Susan Snow's Tale of Turning Grief into Growth

Transcript

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Hello, hello, everybody, and welcome back to Judgment Free Zone.

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Thank you so very much for tuning into this episode.

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I am very grateful to have all of you in attendance to listen to this episode.

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I've got a special guest joining me today, ms Susan Snow, and Susan is the author of the Other Side of the Gun, so we will talk to you guys a little bit about her book today, and we'll talk, obviously, about where you can find that book as well, because it's going to be a fantastic read.

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What the book speaks on, though, is Susan's transition from victimhood mentality, if you will, to survivorhood mentality, and so I don't want to give too much away here, but Susan is the daughter of a slain LAPD detective, and this is the inspiration, of course, of where she started going through her journey and where the inspiration of the book comes from.

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So, susan, thank you so very much for joining me on Judgment Free Zone.

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Thank you so much for having me.

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Absolutely.

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I'm thrilled to have you.

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I'm glad we were able to connect because yours is a story that should be told and should be heard.

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And so one thing I do want to say even though I know there's been some years that have passed and I realize that what we're talking about primarily is this road of recovery, I am still sorry to hear about the tragedy in your life, because that's got to be.

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You know, it's something that, regardless of the years, doesn't go away.

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Thank, you.

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I appreciate that too.

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Absolutely.

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Yeah.

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Well, Susan, if you wouldn't mind, let's talk a little bit about where you are in life right now, and then we'll go backwards.

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So today you're speaking to me from the Denver area, correct?

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I am.

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I'm actually in Castle Rock, colorado, yeah.

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Oh, no, kidding, you know, I actually know.

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I work with somebody who lives in Castle Rock.

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Oh, that's funny.

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I don't know how big Castle.

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Rock is.

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Maybe you two know each other.

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About 40,000 people.

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Maybe not.

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It's grown over the years.

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But yeah, maybe not.

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It's grown over the years.

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Yeah, but you never know.

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Even though we have the 40,000 people, it's still a closer-knit community.

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Sure, no, that's good.

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I'm glad to hear that.

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Did you grow up in Denver? Or you did not correct no, where did you grow up at?

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So I grew up in Southern California, got it.

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So where did you grow up at? So I grew up in Southern California, and specifically in the San Fernando Valley.

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Okay, so that was like born there.

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I know you grew up there, so you were raised there, but were you born in California as well?

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Yes, yes, both my husband and I were oh okay, so today you're married in the Denver area.

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You are a published author, as we mentioned.

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I know you're also a public speaker.

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Yes, and you do some coaching as well, correct?

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I do Resiliency coaching.

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That's awesome.

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So glad to hear that, because a lot of times, the best coaches are the ones who are coaching from experience, right, and so it's great that you're able to take what you've been through and kind of give back.

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Yes, for sure.

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So let's talk a little bit about your family.

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Just, you're not current, I mean, but as you were growing up, you had mom, dad, yourself and your brother Was there.

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More to it than that.

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No no, just the four of you.

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Yes, and how much younger is your brother?

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He's 10 years younger than me 10 years younger.

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Okay.

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So, as we talked about this tragedy that occurred in your life, which inspired everything, this took place back in 1985.

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And I believe it was Halloween, correct? Yes, yes it was.

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Without going directly into the event that occurred.

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Halloween of 85,.

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Can you give me some lead up to that?

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Like, what was life like for you, you know, as a child, before we get to that stage of things? You know my teenage life was pretty normal.

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You know I had a dad that was a cop and so we had very strict rules for me just because, you know, he saw the worst of the worst and so he'd come home and he'd be terrified, I'm sure, for me and protecting me.

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I had a couple of incidents that happened when I was a teenager that he'd be terrified, I'm sure, for me and protecting me.

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I had a couple of incidents that happened when I was a teenager that he was my protector.

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So when I was really young, you know, he was on the streets and um, and I was too young to understand like the dangers behind that, you know, and being on the streets.

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But as he got, as I got older, he became a detective and I just thought, you know, I kind of had a false sense of security.

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I understand.

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Because in my mind, you know, he now has a desk job, he's not out there with the bad guys, and so, you know, I just I felt like nothing would ever happen to him.

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Sure so for years.

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As he's working the streets, there's the fear, and I'm sure not just in you, but with your mother as well.

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Now, was your mom a stay-at-home mom at that time, or was she also?

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No, she worked, yeah, they worked.

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So I grew up in a household where the schedules flip-flopped a lot, you know, and so there were times when dad worked at night and mom worked in the day, and then it flip-flopped and you know they were doing whatever they could to make it ends meet.

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So, yeah, and then you know, I was an only child for 10 years and then my brother was born.

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Yeah, yeah.

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So being the only child for 10 years, that's interesting too, because obviously you're the focus of both mom and dad.

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You're getting all of their attention.

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Dad's a cop, so he's probably most fathers.

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I'm a father of a daughter.

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A lot of us are already overprotective of our daughters, but especially with him being a cop, I'm sure there was even an added layer, if you will, an added layer, if you will.

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But as you mentioned, as you start to get older and he's still working the streets and we alluded to your mother as well there's got to be that fear, right, because dad is dad, he's the leader and the protector of the household.

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So certainly there's the fear.

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When he's working the streets it's like okay, anything could happen tonight on his shift or something, and so you have that fear.

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But then you mentioned he makes the move to detective and you're a teenager at this point, and so what department is your father working when he goes into being a detective?

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He was robbery, homicide.

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Robbery, homicide, okay.

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So I guess, to your point, I could see where some of that fear then would be alleviated, because now it's all investigative work, the crime's already been committed.

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He's going in to kind of look through the crime scene and try to determine who did what and where.

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Right, okay, so I'm with you.

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I would probably be a little more at ease too.

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My mind would probably be a little more at ease.

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Yep, and my dad was always very so, you know, unfortunately I I did not have the same relationship with my mother that I did with my father.

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My mother and I there was just, there was always a lot of attention, there was a lot of tension, you said, and she wasn't really present.

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When I was about 13 years old, my mother was working in a convent for girls and became friends with a young lady there and she had been through the ringer as a young girl, beautiful, stunning, stunning girl.

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Well, she got transferred out and my mom came home to my dad and asked if we could foster her, because there was some abuse going on at the new facility, because there was some abuse going on at the new facility.

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So they did, they fostered this 16-year-old girl and at the time I didn't have a sibling.

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So I worshipped her.

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She taught me all the bad things, though, like the drinking and smoking, cigarettes and whatnot.

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The drinking and smoking cigarettes and whatnot.

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But when she came around my mom, you know I was not the focus anymore.

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Yeah.

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And then, you know, my brother came around and this young lady just couldn't handle what it was like to be in a normal family environment.

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And she split.

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She ran away.

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Yeah, she ran away when she was 18 and was gone for a while, but she too was murdered when I was 13 years old, so I was in middle school she was murdered and that really changed the dynamic of my relationship with my mother drastically.

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My mom started to drink to cope with her loss and her grief Her loss and her grief.

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Yeah, yeah, and I don't blame her for that, but being young I was one I didn't understand really what happened.

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I didn't have any closure and I was not happy with both of them for that.

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But I get that they were just trying to shield me or protect me from that part.

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But I feel like you know, in hindsight I felt like if I had that experience and with the grief and all of that my dad's death I might've had a little bit more tools, sure, to deal with it years down the road.

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I could not agree with you more.

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I, I, and again, it's like you said.

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You look back on it and you say, well, this is.

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We're talking about the 1980s here too.

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So you know, in the 1980s things were very different and in general, the way the households were being different and in general the way the households were being ran and certainly the way children were sheltered, if you will, or shielded from some of these things that people just said that's too grown up for them.

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They don't but, and I have to say you know, being in my 40s, I was right there with you growing up.

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But I agree with you.

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I'm a father today.

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I don't shield my kids from things because we know today we're all experiencing something and we're going to experience it as we continue to get older.

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Life is going to come at you and how are you going to handle these things Right?

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And so yeah, you do have to kind of be aware you don't necessarily throw your kids into the fire, but there's a way to introduce them properly to to grieve for these things that that we might say, no, that's they're.

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They're too young for that.

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Well, again, I learned from my own experience, because you're right in the 80s there was no talk about mental health.

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We're.

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Gen Xers.

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And if the Gen Xers out there get what I'm saying is we raised ourselves.

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We didn't talk about our feelings, we just stuffed it.

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It was stiff upper lip and suck it up buttercup.

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You know that kind of thing, Right?

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Something wasn't wrong with you if you needed to express exactly if you needed to go to a therapist.

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That means you were crazy, like something was really wrong with you and um.

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So there was really no um, especially back then.

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There were no resources or anything that I could have utilized, even in schools there was nothing, and I didn't know how to verbalize.

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I had no idea how to verbalize.

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I knew how I felt and I was frustrated that I didn't get to say goodbye to her.

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I didn't have that closure because I didn't get to go to her services, but at the same time, because it was in a different area, it was in Northern California, so I didn't get to go.

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But you know, they were just trying to do what they knew best, sure, but you know, at the same time, after all of that happened, it was just a very difficult time for me to even connect with my mom?

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Yeah, certainly, and I think one of the things that should be said here too, as we talk about the emotions at 13 years of age, you need your mom, um.

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At 13 years of age, you need your mom, um, and you need your mom to kind of.

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You know, there's a part of us we need to be loved on, coddled, still to a degree and just yep, obviously you weren't receiving that at that time.

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Your mom was going through her own thing and it's hard for you at that age to accept the fact that mom's so upset over the loss of somebody else and you're you're like I'm the blood family here and I'm not getting what.

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I need and and and.

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What I realized now and I didn't took me 54 years to figure this out in writing a book but what I realized was that my mom is a narcissist, she has a narcissistic personality, and so I grew up with narcissistic abuse and I didn't obviously know that.

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Then it's been a long time, you know, moving through different scenarios and realizing this.

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So when you're in that, when you know it's like hitting your head against a wall, right, because they're so caught up in their own self that they're not able to see that you are going through something.

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Well, to your point, even if you'd had the ability to express what you were going through, that narcissistic personality, it probably wouldn't have helped you anyway.

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You know cause? Had you been able to say this is what I'm feeling, some way, somehow that feeling would have been turned around on you.

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Correct.

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Yeah so yeah, again, I'm learning this, you know, I'm learning this and I talk about it in my book, under not knowing when I read when I wrote the book.

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I'm learning this and I talk about it in my book Under not knowing when I read.

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When I wrote the book, I not knowing that what I was describing was narcissistic behavior, I I had no idea and as I was going through the, the editing part of writing my book, um, that's when it just kept coming to me that this isn't, this isn't a normal, uh, relationship between a mother and a daughter.

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Now, mothers and daughters, you know they bump heads and whatever, Right, and that's normal, but this was a little bit different.

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Yeah, I understand.

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Yeah, so when my dad to describe him, he was the type of man that, no matter if it was a work colleague or a friend, or his kids or even his wife, when he was speaking with you, when he was talking with you and you were having a conversation, he made you feel heard, he made, he gave you a safe space.

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He always gave us safe spaces to tell him Now.

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My brother was so young when he was killed but I had 17 years with him and the conversations I had I I am grateful because I did have someone who was present when you spoke to him and he made you feel like you were the most important person in that room, always.

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That's a blessing it is.

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You at least had that from your father.

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I really am.

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I'm just sorry you lost it.

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Yeah, but let's get to that point then, Susan.

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So you know, you've already made mention that your father was killed, so we mentioned October 31st 1985.

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So that's the day your life completely changes.

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Totally changed.

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Can you tell us kind of how that day unfolds?

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Yeah, so, like you said, it was Halloween and the morning started out with my dad was.

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He was not a fashionista, let's put it that way, and he was a little bit colorblind, let's just put it that way.

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And he was a little bit colorblind.

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My mom had already left for work and she had a costume party and a bunch of stuff going on, so she had already taken off and he was going to take me to school, but he was super nervous that day.

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He was supposed to testify in court on the case that he was lead detective on.

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Okay and Do you recall, was this a homicide case, on the case that he was lead detective on Okay and Do you recall?

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was this a homicide case? Do you recall?

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It was.

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It was a robbery, it was a robbery case.

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So I had asked him that morning, you know, can I go to a party tonight? And this was a Thursday night.

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And he looked at me and he said, no, it's a school night, you can't go.

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And of course you.

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And he said no, it's a school night, you can't go.

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And of course you know, being a teenager, I argued with him All the reasons why I needed to go to this party.

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You're 17,.

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Susan, right, are you a senior in high school.

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I am yes, yes, you really need to go to this party.

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I had to go to this party, right, and I wanted to go with my boyfriend and who I'm married to, oh, and so I wanted to go with my boyfriend and he was older and, you know, although my dad really didn't know that he was older, I really didn't know that he was older, anyways.

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So he had just learned that he was older and so he was getting ready and he was asking me to help him get dressed and he was really nervous about what he looked like.

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It was really weird and so I helped him because I thought maybe if I do a good deed he'll let me go to this party.

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So he you know, he regular day dropped me off in school and the whole day I was just concocting this plan of going home and cleaning the entire house and, just like you know, impressing them.

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And I got home and a little bit later my mom came home and she was getting telling me about her day and getting her costume off.

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And the phone rang and being a teenager, I thought who's calling my parents? It's just me, right? So I ran to the phone and I answered it and it wasn't for me.

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It was a lady from my brother's school, Okay, and all she said to me was there was a drive-by shooting and your dad was involved.

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Wow, and I just like I I couldn't wrap my head around what she just said.

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I handed the phone to my mom.

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She came around the corner, handed the phone to my mom and I just kind of watched.

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I could kind of listen to the hear the conversation a little bit, but, um, her posture told me that it was not good.

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Yeah.

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So she got off the phone.

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She looked at me and said we're going to the school, so this is your brother's, so this is an elementary school.

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It's a Faith Baptist school.

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It's from preschool on up to 12th grade.

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So, it's a private school and so we didn't even speak to each other all the way there, and it was about a seven minute ride to the school.

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When we got there, it was a lot of chaos and we got out of the car.

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Neither one of us knew what we were about to walk into.

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And so the way that the school is the front of the school and then there's the back of the school and this was pickup time, so all the kids were being picked up in the back of the school.

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So we headed towards the back of the school and saw ambulances, Police officers were walking around and they had tears in their eyes and we rounded the corner and saw my dad's truck and so both of us started to run, walk towards the truck and that's when some officers kind of saw what was going on and they ran over.

00:22:32,409 --> 00:22:46,390
When we rounded the corner, we saw my dad's body and the aftermath and clearly watching my mom scream and drop to her knees.

00:22:46,390 --> 00:22:57,368
I just looked at the ambulance and seeing the lights on it and stuff and I was just not able to process why they weren't helping him.

00:22:58,269 --> 00:22:58,530
Sure.

00:23:01,317 --> 00:23:09,403
So we were escorted away into an office and my mom was taken aside and I'm I'm assuming by detectives.

00:23:09,403 --> 00:23:14,544
I didn't know where my brother was, I didn't know if he was hurt.

00:23:14,544 --> 00:23:17,919
I didn't know if he was hurt, I didn't know what he saw.

00:23:17,919 --> 00:23:19,080
I didn't know anything.

00:23:20,022 --> 00:23:20,103
And.

00:23:20,222 --> 00:23:38,368
I was just trying to grasp what was happening and I was sitting there and there were two ladies that were in the office and they were chatting with each other and the one lady said that my dad had, that my dad had died and you hear this.

00:23:38,650 --> 00:23:39,715
That's what it hit me.

00:23:39,715 --> 00:23:49,355
Yeah, and it hit me, and part of me was like I wanted to run out of the room and like keep running.

00:23:49,355 --> 00:24:06,948
Um, I wanted to run away from the nightmare that was occurring and the problem was is that my legs couldn't move, like I was literally felt like I had cement in my feet.

00:24:06,948 --> 00:24:13,755
I just I couldn't move and my mom came up to me and she said I'm sending you with a neighbor.

00:24:13,755 --> 00:24:15,771
And my mom came up to me and she said I'm sending you with a neighbor.

00:24:15,771 --> 00:24:18,441
So she sent me away, just you or is your little brother?

00:24:19,104 --> 00:24:19,585
Just me.

00:24:19,585 --> 00:24:30,808
She sent me away to the neighbors and part of me was like, wait, wait, like I need you.

00:24:30,808 --> 00:24:34,003
I need to know where my brother was.

00:24:34,003 --> 00:25:09,619
But I went with a neighbor and I had to navigate all of that stuff by myself and the poor neighbor had known us for years and so she was trying to navigate her own shock and grief and didn't know what to say to me clearly, and I just begged for her to call my boyfriend and what she did, and but she didn't give him any information.

00:25:09,619 --> 00:25:18,396
Over the phone she told him that my dad had been shot, that there was a drive-by shooting at the school.

00:25:18,396 --> 00:25:24,616
So when he showed up he was like, okay, get your coat, let's go to the hospital.

00:25:24,616 --> 00:25:29,428
What hospital is he at? Where's your mom, where's your brother? He has full questions.

00:25:29,428 --> 00:25:32,641
And I just stood there in front of him.

00:25:32,641 --> 00:25:37,778
I just couldn't, because if the words came out of my mouth it was real.

00:25:38,641 --> 00:25:39,201
Absolutely.

00:25:40,364 --> 00:25:48,105
And I didn't want to say those words, but he kept prodding for us to leave and finally I just said he's gone.

00:25:48,105 --> 00:25:56,347
He's not at the hospital and it's the first time I've ever seen my husband, was my boyfriend dropped to his knees.

00:25:56,347 --> 00:26:01,145
He was 19 at the time and we had been dating three months.

00:26:01,145 --> 00:26:02,250
Oh, wow.

00:26:02,250 --> 00:26:09,669
Now most guys at 19 would be like ha ha, bye, bye, I can't.

00:26:09,835 --> 00:26:15,784
This is uh-uh, nope, yeah this just got heavy, no, no no, no, no.

00:26:18,516 --> 00:26:26,801
Something in him told him to stay and he was there for me that night and I will always be grateful for that.

00:26:27,765 --> 00:26:28,487
Always, I'm sure.

00:26:28,487 --> 00:26:32,946
Well, and he was there for you that night and he's still there for you, as you guys are now he is.

00:26:33,275 --> 00:26:35,323
We've been, yeah, we've been together 38 years.

00:26:36,596 --> 00:26:42,567
So happy for you that you had him there, because you know he clearly has a very good heart.

00:26:42,567 --> 00:26:47,644
You know, you make a mention of a 19 year old and you're absolutely right.

00:26:47,644 --> 00:26:48,807
I mean, you really are.

00:26:48,807 --> 00:26:51,798
But I will say this you know it's a blessing.

00:26:51,798 --> 00:26:57,223
It just comes to my mind, susan, to say this, because in that moment you need a man.

00:26:57,223 --> 00:27:01,508
You've got a 19-year-old kid, but he's being the man you need.

00:27:01,828 --> 00:27:02,189
Yeah.

00:27:02,670 --> 00:27:03,210
That's awesome.

00:27:03,510 --> 00:27:33,836
Yeah, and you know, I think a lot of it too, is that, like, literally, my life changed so completely drastically and because, like all of a sudden, my entire quiet neighborhood became a circus, like it was, there were police officers everywhere, now, unbeknownst to us, we were in, we were in danger and I didn't know that it didn't come out until the trial.

00:27:34,856 --> 00:27:37,118
Sure yeah, so let's talk about that briefly.

00:27:37,118 --> 00:27:40,323
You mentioned that this is pickup time at this school.

00:27:40,323 --> 00:27:45,008
Yeah, there's a drive-by shooting, but this isn't random.

00:27:45,008 --> 00:27:47,329
No, they're just shooting to shoot.

00:27:47,329 --> 00:27:48,612
This is targeted.

00:27:50,055 --> 00:27:50,415
It absolutely was.

00:27:50,415 --> 00:28:10,086
So the man that my dad was testifying against that day had a robbery ring and he had been planning my dad's murder for months, wow, months, so there were multiple people that were involved in this planning.

00:28:10,086 --> 00:28:21,116
He was on bail while he was on trial and it gave him the opportunity to do what he did.

00:28:21,116 --> 00:28:47,320
So, yeah, I mean, he laid in wait with his Mac 10 and he waited for my dad to come out with my brother, and my dad put my brother in the truck and rounded the front of the truck and saw what was coming at him, told my brother to duck down in the truck, which he did, and it saved his life.

00:28:47,775 --> 00:28:50,203
How tragic for your brother too.

00:28:50,203 --> 00:28:51,318
I mean unbelievable, absolutely yeah.

00:28:51,318 --> 00:28:54,455
Or your brother too, yeah, I mean it's unbelievable, absolutely so.

00:28:54,876 --> 00:29:13,945
You know, it's been a journey for all of us and I will tell you, there were times in my life where I felt like a victim, but most of the time I told myself nope, you're a survivor.

00:29:15,367 --> 00:29:15,949
Good for you.

00:29:16,154 --> 00:29:19,099
I survived this Like I'm still here.

00:29:19,099 --> 00:29:23,346
I'm still, you know, barely at times, sure sure.

00:29:24,076 --> 00:29:24,476
You know.

00:29:24,476 --> 00:29:31,628
So after that it was very chaotic in my house.

00:29:31,628 --> 00:29:36,266
They didn't catch the guys for six days, okay.

00:29:36,266 --> 00:29:49,067
So we had 20 officers in our front yard, 20 officers in the backyard, helicopters overhead, all the time for six days.

00:29:49,067 --> 00:29:52,826
If I went anywhere, I had bodyguards.

00:29:52,826 --> 00:29:58,980
If I went anywhere, I had bodyguards Not the media, because it was such a huge.

00:29:58,980 --> 00:30:05,066
It was, first, technically the first assassination of a police officer.

00:30:05,066 --> 00:30:13,736
Two, it was the first school shooting, technically, right, right.

00:30:13,736 --> 00:30:20,148
So the media was all over this and they were all over us.

00:30:20,148 --> 00:30:34,664
And so not only was I dealing with all of that going on, I was also dealing with the fact that it took the media two days to figure out he had a teenage daughter.

00:30:34,664 --> 00:31:13,617
Wow, and that's because and you know, and yeah, I mean, all of the focus was on my brother, he was six, and my mom and obviously my dad and obviously my dad, but that wasn't easy for my 17-year-old self because one, I just got pushed aside that night and then, you know, I don't feel important.

00:31:13,637 --> 00:31:20,996
You know, in that, in that scenario, yeah, and also to put it in context, you just lost the only parent you were close to at this point in time in your life.

00:31:20,996 --> 00:31:23,165
It's the only parent you had this bond with.

00:31:23,165 --> 00:31:27,963
You know you mentioned how mothers and daughters they always do butt heads.

00:31:27,963 --> 00:31:38,303
It's like fathers and sons we butt heads also, but there's that special place between a father and a daughter there, you know there, and so you had that, you had that bond.

00:31:38,303 --> 00:31:46,692
It's now been ripped away from you in the most horrendous way and then, to your point, there's a feeling now of neglect.

00:31:46,913 --> 00:31:55,589
I lost the person who loved me most and now I'm being neglected, yeah, not only my other loved ones, but now also by the media.

00:31:55,589 --> 00:32:00,787
So I understand how, yeah, and there had to be so many emotions going through you.

00:32:00,787 --> 00:32:05,625
You know you're you're trying to figure out what in the world just really happened.

00:32:05,625 --> 00:32:07,656
Yeah, you know you got that grief.

00:32:07,656 --> 00:32:19,479
Yeah, on top of the grief, you are essentially being hunted, perhaps by very bad people who have proven how dangerous, in fact, that they are.

00:32:19,479 --> 00:32:26,018
So, yeah, I can't imagine, susan, it's hard enough when a person says I lost a loved one.

00:32:26,018 --> 00:32:30,028
Let's look at cancer, for example, I lost a loved one to cancer.

00:32:30,028 --> 00:32:34,895
It takes just to go through that, takes such a toll on somebody.

00:32:34,895 --> 00:32:39,186
But this, this has really been amped up for you guys in a big way.

00:32:40,095 --> 00:32:49,018
Yeah, well, and I think you know, everybody deals with grief and loss differently, everybody deals with trauma differently.

00:32:49,018 --> 00:33:08,027
And, like I said, you know, when I I I told you that the drinking thing, you know, my mom did that with my father as well, and it just increased the abusiveness of that situation, and so I watched that happen and I thought there is no way I'm going down that road.

00:33:08,027 --> 00:33:20,637
Could I have sure, you know, I'm a teenager, um, but at the same time it was just, I think, a lot of the, the stuff that I was dealing with.

00:33:20,637 --> 00:33:21,903
First of all, I didn't sleep.

00:33:21,903 --> 00:33:32,961
Yeah, like I, I couldn't sleep because every time I closed my eyes I saw that scene over and over again, um and I, and I would be terrified to sleep.

00:33:34,542 --> 00:33:35,144
That makes sense.

00:33:35,743 --> 00:33:41,009
And, um, you know, I didn't know what I was going through at the time.

00:33:41,009 --> 00:33:44,271
I didn't know the word for it, but it was suicidal ideation.

00:33:44,271 --> 00:33:59,800
I wanted to be with my dad and I didn't care how that worked or how that happened, or you know, I didn't know how, but I just had a yearning to be with you know, to be where he's at.

00:33:59,800 --> 00:34:02,623
Um, I didn't want to be there.

00:34:02,623 --> 00:34:09,291
And then there's the anxiousness, and that stemmed from not having the security.

00:34:09,291 --> 00:34:17,237
Even though there were cops everywhere, I did not feel safe because the one person that made me feel that way was gone.

00:34:17,237 --> 00:34:41,570
And so I was anxious, I had anxiety, panic attacks, didn't know what those were and went through them alone most of the time, and so, in depression and not wanting to get out of bed and just not having any energy, I was exhausted, but I felt like I was floating on air, like I was floating through life.

00:34:42,530 --> 00:34:42,771
Sure.

00:34:43,416 --> 00:34:53,527
People would just push me in the right direction and I would just go and friends didn't know what to say or how to help me or how to support me.

00:34:53,527 --> 00:34:59,331
You know they're my age and they don't understand trauma.

00:35:00,233 --> 00:35:00,355
Sure.

00:35:00,675 --> 00:35:52,775
And so I just felt very alone most of the time and, um, I mean, even my own husband was really, really struggled on how to to support me, and I think part of it, too, is like I automatically got this, I'm going to have to figure this out myself, mentality, and um, about a month, and when I tell this story, um, this is what resonates with a lot of people, especially right now, when we talk about trauma and we talk about, you know, the victim mentality and the survivor mentality.

00:35:58,336 --> 00:36:01,454
So, about a month after my dad was killed, LAPD came to my mom and said we want to pay for a therapist for each one of you.

00:36:01,454 --> 00:36:04,257
And my mom agreed.

00:36:04,257 --> 00:36:09,123
There was a little hesitation on her end, but she agreed, Mm-hmm.

00:36:09,123 --> 00:36:11,324
So she came to me and said we're going to see a therapist.

00:36:11,324 --> 00:36:21,775
Now, remember, in the 80s, if you went to a therapist, that means you were crazy Sure.

00:36:21,775 --> 00:36:27,614
So I thought, okay, well, I'm going to do what mom says I need to do and I'm going to go.

00:36:27,614 --> 00:36:29,938
And I had no idea what to expect.

00:36:29,958 --> 00:36:46,686
Um, I met with him and, um, our sessions were very shallow, Like there was no real diving, there was no questions to make me open up.

00:36:46,686 --> 00:37:02,806
Right, and I think part of it in hindsight, is that he was not qualified enough to handle the amount of trauma that I was dealing with and maybe he was a little afraid to unlock the Pandora's box.

00:37:02,806 --> 00:37:21,704
Yeah, so for an entire year I saw this man and all we talked about was my relationship with my mother, my relationship with my mother, my relationship with my boyfriend and school and every session I would be like today's the day.

00:37:21,704 --> 00:37:24,601
Today he's going to fix me, Today he's going to make me feel better.

00:37:24,601 --> 00:37:37,014
And it didn't happen him.

00:37:37,034 --> 00:37:42,648
I went into his office for a session and he said you're a well-rounded young lady and you're going to be fine for the rest of your life and I don't need to see you anymore.

00:37:42,648 --> 00:37:55,047
And I thought huh, Wow, I am that broken I am that.

00:37:55,047 --> 00:38:01,139
That's the exact mentality that happened to me right in that moment is you are broken.

00:38:01,139 --> 00:38:04,454
This is something you're going to deal with for the rest of your life.

00:38:04,454 --> 00:38:05,697
You're never going to feel better.

00:38:05,697 --> 00:38:10,282
So just deal with it, move on Right.

00:38:10,282 --> 00:38:17,628
And that's what I did, and I struggled in it, you know.

00:38:17,628 --> 00:38:30,530
I talk about the fact that, because I wasn't dealing with the trauma, it affected me in all aspects of my life.

00:38:31,655 --> 00:38:31,876
Yeah.

00:38:32,137 --> 00:38:32,878
Down the road.

00:38:33,721 --> 00:38:54,079
Sure, and that's typically how it goes what you're sharing right now and I really appreciate you sharing this because it's something that I've talked about before on this show for our listeners but everybody kind of goes through something and, depending on when you grew up like what you and I are talking about the Gen Xers no one cared.

00:38:54,079 --> 00:38:55,923
I mean, that's the best way to say it.

00:38:56,123 --> 00:39:01,643
No one really cared and, to your point, even if you did go to therapy, it wasn't what you get today.

00:39:01,643 --> 00:39:03,898
There wasn't a lot Like today.

00:39:03,898 --> 00:39:08,744
You have cognitive behavioral therapists and you have all this different stuff to say let's go explore.

00:39:08,744 --> 00:39:10,695
Where did it come from? But you really weren't getting that.

00:39:10,695 --> 00:39:13,905
Yep, where did it come from, but you really weren't getting that.

00:39:13,905 --> 00:39:20,719
And so what I love is you're talking about.

00:39:20,719 --> 00:39:22,726
I wasn't going to be a victim.

00:39:22,726 --> 00:39:27,277
You did have a mentality of I will survive, but without the proper tools, you're going to hurt yourself either way.

00:39:27,277 --> 00:39:29,143
Of course, that's what happens.

00:39:29,143 --> 00:39:36,559
I've been there too, and I will say this one of the proper tools is what you and I are doing right now.

00:39:36,559 --> 00:39:37,780
It is being vulnerable.

00:39:37,780 --> 00:39:41,963
One of the proper tools is to, whatever I do, give people the safe space.

00:39:55,434 --> 00:40:09,440
When I am vulnerable, then they have the license to feel like I am a safe space and that they can say whatever they need to say, to tell their own story.

00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:48,702
But what I will say is that in that mentality, from when I first saw that therapist after I stopped seeing him, other people would say things like oh my gosh, you're so strong, you're so brave, you're so this, and so when people tell you that you start to wear it and I talk about the emotional mask, so I could be going through and be like, you know, hot mess express internally, but that mask is what you saw every day.

00:40:48,702 --> 00:40:50,648
That's not healthy.

00:40:51,875 --> 00:40:53,878
Absolutely, that's not healthy.

00:40:53,898 --> 00:41:06,327
Absolutely that's not healthy, and so I talk about that a lot too, because I feel like there's a lot of people walking around with emotional masks on, but they're, they're in turmoil, you know.

00:41:06,327 --> 00:41:27,483
They're in absolute turmoil internally, and whether they're afraid, you know fear is the biggest thing that holds us back in life, and I have a talk about it calling bulldoze your fear, because I've had to do it multiple times in my life in order to get onto the other side of it.

00:41:28,023 --> 00:41:36,855
You know, whatever it was, I was going through it was.

00:41:36,875 --> 00:41:37,255
I was going through.

00:41:37,255 --> 00:41:37,838
So, um, yeah, I mean it took me.

00:41:37,838 --> 00:41:54,768
So I struggled with that for 14 years and, you know, went through all the life things you know got married, struggled on my wedding day, um, really struggled on my wedding day, but I put my mask on and I was great, right, I was fine that lovely word, fine, I was fine.

00:41:54,768 --> 00:41:57,576
Um, and then I had kids.

00:41:57,576 --> 00:42:03,987
I had two kids and we had moved to Colorado and I was working as a hairdresser.

00:42:03,987 --> 00:42:06,556
Uh, we had been here two years.

00:42:06,556 --> 00:42:16,409
So, we, we moved here in 97 and, uh, in April of 99, the Columbine shootings happened.

00:42:17,630 --> 00:42:17,911
Yeah.

00:42:18,757 --> 00:42:19,922
And I was working.

00:42:19,922 --> 00:42:41,139
I had taken a break went into the back, turned on our little TV and as I was watching the coverage, I saw the school, the ambulances, the police officers walking around, kids who were my own age and little did I know.

00:42:41,139 --> 00:42:47,445
I started having flashbacks and I turned white as a ghost.

00:42:47,445 --> 00:42:51,123
I was having a panic attack.

00:42:51,123 --> 00:42:54,041
I felt like my chest was going to pound out on my chest.

00:42:54,041 --> 00:43:06,844
Um, it was brutal and I had no idea what was happening to me and my colleagues didn't know my story.

00:43:06,844 --> 00:43:10,635
I didn't tell everybody when we moved to Colorado.

00:43:10,635 --> 00:43:15,465
My mentality back then was I'm leaving all of that in California.

00:43:16,266 --> 00:43:16,768
Sure yeah.

00:43:17,878 --> 00:43:21,356
I want a fresh start, exactly Um.

00:43:21,356 --> 00:43:33,981
And so my my colleagues were, like what's going on with you? Like you're too young to have kids there, but do you live in that area? Do you have friends that go there? Like what is going on with you? And I looked at them.

00:43:33,981 --> 00:43:41,523
I said I have no idea what's happening right now and it scared me.

00:43:41,523 --> 00:43:56,463
I was just like I haven't felt like this, all of these things happening all at once in a very long time, and so I had to get back to my clients.

00:43:56,463 --> 00:44:02,099
So I put my emotional mask back on, put it back on I was fine.

00:44:02,099 --> 00:44:06,708
I was fine, this has nothing to do with me, I'm fine.

00:44:06,708 --> 00:44:14,829
And I went about and did my hair clients the rest of the day Like nothing happened.

00:44:14,829 --> 00:44:30,547
Everybody else around me was in turmoil and, you know, sad and whatever, but I was like nope, nope, nope, I'm not, nope, it's not going to get me and I'm not going to let these people see me sweat, so to speak.

00:44:31,148 --> 00:44:31,369
Sure.

00:44:32,275 --> 00:44:36,880
The minute I walked out the door, though, was a different story when I was alone.

00:44:38,255 --> 00:44:39,360
It's coming out right.

00:44:39,360 --> 00:45:10,947
The thing about that too, susan, and I'm sorry to interrupt, but the thing that goes through my mind as you're speaking about this and you're dead on with the emotional mask, dead on with the emotional mask what a lot of people don't realize, unless you're that individual, is that even in the moment, while you're back at work and you're saying I'm fine, you know darn well, on the inside you're crumbling, and that's what's so hard about the emotional mask, as you put it, and I love that you say that that's what's so hard.

00:45:10,947 --> 00:45:18,922
We don't want people to see us hurt, so we say I'm good, everything's fine, and it's such a lie, you know.

00:45:18,922 --> 00:45:22,509
It's like nothing is fine, I'm absolutely a wreck.

00:45:23,034 --> 00:45:39,614
Yep, and now I'm a mom, right, and a wife and, um, you know, my husband been with me for many years by this point, and he, um, he watched me spiral.

00:45:39,614 --> 00:45:46,186
Um, you know, I I did the best I could to pretend that I was okay, but I really wasn't.

00:45:46,186 --> 00:45:53,547
And he was smart and he was in tune and he knew something was not right and it was a slippery slope.

00:45:53,547 --> 00:46:05,621
He thought he was going to lose me, um, and my kids would lose their mom, and I was fighting internally not to do that.

00:46:05,621 --> 00:46:10,630
But at the same time it's you get to a point where you get tired.

00:46:10,630 --> 00:46:20,641
So he met me at the door one day and he said you have two choices you either go get help or I'm putting you in a hospital.

00:46:20,641 --> 00:46:24,688
And I said, okay, I'll go get help.

00:46:24,688 --> 00:46:31,704
So I went to a doctor and the doctor put me on antidepressants, because that's what they do.

00:46:32,105 --> 00:46:36,315
You know that's that's their, that's their lane, yeah.

00:46:36,315 --> 00:46:39,365
And then he said and we need to find you a therapist.

00:46:39,365 --> 00:46:44,501
And I thought, oh, no, here we go again.

00:46:44,501 --> 00:46:54,057
Yeah, um, and I told the doctor I said, look, I did not have a good um, I did not have a good experience with my last therapist.

00:46:54,057 --> 00:46:56,918
You know, I'm just it never.

00:46:56,918 --> 00:46:59,420
It didn't happen then, it didn't fix me then.

00:46:59,420 --> 00:47:01,742
I just don't know how it would fix me now.

00:47:01,742 --> 00:47:06,545
And you know, and he was just like, well, I want you to try to go see this person.

00:47:06,545 --> 00:47:13,949
So he gave me this female therapist and thank God.

00:47:13,949 --> 00:47:21,632
Thank God, because she specialized in severe trauma and PTSD.

00:47:21,632 --> 00:47:49,101
So when I sat with her in the first five minutes telling her my experience when I was 17 and what I was dealing with currently, she looked at me and she said Susan, everything that you have felt and dealt with since you were 17 is normal because you have PTSD.

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Susan Snow's Tale of Turning Grief into Growth

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