kids with two parents do it? And by the end of that year, I was fantasizing about hurting my mother. There were knives in the closet away from my toddler brother. And I was envisioning taking one and in her back.

[00:25:01] I don't want to get too graphic, but fifth grade. And that's what I was envisioning. And because it wasn't just beatings. She was crazy. She was mentally ill. She was schizophrenic. And it would take another 15, 17 years before I understood what being mentally ill was and why she was the way she was.

[00:25:27] Again, my family is incredibly dysfunctional. They don't even believe that mental illness exists. If you can believe that. Today's day and age, they don't believe in mental illness. They don't believe in schizophrenia. I mean, to me, that's crazy.

[00:25:54] But yeah, I was not doing well at all. And school was my safe place. It's where I knew I was safe. I couldn't get hurt. And I did everything I could to maximize it. And I did want to just add, if you foster kids, and I think this is pretty uniform through all 50 states.

[00:26:24] When you're a ward of the state, when you're in foster care until you turn 18, any public state university, they waive the tuition and fees for you. And nowadays, they even help cover your rent and your books and things like that. They didn't back when I went to college. But I think it's incredibly important to know about this.

[00:26:52] Because right now, only 3% of foster youth go on to college or vocational school. It's also good for vocational school. That's really good information to have. Do you have a relationship with your brother? At his request, no. And I begged.

[00:27:20] So my relationship with my brother is, this is a difficult topic for me. Because when my mother was pregnant with him, I was eight or nine years old, and she was pregnant with him. And we would walk around the neighborhood. We lived in an apartment with my aunt and uncle, the trashy ones, not Aunt Rose and Uncle John. We would walk around this community.

[00:27:49] And she would tell me that she was going to have to give him up for adoption, that she couldn't raise him, that she couldn't afford to have the baby. And I just begged her. I would beg her repeatedly, just saying, please, Mom, I wanted a sibling badly. And then when he was born, I became the mother.

[00:28:15] My mother couldn't be a mother to him because of her untreated mental illness. It would be another 18 years before she got help. But I, the time that I was in school, of course, I wasn't there to look after him. But other than that, I bathed him, I fed him, I cut his hair.

[00:28:42] I, and when we were homeless after fourth grade, for some reason, the shelter makes you leave every day from like 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. No idea why. But every day, my mother would leave and I would hold my brother's hand. He was two or three at that point. And we would just walk the streets of downtown Houston. We had nowhere to go.

[00:29:11] We had nothing to do. But I just, I remember holding his little hand. And then when the shelter finally let us back in, we had pushed the two twin beds in our room. We had pushed them together. And so it was my mother, my brother in the middle, and then me. And they would nap and I would read books. I went through their entire reader's digest that summer.

[00:29:37] But I would just touch him and stroke him and later on raise him as well as I could. When he, by the time he was four years old, he had a vocabulary of around 10 words, which is incredibly delayed. And yet again, nobody did anything. Nobody said anything.

[00:30:01] It wasn't until sixth grade, I found a best friend and her family took us in. And they ended up getting rid of me nine months later. Thirteen emotionally damaged, just dysfunctional 12 year old girl, you know, fitting in with their affluent, upper middle class lifestyle with their three. It just, it was a nightmare.

[00:30:30] But my brother was younger and he was able to acclimate and become a member of their family. So as painful as it was for me to get kicked out, I'm grateful to the mother because she took my brother to therapy and speech therapy and got him the help that he needed. And I can say that he would not have the life he has today without her.

[00:31:00] So it's hurtful to me because I got kicked out. I felt like I wasn't good enough. I didn't deserve their lifestyle. You know, remember, I'm coming from abject poverty to, you know, two Lexuses in the garage with the two story house and, you know, all the hoopla that comes along with it. So you ended up in college.

[00:31:30] Where'd you end up going to college? I'm too embarrassed about this. Don't be embarrassed. Okay. Because, so I was in the counselor's office at high school, first grade. And I overheard that they were having honors weekend at Southwest Texas State. And I knew that Texas A&M, I'm in Houston, by the way. I knew that Texas A&M was way too country for me.

[00:31:58] And I felt like University of Texas Austin, you know, I didn't really want to be just another number. I'd heard that their lectures had like 300 students. I was like, no, I don't want that. So I went to honors weekend. And while there, they talked about the honors program. And then I was staying with one of the girls in the dorm. She took me to a fraternity party.

[00:32:25] And I was like, I'm golden. This is fantastic. So, I mean, honors classes, fraternity party, I'm gold. Southwest was on Playboy's top 20 party schools in the U.S. in like 1985. So, despite the fact that I graduated in three years, everybody always said to me, oh, you went to a party school.

[00:32:54] I was like, yeah, I graduated in three years. So, I'm embarrassed. And I went there because nobody told me any different. Nobody said, hey, this is going to impact your ability to get a job later. This is going to matter. And it sounds incredibly naive to say that I didn't know that, but I didn't know that. Yeah. Go ahead. What did you major in when you went?

[00:33:24] Okay. So they didn't have an international business. What they had was international studies with a business focus. And I did a double minor in German and business administration. So I learned a little accounting, a little marketing, a little finance, a little, you know, communications. But I didn't learn anything tangible where a company could hire me and I had skills like

[00:33:54] an accountant. And it did not help that I walked the stage August of 2001 and then 9-11 happened. There were no international jobs to be had. And I had moved back home, back to Houston. And I floundered. I just, like a fish out of water.

[00:34:18] I was no longer doing drugs, but I was drinking just uncontrollably. And side note, if you drink while on Prozac, you have functional blackouts. So my very best friend, Joshua Neal Murray, two years ago, my husband and I took him and his partner to Cancun to celebrate our 35th friend-a-versary. Mm-hmm.

[00:34:47] That's awesome. That's really cool. He was amazing. He is amazing. He's been in my life since eighth grade. Wow. But I'm sorry. I lost track. You know what? It happens to the best of us. I lose track at least 42 times a day. I show up in places and like, why am I here? What am I doing? Like, where are my glasses? Oh, wait, they're on my face.

[00:35:12] So when you got married to your husband, like how much of your journey did you share with him in the beginning and has he been incredibly supportive? So I have to clarify that he is not my first husband. My first husband, the father to our daughter, he passed when I was 35 years old and our daughter was 10 years old. Wow. Yeah. The hints kept coming for me.

[00:35:41] You know, just because the book ended doesn't mean they stopped. There may be a book too. I'm not sure. I'm not sure that I'm emotionally willing to do it all over again. It was hell. So I am remarried. He is freaking amazing. But no, I did not tell him everything at first.

[00:36:09] We were very intense. I say we spent like the first five months of our relationship in the bathtub. It was one of these larger tubs and both sides were slanted. So we would just sit in the bathtub and talk for hours because I told him, I said, communication

[00:36:37] is going to make or break our relationship. So we would, you know, get in the bathtub and just talk. And there are no distractions in the bathtub. You can't answer your cell phone. You can't go check that email. So we got to know each other really well. But my story is overwhelming at some points.

[00:37:03] It's not an all at once kind of story and unbroken life outside the lines. My book, it's not an all at once book. It's dark. And I'm just being very honest and very open about it and heavy and triggering. That's why there are trigger warnings. But he's been amazing.

[00:37:29] He's the only person I've ever met who is like normal. He's never had like any major trauma in his life, which to me, that makes him abnormal. I'm like, okay, no, everybody has something. And, you know, his dad was a blue collar worker. And at points he had to do like school lunches, free school lunch. But like other than that's as bad as it gets really. Oh, and an older brother who picked on him.

[00:37:59] And I'm like, wait a minute. So I've had to explain these and he's incredibly empathetic and very willing to listen. But he doesn't. He can't say that he's been through it too. There isn't that. But not that I wish it on him. No, no. But he's been amazing both for me as well as my daughter.

[00:38:28] He's an amazing stepfather. He's amazing period. What brought you to write your story? So there's a little bit of a history to that. So I was awarded the state until I was 18. My mother had completely relinquished her parental rights. And I didn't see her for a decade. She was gone. She was out of Houston. She was gone. Nobody knew where she was. And when I was 20,

[00:38:58] I don't know if something came in the mail or maybe I'm just me. I requested my children's protective services case plan. I'm so maybe I was just nosy. I wanted to know what they had written about me. And so they send me this box. It's huge. It's a huge box. And it has these two stacks of paper in it.

[00:39:26] And it has every single document that's ever been written about me. So my brother and I came into CPS custody. I was sixth grade. He was around three or four. And it has everything, including the CPS report from first grade, where my mother had smacked me so hard that it left a red mark on my left cheek.

[00:39:56] And so I have actual documentation that CPS missed it when CPS was called out to my house when I was in sixth grade after my best friend, you know, persuaded me to go to the counselor saying they'd be able to do something. They completely overlooked the fact that there was already a preexisting complaint or remark.

[00:40:21] So this case of documents includes two psychiatric evaluations. The first one, which I include at the end of my book, as well as the abuse diagram showing the bruises and the marks I had from the last beating my mother gave me. And letters that I wrote to CPS during my foreign exchange. And just every document, including court records as well.

[00:40:48] For me to go to Germany on that foreign exchange, a judge had to sign off on it. So I got this huge box with these documents and I shoved it under my couch for 20 years. Every few years, I would pull it out and I would start going through it and I would just get overwhelmed. It was too much. And so I just pushed it back under the couch and I waited a few more years.

[00:41:17] So 20 years go by and I pull it out and I start going through it. And I'm married to my present husband. My daughter's thriving. I'm able to start unpacking it, literally taking it out of the box. And the abuse that I went through while living in the therapeutic foster home.

[00:41:47] I'll say it this way. My schizophrenic, physically abusive mother, I've never had a nightmare about her. The foster mother who was supposedly providing therapeutic care for me. I've had nightmares about that woman up until about two years ago. Nightmares where I wake up crying.

[00:42:10] And anyone who ever says that emotional abuse is not abuse, I will be the first one to stand up and say that is a lie. It is absolutely abuse. So I started reaching out first to make sure that she wasn't still a foster parent. And second, to see if there were any repercussions or consequences or anything that could happen against her.

[00:42:38] I felt like there was this huge injustice that she hurt me. She hurt me and she got away with it and she was potentially doing it to other girls. And I felt guilt for not addressing it sooner. So I get back from lawyers and from the state, just everybody says, no, there's nothing you can do about it. It's too late. You're 18 years too late.

[00:43:08] Statute of limitations. And that's when I started writing. That's when I said, okay, I can't do anything about that. And periodically, on the rare occasion in my life where I actually shared my background with anyone, they would always say, you should write a book. So I've heard that over the course of my life, you should write a book. You should write a book.

[00:43:36] And I always just know. And it took having no consequences for the foster mother for me to say, okay, yes, I am going to do this. And it's taken me four years and it's been absolute hell. It's been awful. Because I am an expert level when it comes to repression and compartmentalization. It's how I've survived.

[00:44:05] And writing Unbroken forced me to take each one out and to address it and to revisit it and to relive it. And our brains can't tell the difference between present day and the past. Whenever you think about or endure a trauma, the brain can't differentiate. So it was like I was reliving everything over again.

[00:44:31] And yeah, if you ask me if I would do it again, I don't know that I would. It's been that hard. Well, but I, it is ultimately a story of hope. Because where I am right now in my life is if you had shown my life to the 15 year old Adrian, she would have called you a liar.

[00:44:59] There's, at 15 years old, there was no way that I could ever believe or hope to believe that my life is what it is now. And I share that through Unbroken. The, where you are right now, it's not, don't think that it's going to stay this way forever. For younger people, you know, in a few years, you're going to be independent. You're going to be able to make your own decisions.

[00:45:30] And the decisions you make today affect your life tomorrow. And I, I just, I know it sounds like it's just a litany of traumas. It's not. It's about survival and coming out the other side and wanting to show other people you can get to the other side of this. You know, just start with a baby step. Just do something little.

[00:45:59] Make those decisions that are going to put you in a better place. Whether it's education or not drinking, not doing drugs, whatever it is. Start making those decisions because you'll find out sooner than later that you do have more power over your life than you realize. And you can change things. You can take control. Thank you. That's really beautiful. Yeah. Very beautiful.

[00:46:28] So I have a couple of questions. Okay. So my first question is, we're going to lighten the mood up here just a tiny bit. If your anxiety had a theme song, what is it and why? Theme song for my anxiety? Oh, I don't know. And I'm horrible at song titles, song names. Can I come back to it? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[00:46:57] So what do you do today for self-love? What do I do? I rest when I need to. I know my limits, physical, emotional, mental. I know my limits. And there are times where I have to just say, no, I'm not engaging with the world or anyone else right now.

[00:47:23] I need time to recuperate and to take care of myself. And I, little things, going to get a pedicure or just watching silly stuff on the internet, listening to music. Music is very powerful in my life, which is ironic because I don't know any of the names. Happy, upbeat music.

[00:47:54] I have to be careful what I listen to because I do know this one, Hurt. Johnny Cash's version, not Nine Inch Nails, but Johnny Cash. It will take me to a very dark place. I cannot listen to it. And it's an incredibly moving song, but I have to turn it off. The theme song for my anxiety. I'm going to kind of be a little lazy on this.

[00:48:23] You know the movie Rocky? Yeah. The theme song for Rocky? Yeah. And the Yo, Adrian? Yeah. That's my... Yo, Adrian. I remember that. Yeah. So that's my theme song, I think. I love that. And then I'm going to tag two more questions onto that because you kind of covered what Dirty Skittles asks. So it's a double-sided question. I'm going to ask you, what is your favorite word?

[00:48:52] And what is your least favorite word? Cunt. Is that your favorite or least? Least favorite word. Okay, beautiful. And what's your favorite word? Hope. I love that. Because you truly are the story of hope. Yeah. You came from a very broken background to where you are now.

[00:49:17] And you're a shining example of taking your life and running with it. And I'm so proud of you for being that and doing that and helping others and just being a fucking badass, man. Thank you. I haven't... It took me a while. Even after college. It took me a few years, five, six, seven years to get here. But you didn't quit. You didn't quit. You didn't quit. I tried.

[00:49:47] I tried. And if you read Unbroken, you'll see that in the prologue. I attempted suicide. I... Yeah. And it didn't work. I lost count of how many times I tried. So I had a revelation that I was put on this planet for a reason. And I would not be allowed to leave until I had fulfilled my purpose. And there was no memo.

[00:50:15] So I didn't know what the purpose was. But yeah, I tried. And I'm here for a reason. We'll see. Maybe it's the book. Maybe it's not. Well, thank you for staying. Yeah. Thank you for choosing to stay. Yeah. And just keep being a badass. Like you are a complete badass. And thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Because I am telling you, somebody's going to hear this episode. And we're going to help turn their life around. That's what I hope.

[00:50:45] That's my barometer of success. If I can change, and I mean truly, profoundly change one person's life, it will have been worth it. If I can do that, which it's a big ask. Changing a person's life is not like ordering takeout. It takes a lot to make a person change their habits, change their decision making, change their thinking.

[00:51:15] So if I can have a true, profound impact on one person's life, it will have been worth it, I think. So beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for joining us on this crazy little podcast of ours. It was great. It was great. Thank you so much for having me. I am honored to be here. Hi, all. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I'm G-Rex. And I'm Dirty Skittles.

[00:51:45] Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. We'd love to listen to your feedback. We can't do this without you guys. It's okay to be not okay. Just make sure you're talking to someone. Thank you so much.