Speaker 1: And Martinez in real life podcast.
Speaker 2: Melissa Ford, it's my guest today.
Speaker 1: Everybody, Well, let's afford welcome.
Speaker 2: Welcome to us, a woman's podcast where there.
Speaker 1: Is good lighting.
Speaker 2: The boys are not frolicking around.
Speaker 1: We're not sad. Look at the woman behind the camera,
Speaker 1: a woman.
Speaker 3: Welcome, Thank you. Oh I feels so good. I fetch it.
Speaker 1: With the boys. Oh god, she.
Speaker 2: Is in a boy podcast with a bunch of boys.
Speaker 2: Let let's start before we get into all of that.
Speaker 2: Let's start from the beginning. Let's talk about where you
Speaker 2: came from and your history and how you started.
Speaker 4: And okay, let's do a condensed version. I'm originally from Toronto, Ontario.
Speaker 3: Canada, Canada girl.
Speaker 1: I am a.
Speaker 3: I am a.
Speaker 4: Landed immigrant here in this country. I have a green card,
Speaker 4: I pay my taxes. I've never committed a crime, so
Speaker 4: I'm here legallytt So I started my career doing music
Speaker 4: videos and I was just kind of sitting on the
Speaker 4: fence living in Canada, thinking that, you know, why would
Speaker 4: I ever leave here? This is where I was born, raised,
Speaker 4: my family is but here I am on weekends, you know,
Speaker 4: ending up in Trinidad on yachts with Jay z.
Speaker 1: Oh so you got that job before you came here,
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 4: I was living in working yes so university student, working
Speaker 4: in a call center in bell express View and bartending
Speaker 4: regular life and moonlighting as this music video model, lead
Speaker 4: girl or principal girl in the biggest budget you know,
Speaker 4: music videos and songs for the most enormous artists, hip
Speaker 4: hop artists.
Speaker 3: On the plan.
Speaker 1: People were spending bread on videos.
Speaker 3: It was around the time that it was startarting.
Speaker 4: It was just starting, so you know, I just I
Speaker 4: entered the fray at literally the perfect moment. From December
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety nine to roughly two thousand and four was
Speaker 4: where my music video career really was shaped and honed.
Speaker 3: And this is the space that I lived in.
Speaker 4: But I always knew that you got to take the
Speaker 4: exit ramp somewhere, and you got to take the exit
Speaker 4: ramp before people, you know, divert the traffic and say
Speaker 4: you're no longer viable. One of the last videos that
Speaker 4: I did before I try, before I took the exit
Speaker 4: ramp was Usher's video Yeah, and we shot that in
Speaker 4: LA and that was like a really fantastic experience.
Speaker 3: But that was one of the.
Speaker 4: Last videos that I did because I had my site
Speaker 4: set on hosting on television now, and so I'd started
Speaker 4: to you know, solicit opportunities with BT to start to
Speaker 4: be use my voice more. You know, I'm a silent
Speaker 4: movie star quote unquote doing these music views.
Speaker 1: I've heard you call it that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, like it's three minute. It was a
Speaker 4: three minute movie. But still, you know, I mean it's qualified.
Speaker 4: But I really really really wanted to, you know, show
Speaker 4: that I had talent beyond you know, congratulations on your
Speaker 4: face and your body kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, you know, so that was one of my very
Speaker 4: last videos. I think I think my last one was
Speaker 4: Will Smith and it was a song called Switch for
Speaker 4: the movie Hitch. Oh yeah, yeah, wow, random, What were
Speaker 4: those What are those sets like though?
Speaker 2: Because there's all this like and you said and the
Speaker 2: times was so different, so different.
Speaker 1: It's like, now we're seeing a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: was going on in.
Speaker 2: The nineties that is through the lens of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Looks great different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, looked one way in the nineties, looks way different now.
Speaker 1: So I just wander through.
Speaker 2: The lens of twenty twenty three, and when you think
Speaker 2: about those times, like, I don't know what was happening.
Speaker 1: What was your experience.
Speaker 4: I feel like I was really insulated, you know, my
Speaker 4: personal experiences. I was really insulated because because I was
Speaker 4: so close to director X, and because I was, you know,
Speaker 4: close to Hype Williams, and because I was close to INGA,
Speaker 4: and I was close to this the like the the
Speaker 4: executive level of who put together these massive productions. I
Speaker 4: was insulated and protected. It's not that you didn't experience
Speaker 4: situations that might be a little precarious, you know. I
Speaker 4: used to make kind of like a jokey reference to
Speaker 4: the fact that some of us, you know, music video
Speaker 4: models would act like beaver's You know, when beavers go
Speaker 4: to sleep in the water, they sleep back to back,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying, so they don't drown.
Speaker 3: And so it's music video models.
Speaker 4: You got my six, I'm gonna go to sleep, and
Speaker 4: you keep your head on a swivel, you know, make
Speaker 4: sure that you know, because what we know now wasn't
Speaker 4: really described that way. There's a little bit of predatory
Speaker 4: behavior going on on music set. I mean there was
Speaker 4: a lot of alcohol, want to get you a little
Speaker 4: loosey goosey.
Speaker 2: And and then you're there under the you're there under
Speaker 2: the premise of being this is sexy, this is a sexy,
Speaker 2: beautiful woman.
Speaker 3: And you're wearing not much.
Speaker 2: And so it's immediately, yeah, this is why you're here.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So yeah, you know, it's almost like there was an
Speaker 4: It wasn't only that it was just accepted. It was
Speaker 4: expected that something could happen to you on music video sets.
Speaker 3: And it's only now that.
Speaker 4: People really truly have an understanding that women were there
Speaker 4: doing an honest day's work for an honest day's pay,
Speaker 4: because really, people didn't look at it like work.
Speaker 2: I just wonder how you manage and that because she's like,
Speaker 2: you were protected, right, but like how did you manage
Speaker 2: navigating that type of energy all the time?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: It was depending on the set, the energy could be
Speaker 4: wildly shift, like for example, when I did knock yourself
Speaker 4: out Jadakiss. I can't say enough good things about Jadakiss.
Speaker 3: He really is a gentleman.
Speaker 4: He back then we had a scene in which everybody
Speaker 4: wanted me to be very handsy with him, and they
Speaker 4: wanted the energy return. They wanted us to kiss, they
Speaker 4: wanted us to like kind of grope each other.
Speaker 3: It was like supposed to be very romantic.
Speaker 4: So I don't know him.
Speaker 3: I got a man, I'm going home.
Speaker 4: Too, So no, And so I had this conversation with
Speaker 4: him at the car Moonlight and Old nine, and I
Speaker 4: was just like, hey, let me just I'm gonna make
Speaker 4: the video look real, real good, but I need you
Speaker 4: to keep your hands above the waist and just kind
Speaker 4: of let me lead.
Speaker 3: And he was like, I, MA, I wasn't gonna touch you.
Speaker 3: I just should you know. I was like, thank you
Speaker 3: so much.
Speaker 2: Did you not have any experiences where people were disrespectful
Speaker 2: or like.
Speaker 4: One experience that kind of lives with me during that time.
Speaker 4: It was in the crafty room craft services, It's where
Speaker 4: all the snacks are and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And it was a.
Speaker 4: Video where there was a lot of women on set.
Speaker 4: There was a lot of movement on set. We were
Speaker 4: at the Parker Murdy and Hotel. We had two floors.
Speaker 4: There was a lot of action going on and stuff
Speaker 4: like that, and I really I needed a break. I
Speaker 4: need a break from all the energy. There's a lot
Speaker 4: of people and stuff like that. So I went to
Speaker 4: the crafty room.
Speaker 3: And nobody was in there. I was like oooh, and
Speaker 3: I got.
Speaker 4: Like this ponytail, and I'm wearing this dress that's literally
Speaker 4: like a condom. It's like it's sucked all everything in
Speaker 4: and it's really really short, like don't sneeze. So I'm
Speaker 4: sitting there and I'm just like eating some liquorice and whatnot.
Speaker 3: And then this guy comes in the room.
Speaker 4: I don't know who he is, but you know, he
Speaker 4: looks like he's part of the entourage, knows a rap video.
Speaker 4: And then another guy comes in the room, and before
Speaker 4: I know it, there's about ten guys in the room
Speaker 4: and they're circling me and they're starting to touch me,
Speaker 4: and I did not know how to defend myself or
Speaker 4: I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but I
Speaker 4: think that women sometimes have a fear of offending or
Speaker 4: making a bigger deal out of something. Their instincts are
Speaker 4: firing off like crazy, like.
Speaker 1: Especially when you're in a work environment exactly.
Speaker 4: But it's just like danger, danger, danger, But you suppress
Speaker 4: those instincts. You suppress them because you don't want to
Speaker 4: seem impolite. You don't wanna you don't want to call
Speaker 4: attention to something that might might not be a thing.
Speaker 4: But it's a thing and you're terrified, but you don't
Speaker 4: know how to act. You don't know how to You
Speaker 4: just don't know how to act in this moment. And
Speaker 4: it's almost like if I do act and I get hysterical,
Speaker 4: will that make it worse? Will that mean that somebody
Speaker 4: covers my mouth? And then it just goes all to hell?
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying. And it was one of
Speaker 4: those moments where I literally terror on my face, didn't
Speaker 4: know what to do, and literally cameraman or Grip walks
Speaker 4: in the room and notices, which was amazing that he
Speaker 4: could even notice, but he noticed that I just was
Speaker 4: like sitting there like my chihuahua, big eyes sos.
Speaker 3: And he was like, hey, now I think they need
Speaker 3: you on set. Let me take you.
Speaker 4: And that was it that diffused the situation and got
Speaker 4: me out of a situation that I felt like I
Speaker 4: was in peril.
Speaker 3: Wow, you know that.
Speaker 2: Makes me wonder how many women were in those situations?
Speaker 4: And those were treacherous times. Yeah, it was the wild
Speaker 4: wild West. There was no there was no rules, there
Speaker 4: was no boundary, there was no hr Who are you calling?
Speaker 3: Who are you complaining to?
Speaker 1: That's it, There's no more work. Then right, because you're.
Speaker 4: Exactly, exactly exactly and a lot of times women, you know,
Speaker 4: they made they made decisions based on need, you know,
Speaker 4: rather than I feel empowered by this decision. I feel
Speaker 4: I want to be here, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 4: and I am in control and bubble.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, God, did you ever see that guy again?
Speaker 1: No? Where he is?
Speaker 4: No, it was.
Speaker 1: He's a good guy. I wish for him some blessing today, I.
Speaker 4: Do, I do, I wish, I wish him well. I've
Speaker 4: sent him flowers in my head for you know, over
Speaker 4: the course of many years, because that situation could have
Speaker 4: just gone completely differently. Yeah, for sure, you know, so
Speaker 4: I was, I was. I was definitely fortunate. But like
Speaker 4: I said, I mean it's been sometimes it's treacherous waters that.
Speaker 2: Stuff triggering for you that comes up, like now, how
Speaker 2: we were talking about like now in this day, all
Speaker 2: these like stories of the nineties people that we know
Speaker 2: going through accusation. I feel like there's a whole group
Speaker 2: of our people that were like pillars in the culture
Speaker 2: that are just like that titans of the industry, knocking
Speaker 2: down one after another after another, and I don't know,
Speaker 2: you know, we get asked a lot about believing victims.
Speaker 4: You know, yeah, and well, why would they have waited,
Speaker 4: Why would they have waited to make these claims and
Speaker 4: defile these suits? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And
Speaker 4: it's a conversation. It's a question I am extremely uncomfortable with.
Speaker 4: It is not for me to answer. It's not for
Speaker 4: you to answer. It's not it's not it's not our story,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: But I just imagine there's all types of reasons why
Speaker 2: women don't speak up right away.
Speaker 4: Well, so I will say this that I think that
Speaker 4: anybody that comes forward, whether it was five minutes ago,
Speaker 4: five days ago, five weeks ago, five years ago, or
Speaker 4: twenty years ago, I commend you.
Speaker 3: You're brave because.
Speaker 4: Every experience that I've had has not been on the
Speaker 4: up and up, you know, and they've been with There's
Speaker 4: one that I can think of in particular. I I
Speaker 4: don't have the band with the strength to deal with
Speaker 4: the onslaught of what I have seen victims go through,
Speaker 4: to put myself in that position. That is why I
Speaker 4: might I tip my hat to them.
Speaker 1: I've never heard anybody admit that or say that out loud.
Speaker 4: You know, well, I s I'm in I'm very brave
Speaker 4: these days, and I give myself a lot of credit
Speaker 4: for being brave to say things that people think to
Speaker 4: themselves but would never ever utter the words.
Speaker 3: You know, And I have said this two people.
Speaker 4: You know that there's been experiences that I probably could
Speaker 4: have filed suit on, but I'm probably never I'm never
Speaker 4: gonna do it because I can't deal with the repercussions
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 3: I can't. I can't, and I won't. I won't want.
Speaker 4: I have to protect myself in some form or fashion.
Speaker 3: You know, my mental health, I've been through a lot.
Speaker 4: My mental health is fragile, you know, and especially like
Speaker 4: the last five six years of my life from the
Speaker 4: near death car accident.
Speaker 1: Definitely want to talk about that.
Speaker 4: Everything that transpired after that and then my mom, you know,
Speaker 4: getting sick with cancer and passing away, and that rocked
Speaker 4: my entire universe.
Speaker 3: I mean, I had.
Speaker 4: More suicidal ideations during that those you know, first couple
Speaker 4: of years of my mom passing away. Then I've had
Speaker 4: my entire life, you know, So when you think about
Speaker 4: adding to that.
Speaker 3: I can't. Yeah, I can't.
Speaker 4: You know, maybe there's people that would say, but Melissa,
Speaker 4: you you doing that, you standing on that platform and
Speaker 4: saying I'm like.
Speaker 2: That's why people are not honest about the fact that
Speaker 2: they won't, because then, well, you could have saved somebody else.
Speaker 1: But it's also you have to you have to live
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 2: The person who is sharing whatever experience that they had
Speaker 2: has to live with the energy that comes back with that.
Speaker 2: It is a very brave thing. People don't talk about
Speaker 2: that enough. How brave you have to be to put
Speaker 2: your stuff on the front line. So you're right about that,
Speaker 2: for sure. But I've also never heard somebody, well at
Speaker 2: least I've never had I'm sure people have admitted to it,
Speaker 2: but I've never heard somebody from the other side talk
Speaker 2: about why why I wouldn't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's why I'm too I'm too fragile. I know myself.
Speaker 4: I know myself, and I've done I have gone through
Speaker 4: an enormous amount of therapy and come out the other
Speaker 4: end with a really intense sense of self awareness. And
Speaker 4: I know what my bandwidth is, and I know I
Speaker 4: know what I am not capable of handling. That will
Speaker 4: probably like upend my life to a point where I
Speaker 4: won't recover from it, and I don't want that for myself.
Speaker 1: Do you think ever in your life you might change
Speaker 1: your opinion on that.
Speaker 4: You know, we're watching, you know, chickens coming home to roost,
Speaker 4: and when somebody does the things that they do. You
Speaker 4: know what's happened to me. It's not an isolated incident,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying. And I'm sure that there
Speaker 4: will be a before and an after kind of thing.
Speaker 4: And I don't believe that anything that I do or
Speaker 4: I say can prevent another act from happening.
Speaker 3: I don't believe that. I don't.
Speaker 4: And also again I stress, after everything that I have
Speaker 4: gone through, I have to protect my peace, you know.
Speaker 4: So I have had to make peace with this decision.
Speaker 4: It has not come lightly. I have struggled, I have cried,
Speaker 4: I've screamed.
Speaker 3: I've talked to my therapists.
Speaker 4: I've talked to close friends that I knew that I
Speaker 4: know would never betray my confidence.
Speaker 3: And I know.
Speaker 4: That I I just not this lifetime, not this lifetime.
Speaker 4: Maybe next lifetime I come back as Joan of arc
Speaker 4: you know, you.
Speaker 1: Just never know.
Speaker 2: But anyway, I asked you that because to the point
Speaker 2: of like, how brave those women are and when people
Speaker 2: ask the question like why did it take them so long?
Speaker 1: That's this is why.
Speaker 2: This is why, because you have to because it's scary.
Speaker 4: And a lot of times, you know, we you know,
Speaker 4: are our vocabulary has expanded. You know, I'm surprised consent
Speaker 4: was not the word of the year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're saying nobody was talking about that.
Speaker 4: We have a different understanding about it now, we have
Speaker 4: an more expansive.
Speaker 3: Way of understanding what it actually means.
Speaker 4: And I think that a lot of people are very
Speaker 4: uncomfortable with the expanded understanding of what that concept actually
Speaker 4: means because then they have to go back in their
Speaker 4: past and they have to understand that their behavior.
Speaker 3: Is now being called into question.
Speaker 4: And now somebody might have a might have been living
Speaker 4: with a different perception as to what transpired between the
Speaker 4: two of you. And that's literally what we're seeing. What
Speaker 4: we're seeing right now. Wow, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: So it's ooh as soon sometimes this muddy waters, you know.
Speaker 1: Water WHOA.
Speaker 2: Let me take you back to those times you were
Speaker 2: talking about, because honestly, how you and I connected, we
Speaker 2: were that Jennifer angeloiyee. We had never really had an
Speaker 2: extensive conversation like that.
Speaker 4: Before, always like I'd always adored you for my part
Speaker 4: and I told you and I told you that was
Speaker 4: so when we did the fiftieth Year of Hip Hop
Speaker 4: thing for ABC. One of the moments that just like,
Speaker 4: you know, where I was literally like this to you
Speaker 4: was when you were on American Idol and you decided
Speaker 4: to leave because you just were you just didn't want
Speaker 4: You said, I don't want to be responsible for crushing
Speaker 4: people's dreams like this is. I'm not cut out for this.
Speaker 1: I know what I can do, I know what I'm
Speaker 1: built for it.
Speaker 4: And I was just like, there's not there's so not
Speaker 4: very many people that would have had that level of integrity,
Speaker 4: self awareness and that level of kindness.
Speaker 3: To do something like that.
Speaker 4: I was like, I love Angie.
Speaker 5: I love her girl hashtag girl cries, you know, so
Speaker 5: like in you were always like a friend in my head,
Speaker 5: and you know, you were always floating on the peripheral
Speaker 5: for me because one degree of separation in terms of
Speaker 5: all friends.
Speaker 1: And stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So it's always just like hey girl, hey, yeah, yea,
Speaker 2: if I saw you'd be like hi. But we never
Speaker 2: really took we would never had time together until that night,
Speaker 2: that dinner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we.
Speaker 2: Were talking about this trauma and accidents. You had told
Speaker 2: me about your.
Speaker 1: Accident, which I had I didn't know about. I didn't.
Speaker 2: It was way more traumatizing than anything I had experienced.
Speaker 2: And you don't really talk about that much, do you,
Speaker 2: or have you? I mean, you've shared the story somewhat.
Speaker 4: When it it took me almost a year to recover.
Speaker 4: I was living in LA I was going to a
Speaker 4: bridal shower the R and B Artist Tank. He was
Speaker 4: getting married to his now wife, Zena Foster. It was
Speaker 4: her bridal shower. I was going to a part of
Speaker 4: LA that I wasn't really familiar with. It's called Glendale.
Speaker 4: I was on the one thirty four freeway. I was
Speaker 4: not familiar with it at all. So you by yourself
Speaker 4: and by myself in the car. Thank god. I did
Speaker 4: not have Daisy with me. Oh my god. You see
Speaker 4: I take her everywhere with me, you know. On this day,
Speaker 4: I was literally like she's looking at me with the eyes.
Speaker 4: I was like, no, you stay here in my car.
Speaker 1: Accident. My was in the car with me. He was okay.
Speaker 4: Thank god, Daisy would not have been okay because I
Speaker 4: got hit by a truck and my jeep flipped five times,
Speaker 4: and what ended up happening was when it was flipping
Speaker 4: upside down, the roof got ripped off, and so when
Speaker 4: my jeep came to rest upside down, my head hit
Speaker 4: the pavement and that's how I ended up with a
Speaker 4: skull fractor. My brain was bleeding. I had a massive concussion.
Speaker 4: I was knocked out. I don't when I saw the
Speaker 4: photos of my car accident, I have zero memory of
Speaker 4: any of that. And all the good Samaritans that stopped
Speaker 4: for me, I have zero memory.
Speaker 3: I don't remember anything.
Speaker 1: Oh people stop, Well they had to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so oh yeah, like it was the one four
Speaker 4: was shut down, and so the memory that.
Speaker 3: I have head hit the actual pavement.
Speaker 4: Yes, So when I woke up, I remember waking up
Speaker 4: and I could only see through one eye because there
Speaker 4: was like blood like pooling in my other eye. And
Speaker 4: but I don't know, Oh, I don't know what's happening.
Speaker 4: I just know my back feels really warm, and I'm
Speaker 4: looking up at the sun. I was like, what the
Speaker 4: hell and going on over here? And then I start
Speaker 4: seeing these figures above my face and I see yellow
Speaker 4: and it's basically the EMT workers like the first responders
Speaker 4: and stuff like that, and I'm thinking to myself, there's
Speaker 4: no possible way, There's no way, no way, and so
Speaker 4: I kind of just turned my head to the side
Speaker 4: and I see my jeep upside down, wheels still spinning slowly,
Speaker 4: and it smashed, and I was just like it was
Speaker 4: the most surreal experience of my entire life because I
Speaker 4: feel no pain. I don't feel any pain because I
Speaker 4: guess shock and adrenaline and the whole nine nothing has awake.
Speaker 4: I've now woken up, but apparently I've been out for
Speaker 4: about ten or fifteen minutes because the good Smaritans that
Speaker 4: came literally one guy took his shirt off and held
Speaker 4: my head closed because I had like this, my head
Speaker 4: head was like cracked open. And then somebody else was
Speaker 4: like shielding me from the sun with a hat. And
Speaker 4: I see all this in the pictures because I don't
Speaker 4: remember it.
Speaker 3: They might have been talking to me and I don't know.
Speaker 4: And so then they, you know, first responders, they put
Speaker 4: me on the board neck thing, and then they put
Speaker 4: me in the ambulance and they take me and I
Speaker 4: just your head is open, yeah, And I remember like
Speaker 4: saying to the first responders. I was just like, I
Speaker 4: started crying and I said, can somebody hold my hand?
Speaker 4: You know, I felt like I was so alone. I
Speaker 4: felt so alone, and they were like, oh, yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: you know whoops, offer some compassion to the chickens like
Speaker 4: a mess right now. And then it was just like
Speaker 4: a flurry of activity when I got brought into the
Speaker 4: emergency room and you know, neurosurgeons and doctors and e
Speaker 4: are nurses, etcetera, etcetera, just going crazy just over here
Speaker 4: because I don't know what's happened. I don't know that
Speaker 4: I have like this gaping wound and my skull is
Speaker 4: like cracked and all the whole nine. I don't know
Speaker 4: this because I can't feel it. So I'm in the
Speaker 4: hospital for about a week with the head injury. They
Speaker 4: keep you there really long. Yeah, gave me some really
Speaker 4: good drugs. But a lot of friends came to see me.
Speaker 1: So what was it?
Speaker 4: And it kept mirrors away from me too. But I
Speaker 4: will say that I survivor's guilt crept in very very quickly.
Speaker 4: I started to feel really resentful of the fact that
Speaker 4: my life was spared. Why I didn't I didn't really
Speaker 4: feel like it was worth sparing over others.
Speaker 1: You know, did somebody else lose their life and that not? No,
Speaker 1: no notice in general.
Speaker 4: No, just just in general, you know, like I just
Speaker 4: started thinking about I don't know, child prostitutes in Calcutta,
Speaker 4: Like I don't know, like children in refe geez can't refugee.
Speaker 1: Just you just felt like you probably should have died
Speaker 1: in that car.
Speaker 3: I was like, I was really angry at God for
Speaker 3: sparing my life.
Speaker 4: And everybody's saying to me, you know, you have a purpose.
Speaker 4: God spared you for a reason. I was just like,
Speaker 4: I hate that idea. I hate it. Stop saying it
Speaker 4: to me.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 4: Because it felt like it was way too much pressure.
Speaker 4: First of all, my purpose?
Speaker 1: What is that?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 4: I was wildly disoriented. You know what I'm saying. I
Speaker 4: have a traumatic brain injury, and I didn't understand what
Speaker 4: comes along with that traumatic brain injury, which is why,
Speaker 4: first of all, your your natural like mood stabilizers are compromised,
Speaker 4: your dopamine and serotonin receptors, the whole nine. So like
Speaker 4: you're you're you're kind of off your nut a little
Speaker 4: bit A lot of times. What I came to find out,
Speaker 4: but my doctor did not tell me, is that a
Speaker 4: lot of people who suffer from TBIs, they are they're
Speaker 4: prescribed traumatic brain injury. They're described SSRIs, basically antidepressants to
Speaker 4: try to, you know, offset the suicidal ideations that come
Speaker 4: along with it. I could not figure out why I
Speaker 4: wanted to kill myself like so soon after surviving what happened.
Speaker 1: But had you ever felt like that before the accident?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean, like this, being surviving this industry alone,
Speaker 4: I've definitely, you know, had like like severe depressive episodes
Speaker 4: that lasted months where I isolated myself and hid from
Speaker 4: the world and drank too much to self medicate and
Speaker 4: self soothed and stuff like that. Because I've been very
Speaker 4: anti antidepressant my whole life, I just would I just
Speaker 4: felt like it was it was weak to take them
Speaker 4: and I needed to white knuckle it through my own problems,
Speaker 4: not understanding that I probably was suffering from chemical and
Speaker 4: violences and I could use some medication. We have a
Speaker 4: different understanding about that kind of thing now, too, So
Speaker 4: fast forward to my car accident and understanding that now
Speaker 4: I really actually do need them, but I won't take
Speaker 4: them because my doctors haven't explained to me what's going
Speaker 4: on up here. It took me crying out for help
Speaker 4: using my Instagram page, which I would never do in
Speaker 4: my whole life. I have thought that vulnerability and exposure
Speaker 4: was a weakness that I would.
Speaker 3: Never ever ever.
Speaker 4: Want to let the world know I was suffering or
Speaker 4: I needed help. I just know. But I was out
Speaker 4: of my depths. I was dealing with a monster that
Speaker 4: I just didn't have the tools to understand how to
Speaker 4: fight it off.
Speaker 3: And so I.
Speaker 4: Started speaking through my Instagram page and talking about the
Speaker 4: ubiquitous misery and overwhelming sadness that I felt.
Speaker 3: That I was out of control and I didn't know
Speaker 3: how to fix it.
Speaker 4: I was full of raine, just things like that. You know,
Speaker 4: I'm a loquacious mofo, you know, so even in the
Speaker 4: depths of my despair, I could write a pretty little caption,
Speaker 4: but people would reach out to me, and then, you know,
Speaker 4: I ended up going on the Breakfast Club and being
Speaker 4: very vocal about what had happened to me and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. So people would send me advice, you know,
Speaker 4: like I had people who had experienced PTSD and traumatic
Speaker 4: brain injuries while they were you know, serving overseas you know,
Speaker 4: and my god, my hat and my heart go out
Speaker 4: to these people because they really helped me understand how
Speaker 4: to help myself. Like one person said, oh, yeah, my
Speaker 4: husband when he came home with a traumatic brain injury
Speaker 4: from being in Afghanistan, nothing worked and blah blah blah
Speaker 4: until he tried hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: you mean, like the thing that Michael used to lay
Speaker 4: in And they were like, yeah, not covered by insurance.
Speaker 3: Hella pricey.
Speaker 4: But it was one of those therapies that I that
Speaker 4: I tried. I tried to do a lot of holistic stuff,
Speaker 4: and you're trying because emotionally, you feel emotionally mentally, I
Speaker 4: am I am. I am a pancake, I am a puddle,
Speaker 4: I am a mess. I don't know how to fix myself.
Speaker 4: I feel broken. I literally felt broken, and I did
Speaker 4: not know how to put myself back together. I had
Speaker 4: certain coping mechanisms my whole life, and none of them
Speaker 4: were working anymore. Curious, like I told you a little
Speaker 4: bit of self medication, maybe a little a lot of
Speaker 4: over indulgence in alcohol, marijuana, never did anything else. I've
Speaker 4: never I've never done cocaine, never done, never done any.
Speaker 3: Of the hard stuff.
Speaker 4: But you know, I mean, wine is a gateway. It
Speaker 4: is a gateway that a lot of us women, really
Speaker 4: really really you know sometimes takes.
Speaker 1: Also work addiction also probably was in there.
Speaker 4: And you know what I want, I was gonna mention
Speaker 4: that I watched Ryan Coogler's interview and that work addiction
Speaker 4: thing is is is a very real thing because something
Speaker 4: traumatic like dying almost dying can happen to you, or
Speaker 4: you're the person that brought you into the world, like
Speaker 4: your mother dies, and you still feel this overwhelming urge
Speaker 4: or need to keep yourself.
Speaker 1: Working, working, busy.
Speaker 4: Busy for fear that you lose relevance or popularity, or.
Speaker 1: You also don't want to deal with what's really going on.
Speaker 1: It's just a way to avoid.
Speaker 3: It is a way. It is the absolute worst.
Speaker 4: It's the absolute worst way to avoid because it's going
Speaker 4: to rear its ugly heads somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Sure, you know.
Speaker 4: So for me, those coping mechanisms were you know, abusing
Speaker 4: weed and alcohol and then just self isolating some weeks
Speaker 4: months and what do you mean, what does that mean?
Speaker 4: There would be times where you wouldn't really see me
Speaker 4: for like six months.
Speaker 2: Would anybody say you maybe a couple of people.
Speaker 4: Mmm, I I could like hide for a really long
Speaker 4: time and a lot of and a lot of that
Speaker 4: that time was pre social media.
Speaker 1: That's scary. Yeah, that's when it gets scary.
Speaker 4: Is it. It is really scary to think about to
Speaker 4: think about what I thought were my coping mechanisms, and
Speaker 4: that that these not even considering how unhealthy they were,
Speaker 4: and trying to figure out a different way, a different emportation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it was just like it. It was just
Speaker 3: you know, get.
Speaker 4: Home, buy bottles of bottles of liquor, self medicate, fall
Speaker 4: asleep and rinse, repeat, you know, rense repeat, you know.
Speaker 4: So I I'll say all that to say that by
Speaker 4: the time the tru M, you know, my traumatic brain
Speaker 4: injury for my car accident happened, those tactics no longer work.
Speaker 4: My brain was a different brain, you know, it had
Speaker 4: I had it had been bleeding. You know what I'm
Speaker 4: saying it Drinking alcohol was the war and smoking weed
Speaker 4: was the worst thing that I could do for my
Speaker 4: brain to try to repair it. You know, in a
Speaker 4: in a point and time in which I need to
Speaker 4: repair it, what I need is sleep. What I need
Speaker 4: is meditation, deep breathing, that oxygen therapy. What I need
Speaker 4: is peace and quiet talk therapy. And and I need
Speaker 4: people to like my loved ones, to rally it around me.
Speaker 4: And I need to give myself, you know, a break
Speaker 4: from feeling like I need to contribute to in any way,
Speaker 4: shape or form, to the ether, to the world whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's that's a load.
Speaker 3: It was It was a lot.
Speaker 4: It was a lot, and just this overwhelming also urge
Speaker 4: to feel like a comeback story, you know what I'm saying, Because.
Speaker 2: You want you're still working. That's you being performative. That's
Speaker 2: you wanting to the Melissa Ford brand. That's how it's see.
Speaker 4: Super performative, super super performative. To my own detriment. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and so you know, I eventually go back to work.
Speaker 4: I was on a podcast at the time, very popular
Speaker 4: podcast and Hollywood and locks. And then at that time,
Speaker 4: I was just like, I really need my own thing,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying. I just really need to
Speaker 4: do the girl thing, you know what I mean? So
Speaker 4: I started my own podcast at the time. I called
Speaker 4: it I'm Here for the Food. The title was based
Speaker 4: on my dating life because usually.
Speaker 3: I was just saying the food.
Speaker 4: I'm kidding, but it was like that was tongue in
Speaker 4: cheek and it's like a girl thing, you.
Speaker 1: Know, but still healing at this time. Had you figured out.
Speaker 3: At this point?
Speaker 4: So this is basically like a year later. So I'm
Speaker 4: I'm I'm doing so much better. But the day that
Speaker 4: I launched my podcast, I find out that my mom
Speaker 4: has cancer. Let me add on to the fact that
Speaker 4: I had not spoken to my mom for six months
Speaker 4: because I was angry with her, and wow, she had
Speaker 4: been trying to contact me, calling me, sending me messages,
Speaker 4: mailing me little things and stuff like that. And it
Speaker 4: wasn't until her best friend, who I call my aunt,
Speaker 4: she was like, I need you to call your mother
Speaker 4: right now. And I was just like, I'm not very
Speaker 4: happy with my mother. She was like, I don't care,
Speaker 4: you need to call her right now. And I knew
Speaker 4: in that moment that something was really really wrong.
Speaker 1: And where were you met at her?
Speaker 4: My father had died a really long time ago, in
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety two, and we had his ashes in a box,
Speaker 4: really pretty, you know box, and I always had this
Speaker 4: idea that I was going to take it to Barbados
Speaker 4: and I was going to take a boat out in
Speaker 4: the Caribbean Sea and I was going to empty his
Speaker 4: ashes into the sea. Well, obviously couple of decades past,
Speaker 4: so I didn't get around to it, you know, But
Speaker 4: it was always this thing that I was going to do.
Speaker 3: He wasn't going anywhere, you know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 3: it was always this thing that I was going to do.
Speaker 4: My mom discovered that she had cancer, so she started
Speaker 4: to tie up loose ends because she I think she
Speaker 4: felt that she wasn't gonna survive this, and so n
Speaker 4: she took his ashes to his parents' cemetery plot and
Speaker 4: buried them there.
Speaker 3: And I was so angry you.
Speaker 4: I was so angry you didn't ask me. You didn't
Speaker 4: ask my step brothers, and you know, my father had
Speaker 4: other children from previous relationships. You didn't ask any of
Speaker 4: us if anybody wanted them and wanted to do something
Speaker 4: different with them, why would you do that? I was
Speaker 4: so angry, But a part of me knew in my
Speaker 4: bone why she did it.
Speaker 1: Did you know she had cancer? Oh you didn't m mmmmm.
Speaker 3: She didn't tell me at that point, and I just
Speaker 3: was so.
Speaker 4: I was I just was angry and I was just
Speaker 4: projecting and just just being an infant and just and
Speaker 4: just being a dick, you know, because I could. My
Speaker 4: anger was really important to me. And yeah, I were.
Speaker 2: You guys close before you and your mom before this happened,
Speaker 2: or complicated.
Speaker 4: Complicated, got it complicated, really complicated. She loved me so much,
Speaker 4: but she was like Russian and Norwegian, you know, Viking,
Speaker 4: you know, stoic, you know what I'm saying. And it's
Speaker 4: just like her mom died when she was fifteen, and
Speaker 4: she didn't have an easy life, so it's not like
Speaker 4: she was like the warmest person. But I never really
Speaker 4: gave my mom, you know, I never really like gave
Speaker 4: heard like a wide birth for understanding. You only act
Speaker 4: you only the education of which you are first disposed
Speaker 4: to is who is basically who.
Speaker 3: You are, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: And so I just I never let my mom off
Speaker 4: the hook. Really, I just never let her off the hook.
Speaker 1: Moms and daughters. It's not uncommon. It's not an uncommon.
Speaker 3: Thing, it really is.
Speaker 4: And I just, you know, guilt, Oh my god, that
Speaker 4: has been my cross to bear, the guilt that I
Speaker 4: have like just felt for so many different reasons. Like
Speaker 4: my career choice, the way people have received me. I
Speaker 4: internalize it, you know, just I self flagellate all the time,
Speaker 4: make myself pay for every misstep in judgment and every
Speaker 4: bad decision. I have not allowed myself to be a
Speaker 4: human being. For the vast majority of my life. I
Speaker 4: expected more of myself than I have expected of any
Speaker 4: other human being in this world. And I and I
Speaker 4: don't know how I'm still here. I don't know how
Speaker 4: I've survived.
Speaker 1: But wow, you are a warrior, sister.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I just really want to be a soft pink no right.
Speaker 3: I hate when they like, you're so strong. I don't
Speaker 3: want to be true.
Speaker 1: I just said that after my accident. People be like,
Speaker 1: but you're so strong. I'm like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be true.
Speaker 3: I'm tired.
Speaker 1: I got used to get so bad. You're so strong. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, finding out that my mom had cancer, it was
Speaker 4: aggressive and it was fastncer did she had colon and
Speaker 4: uh so in a very short amount of time, I
Speaker 4: had to experience change.
Speaker 1: Did you call her right away when they Yeah?
Speaker 3: I did. And this was in November.
Speaker 4: Come December, she's sold the house I grew up in
Speaker 4: as a child. The my sanctuary, the place that I
Speaker 4: knew if everything else falls apart and everything fails, if
Speaker 4: I if I fail at life, there's that place I
Speaker 4: can go to. I can go home to my childhood
Speaker 4: room and crawl into my bed, and my mom is gonna,
Speaker 4: you know, make me a coffee and a scone with
Speaker 4: some butter, and she's gonna bring it upstairs, and she's
Speaker 4: gonna sit on my bed and she's gonna stroke my
Speaker 4: head and she's gonna tell me everything's okay. Hm.
Speaker 3: So I had to.
Speaker 1: For Christmas.
Speaker 4: I like, I had to pack up my house. I
Speaker 4: had to say goodbye to like so many things. I
Speaker 4: had to say goodbye to my life, the you know,
Speaker 4: and knowing that my mom was probably not gonna survive,
Speaker 4: and oh my god, it just it was awful.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3: It was really really hard.
Speaker 4: And it's just like this this was uh, this was
Speaker 4: end of night two two thousand nineteen into two thousand twenty.
Speaker 4: So the pandemic came.
Speaker 1: Oh, this is not that long ago.
Speaker 2: Now, as we get some tissues, please sorry, I wanna
Speaker 2: make sure you gotta keep your makeup good.
Speaker 1: In so.
Speaker 4: Two thousand twenty, uh, pandemic hits and it gets real.
Speaker 4: It was very different and you ima still here. No, No,
Speaker 4: it was very different in other countries than it was here.
Speaker 4: M So Canada's borders shut down. It became very difficult
Speaker 4: for me to travel there. And what I didn't know
Speaker 4: is that my mom decided to there's a perc there's
Speaker 4: a process in Toronto call in Canada called made Medical
Speaker 4: Assistance and dying. When you are terminal, you can choose
Speaker 4: the day that you are going to die because they're
Speaker 4: going to assist you.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that was a thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's legal in eight states here, maybe more now
Speaker 4: I'm not sure, but it's legal in Canada, and so
Speaker 4: you have to go.
Speaker 3: You have to go through a very long process.
Speaker 4: They ask you, They ask you in front of people,
Speaker 4: they ask you when you're alone. Is anybody coercing you
Speaker 4: to do this? The executor of your will cannot be
Speaker 4: a witness to anything.
Speaker 3: There can be no conflict of interest or whatever.
Speaker 4: It is very It's a process in which, let's just say,
Speaker 4: twenty people say oh, this is what I want to do.
Speaker 4: By the end of it, two people will go ahead
Speaker 4: with it. And those two people are always women. Men
Speaker 4: always back out.
Speaker 3: That's what the doctor told me. She was like, women
Speaker 3: are warriors, they really really are strong. So my mom chose.
Speaker 4: My mom chose the date as May nineteenth, and I
Speaker 4: got home to Toronto.
Speaker 1: On during during COVID twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: I got home to Toronto on May thirteenth. I tried
Speaker 4: to get there the twelfth, but I tried to smuggle
Speaker 4: Daisy on the air on the airplane and they caught me. No,
Speaker 4: and I didn't have her vaccination records, you know what.
Speaker 4: I got there the thirteenth, and I was shocked to
Speaker 4: see I had just seen my mom in March. So
Speaker 4: I'm I am trying to work. I'm trying to be
Speaker 4: Melissa Ford. I'm trying to run my podcast, I'm trying
Speaker 4: to work on my other podcasts.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to do all of.
Speaker 4: These things at this and act like everything is fine
Speaker 4: and projecting that everything is fine and nothing's fine.
Speaker 1: Why do we do it?
Speaker 4: I don't know why we do this to ourselves? Is
Speaker 4: what I did. And so the last time i'd seen
Speaker 4: her in March, and when I came in May, my
Speaker 4: mom was a skeleton. She was it was over, and
Speaker 4: you know, so I just l lay it in bed
Speaker 4: with her for days and just I tried to ask
Speaker 4: her as many questions as I could. Mm.
Speaker 1: Oh, baby, I am so sorry.
Speaker 6: That's why, like after it happened, you know, I I
Speaker 6: any chance I could get to, like do an interview
Speaker 6: and talk about this, I would say to people like,
Speaker 6: please if you can, if you have a funky relationship
Speaker 6: with your parents or your mom, just try your best
Speaker 6: to repair it. And also like talk to your parents
Speaker 6: about the people they were before you came along. Mm
Speaker 6: ask them questions, you know what I mean, Like d
Speaker 6: get to know them as the human beings they were
Speaker 6: before they had you, you know, and understand and also
Speaker 6: j just you know, just understand their falliability, like.
Speaker 4: They're just they're they're human beings. They will air, they
Speaker 4: will make mistakes, and you know, but it's just like
Speaker 4: just enhance the relationship just through that, you know, just
Speaker 4: improving your level of communication with this person. It's going
Speaker 4: to make you feel so much better when they're gone.
Speaker 4: Because I felt like I was racing against time to
Speaker 4: try to figure out.
Speaker 3: Like what do I want to ask her?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know because I didn't take the time to
Speaker 4: figure out who she was outside of me, and it
Speaker 4: just oh, I don't believe me. You don't want to
Speaker 4: live with that guilt? Oh, it will kill you. It
Speaker 4: will just it will just kill you. And you know, watching,
Speaker 4: I think you're doing amazing thing.
Speaker 2: By the way, because this is recent, this is these
Speaker 2: are these are open wounds. Even the fact that you're trying,
Speaker 2: attempting in this moment to take what is inside you
Speaker 2: and this trauma and this and still use it as
Speaker 2: an offering is really commendable because your wound is still open, baby.
Speaker 1: Like you're still in it.
Speaker 2: The other side of this, I can only imagine what
Speaker 2: you're gonna be able to offer in terms of surviving it.
Speaker 4: So you know, the whole health and wellness space, self love,
Speaker 4: self care. It is not a weighted ikea blanket, a
Speaker 4: glass of wine. That's not what it is. It is.
Speaker 4: It is difficult, difficult, shadow work. It is you are
Speaker 4: depths of despair. You feel like you're coming apart at
Speaker 4: the seams. When my mom passed away, I wanted I
Speaker 4: was trying to find a mental health facility to check
Speaker 4: myself into because I thought I was I felt like
Speaker 4: I was going insane and just thank god I had
Speaker 4: certain friends in place that.
Speaker 3: They would let me do. They would just let me be.
Speaker 4: If I was aging out of control and I was
Speaker 4: difficult to deal with, they didn't judge me for it.
Speaker 4: A lot of people judged me some, but some friends
Speaker 4: did not, and they let me go through this.
Speaker 2: Could anybody judge you through that because they probably don't
Speaker 2: know what you're in.
Speaker 1: They just know what your actions are.
Speaker 3: It's a terrible club to be a part of.
Speaker 4: But anybody who has lost their mom understands what it
Speaker 4: means to be a part of this club and know,
Speaker 4: and people who have not lost their mother don't understand.
Speaker 3: Until it happens to them.
Speaker 4: The insanity that you feel will you just won't get it.
Speaker 4: Your entire universe has been ripped to shreds. You are
Speaker 4: hurtling through time and space. It's literally like you are
Speaker 4: you know, you're untethered. You've lost your tether to the
Speaker 4: earth and you are just flying around and you're hoping
Speaker 4: somebody grabs the string and pulls you down.
Speaker 3: But that is like.
Speaker 4: That, It doesn't happen. The grounding that happens takes years.
Speaker 4: It takes years years.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm at.
Speaker 1: Year three three, just about not even fully.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm at year three and you know, the Christmas
Speaker 4: holidays are coming up. I have no parents, I'm an orphan,
Speaker 4: I don't have family. So it's just like I look
Speaker 4: at Christmas trees. I to look at everybody making these
Speaker 4: plans and stuff like that, and I'm like, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: go to Mexico. I'm just gonna go cry on the
Speaker 4: beach and talk to the ocean and the universe and
Speaker 4: stuff like that and just try and make it hot
Speaker 4: for myself.
Speaker 3: You know. But that's just you're.
Speaker 2: Trying to survive through these times. It's probably really hard
Speaker 2: this time of year. I always try to keep that
Speaker 2: into consideration. I always see everybody the holidays. Everybody's always
Speaker 2: joy and family in this and there are so many
Speaker 2: people in different ways, not just what you're going through.
Speaker 1: It's just a triggering time for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 4: One of the things that did help me during this time.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 4: You know, like h how I said previously that I
Speaker 4: had a very difficult time with using SSRIs, you know,
Speaker 4: like antidepressants like Zoloft and Paxil and blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: I just white knuckled it through it. But I discovered
Speaker 4: micro dosing psilocybin. Oh you know, I don't like to
Speaker 4: call it drugs. I like to call it plant medicine.
Speaker 4: And I was introduced to it by way of Kirby,
Speaker 4: who's the creative director of Pier Moss. I was introduced
Speaker 4: to him by a mutual friend and Vic Mensa. I
Speaker 4: was really afraid, you know, to try. And I didn't
Speaker 4: know what it meant. I'd never tried shrooms before, Like,
Speaker 4: I didn't understand. But I was willing to try anything
Speaker 4: because I again, I didn't think that I was going
Speaker 4: to survive. I kept seeing headlines video music model Melissa
Speaker 4: Ford dead at forty five. She's just dead at forty six.
Speaker 4: I kept seeing them. I lived in this building in downtown, LA,
Speaker 4: which is hell on Earth. I will say, skid row
Speaker 4: is just like down the I uh, anyways, I won't
Speaker 4: even go into but I l had a balcony. I
Speaker 4: had a patio and over the balcony it was like
Speaker 4: a nine story drop onto just aluminum siding kind of thing,
Speaker 4: and it was like kind of like where you can
Speaker 4: you look down and you can see all the the
Speaker 4: other apartments and stuff like that. But it was like
Speaker 4: this big empty square and I constantly, constantly thought about
Speaker 4: throwing myself over the balcony. I was like this, ID,
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna survive
Speaker 4: if I don't find something to do. So I was
Speaker 4: introduced to these two and they started talking to me
Speaker 4: about how plant based medicine microdosing really helped them deal
Speaker 4: with their depressive symptoms and their anxiety and that sort
Speaker 4: of thing. So I tried it and it definitely, definitely
Speaker 4: definitely helped.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: I was grateful for that.
Speaker 1: How so, how does what does it do to you? Like?
Speaker 1: What do you for you?
Speaker 4: It stopped the negative narrative that constantly, constantly, you know,
Speaker 4: kind of plays inside my head. You're not worthy, you're
Speaker 4: not good enough, You're stupid, You're this, You're that you
Speaker 4: should have done.
Speaker 1: Are you still dealing with this? Do you think?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, I know this is so, this is a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago you started this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but also talk therapy. Yeah, therapy has been, you know,
Speaker 4: extremely helpful. When my mom passed away, I had I
Speaker 4: had a moment of reckoning with myself, looking at myself
Speaker 4: in the mirror, and I said, I just said to myself.
Speaker 4: I was like, Melissa, there's no one left to take
Speaker 4: care of you.
Speaker 1: You.
Speaker 4: You have got to get a lot better at taking
Speaker 4: care of yourself, and that means taking care of your
Speaker 4: your mind. You promote health and wellness and beauty to
Speaker 4: the world, your hashtag goals for how you know you
Speaker 4: work out and that sort of thing, But you are
Speaker 4: a mess up here. No one would want this. The
Speaker 4: way you talk to yourself. You wouldn't even talk to
Speaker 4: some random on the street. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: You wouldn't talk to your worst enemy. The way you
Speaker 4: talk to yourself. You gotta fix this. You're not gonna starve.
Speaker 3: Vibe if you don't.
Speaker 4: So I had that moment with myself where I told
Speaker 4: myself this, but I was like, I don't know how
Speaker 4: to be kind to myself. I don't know how to
Speaker 4: be patient with myself, and I don't know how to
Speaker 4: offer myself grace. I had to learn. It was a
Speaker 4: muscle that I had never used before, so.
Speaker 3: I had to learn. I had to ask people.
Speaker 4: I had to talk to my therapist about what are
Speaker 4: some healthy coping mechanisms. So it was a very long,
Speaker 4: arduous process, and it was many, many years, and I
Speaker 4: regressed a lot of the time. But you know, one
Speaker 4: step back, one step forward, two steps back, blah blah
Speaker 4: blah blah blah. So eventually now I'm in a much
Speaker 4: better headspace to where I am very gracious to myself.
Speaker 4: I am very kind to myself. I'm like, oh, nope,
Speaker 4: we're not going down that road. This is how I
Speaker 4: talk to myself. Nope, we're not going to be rate.
Speaker 4: You made a mistake. It's fine, moving right along, It's okay.
Speaker 2: What is the what is the biggest coping Like, what
Speaker 2: is your go to coping mechanism for even if you
Speaker 2: like slip back a little bit, or you see yourself
Speaker 2: telling yourself something negative or slipping into some type of depression,
Speaker 2: especially now it's tough the holidays are here. Like, what
Speaker 2: is your Do you have a go to thing you
Speaker 2: learned from the therapist or pilates.
Speaker 3: Pilates came along at a really good time in my life.
Speaker 1: I'm so interested. I want to start.
Speaker 3: I started.
Speaker 4: I loved it so much that I started to learn
Speaker 4: how to be I was I'm training to be an instructor.
Speaker 1: I'll be your first client. I'm in.
Speaker 4: I got I got you, okay. I am in love
Speaker 4: with pilates. I love everything about the principles of pilates.
Speaker 4: I love everything about it. I loved how out of
Speaker 4: my head and into my body I could get because
Speaker 4: I needed that. There'd be times where I would be
Speaker 4: on the reformer board sobbing, but it would help me,
Speaker 4: especially when I was doing something that was there was
Speaker 4: a new exercise that required a deeper level of concentration
Speaker 4: to connect, to make that mind body connection to it.
Speaker 3: You know, where it feels really foreign, like what am
Speaker 3: I doing here?
Speaker 4: You know there's a move called helicopter that's like, oh,
Speaker 4: it looks so dope when you master it, but it
Speaker 4: is really really hard and complex. So for me getting
Speaker 4: out of my head and into my body, usually it's
Speaker 4: physical exercise that helps me.
Speaker 2: How are you managing the guilt because you mentioned guilt
Speaker 2: from surviving your accident and also guilt your relationship with
Speaker 2: your mom and not talking and all of that for
Speaker 2: that time, how are you managing that?
Speaker 1: Like, what is the thing?
Speaker 2: I mean, sure therapy, you've talked about it, right, So, like,
Speaker 2: what is the thing about getting around guilts? Because I'm
Speaker 2: sure there's people all over the world dealing with different.
Speaker 1: Types of levels of guilt.
Speaker 4: But like I'm I'm very cerebral. I'm an intellect and
Speaker 4: so I intellectualize all my problems. You know, I have
Speaker 4: to find a solution, and it's usually in literature. And
Speaker 4: so when I don't know the answer to something, I
Speaker 4: get on Google, I start searching.
Speaker 3: I'll search the words solve. You know, I'm problem solving,
Speaker 3: So I'm just looking.
Speaker 4: So I'll like, you know, look for self help books
Speaker 4: or like personal development books, or maybe I'll get on
Speaker 4: YouTube and I'll you know, watch something that you know
Speaker 4: is motivates or inspires me or allows me to reframe
Speaker 4: how I'm thinking about something. I've got a couple of
Speaker 4: you know, girlfriends who are a little bit older than me,
Speaker 4: who are mentors, and they're just your their life experiences.
Speaker 3: And the way that they the way that they you know,
Speaker 3: gauge with me.
Speaker 4: They have really really, really really helped me understand a
Speaker 4: how to reframe my thinking from being negative to more positive,
Speaker 4: but also understanding how to challenge long held beliefs, you know,
Speaker 4: ask asking me questions.
Speaker 3: Well, why do you believe that? Where did you where
Speaker 3: did that belief come from? In the first place.
Speaker 4: Have you ever thought that maybe you were wrong? And
Speaker 4: what if it's this working on yourself. It's it constant,
Speaker 4: constantly working on myself.
Speaker 3: I swear to God. It is exhausting, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's always at least it's always forward motion.
Speaker 3: Is it is forward motion.
Speaker 4: But every once in a while you're just like, take
Speaker 4: a break, Just pick up some you know, chick lit
Speaker 4: and just read that, you know what I mean, some
Speaker 4: fictional stuff. Just take a break from the personal development,
Speaker 4: because you know what I discovered, there's no arrival. There's
Speaker 4: no arrival, destination, final destination. There's not gonna be a
Speaker 4: point in which you're like, you close the book.
Speaker 1: WHOA, I'm perfect, I'm healed.
Speaker 3: I'm healed.
Speaker 4: There's nothing left to do. Trust me, when I say
Speaker 4: something's gonna come along decides wipe you.
Speaker 3: Because this is life. It undulates ebbs and it flows.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying, There's gonna be something that
Speaker 4: knocks you off course that maybe now you have the
Speaker 4: tools and the proper coping mechanisms to deal with it
Speaker 4: when that comes comes along. And one of the things
Speaker 4: that I discovered along the way my research is I
Speaker 4: discovered Brene Brown.
Speaker 1: I love Brene Brown.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, Brene.
Speaker 1: Renee, please come through the podcast.
Speaker 3: Renee.
Speaker 1: We are fan.
Speaker 3: He adopt me. I love her so much. She is
Speaker 3: for people who don't know.
Speaker 4: She is a social worker with multiple PhDs. Her life work,
Speaker 4: she is devoted to teaching people about shame and vulnerability.
Speaker 4: And this is a shame.
Speaker 2: We've talked about this, by the way, Kelly Clarkson, we
Speaker 2: talked about shame and vulnerability.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I mean, shame and guilt are cousins, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm saying they're first cousins. And so whereas at one
Speaker 4: point I never wanted to show any chink in the armor,
Speaker 4: I never wanted anybody to see any level of like
Speaker 4: my humanity. I looked at vulnerability as a weakness. I
Speaker 4: now look at it as a superpower. It and it
Speaker 4: and it has endeared me to people being so vulnerable
Speaker 4: and candid and transparent.
Speaker 2: And so all these years, you and I have finally connected,
Speaker 2: all these years in passing and at the moment of
Speaker 2: both of us being vulnerable, connected in that way.
Speaker 3: When we both looked at vulnerability like we can't afford.
Speaker 1: It, and then we're like off about our world exactly.
Speaker 4: But now it's just like vulnerability is something that we
Speaker 4: embrace and we look at it as like a superpower
Speaker 4: rather than being a hindrance or you know, a weakness
Speaker 4: or whatever the case is. And then just having a
Speaker 4: greater understanding about how shame shapes so much of our
Speaker 4: you know, the decisions that we make and how we
Speaker 4: live our lives and how we try to shield ourselves
Speaker 4: and protect ourselves. Guilt is closely related to that. So
Speaker 4: by way of you know, listening to her, reading her
Speaker 4: literature and just everything kind of related to that is
Speaker 4: it helped me to develop a different relationship with the
Speaker 4: concept of guilt and how much I need to release it,
Speaker 4: you know, and how and how it is. I want
Speaker 4: to say it's a worthless emotion, but it's not, because
Speaker 4: it can kind of it's almost like a form of
Speaker 4: self preservation, you know what I'm saying. But it's very complicated.
Speaker 4: I will say that because at the wrong times it
Speaker 4: is a very it is a very worthless emotion. It
Speaker 4: is doing absolutely nothing for you, and it is detrimental
Speaker 4: to your guilt yet to you your mental health and
Speaker 4: forward momentum, you know. But in the right situation, guilt
Speaker 4: can help you make different decisions, maybe repair situations that
Speaker 4: you have been the cause of its destruction.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, my god, I didn't ask you this at
Speaker 2: the beginning.
Speaker 1: I'm almost afraid to ask you this now. Oh I'm
Speaker 1: not afraid to love it. I love it. I asked
Speaker 1: this on every episode. How happy are you.
Speaker 2: On a scale of one to ten right now, right now,
Speaker 2: not an hour ago or yesterday, but right now.
Speaker 4: I'd probably say like a nine. Really, I've I've been
Speaker 4: looking forward to this. This makes me happy. Oh, I'm
Speaker 4: so happy I you your energy is like, is so
Speaker 4: dope than I've been looking forward to this. This is
Speaker 4: this is the definition of a safe space. Your staff
Speaker 4: is incredible. I look bomb you do you know my
Speaker 4: babies in the corners, Daisy like this is this is
Speaker 4: this is good stuff.
Speaker 3: I love that, this is good stuff.
Speaker 4: I like I'm gainfully employed, you know, like I've got
Speaker 4: opportunities coming my way. Like I would, I'd definitely say,
Speaker 4: in this very moment, right now, I am at an.
Speaker 1: That makes me so happy and you deserve to be
Speaker 1: out a nine.
Speaker 4: Thank you, you really do, thank you.
Speaker 1: The whole week hasn't been a nine.
Speaker 4: Holy shit this whole time.
Speaker 1: I know, there's been so raisy time and stuff. Not
Speaker 1: always a nine.
Speaker 4: I'm sure that it was more like a two about
Speaker 4: five days ago, maybe four days ago or something like that.
Speaker 4: But you know, I mean, ebbs and flows, undulation, this
Speaker 4: is life. Yeah, you know, if this had happened maybe
Speaker 4: three years ago, I might not have had the bandwidth
Speaker 4: to stomach what's happening, you know, but I'm good.
Speaker 2: I'd also even or or to even know that you
Speaker 2: could get to a nine. I'm sure a few years
Speaker 2: ago was far fetched.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, part of my part of
Speaker 3: my you know, uh, my.
Speaker 4: Self education has been to study happiness and study the
Speaker 4: concept of happiness. Wow, and what.
Speaker 3: Makes us happy?
Speaker 4: And you know, like I'm in my forties and so
Speaker 4: you know, this is this is this is This is
Speaker 4: the decade where we have like an existential crisis, you
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying, where we start to really really
Speaker 4: really really like look at.
Speaker 3: How is my life meaningful?
Speaker 4: What is my purpose? Maybe start thinking about you know,
Speaker 4: legacy and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: That's all my IRL questions basically all those things, you know,
Speaker 2: But yeah, these are the Yeah, this is the decade
Speaker 2: in which you think about these things where things that
Speaker 2: used to impress you or things.
Speaker 4: That used to you know, like just you know, you
Speaker 4: used to be like mired, and you're thinking about that.
Speaker 4: You're just like, yeah, that's not really all that important,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. I'm thinking about I need
Speaker 4: to buy a vacation home because I need to spend
Speaker 4: a lot of time there. I need a happy place,
Speaker 4: a physical happy place where I can go and I
Speaker 4: can escape and I can just be the best version
Speaker 4: of myself, the self that I love of so much
Speaker 4: that yeah, you know. So I'm just trying to figure
Speaker 4: out where is that going to be? Costa Rica? Is
Speaker 4: it Nicaragua?
Speaker 3: Is it has been? Is it Jamaica?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 4: Is it Mexico. It's gonna be somewhere.
Speaker 3: Girls wait to see you guys.
Speaker 4: I'm I'm gonna be looking at some real estate in
Speaker 4: Mexico on my next trip.
Speaker 3: Trust and believe, Yeah, I love that. So that's that's
Speaker 3: what my idea of like.
Speaker 4: Creating like a constant source of contentment and happiness, because
Speaker 4: that's the other thing that I learned about happiness.
Speaker 3: Is it's it is, it is.
Speaker 4: It is elusive, you know, and as human beings. We're
Speaker 4: not really built to be on such a high level
Speaker 4: of emotion all the time. We burn ourselves out. The
Speaker 4: goal is to search for contentment, not happiness, because it's,
Speaker 4: like I said, it's too elusive, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: And life will come along and life, you know, life
Speaker 4: be life in it, do you know?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 3: Content God, Contentment is the thing that you're looking for.
Speaker 1: Two? Two things left.
Speaker 2: Number One, we talked about this time and the holidays,
Speaker 2: and this is not your first holiday without your mom
Speaker 2: or even since your accident and going through all of that,
Speaker 2: but you had I'm sure some of them. I'm sure
Speaker 2: this is tough, but I'm sure some of the ones
Speaker 2: from the past couple of years were even yeah, tougher.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine that first holiday after losing your mom
Speaker 2: and going through all of that, what that holiday season
Speaker 2: was like for you. And when I think about what
Speaker 2: some people might be going through right now who are
Speaker 2: in the trenches of something and this time, I don't know,
Speaker 2: do you have any advice or any thoughts on.
Speaker 1: Just how to weather the storm or weather this time
Speaker 1: a year?
Speaker 4: You just you have to fy you really have to
Speaker 4: figure out what protecting your piece looks like for you, you know,
Speaker 4: I I can't tell you what protecting your piece looks like,
Speaker 4: because it's you know, it's it's it's it's individual curation,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying. So for me, protecting my
Speaker 4: piece is I spend a lot less time on social
Speaker 4: media spend I spend no time digesting what's going on
Speaker 4: in the news. As much as you want to care
Speaker 4: about what's happening to other people in the world, and
Speaker 4: they're you know, they're they're they're sordid circumstances. You protecting
Speaker 4: your peace, you have to live with yourself. You have
Speaker 4: to create a boundary, you have to, you know.
Speaker 3: And so for me, that's what I do.
Speaker 4: I really limit my social media interaction, how much I'm scrolling.
Speaker 4: I'm very aware of the dopamine hitten stuff like that,
Speaker 4: especially this time.
Speaker 2: If I go back to this time when people only
Speaker 2: put the highlight reel the highlight, everybody has the perfect
Speaker 2: family and the h and the husband or the or
Speaker 2: the mom got from the perfect gift and they have
Speaker 2: the perfect relationship, and there's the comparison is at all
Speaker 2: time high of that, like you said that feed of
Speaker 2: like that, Yeah, I think you have to remind yourself
Speaker 2: that is not every buddy's reality. It's not if you
Speaker 2: are in a down place right now, during especially this
Speaker 2: time of the year. The reality is there are a
Speaker 2: lot of other people also in that.
Speaker 4: One of the things that I did in order to
Speaker 4: get out of my head is I started to volunteer.
Speaker 4: I was so I just was like, I am tired
Speaker 4: of myself. I am tired of constantly thinking of myself
Speaker 4: and my problems.
Speaker 3: I am exhausted.
Speaker 4: I need to get out of my head and I
Speaker 4: need to put my effort and my energy somewhere else.
Speaker 3: So besides pilates and working.
Speaker 4: Out and stuff like that, I started to volunteer at
Speaker 4: an animal shelter when I was still living in LA
Speaker 4: And when I tell you that I got so much
Speaker 4: joy out of cleaning the kittens little cages, there was
Speaker 4: nothing that made me happier in that moment. Like those
Speaker 4: few hours that I was at the shelter a couple
Speaker 4: few times a week brought me so much Joy's really good.
Speaker 4: Volunteerism is really really something that is good for your soul.
Speaker 2: You know, when you're like sick of yourself, if you're
Speaker 2: in desperation, and can't fix yourself quick enough to be
Speaker 2: able to deal. It's just an easy quick fix to
Speaker 2: like take that energy and put it out work. It
Speaker 2: doesn't heal you completely, but in the moment, if you
Speaker 2: just need to change your energy and get out of here,
Speaker 2: get out of yourself your own issues and problems.
Speaker 3: Service is service.
Speaker 4: A service onto others is a quick fix. It's a
Speaker 4: very quick fix, and it's it's very rewarding. It's very rewarding,
Speaker 4: and I just I'm really good.
Speaker 3: It help.
Speaker 4: It was It was a bomb. It really soothed my
Speaker 4: emotional and mental wounds, and I knew it was also
Speaker 4: something that my mom would be looking down on me
Speaker 4: and being like.
Speaker 1: That's my baby. Yeah, I love that. On that note, we'll.
Speaker 2: Ask our final question, which is in real life, what
Speaker 2: do you hope that people.
Speaker 1: Learn from you and your life and your experiences.
Speaker 4: I hope that by way of me being transparent and
Speaker 4: candid about my experiences, people feel seen and heard and
Speaker 4: they feel.
Speaker 3: They feel less alone.
Speaker 1: That was beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I want you to have an amazing holiday and I
Speaker 2: want you to get a vacational
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I'm I'm going to Mexico.