Women in the Arena
Women in the Arena is the celebration of everyday women living extraordinary lives in plain sight. We seek to inspire, encourage and challenge you to reach for the great heights you're made for.
Women in the Arena
You Can Survive This: A Story of Advocacy, Resilience & Hope with Lizbeth Meredith
Lizbeth Meredith's life reads like a thriller, but it's her real journey from domestic abuse survivor to international child recovery advocate that makes this conversation so powerful. After escaping an abusive marriage with her two young daughters, Lizbeth faced the unimaginable when her ex-husband abducted the children during a visit and fled overseas. What followed was a two-year international battle that tested every fiber of her being.
With remarkable candor, Lizbeth reveals how she navigated contradictory advice from government agencies, survived on minimal resources, and maintained hope when everything seemed lost. "I scheduled my worry," she explains, describing the disciplined emotional management that kept her functioning through the ordeal. When finally reunited with her daughters, she faced new challenges – they no longer spoke English and carried deep trauma from their experience.
The heart of Lizbeth's story isn't just about survival but transformation. Her professional work as a domestic violence advocate evolved into becoming a trauma-informed care trainer, fundamentally changing how she understood her daughters' behaviors and her own parenting approach. A powerful breakthrough came when her adult daughter experienced a mental health crisis that brought Lizbeth to a new level of understanding about trauma's lasting impact.
Today, Lizbeth's memoir "Pieces of Me: Rescuing My Kidnapped Daughters" has become a Lifetime movie ("Stolen by Their Father"), and through her speaking and podcast "Persistence U with Lizbeth," she helps others increase resilience by "taming trauma through storytelling." Her message resonates beyond those who've experienced similar traumas – she reminds us that setbacks don't define us but can refine us, turning our most difficult experiences into sources of strength and connection.
Visit https://lameredith.com/ to connect with Lizbeth and discover how your own challenges might become the foundation for unexpected strength and purpose.
Welcome in everyone and thank you so much for joining me again this week. This week, you are in for a treat. The woman that is joining me this week is such a remarkable woman. I cannot wait for you to meet her. Lisbeth Meredith is an author, a professional speaker and a podcaster, whose first book, pieces of Me Rescuing my Kidnapped Daughters, became a TV movie under the name of Stolen by their Father. She works to increase resilience by taming trauma and crisis through storytelling. After three decades of serving crime survivors and offenders in Alaska, lisbeth now enjoys working from home in East Tennessee and FaceTiming with her adult daughters and grandpets. I want to make sure that you have access to connect with her at lamerktithcom and don't forget to listen to her at Persistence U Podcast with Lisbeth. It is my pleasure and honor to introduce to you Lisbeth Lisbeth. Thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
Lizbeth:Audra. I'm so excited and grateful to our mutual friend Heidi Love for making that connection. This is the highlight of my week, no doubt.
Audra :I am so excited for you to be here because you have a remarkable life, an incredible story, and you are just a joy and delight to talk to, to get to know, and nobody would guess that you've had such an incredible story and life. No one would guess the trauma in your background and what has led you to live such an incredible life of advocacy. So before we get into your incredible life of advocacy, tell us a little bit about you.
Lizbeth:Oh, thank you, and thank you for those kind words. So, like you said, I live in East Tennessee. My roots began in, surprisingly, in Kentucky and very abruptly I was spirited off to Alaska when I was a little toddler and didn't really understand why, and I grew up feeling very other than the people in my family. You know they were a lot of blonde-headed kids and there was me with nearly black hair and I just felt like I didn't belong and I couldn't figure out why.
Lizbeth:As soon as I understood why that I had been taken from my father and then raised with siblings who weren't full siblings but they're definitely my sisters I knew I was in a land that I probably didn't belong in and I just sort of vowed as a youngster to make different choices. I thought, man, I'll never divorce when I get older, my kids will never have to look for their real father and there won't be lawyers in their lives or domestic violence like I grew up with a lot of family strife and tensions and, frankly, violence, only to find myself in a shelter with my two young daughters when I was in my mid-20s. So I didn't do a lot of the work. That would have been super helpful. Didn't know how to start, but as a young person I just felt like man adulting seems really hard. Oh great, there's someone who looks like he's going to rescue me from it. And little did I know that that would be a decision that paid dividends for not just me, but for people in my community for a long long time Now.
Audra :Adulting is not for the faint of heart. I say it a lot, I actually say it a lot to my kids that adulting has very little upside, that some of the upsides only include you don't have to live with your mother. But other than that, there's very, very little upside to adulting. But other than that, there's very, very little upside to adulting. But especially if you are an adult that has grown up with trauma in your background, you don't know that you are repeating habits that you grew up with, because you really don't know the difference. Don't know the difference because the habits that you grow up with and the things that you do feel normal.
Audra :The treatment that you receive feels normal because that's the environment that you were in. So you find yourself drawn to certain types of people because that's a normal environment, that's the normal treatment. So you don't know what healthy is versus abusive, and you probably found yourself in a situation where, oh, here's a guy. I think he loves me, I think that this is what love feels like and he's going to rescue me. Am I on a similar track?
Lizbeth:Amen. It's like a magnetic force comes in and the next thing, you know like? I remember telling someone I knew he was the one because he felt like home and fortunately, had I really thought through that, I might have said yikes, I'd never run in another direction. But I just didn't know better at that time and so I went ahead and let that magnet pull me right in, and it didn't take long for things to go very, very sideways and for me to realize love is not just this initial impression or attraction or, frankly, an emotion. It's something much stronger than that and we did not have that amongst us.
Audra :So you got married very young. How old were you when you and your former spouse got married?
Lizbeth:How old were you when you and your former spouse got married? I was 21. So I was. I think I was younger in some ways because I had was fairly innocent and didn't have a lot of experience with men, but I was. I met him when I was 20 or maybe just turned 21. And I tell people I am the original 90 day fiance. Like, I met him and the next thing you know, I have a ring on my finger.
Lizbeth:By November we met in, I'm thinking, august, and he, like 90 Day Fiance. He was an American citizen but he was from another country and grew up in that other country and had only been in the States for not all that long. But I just felt so smart because I thought, look, I checked and I already found out he's a citizen, so he's not using me for any untoward purposes. Look at me and you know I really knew so little about him. I think, more importantly, audra, I knew so little about myself and I think that's something that I see. I live in the South now. I see a lot of people Mary, very young here still and it breaks my heart because if something is to last forever, what's the rush? And also, what do we know of ourselves when we're barely an adult, our brains haven't even fully developed. We're years away from that happening and that's such a big and beautiful decision.
Audra :Why rush? I mean, let's face it, I'm 53. I am still figuring myself out, me too. I mean, when you're in your 20s, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, as far as your brain is concerned, you are just barely barely having it fully formed.
Lizbeth:I mean, it barely is fully formed at 25, but you don't hardly have any experience, any life experience to compare this big beautiful life to, and you compared it to what you felt was normal at 21. Yikes, and it was something that just kept paying dividends even after I left, you know. For it took four years for me to decide to leave him, and it was awful from the first week. I mean awful, and while it wasn't physically abusive from the first week it didn't need to be he just would disappear for days at a time. There was suddenly nothing that he liked about me, and when he was around which wasn't too often he let me know every little detail and he also didn't seem to like my family and in some ways, maybe compared to his. That was a fair assessment. Okay, but he didn't want me to hang out with certain friends. You know, it was just like he didn't like me, but he didn't want anyone else to have the chance to.
Lizbeth:And I think what I didn't realize then was if the only person in your life says really negative things about you, if you're in community, if you have your friends and your family, maybe your job or your hobbies, you think to yourself what's wrong with this person saying this to me? What in the world? How were they raised? But if you're isolated, it makes sense because there's no one to counterbalance those messages and say you're not perfect, but you've got mighty fine positive attributes and you can work on some of the others, you know. So it took little by little by little. I didn't notice it until I was very isolated and he was sort of the last man standing in my life and I got laid off from my job and was having our baby and I became very dependent.
Audra :And you very quickly had two children, one right after the other.
Lizbeth:So now you're isolated with two little babies. It Then add to that I had a partner who was escalating in bad behaviors, and so he started cutting off my own financial ability to get a hold of money in my account. And I remember a time when my oldest daughter was an infant and I was pregnant with my youngest and he had me on about a $25 a week grocery plan. I wouldn't buy diapers in Alaska for that price even back then, and so I was really left to figure out who is the more important choice. Is it the upcoming baby or is it the baby that I'm holding? You know, who do I choose? And it was awful.
Lizbeth:I did belong to a new mother's group. There was a group that he didn't object to, and it was at a church that I didn't particularly go to, but I could go to that without bothering him whatsoever. And someone I befriended at the new mother's group came by and saw me at one point when I was very, very pregnant with my second daughter, and saw I think she went to go open the refrigerator, put something in and saw we didn't have anything, and she didn't say anything to me, but I got a donation. At about Christmas time A stranger showed up and delivered a ton of food and pregnancy clothes was so beautiful and we're still friends today. This person and I and you know we need each other in the worst of times and I think what people forget is folks who are under coercive control, whether it's intimate partner violence or even a cult or whatever. You're isolated so you don't even have your stronghold, the people and things that help support you to help you out of it.
Audra :You're in a very, very extreme situation, so the fact that you got the strength to leave is extraordinary. So you did this for four years.
Lizbeth:Yes, yes, how long Dev. For four years. Yes, yes, how long Devastating years. You were only 25.
Audra :Right when I left. You were 25 when you left with two tiny little babies.
Lizbeth:Two adorable little girls. I had been, you know, trigger warning but I had been injured in front of my oldest daughter and it was bad. You know, it was really bad. I didn't feel then that I was worthy of a better future. I really didn't think that way. I didn't say to myself I don't deserve to be treated like this. But when that happened in front of my daughter I knew she deserved a better future and the chances of things turning out well for her if she grew up in a home like this were about zero. So that helped a lot. That really helped me figure out I need to make a big change and I did.
Lizbeth:This was pre-violence against women act. This was pre-police have to make an arrest sort of an act. So I knew back then that when you called the police they used to do what sometimes I think they still do it but pick up the angry person in the house Usually, you know, it was often the husband not always Drive him around the block, drop him off, and they would be on their way. Cool down, sir. You just need to cool down and that's it. And I couldn't afford for that to happen. So I called someone else that I knew, a lawyer and she sent a taxi for me, and that was the beginning of a new beginning.
Audra :So this new beginning was not easy. You found yourself in a shelter with these two little girls. Um, at what point, what did you find? That your former spouse decided to take matters into his own hands and decide to hurt you by taking his daughters away from you.
Lizbeth:Right, Well, and I should say first that the last thing in the world I think most people want to hear is that they should go to a shelter or that they should go to domestic violence treatment. You know a place that has services for survivors of domestic violence, so I didn't want to do any of that. First, I just went to a friend's place and my husband tracked me there right away and so eventually I went to the shelter and truthfully, it was very stressful, but there was a lot of advantages and I tried to remind people that there are things that one can learn and access if they do the thing they don't want to do sometimes that they'll never be able to do on their own very easily. So I did go to that shelter and that was the beginning of many good micro decisions. I focused very hard on being what I like to call a good victim, because people are really annoyed with victims of domestic abuse. Often and I know that it can be frustrating it's not just that they're being rude. Sometimes it's very frustrating to hear the same story and not see change year after year. But I decided no, no, no, I would not be that. I will not go back to him, I will not complain loudly, I will get a degree. I eventually decided I will get my degree, I will work. I won't ask for too much. I'll keep moving forward. Take the girls to counseling, play therapy, play by the rules. I really tried to color within the lines and make sure that I set us up for success.
Lizbeth:What I realized later was I must have had an imaginary thought, some sort of fantasy that I had control over his behavior. You know, I felt like to end domestic violence and I think a lot of people believe this today. To end domestic violence, victims need to make better choices. Some people will say victims need to have better self-esteem. You know, like just get good self-esteem and this wouldn't happen in the first place. Well, that's not true. But I thought that I had put it into things and so I went through that horrific divorce.
Lizbeth:It took almost two years. I had to rely on legal aid. He kept stalking me. It was not easy. There were days where and one day in particular I get a knock at the door it's Child Protective Services coming because there's been an allegation of abused my kids. So the girls are searched. That day public assistance comes by our home to check to see if I actually had a man living with me, because there had been an anonymous report man living with me, because there had been an anonymous report. I wonder who made that report that there was a man living with me. I have apropos of nothing. Size nine and a half feet. They're kind of big for a woman. I'm not a short woman. So when they saw blue skis in my closet cross-country skis, someone had gifted me. They're like well, that proves that there is a man living with you. I'm like no, these are my feet, watch me slide my feet in. None of this was funny at the time, but this was the life I led While I was trying to go to school.
Lizbeth:My children were suffering their own losses. Sometimes he would show up for visits. A lot of times he wouldn't. But it's always incumbent upon the parent to get their child ready and have them waiting at the door, and if they choose to do something then they could be fined a couple hundred dollars a day for missed visits. So my kids didn't see him regularly, but when they did and they got old enough to speak, the things they would come home with were terrifying. Daddy says you're going to die, you're going to hell. Daddy says you won't love us anymore. Daddy says you'll find someone new. Daddy says I think at one point one of my daughters said he's going to kill you. So scary messages for little kids to have to bring back to their mother.
Lizbeth:But four and a half years later four years later, not four and a half, four exact years later I made it. Within two years I'd finished up that college degree. So I did it. I got a wonderful job as an advocate in a domestic violence agency the same one I'd fled to. So I had to do trainings for law enforcement and judges and talk about my real experiences and help women who weren't in the shelter to learn to be their own best advocate. So it was an amazing job for $10 an hour and you know I loved it.
Lizbeth:I lived with a roommate who was just like a grandmother to my children, but better than the ones that they were that they inherited. So I just felt like, in some ways, I was living the dream, if I could just deal with the anxiety of all the stalking. And then, sure enough, four years after I left him, he took our daughters and fled the country on a visit and I didn't see them for more than two years. By the time I did, they no longer spoke the language that I did. So they've gone through countless difficult circumstances. I am not saying this to blame myself, but I want to be very clear. This was not so that he could be with the kids. It was to punish me because I stepped out and left, and it was quite a punishment, it was.
Audra :So this, this experience, and you were trying. You were trying to be you used an interesting word, trying to be a good victim, which I think is interesting. The way that you described that as being a good victim, that you described that as being a good victim being, I guess, better than what all the others had been before. It's ridiculous really, which, when you say it out loud, just sounds the bizarre. But I understand why you were explaining it that way because everybody, there's not a whole lot of sympathy for the victim, which I don't understand why. Because they're like why don't you leave? Why don't you leave? Because there's not a whole lot of sympathy for the victim, which I don't understand why, um, because they're like why don't you leave? Why don't you leave this? Because it's not easy, because because the system, unfortunately, is still not set up to protect the victim. So you're in this situation, going I'm gonna do this differently, I'm gonna outsmart this system, I'm going to fix this. And you did everything right. And he outsmarted the system.
Audra :He outsmarted it and this is what triggered your. It souped up your advocacy. You thought, okay, I did everything right and it still had a backlash on me. Now I'm going to kick this up a notch. Now I'm pissed. Now, this isn't just I'm angry. Now I'm pissed because now you have taken my children to another country and now you have to fight to get your children back from another country, which is not going to be easy. How did you survive two years without your children? I'm assuming you didn't have any contact with them whatsoever.
Lizbeth:Not one phone call, not one picture, not one letter, nothing. I think there were a few things that helped me survive One. You know I've been treated very, very badly in that marriage but when I got out and went to the shelter and in some ways not having a supportive family at the time, I now know many more of my family members and I can honestly tell you that a number of them would have stepped up had they known, but I didn't know them then. I shouldn't know them. So having no family in my corner and no resources in some ways was a huge strength and being and optimistic because I had to land on my feet, I had to learn to not only get a support system but nurture it along and not burn them out, and that meant that I needed to rely on things like support groups and other places. You know I was a domestic abuse advocate by the time my kids were kidnapped, but I also found a lot of comfort in things like a parenting support group that I got to be a part of for parents whose kids were kidnapped and taken out of country. Whenever I went to a resource like, let's say, the police as an example and that didn't always go well, really did not at all. But when I went to one resource I would say, what else do you suggest? And I would follow the suggestion I really did. And then I would ask that next place well, what else would you suggest? Is there anything I definitely shouldn't be doing that I might want to do? Important questions.
Lizbeth:I really tried to navigate a bunch of systems I didn't understand and that didn't understand each other. So, as an example, the State Department. You know, with your kids taken out of country, you get a hold of the State Department, you file all these documents, blah, blah, blah. They then finished the preliminary paperwork. The person assigned to my case said well, be sure and just cooperate with the police, do whatever they say. I did and the police eventually, after a lot of prodding and me going to the newspaper, issued a warrant for my ex-husband. And then the State Department turned around and said this is the dumbest, you know, most ridiculous thing you could have done. This is so horrific. Why would you do this Now? You'll never get your children back and it's that kind of thing. Nobody was trying to be harmful, but it's hard, it's very difficult. If my children had been taken to Kentucky it would have been difficult, but much less another country. You're talking about all of these government systems who don't speak with one another. So it really relied on me.
Lizbeth:Thank goodness I picked the job that I did. I had wonderful role models. My executive director was super helpful and very well politically connected, but I also used her as a role model, like how do you keep it together during really hard times? And you know, I did learn to find people who had bits and bobs of the things that I wanted to be when I grew up, and so not everyone had all of it None of us do. But trying to find people that I wanted to, women that I wanted to kind of be an understudy to or hang out with or have as my role model, I listened when friends told me certain things there's I say this all the time it just meant the world to me.
Lizbeth:A friend of mine once told me early on when I had left my husband, my kids I don't think we're even missing them. You're going to need to schedule your worry. You're really going to have to do that. You're going to have to not bring it to work, not talk about it all the time to everyone that you come into contact with and it's real tempting. But give yourself an hour a day to simply grieve, be angry, feel sorry for yourself, cry whatever you need to do. Don't suppress your feelings. Honor them in that hour. After that, you got 23 more in a day to do what you do, to keep moving forward.
Lizbeth:That really did help and not, you know, had I had acute mental health issues then, which later I had some really strong ones, but I, you know I would have had to get medication or do whatever. First, I did march my fanny into counseling and because I couldn't afford much, I got whatever the state had for me, basically on a wait list. It was still great. It was great. I made sure that I reached out for support and that I wasn't saying to myself any longer because this is a lot of what got me in trouble in the first place. I got this. I can do this myself. No, none of us really can. When it matters, when something matters greatly, we really need help.
Audra :I mean two long years. Thank goodness you had collected a support system, listened to the advice and held on for dear life is basically what you did. You held on to your senses and your wits for two years to be able to bring your girls home. But what I think I am so impressed with is that you could have taken all of that knowledge that you gathered while trying to bring your girls home and you could have just kept it at that. You could have just said, okay, I accomplished this, I brought my girls home, they're home safe, I'm done, I'm going to be home, I'm going to recover with them, I'm going to make sure that they're recovered and I don't want to ever do this again.
Audra :You did not. You took all of this information, all of this research, all of the connections that you took, that you made, all of the information that you gathered everything and, like I said in the beginning, you took your pain, you took your experience and you took your knowledge and you turned it up to a 10. It up to a 10 and you've become this amazing advocate for others that have been in situations just like you. So tell us a little bit about what your experience has been like as an advocate for others that have been in your situation, both here, domestically, and abroad.
Lizbeth:Thank you, thank you so much for saying that and please know and maybe we'll double back to this but I made huge mistakes along the way parenting traumatized children, and there were things that I just didn't know and made things worse at times. So I want to be real clear that this wasn't just a super smooth process. But I was so fortunate to return after three and a half months was the second trip I took and I was able to come back to my job, where I now made $12 an hour and I often say, well, it was a $100,000 problem on a very slim budget. But I will tell you, the community was so excited when I got home I did get to return to that job. I was in rough shape and it would have been ideal had I been had more leave to focus on my mental health and the kids, but I didn't. I had to go back the very next workday. Basically, I mean, I had really burned through not just my leave, but employees had donated leave. I had burned through all of it and what a fortunate person I was to have that to begin with.
Lizbeth:Helping teach people to advocate for themselves that job was the perfect job for it and my life in some ways had been the perfect case study, because I do believe if somebody would have rolled right in at my time of need and said, hey, I got this, don't worry about it, I can write big checks and I'll take care of all the details. You just show up when we need you. I would have said, yes, please. And I still hear a lot from people who are kind of looking for that from me today and I can't do that. I can't go help people get their children or spend individual time troubleshooting how to get them back. But what I can do is teach people to be the best that I know, to be their own best advocate. And it really does have so much to do with we start with a mindset and self-care, taking good care of ourselves and the idea that early on in whatever we're going through that hurts so much, we could help someone else later If in between, when it happens to us and when we get to them, we take stock of what we're learning, what worked and what didn't. And I feel like to some extent, I had an unfair advantage because I was so emotionally damaged by the time that my kids were kidnapped that there was a certain part of removal.
Lizbeth:So I had really thought about life as a story. You know there's a beginning, a middle and an end, and none of us, when we're born, we didn't write our beginning. You know we get what people say. We all have equal chances. I don't agree. I don't agree whatsoever. Depending on where you're born in the world especially, we don't get to choose a whole lot of things, but we are handed something. Born in the world especially, we don't get to choose a whole lot of things, but we are handed something. And in the middle we're fortunate if we can start shaping or influencing some of it to where we can feel proud of the ending, no matter what happens, because a lot of things will happen out of our control. But if we can just have more opportunity to influence it, that will be useful. And so for me, I would think this is a story. It's going to have a big. It's had a beginning. I'm in the middle, ooh, and I'm envisioning a different ending, and you know that helped me a lot. It did.
Lizbeth:There were certain theme songs that I would have running around in my mind when I was feeling so much despair and so much hopelessness, and I would think I know, when my kids get off the plane I'll be thinking about this song, you know, and I would just allow myself to envision that beautiful thing. So then, when I was arrested wrongfully in Greece, when my attorneys quit and I don't blame them because I didn't pay them fully, my Greek attorneys when so many setbacks happened, when I had a police officer who was looking to date me rather than helping me, I could get through some of that just thinking it'll make great story later, which it did, turns out. Turns out people love. Tragedy Makes a great book. Woohoo, thank you. But you know, it really helped to have that vision.
Lizbeth:But I think for all of us, if we can remember, no matter what we're going through, someone else has already walked through it something similar, and what skills am I learning in the midst of it? I could tell you in great detail back then who didn't show up that I thought would have to help in my life, because that's the normal thing is, our brains are kind of wired to be a little bit negative. But I started thinking oh, wait a minute, look at all the unexpected people, people in Greece I'd never met helped People. You know, one person in Turkey tried to help in the country of Turkey. Countless Alaskans responded to this newspaper stories that were coming out about my kids. More often than not, it was fabulous and delightful and really heartfelt. And there are always going to be those people who are a little trollish. That's okay, you know. That's okay, you know feel bad for them, but we don't have to hold on to it.
Lizbeth:So, in the middle of all of a bad time, as far as teaching people to be their own best advocate, I would say starting out with knowing where we want to go, really being intentional about when we emote so that we don't burn out our support systems. We really do need support groups for certain things, like if you're going through, let's say, a divorce or a spouse that died, for a while your friends will be there and they'll be happy to do so. There comes a time when they might not be, and so diversifying and making sure that we have a place to put that doesn't mean that they don't care, but we don't want to just take over. They got their own tragedies, their own life and their own hardships. So doing, you know, definitely modulating a support system and then remembering to contribute, not just to take, in the midst of that.
Lizbeth:For me that was some of the most important lessons learned in advocacy and I really failed at times. People would say you know a good friend, say to me you know, sometimes you just suck the air right out of the room and it was terrible. Sometimes you just suck the air right out of the room and it was terrible. It wasn't an ideal message, but I needed to hear it Because you know, if you're not told those things, you can see your friendships becoming scarce and you not knowing why, because they were too tactful to tell you that you're all about yourself anymore in this crisis.
Audra :You'd mentioned some other mistakes that you had made. Is there other things that you had made that you're like oh, I really blew it on that one, and maybe they are mistakes that we all make. It may not have been in these same situations that we could learn from it too.
Lizbeth:Right, and thank you for bringing that up. I mean there were so many to choose from. But I am thinking especially when my kids came back from Greece, my attitude was well, I should say that we had fundraisers. People donated. They were so kind I got to keep my job. Donated. They were so kind I got to keep my job. I wasn't unemployed. I mean that in itself was miraculous.
Lizbeth:So I felt very guilty, I felt very much indebted and basically, without meaning to, gave my kids the impression that, okay, you're back now. Here's where we'll go to counseling. You know for sure, you have counseling. Here's some sports, a good school, all of the things. Don't complain about it. You've got all these people to be thankful to. You know, I impressed upon them without saying it expressly you should invent the cure to AIDS, because so many people have shown up for you that you don't even know. So be sure and be grateful.
Lizbeth:That message was very stifling. It was a lot of pressure on little kids, a lot of pressure on little kids that I didn't even know what all they'd been through and I'm still learning. They're in their 30s and I'm still learning. So raising them as I'd been raised in the bootstraps generation did zero percent good, as near as I can tell. It could be traumatizing, difficult and guess what? I was in no space to be very nurturing when they came back for a while because I literally had some psychotic symptoms of my own post-traumatic stress disorder and so I was a hot mess just trying to keep it together. And I did choose to work in the field, and I like to say to people I actually did work for three decades in the field. That often failed me the justice system. But what was so helpful about that was I had continuing education. So I got my master's degree and I did some other things, but I kept getting continuing education. So I got my master's degree and I did, you know, some other things, but I kept getting continuing education at work. And not only that, I helped serve people whose lives made mine look like child's play. I mean, there were people up until the day I retired, that it looked like I had just been living the dream my entire life. Theirs was so difficult been living the dream my entire life Theirs was so difficult. And when I became a trauma-informed care trainer and that was like the last 10 years of my probation work as a probation supervisor, that was a game changer and I'll never forget.
Lizbeth:I was trying to finish my book the first book, my memoir and my oldest daughter had had a huge mental health break and she was like a little kid again. She didn't just have a mental health break, it was like it brought her back to the age in which she was taken, and so I had thought that we were on a path where things were just about to get better because she was like 19 when this happened about to get better because she was like 19 when this happened and instead it was quite the opposite. So she called me at work, as I'm at a training for trauma-informed care trainers, and suddenly I knew something. It was like for me that was my own snap. That was a break where I understood oh my gosh, I have been doing this wrong and I literally have got to humble myself and learn the best that I can. What can I do to help the kids heal and developmentally reach their milestones? And Tough Love was not doing it. They're amazing young women today.
Lizbeth:But that was a huge, huge moment for me, and I began my book with that day, although I had to take some of it out because I was accidentally sharing my daughter's story and it wasn't mine to share, but, um, it was very, very, very helpful to learn that, instead of saying what's wrong with you what is wrong with you which I didn't expressly say, but that's the implied impression of bootstrapping when you meet someone with dysfunction what's wrong with you Just can you not get it together and instead, looking at her with empathy and wondering what happened to you and I am confident that there's more that I don't know I'm going to give you that benefit of the doubt and make sure you have the resources you need and I'll see you strength-based, as opposed to your foibles, the things that hurt.
Audra :How has that changed? Or how did that change when you were advocating for children of trauma, instead of seeing these kids and putting them in therapy and going, oh, they're kids, they're resilient, they'll be fine, they'll bounce back, they'll be better, and then seeing that, well, no, that trauma stays with you. I've heard that trauma, while it is emotional trauma, actually sits in the body, physically somewhere. So how did that change the way you approached it once you saw the way your daughter had been affected and how it made her revert back as a child emotionally?
Lizbeth:That was so tough. That was just so tough. And even before I was a trauma-informed care trainer, I had left domestic abuse advocacy to become a child abuse investigator abuse investigator. So some of the same children whose mothers I had served were caught up in the child protective system, where then years later I would find them in the juvenile delinquency system. So some of the kids I used to joke like I should be in your baby album. Do you want a picture? We've been together a long time.
Lizbeth:But what I didn't realize, even as a child abuse investigator, was how much kids even pre-birth children, much less infants are impacted by what's going on in the home. They don't have to witness it personally, they don't have to have their eyeballs on parents and their beat injuries. Just being in the home with that tension it's like a hotline to their little hearts. So for me that was. First of all, I was engulfed with a whole lot of guilt with my oldest daughter. We still had some things to work out, but my therapist turned into more of a parenting coach for me at that point and really served her needs but helped me be the best advocate for her also and with other kids in the system. What I learned to do was to let them know that you know they were still accountable for their actions. I never want people to think that trauma-informed care is like green lighting, bad behavior in people or there's no hope for any of us. You know we cannot allow criminal conduct to go on and say well, it was just you only knew what they went through, you would not think they should be having consequences. No, no, no, no. People need consequences. That's part of healing. But letting the juveniles know that I served and the same with adult women later and I've done some coaching work but letting people know that I see your potential, I see who you are, I want the best for you. I'm never going to work harder than you do for your own progress, but I will be with you during this journey and I understand it's not going to be a perfect straight line to success. You know success is up and down and whatever, but in the journey that's where a lot of the gold is. So it really helped so much.
Lizbeth:Before it was, it was very common for us to say to probationers, whether they were adults or juveniles you know I'm going to get paid one way or the other, so you can do what you like, because it seemed like sometimes it didn't just seem like sometimes people were acting out to get that attention. So to combat that, well, I'll get paid one way or the other. You do what you need, but you're going to have consequences. And a juvenile once told me I need to hear from you that you care that I succeed. That's all I want to hear, that you care that I succeed. I know my success isn't your problem, that's me but I want to know that this relationship matters and that you care that I do succeed. And I said that from every you know pretty much every interaction on after that.
Audra :Wow, a child that had that sense of self, enough self-awareness, regardless of what that poor child had been going through at that point, had enough self-awareness to say I need to know that I matter to somebody, anybody, and if the only person that I have available to me is you, well then I need to know that I matter to you. I don't know who that child is, but I applaud that child for having the strength and the enough sense of self. It might have been desperation and saying that to you and saying, please make me matter to you, because that changed you and every child thereafter I don't know if that child, if you're still in contact with that child, bravo, bravo, and I am so proud of whomever that is. You changed by standing up to you. That child changed lives, right, probably changed generations. Doesn't even realize that that child did that.
Lizbeth:A definite truth teller, a definite truth teller, and really the job was in many ways very inspirational Because you could see people surviving the unimaginable and sometimes going on to do in a short period of time because we didn't have them forever. Pretty amazing stuff, but always trying to do a little and trying to do a little, not always.
Audra :Often, I should say more honestly, often trying to do better than what was modeled for them, and that's certainly not easy. No, Because they didn't have a foundation to do it. So they were making it up as they were going along.
Lizbeth:Right, much like yourself, you were making it up as you went along, because it wasn't modeled for you. It was not, it was not. And I will say my parents were both high school dropouts and I feel like they were both hard workers and I mean, when you look at what they were going through historically, that's one advantage of writing a book is like you have to really get into your parents' heads or whoever you're writing about. But I thought, finally, I started thinking about, well, what were they going through? Oh wow, you know, they didn't have much of a shot, either being born or surviving the Great Depression, not having access to education, not having role models that helped support them, because everyone's in survival mode. It was hard for them. So it didn't mean that I said to myself, sign me up for an extra portion of that, but also that I didn't want to hold any bitterness and I had to say they did survive and they had some amazing strengths. Just wasn't quite what I needed at the moment, but that's okay.
Audra :So do you think that your work has given you the ability to heal? I mean, you've had a tremendous story and you've gotten more than your fair share of trauma. You probably got a couple of helpings of trauma. But because of the work that you've done and the advocacy that you've done and the lives that you've been able to affect and help heal, starting with your children, do you think that your work has been able to finally heal the initial wound that you were given, that initial we'll call it the mother wound, I mean, for lack of another name Right? Has it been able to help heal that initial wound?
Lizbeth:It has definitely been able to help heal that initial wound. All of my work really has, but it's important to, like what you said, help heal. I do believe that healing is that long-term journey. There are times where I feel like, wow, life couldn't be better and I think I'm over this or that or whatever. But honestly, trauma doesn't work like that, and so that's I think, why I tell people I like to help increase resilience by taming trauma through the use of story, but I would never say to someone I'm going to help you get over it or I'm going to help you arrive to a certain destination, because I certainly haven't found it and it just is an ongoing battle.
Audra :Yeah, I'm always just such an admirer of people that, like yourself, that have been given their fair share of helpings, of hardship, and still choose to get up and choose joy and positivity and strength, and choose to serve others. Where it would be just as easy to sit in bed and put the covers over their heads and sleep the day away, is so much harder to say. Who can I serve today? And I think that it's through that that you are constantly healing, layer after layer, because trauma is not a one and done healing. It is a constant thing because you never know what you're going to feel. When you're like, okay, that feels better, oh, what in the world? Where did that come from Exactly? You're like I didn't know that was there.
Audra :And so it's a constant process, and I have found for myself personally and from the research that I've done, is that the constant work for myself and for others, is where the work is done, and you've made a life to it, your career through it, and now you do it, for I dare say it's not a hobby, but this is your passion. Your passion is helping others through their trauma experiences and through advocacy, and to listen to those when others won't and to listen to those when others won't, and that is an amazing and a remarkable gift that you give away just because you need to show up for those that have lost hope. And there's one thing we cannot lose is that we cannot lose hope.
Lizbeth:We cannot lose hope, and thank you, audra. That cannot lose hope. We cannot lose hope, and thank you, audra. That is so true. We cannot lose hope and I never want anyone to feel like they can't be their own best advocate, and I think one of the most, as women, one of the most important things that we can learn is you know, we cannot hire some sort of an agent that will machete through hard times for us. It's us. We can read, we can go to therapy, we can do many sorts of forms of healing, but my hope is to help in writing and storytelling and all of that for people to understand. Each of us can be our own best advocate. It may look very differently for another person than it did for me, but there's no doubt that the answers and the connections, all of that will come from that person if he or she is willing to be their own best advocate. And I feel like I wouldn't go through again what I went through back in my youth. But I will say this one thing If we take some sort of inventory of the skills we learn, they can be really powerful things in our professional life. And it was just something I was inventorying the other day Like I really did look for mentors early on and I still did that in the professional workplace for development and that really served me. And the same with having learning that I didn't have the social skills so well. But to learn the social skills to be in support and give support, that's networking, right, I mean that's networking and learning.
Lizbeth:The written communication piece of dealing in crises it's a part of my second book. I don't know that I did a great job telling it, but I meant to. But like how to hold government systems and non-government systems accountable Very important. You do that in writing. You really don't do that by phone or saying nasty things online. You know putting up a nasty Yelp review is not going to help you necessarily. It really won't. So you know we all have it in us to learn how to get through really difficult times. But I feel like we can retain some of those skills and that's a good thing.
Audra :But I feel like we can retain some of those skills, and that's a good thing. And you've done it in such an efficient and remarkable way. I mean, you've done it and you've made it an art form, thank you. And I'm so glad that our mutual friend, heidi, introduced us and allowed me to tell your story. I think it's, and we just barely scratched the surface. I want to make sure that, before I let you go, I want to do two things. One I want to make sure that everybody knows where they can get access to you and all your information, your books, your site and your movie. So where can we find all of that information, which I will also include in the show notes as well? So where can we find all that information?
Lizbeth:Well, like you said before, my website, lamaridethcom that's my first, initial and middle, initial and last name, lamaridethcom. We'll get you to a lot of those things. I'm a little behind in updating some of my website, but you'll see events, you'll see writing and my videos will be even more clear in my podcast, persistence U with Lizbeth. The more recent episodes I'd say the last 40 episodes are likely on YouTube now that we have a Zoom feature to it and I really want you on my podcast, audra and anyway. So you'll find it there at lamaridethcom.
Lizbeth:The book is called Pieces of Me Rescuing my Kidnapped Daughters and the movie is called Stolen by their Father, and if a person wanted to, they could just Google. Where do I stream Stolen by their Father? Because sometimes that changes, but for now I know that it's on Amazon Prime at a very low price point to rent. It's free on Lifetime. It's because it eventually landed with Lifetime, started with Cineflix, went to Lifetime, it's on Vudu and Hulu and some other places, so that's where they can find that and thank you for asking. I have loved being here today, so excited.
Audra :So happy that you are here, and this is the part of the show that is one of my favorite things to do, which is when I get to step back from the mic and give you an opportunity to have a intimate moment directly with the audience, where you get to speak directly to them, give them a final thought, just something that they can take with them and contemplate with them for the rest of the day. Give them something to think about. So the mic is yours.
Lizbeth:Oh, thank you. Well, I like to think of setbacks, and we all have them. Not all of us have huge trauma, but all of us at some point have setbacks. A lot of us have huge dramas. We can allow it to not define us, but it can refine us, and so when you think of yourself as a diamond in the rough, sometimes the process doesn't make our life uglier. In the end, it really can be something worth savoring and something worth either writing about or sharing with someone. It is we connect mostly I do believe one of my first podcast guests told me this but we connect through our stories and we often connect through our brokenness, and so if people look online and all they're seeing are all these successful, happy, happy, rich, seeming people on vacation, that can lead any one of us to feeling very sad and lonely, but connecting authentically is a beautiful, beautiful thing, and we're all kind of in this struggle together, whether we're willing to acknowledge it or not, kind of in this struggle together, whether we're willing to acknowledge it or not.
Audra :Thank you for saying that, because social media has a way of painting a pretty picture which none of that is true.
Lizbeth:It's so true, and I fall prey to it often as well.
Audra :You know, if it's the wrong weekend and I'm alone, I'm just like, why not me? It's all pretend. Everything on that social media is pretend, so don't feel bad, because they're they're posting all the best pictures of them that have been airbrushed. So it's not true, right? If you want real stuff, if you want real stuff, hang out with lizbeth and I, because we'll tell you the it's not always fun, but it can be funny.
Audra :It can be very funny. Lizbeth, once again, thank you so much for being here, thank you for your vulnerability, thank you for being willing to share your story and your advocacy and just spending your day with me. I appreciate it very much.
Lizbeth:I thank you, audra. This, seriously, is the highlight of my day and probably the entire week. I loved hanging out with you.
Audra :Well, thank you. I appreciate once again you being here and I want to thank all of you for listening and we'll see you again next time.
