Learning How To Connect With Human Beings with JoAnn Lagace

Welcome to The Trauma Thipper's podcast. My name is Giaming Furson. I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping those who've been impacted by trauma. Big thank you to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show. So five, four, three, two, and one. Our folks welcome back to the podcast. Very excited to have us, my guest today. Joanne, Lugacy, Joanne, welcome. Thank you guys very glad to be here and I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. Joanne is an author advocate, nonprofit founder, and woman in long-term recovery whose life has been shaped by trauma, resilience, and decision to turn pain into purpose. In her memoir, seeds and shattered soil. She shares an unfiltered journey through childhood trauma, addiction, mental health challenges, survival of recovery, and ultimately healing and acceptance. After more than 20 years in real estate, Joanne changed the direction of life and entered nonprofit work, eventually founding the national animal foster network organization, working to build infrastructure that helps keep people and their companion animals together during temporary human crises. All right, Joanne, just a little bit about you. Before we get going, share with our listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently. I was born in Rhode Island, raised in Savannah, Georgia, and now I currently reside in the Denver Colorado area. Okay, so how does this all start for you, Joanne? You know, the book has been 17 years in the making and I don't want to give away any spoil or alerts. My book is about, as you mentioned, trauma being first and foremost because I was born into generational trauma. And what I didn't understand then is that the generational trauma as well as mental health challenges that I didn't understand led me to what I refer to become a trauma magnet. And when chaos is all you've ever known, chaos is the life that you live because you don't know anything else. Let me pause you for a second here. I want to I want to get specific. So when did this happen? Where were you? What was your family structure like? So I was born in Rhode Island, which is primarily made up of French Canadian Catholic individuals. So I grew up thinking everyone in the world was French Canadian and Catholic. That's how naive I was as a child. And then when I moved to Savannah, Georgia, I had a worldwide opening with different religions and different, you know, racial animosity. I didn't grow up with all that. So it was a very dynamic and impactful traumatic experience for me at the age of 11 going on 12 to make that type of move. So at the age of seven, where it all started, I was born with a degenerative hip disease. And so at seven years old, if you can imagine force gum, I had a brace on my left leg with a boot and a pedal that looked like it would go on a bicycle, had to walk with my leg extended. If I wanted to sit down, I would have to lift the little hook to make my leg be able to bend as well as walking on crutches. That made me a target. We all know how horrible children can be. And I was targeted. And I was called every name under the book. The boys would jump on my back at recess, make me go around in circles. I mean, I felt like a lion attacking its prey. And the teachers stood there and laughed. And so at a very early age, I lost faith in humanity. I lost faith that there was anyone out there who was going to save me. Pause for a second. So your family structure was what? Mom, dad, siblings? My mom was divorced with two children married. My father and my father passed away when I was 18 months old of leukemia. He went to the hospital thinking he had the flu and two days later he was dead. My mom never remarried. She did have another relationship where she had my younger siblings, the twins. So I'm the middle child of five. The two older are seven and eight years older than me. They're Irish twins. Then my younger sister and brother are actual paternal twins. So you grew up with this hip situation, targeted, bullied, how do things unfold for you during school, high school, etc. So it progressively worsened because I couldn't run and play like other kids. So now I'm not just handicapped. I'm overweight. And then my teeth, one of my teeth. My eye tooth grew up out of my gum rather than down underneath. And so I was overweight, handicapped, snaggle, tooth. My hair was funky. It just didn't grow right. I had a protein deficiency. So anything and everything that you could think of, the world judged me, beat me, criticized me for and conditioned me to believe that I was an unworthy person. And that continued to be validated because the more traumatized untreated trauma I experienced, the more trauma I attracted into my life. Want to thank our sponsor today, novo.co. Running your own practice sounds great. Until you realize you're the accountant, IT guy and the collections department, novo was a banking platform built for independent businesses, helping you manage money, track cash flow, and get paid faster with no maintenance fees and no minimum balances. Head to novo.co, use code, trauma therapist for $50 bonus for qualified applicants, or find the link in our show notes. Novo, more time building, less time banking. Novo is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services are provided by middle-sex federal savings, F-A member F-D-I-C. Once again, head on over to novo.co. And you say that, hang on, before you get there, how were you, during this time, how were you, quote unquote, managing? How were you dealing with it? Did you have any friends? I had a big family. So my friends were my cousins. They had to play with me. But what did develop was my rage. I became very enraged as a child. And I start my memoir off by saying, I think when I was born, the doctor might have smacked me just a little too hard. And I put up my dukes and said, I'm getting ready to kick your, you know what? Because as far back as I can remember, I've always been very angry. And it only progressively worsened, as I progressed in life, and kept attracting more and more trauma, whether that trauma came from an intimate relationship or sibling rivalry. It was everything about me was anger. I never felt happy. I'm just now at this age learning to find peace and joy in certain moments. But I don't yet know if I'll ever find happiness. During what was high school like for you? I was expelled in ninth grade for fighting. I was very violent. In 1980 is when alternative schools came out in Savannah, Georgia. I was one of the first seven students in Chatham County School District selected to go to alternative school, which is your last chance school. If you did not do well at the alternative school, you were expelled from Chatham County school system permanently. And so I was in an altercation. It got really bad. I almost really hurt the principal of our school. I was sent to alternative school a week after getting there. I almost threw a kid out of a second story window when I was expelled from the Chatham County school system. So up to this point, Joanne, where how was your mom coping with this? Were you getting any kind of quote-unquote help treatment? I saw one shrink when I was seven. I had two visits worth her. And then I ruled the roost. I told my mother what to do. My mother was very fearful of me. My rage was such that that my own mother feared her own child. I'm not proud to say that. But it is what it is. And I had to make an amends and ask for forgiveness from my mother later on in life. But that rage consumed me, controlled everything about me and I didn't know how to heal. And I wasn't willing. I was so stubborn at the time. I wasn't willing. to look at mental health diagnosis. I probably had narcissistic tendencies at that point in my life. No one could tell me what to do. I was the boss of me and just very hard to get along with. During high school, where did you have any types of relationships, friends, intimate otherwise? Where did you work? What? I did develop promiscuous side during those years because I was lacking self-esteem. I was lacking connection. I didn't know how to connect to human beings in that emotional place. And then when I would let my guard down a little bit, my first love, I was 14, he was 16. And I felt head over heels in love with him. He was my first everything and I know that was a very young age, but it is what it is. It's all in my memoir. So John was my first love and also my first heartbreak in the intimate realm. And that just became a trend throughout my life. And as that trend progressed as I aged, I never developed the ability to completely love or trust anyone. My love and trust can be flipped on like a switch because I've been let down so much in my life. It's really hard for me to allow at this point in my life anyone to put me in that vulnerable of a situation ever again. What happens after high school? So after I get expelled from high school, the fair was in town, the carnival, the local carnival that comes to your town every year. Well, I thought why not? I'll join the carnival and travel with the fair since I can't go to school and I'm, you know, don't want to work at a fast food restaurant. And so I made my mother sign custody of me over to some man she didn't even know what he looked like. And I told her if she didn't, I would run away anyway and never come back. But if she agreed to sign that relinquishment of custody paper, I would come back and go back to school the next school season. So then I took off with the fair and I ended up becoming spider lady with the fair. What is what was spider lady? Spider lady is where I sat in a box with my head sticking out only and I wore a big black wig, big eyelashes. I had a stuffed spider body behind me and I had gadgets underneath the box where I could move the legs and convince people that I was real. Wow. So at 15, okay. Interesting. I mean, it's hard not to draw the conclusion from how you were treated as a kid, what you felt about yourself and then here you are putting yourself as some kind of attraction, right? I wanted attention. I wanted attention. However, I could get it, right? No one ever saw any good in me. Everybody was all so good at pointing out all the bad things about me. The question was always what's wrong with you? It was never the question of what happened to you, right? There's a big difference there. People weren't trying to understand me. People were wanting to judge me and criticize me and I gave them every right to. I will own my responsibility there. I had a very bad attitude. I walked around just very angry at the world because the world hurt me so bad. No one could blame you. I mean, it sounds awful. What you went through, Joanne. It is awful. And that's just the beginning of my life. So let's move forward here. What happens at some point? Did you want to jump ahead? When into your 20s and 30s, how do things unfold for you? The more pivotal experience was when I got back from the fair. So I was traveling with the carnival for two months. And I met a young man who was in the National Garvers R. And he came and traveled with me. And he wanted to control me. And that's not going to happen. I just made my mom sign custody of me over to somebody she doesn't even know. And I'm not going to be controlled by anybody at this age. And he was 21. He wanted to control me. And the owners told me I either had to stay with him or go back to Savannah. And I said, send me back. And when I got back to Savannah, I found out I was pregnant with his baby. And I carried that baby for nine months. And I thought, wow, if I could just have one boy, if I could have a boy, I could have one man in my life who will never leave me, who will love me no matter what. He'll have to love me because I'm his mother. Well, on January 13, 1983, he was still born on his due date. And I have to bring that up because it was at that point where I felt like God had it out for me. And I was a mistake. I never thought God could be so cruel. And so I really went out of control after that because I didn't care whether I left or died. You could probably say that I was a living suicide attempt. That's how I lived my life. I really never did care whether I left or died. I did things and put myself in positions where I should have been dead time and time again. So you come back to Savannah, are you living with your mom at this time? I moved back in with my mother, yes. She told me I was going to have to give the baby up for adoption. And I told her there was no way that was going to happen. So I got the father to agree to come to Savannah and agree to help me raise the baby. And he joined the military full time. So he was going to be a military father. And so my mom said I could keep him. But then you already know what happened there. So let's in the interest of time here, at some point I'm guessing something happened such that you started to gain a little bit of what awareness into the possibility of healing or what that even might look like. What started to happen? The pivotal moment was I ran into an old boyfriend on River Street in Savannah, Georgia. And he was with a girl that I went to high school with and they had gotten married and had a baby. And this was after I lost my son. And I was trying to be nice. And I said, hey, how's your baby doing? And she looked at me and said better than yours. And when she said that, when she said that, I lost control. I didn't black out. I read out first. Everything went red. And then everything went to black. And I didn't see anybody but her. And I beat her so bad. I could have taken her life. And I realized in that moment that I was afraid of myself. And I started to pray for God to take that anger away from me because I was fearful of what it was going to do to me. And so after that, I really started to progress. But it was little by little. You don't just come out of all that trauma. Of course. And jump into this major healing cycle. So I still made bad relationship choices and went through domestic violence and alcoholism. And I'll be 18 years sober on October 13th. And it's been a progressive healing journey. The memoir seasons shatter soil. I've been writing that for 17 years. And to have it come out and be released. It's like taking your child off to college. The empty nest. Well, I want to get there. But I kind of want to find out how you got to that point where you're even like, I want to write this book. I was once again, I was back in Savannah, Georgia. I was still in my drinking days. It was in 2007. And I was just so depressed. I just knew I needed some help. I just didn't know where to turn to get it. I knew there was something horribly wrong with me. I just didn't know. And so I started, I thought, if I journal about it, maybe that will help me. And journaling started becoming a book. But of course, I was still too sick. There was just tears all over the page. As you can see, even with the healing now, I still get emotional talking about it because it is so perfect. personal. But it was then I had my bottom fall out and I called my brother in Tennessee in 2008 and said, "If you don't come and get me tonight, I'm going to take my own life." And he said, "Joe, don't do anything. I will be there in eight hours." He was there in seven. He took me back to Tennessee and I went into treatment October 13th of 2008. Was that the first time? That was my first time in treatment for alcoholism, her say. I had attempted to get help on multiple occasions. I was diagnosed narcissistic. Not an alcoholic, narcissistic, right? But the pivotal diagnosis, if you want me to go there next. Not necessarily. How did you, when did you start to consciously say, "I want to write this book"? I consciously wanted to start writing it in 2007, but I knew I was still too sick. I wasn't anywhere in a position. So when COVID happened is when I really got down to the nitty-gritty because I had time. I was a real estate broker. That was my career. And I had just moved from Tennessee to Colorado. It was going to start my team and COVID shut me down. I also went through a divorce. And so during that time, I had a lot more experience. And things continued to progressively get better. I started finding my spirituality and my rhythm in the spiritual realm. And I just started opening up for healing. And I removed myself from society. At first, it was isolation. And now it's become solitude. And there's a difference. I isolated because I couldn't continue to get all this port on me. I couldn't heal with it, continuing to come. And we all know how judgmental and critical people can be. And so I. If I may, when you started to write the book, what did you want to say? Initially, I wanted people to understand me. I wrote it thinking if I just tell my story, then they'll understand. Like you said, in the beginning, when I was telling you a horrible those kids worked to me, you said, "Why wouldn't you, Joanne?" And that's. Initially, that's what I wanted people to say. Why wouldn't you be that way? And what I wanted was. How could you not? Of course, you're a human being. You're conditioned. You're conditioned to hate yourself. Right. And when you're conditioned to hate yourself, you can't love anyone else. So you've been conditioned to hate yourself. Therefore, you hate everyone else. And misery loves company. And everyone was invited to my party. So the book, again, the book is called Seeds and Shattered Soil. Yes. Okay. And who would you say the book is for? My mother, primarily for my mother. My mother is the. And I didn't recognize what unconditional love was until later on in life from a human being. My mother never turned her back on me. As much as I hurt my mother, making her sign custody, I was physically violent with my mother at times. I put my mom through a lot going to jail for DUIs and staying out on my party when I should have been taking care of my children. My mother never judged me, never criticized me, and never once turned her back on me. So my mother, I was the seed. My mother was also born. I'm so sorry. Into Shattered Soil. But that woman knows how to love. And she loved me so much. And my book is about my gratitude for her never giving up on me. You. Joanne, obviously, have been through. Your journey has been. How do we say this? A horrific tragic. But you sit here. You sit here having moved through this with a certain amount of resilience and strength and courage. How the hell did you do that? Because of my mother's love. And so what my book also shares is not about the trauma that I experienced, but about the hardships. It causes for the people who love you the most. And so I have done my best to try and help those who love someone, who struggles with addiction or mental health or are in their own way, their own trauma magnets. How to be able to love and support someone when it hurts you so bad. How do you do that? Obviously, we're not giving away the book, but give us an example. How would we do that? For one, it's recognizing that you will never understand what they're going through. Stop trying. I'll describe it to you this way. When someone is in an episode, say bipolar, it's like living inside an F5 tornado. You've got rain, sleet, hail, thunder, lightning. You can't see, taste, touch. You just can't make heads or tails of anything. And then once the tornado subsides, you're treading water and flood waters. You can't feel the bottom yet. And once that subsides, you are stuck cleaning up the wreckage of everything that's left behind. And that can be something as far as we didn't agree on something. And I cussed you out and I brought up something you did 20 years ago and threw it in your face and now we're back to square one. How to avoid doing things like that. How to have boundaries and stay happy within a relationship with someone you love, who may struggle with bipolar or addiction or something else. It's a really fine line. And so I talk a lot about that in my book to try and help those of loved ones because I put my loved ones through a lot. And there are sections of my book dedicated to them as well because my mom transitioned in 2018 and in her place is my best friend, Christie. And I just went through a very dark period and they can come and go. And that dark period led me to a bipolar diagnosis where I was finally able to find the right medication to stop all of the tornado activity going on in my head. And because I got that part under control, I was able to finish the book because when you have that much chaos going on, you cannot separate and categorize. And AI was a big help to me having ADHD as well. AI, I want to make this clear, did not write my book. It could not write my life story, right? It helped me categorize it and put it out in a way where people can understand it where my trauma brain wouldn't be able to do that without assistance. Before we close out here, I want to talk about the National Animal Foster Network and you founded that. How did that come about? Oh my gosh. Thank you for bringing that up because this is my heart and soul. So it came up during COVID. I couldn't sell real estate. And I thought, Joanne, if you were to take all your titles away, real estate broker, sister, mother, cousin, whatever. Who are you? Who are you? And I did not have an answer to that question. I thought, I don't know who I am. And so COVID helped me really start peeling back the layers of the onion to get to that pearl. And that pearl is a nonprofit founder. And because I've been through so much trauma, as I mentioned, I've lived in the world of recovery. I've seen how much impact an animal can have on someone in recovery's life as their emotional support animal and only source of unconditional love and companionship. And the crisis, the type of crises might change, but the need doesn't, right? Right now, when someone is in a temporary crisis situation, They typically surrender that animal to a shelter when all they needed was two weeks four weeks a month 90 days for a treatment program and Someone to love their animal until they could get back to it and We have great organizations out in the world But we are so fragmented. No one knows who out there exists and there's no unified platform Putting everyone in one place. And so that's our first step is we are building we dug the foundation over the last three years Now we're building our advisory board of experts in their own field legal human animal bond animal welfare researchers we have Just we have 12 members of our advisory board now of experts who are going to build our policies and protocols, and this is a ground level Non-profit. We are now filling in the foundation. I So just to clarify the organization the National Animal Foster Network hopes people Who are in crisis who might otherwise who need to go into treatment for example who might otherwise lose their animal because of that You help them place that animal during the time that these people are getting treatment That's right Wow With reunification as the outcome Wow, the other great thing is we're going to reduce the overpopulation of animal shelters, right? so our Our overpopulation of animal shelters is due to temporary crisis and no resources being available To help those people be reunified with their animal. We are now creating the nation's first coordinated vetted and compensated foster care system for animals serving those in crisis Wow Joanne damn I mean you are amazing really. Thank you Um, I want to thank you for coming here and sharing a what sounds like a fraction of your story I can tell that there's so much more, but You know it goes without saying what you've gone through is tragic, but you're sitting here as A testament to what resilience? I mean, you use that word or how would you describe it? How do you pull through this? Somewhere along the way there was always some little flicker of hope whether it was my animal my children my mother There was always some little glimmer of hope. There was always something in my heart that says this is not the end for you And I want to inspire other people that no matter how horrific your Trials and tribulations may be your story doesn't end there and you get to decide I'm deciding at 60 years old who I am who I will portray myself to the world as and I get to teach you at this point How to treat me and if you don't treat me the way I want you to treat me then you will have nothing to do with me I love it. All right, Joanne. How do people learn more about you and And the book again seeds and shattered soil. What's the best way? So it will be released on Amazon tomorrow So they can go to Amazon and look it up. It's releasing on my 60th birthday. So that's tomorrow Nice. Great. It's birthday. Thank you very much. And they can go to J-O-A-N-N-L-A-G-A-C-E.com That's my author speaker Personal website and then n-A-F-N dot U-S is The website for national animal foster network you can check out what we're doing We're going into phase two this year. The students at CU Boulder are building our technology infrastructure So we'll have an app and a completed website by May of 27 And it's just a very exciting time and growth. So if they could support us I've got a birthday campaign going on. They could donate a dollar to N-A-F-N Every little bit helps All right, and we'll have each of those linked up at the show notes page here at the trauma therapist podcast.com To and thank you. You are so freaking inspiring. Yeah Thank you guys. I appreciate it. I appreciate you. All right. Take care. All right you too. Bye. Bye