Don't Be Caught Dead
Welcome to Don’t Be Caught Dead - a podcast encouraging open conversations about dying and the death of a loved one. I’m your host, Catherine Ashton - Founder of Critical Info - and I’m helping to bring your stories of death back to life.
Because while you may not be ready to die, at least you can be prepared.
Don't Be Caught Dead
Death, DNA, and Family Secrets: How Trauma Lives in Our Genes
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What if the unexplained feelings of grief, anxiety, or disconnection you carry aren't entirely your own? In this compelling episode, I sit down with Michelle Scheibner, author of 'Hush', to explore how the secrets and trauma of our family history can echo through generations, impacting our lives in ways we never imagined.
Michelle's journey of discovery began when she found an old leather suitcase filled with documents after her mother's death. These papers revealed her father's hidden Jewish heritage and his harrowing escape from Nazi Germany - a history that had been carefully concealed throughout her life.
Through her work in epigenetics and inherited family trauma, Michelle explains how traumatic experiences can actually modify our DNA, affecting future generations. Her research, backed by groundbreaking studies from Dr Rachel Yehuda at Mount Sinai School, demonstrates how children of Holocaust survivors and mothers present at Ground Zero show identical anxiety markers and cortisol levels as their traumatised parents.
As an adult orphan who lost both parents and later her significant other, Chris, to cancer, Michelle's personal story illustrates how unresolved family trauma can manifest in our lives. Through narrative therapy and deep personal work, she transformed her understanding of grief and identity, moving from a place of blame to one of appreciation for the resilience she inherited from her parents.
Her journey offers hope and practical guidance for anyone seeking to understand their own unexplained feelings or recurring patterns.
Key Insights:
● The science of epigenetics reveals how trauma can be passed down through generations via our DNA
● Unresolved family secrets and trauma can manifest as unexplained feelings of grief, anxiety, or disconnection
● Our relationship with our mother/primary caregiver from birth to age seven creates the blueprint for all future relationships
● Healing begins when we let go of the stories we've been telling ourselves and embrace our true narrative
Resources and Tools for Healing:
● Journaling with coloured pens (avoid digital methods)
● Narrative therapy and coaching
● DNA testing for understanding heritage
● Michelle's book 'Hush'
Remember; You may not be
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When you're not seen through your mother's eyes, the love of the mother, and you grow up with these kind of Swiss cheese like holes in your emotional core, when someone else comes into your life and sees you, you kind of go, whoa. Okay, that person sees me, and you're so enamored with that, that you don't necessarily make the right decisions and make the right judgment call as to whether you're being seen for the right reasons or not.
Catherine:Welcome to Don't Be Caught Dead, a podcast encouraging open conversations about dying and the death of a loved one. I'm your host, Catherine Ashton, founder of Critical Info, and I'm helping to bring your stories of death back to life. Because all of us. While you may not be ready to die, at least you can be prepared. Don't Be Caught Dead acknowledges the lands of the Kulin Nations and recognises their connection to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nation peoples around the globe. Today we have Michelle Scheibner. Michelle is an author, a TEDx and keynote speaker, activator, and she's a woman that enriches the conversations you have with yourself to raise your brand voice, lift your visibility and meet your unique identity. Overlapping postgraduate qualifications in career development, social branding, and image management with her study of narrative coaching, conversational IQ, and inherited family trauma gives Michelle a distinctive lens to her work. Well, I've also had the wonderful opportunity to meet Michelle outside of the podcast and it was at a networking breakfast here on the Mornington Peninsula. And I have read Michelle's book called Hush, so you can see that here, those of you watching on YouTube. But now Michelle, this is quite the interesting book. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having me. What motivated you to write Hush?
Michelle:Whoa, where do I start? I think it was several things kind of coalesced, you know, came together at a, at a time. It was lockdown. It was the start of embellishment, the strong lockdown. And I was concerned that my coaching practice wasn't perhaps not going to recover. And I needed to do something to have ready for when we came out the other end. And I started. considering a number of things and was drawn to a thought leaders group where many of those folks had written books and as part of the ecosystem of their business. You know, it may be that it's a calling card, it might be codifying some of their IP, whatever the case was. And I was very keen to. educate my clients and my networks about what I'd been learning and what I'd been researching about identity. And so Hush wasn't the first manuscript. Hush in its current version, as you've read, is manuscript number three. The other two didn't quite pass, didn't pass go. They were completed, but they didn't work especially well.
Catherine:Well, that's very interesting. That's very honest of you. I think a lot of writers don't actually give us the indication of how many attempts have ended up in the bin before the published manuscript has made it. So, so tell me, what were you researching and discovering about this that led to the book?
Michelle:As a personal brand strategist, we're always reviewing and redefining. Who are we and, and what's our distinction in the marketplace? How am I different to other personal branding coaches, advisors, strategists, whatever? How am I different? And in the work I've been doing and the stuff I've been uncovering, I've, you know, maybe it's something around my story that makes my view a little bit different. And at that point, I didn't understand fully the impact of inherited family trauma, but I had been working with. the lovely Sarah, the narrative therapist that I'd met after I lost someone very close to me. And I was aware by then of epigenetic impact. I was aware of genetic imprinting in that way. I was aware that there may have been something going on that had impacted my life choices and decisions. And when that penny finally dropped, I just wanted to share the, my learnings with others, because it was a way of thinking about my own stuff. that I hadn't considered before. The first time I went to a counselling was when I was at university. That's how long I've been trying to understand who I am and why my life has panned out the way it has, which was not necessarily at all the way I had expected or planned. And there was a lot of shame and regret around that.
Catherine:Now I don't want you to give too much away. I'll leave that to you about how much you devolve and how much you keep secret. But, you know, you just said then that the life that you live now was not the life that you expected to be leading. What were your expectations? And at what age were you when you, you sort of had these expectations?
Michelle:Look, I'm pretty sure going through secondary school, Coming at the other end of that, I just expected that at some point I would marry, have a family, continue with my career, which my first career was teaching. And I think the first time I went to a school reunion, It was like, I think, a 10 year reunion. Oh my goodness, and everybody was there with either their engagement photos or their Wedding photos or their baby photos and stories and and I was there with none of the above Thinking well, I've failed here. I'm not good enough and I would look around and go Okay, why don't why don't I why what's what's what's wrong with me, but that just hasn't happened So, yeah, it was probably about then. It didn't stop me anticipating. It was just that that was the times that I, I'm a little older than you, and that was how we grew up and how we went from high school to university and establishing a career, fully expecting that at some point in that career I would hit pause and have a family. And I didn't.
Catherine:Yeah, and there's not that, there's not that much difference really with the way in which I, I grew up also. Also share the same horror of having a 10 year school reunion and don't want to do that ever, ever again. You know, because it, it does, I think when you have a milestone like that, you do tend to, Do a lot of self analysis about how far have I come, you know, you go back into this mindset of where you were at that person in the schoolyard and, oh wow, it, you know, for me, I didn't handle that very well at all. I ended up quite drunk, um, so, needless to say, I've done quite a lot of work on myself since then. But, you know, it is a really confronting thing. My husband loves school reunions, but man, I don't know whether I'll ever go for another one again. I think I'm, I'm up for my 20th shortly and I don't know whether I'm ready for that. But it is a time where you do have that self analysis about where your dreams and goals and where are you now and you, you know, whether we, do it consciously or unconsciously. We do have biases and we do still put people in our pigeon holes. And to look at someone like you, Michelle, you look like a very confident woman. You look like you've got it all together. So there's no way that someone would probably at the reunion think that you were feeling like that inside.
Michelle:And I think that's part of the story is in, in many ways, I was leading a double life. And by the way, I kind of love reunions now. I'm going to one on the. In October, and I'm going to rock it. And, because I Okay, well,
Catherine:maybe, maybe I'll consider my 20th then. Well, I turn
Michelle:up with a very different I'm a different person now. And, you know, I just look around and go, That's fine. But I've got a story too. I might not have your story, but I have my story. And since Uh, Hush has been published and I've been doing some live events and some podcasts and so on. I'm hearing thanks from people, you know, I'm hearing from women who tell me, well, I see myself in you. Thank you for, for telling this story because before that I didn't think anybody saw or heard me or understood what it was like for me. Because I'm an only child as well. So, you know, there's not a lot of busily little bees around the community and the network. I've got to create those. And so I, Yeah, I'm, I'm looking forward to the next reunion, I have to say, but, but it's because it's a different person showing up. But I think the irony is that I've created an image professionally, I would say,
Catherine:yeah,
Michelle:and it wasn't inauthentic because it was who I thought I, that's all I had was that part of my life. I was in the first certification of an image management course ever run in Australia through Image Group International. And In fact, I did it twice to understand how we manage our physical image and our inner image. And my work became helping other people to do that and to surface their brain qualities and to have a story about their brand. And all the time, I didn't really know mine because it had been kept secret, not because I hadn't faced it, but because many elements were secret. So now that that's all, Revealed and published for the world to see and I've put all the jigsaw pieces together. I now have a lot of confidence in my self identity. And so I do show up differently. It kind of all probably matches more now. And that's what I want for other people.
Catherine:And when you're, you're sort of talking about the fact that you did that course or certification twice in image, you know, you're Your mother, you reference her and how she was very specific about appearance and how she wanted you to appear. Have you given thought to how that impacted your focus on self image externally and how it's portrayed?
Michelle:I
Catherine:have.
Michelle:She had a very natural elegance. And in fact, she was more of a dress maker than I will ever be. I was more the design and the ideas, and together we would, you know, I, I'd designed something and she'd make it, and so I wanted to be a fashion designer. That's really what I wanted to do. But my parents had other ideas and the school had other ideas, so I didn't, oh, I think I had a natural interest, I guess, in style, external image in that respect. But at the same time, I've spent a lot of, all my life, managing my weight. And now I understand what, what all that's about, but nevertheless, I was an ugly duckling for a very, very long time. And I guess I looked at her and thought, I want to be, I don't remember thinking it, but I probably learnt that from her. You know, get on the scales every day, manage your weight. But I, you know, that's just one of the layers now. It's all about what's underneath the external. And that determines how we make choices about how we show up, of course, as well.
Catherine:Yeah, yeah. But it is interesting that that is something that if you do see that behaviour when you're younger, how at times in later life you can actually, therefore, start mimicking that same behaviour. Because it's natural. It's what you've seen and what you know. That's
Michelle:exactly right.
Catherine:So In your book, you describe yourself as an adult orphan. You mentioned that you're an only child. Can you talk us through that stage and how you were feeling and
Michelle:Well, my father died in my first year of work, my first year out of university, first year in full time work, very suddenly. Way too young. And that sort of sent me down a path that's, that wasn't fun. And my mother lived the next 17 years on her own. Didn't date anybody. Had a lot of friends, but, I had, no, not a lot, but a small group of friends. But when she passed away, I really felt it. I really felt the absence of family. And when I lost my mother, things like Mother's Day became an absolute bane of my life. You know, the expectation from the media, from the retail world, from everybody I came across, Oh, what are you doing for Mother's Day? And, Oh, how was your Mother's Day? And I'd spend Mother's Day. Being a little neurotic and not wanting to know about it. And that was because part of the, I had not, I think the grief of being alone. Had I been a mother, it probably would have been very different. But I'm like, well, what am I doing for Mother's Day? Well, I'm not doing anything for Mother's Day. I'm not a mother. I don't have a mother. And what can I say? I fully accept that I was a little weird about it, but that was how I felt. I just, again, you know. It was that elongated, I don't, I really don't fit with what's going on around me. And so if I say to somebody, well, I'm not doing anything for Mother's Day. Oh, really? Does your mother live some interstate? Or are your kids? So I just, yeah. I found anything. related to families in that way. I can remember when a lot of my friends were having their children. It was just easier for me to isolate and withdraw from those situations. And in doing that, yeah, I did, I felt like an adult orphan.
Catherine:And it's interesting that, you know, people just, again, it's that pigeonholing and that sort of projection. Oh, well, you know, what are you doing for Mother's Day, just as a flyaway comment to sort of initiate a conversation without really thinking that it can really impact on the people that they're talking with.
Michelle:Likewise, yeah, I don't know if you remember the story in the book of um, it was a client visit and I was there to meet a potential coachee. A leadership program. One of the first questions she asked me was, was I a mother? Seriously? A, that's a personal question, but B, what does it have to do with your future leadership potential and development? And so this whole mother child, mother relationship, the role of mother in our lives, the loss of mother. Do we all love our mother? Like, there's so many questions. What did we learn from our mother? What do we blame our mothers for, for the primary care person? And for mine, for me, it was mother. It was that whole mother relationship. And now, again, I have a different understanding about that. Now I understand what, in fact, had been going on for her, which I just had no clue. In her lifetime, while my parents were alive, I, I, I didn't know anything. I didn't know anything about their lives before they met and got married.
Catherine:And did they, they not speak about it? Did they not share photos?
Michelle:No, no photos. No, oh, you know, I can remember my first date, or my first boyfriend, or my first girlfriend, or going on a, no, nothing, nothing. I knew nothing about their lives, well really before they had me, I mean obviously I knew, I saw their wedding photos, but, and I knew my father had originated in another country, but I didn't know how he got here, or when, or, no. It was all part of the secret.
Catherine:And that's something that I was talking to some people about today, is that it's a real shame that, you know, it's not until people die and you may be sitting at their eulogy and hearing, you know, or sitting at their funeral and hearing their eulogy and then you go, Oh, I didn't know about that. Well, I didn't know about that part of their life. It's a shame that we only find out those amazing things that they have done, or, and like I always feel like, oh, I wish I'd known, I would have loved to have actually asked that question, or found out more, or, or learnt
Michelle:more. You know, I mean, we, we learn, I, I'm pretty resilient, and I can certainly see it in my mother, but I don't know how she did it. I'd love to have known. Well, I think grief. And, and Shane was in, in the end was what killed her, but I would love to have had a conversation with her about, well how do you, when you lose somebody, when somebody dies in your arms, how do you get up and keep going? But I didn't ever have that opportunity to talk to her about anything like that because she wouldn't.
Catherine:And did she, was there just a, a, a lack of intimacy between the two of you or is that just like, it just wouldn't? wouldn't open up those, those sort of levels of conversation between the two of you. We spoke
Michelle:often and at length about things and events and other people. We did not speak about anything, again, below the line. We didn't speak about feelings. We didn't speak about ideas, unless it was something to do with my work. She was very stoic. But what I know now is that there were certain things that we had to steer away from because that would, I would ask the questions and maybe I'd find out. So I learned very early on, Catherine, that there were questions I couldn't answer because I simply didn't get, I didn't get an answer. So I'd say, How about this? Shrug of the shoulders. Can't help you with that. So I was trained not to keep being inquisitive. I mean, that's just what happened because ultimately it doesn't matter what you think is going on. You still want to be loyal to your parents. And we do it without really knowing. It doesn't matter how bad the situation may be and we can look back as an evolved learned adult and say, well really, gee, that wasn't too flash. But still, most people will still have a loyalty to their parents, or to the folks who raised them. Because I wasn't in need of everything. You know, I had a roof over my head, I went to a good school, I was Fed and taken on holidays. What's there not to like about that?
Catherine:And also like you don't know any different. I didn't know any different. Like, like you don't know what you don't know, you know? So that's normal. Like, that's just normal. But this is the
Michelle:thing. I did not know any different. I didn't. Yeah, yeah.
Catherine:I
Michelle:didn't spend a lot of time inside other people's families to see how Parents interact and siblings interact, and I did, because I didn't have siblings, I didn't learn a lot of those communication skills around, well, how do I barter to get my toy back? Or how do I, how do I argue to get out of doing the dishes? Or, you know, like I just, a lot of that. Push and pull and conflict management and collaboration that you'll learn within a normal regular family. It just wasn't going on. I spent a lot of time with adults. Most of my time with adults. So, I didn't learn.
Catherine:So, Michelle, tell me. At what point did you uncover your history, your, you know, your family origins? Are you comfortable sharing that?
Michelle:Yeah, sure. I had, I mean it might sound like I didn't have any, you know, collateral so to speak, but when my mother died and I had to clear out her house, I found a very old leather suitcase. And inside, it was chock a block with very old documents. And I just went, okay, that looks important, but I cannot face it right now. But it was in my care for about 25 years. And when I started to read a little bit about the impacts of inherited family trauma, I And was contemplating a book, I figured, oh, I've got to do this detective work also. So I had to get into the case. Well, Sarah really said to me, I think you need to get into it. You need to see what's in there. You need to get some information. It was my father's history. In, most of those documents were in old German. Some had been translated. Actually, I started doing that before I did the training for Inherited Family Trauma. And I knew my father was German. Shardner, you know, like, I knew, I knew he was German, but in my, to my ear, he didn't ever have an accent. So, I just figured he'd been here a long time. I knew he had relatives in Sydney, one cousin. I'd met her maybe, I don't know, once or twice. But I didn't understand his background. I didn't ever know what happened to his parents. Uh, so going through these documents, I've, I've, I discovered that when he'd left Germany, and it was just at the outbreak of the war, I read that he'd tried to get his parents out here, and I, look, I had to sneak up on this quite gently. I couldn't, I could not manage it all at once. So it actually took me a few years to really get it all pieced, it was actually like doing a jigsaw puzzle. And in there, you know, I found things like my father's baptism as a Lutheran. I found his father's certificate of baptism as a Lutheran. So I couldn't quite work out why he had a Jewish cousin in Sydney. I couldn't quite, I just could not work out what was going on here. Of course, now I understand the Jewish people converting. To a Protestant religion has been going on for centuries, not, not just in the twenties and thirties, as a way of protecting themselves from antisemitism and from from war, but I, I did not understand it, and so I didn't think that any of that impacted me. I mean, I didn't think that there was anything to see here. Now, of course, I look at that very differently. And the more I got into the letters, the more I understand that my father had been arrested a number of times as a teenager for being Jewish. His father, Well, as it turned out, his parents were both victims of the Holocaust. But I didn't, I did not grow up knowing that. I've only known that in the last, I don't know, that many years. So I didn't, I knew that I didn't know a lot about who I was, but I didn't have any clue that there was a whole cultural heritage that I didn't know and I didn't understand. Ironically, we lived opposite an Anglican Church in which my mother was the a very active parishioner, Christian woman, and um, but I don't know how they made that work. I mean, I don't know. I now know that my father, even though his family were outwardly living as Lutheran, were quietly behind closed doors, still adhering to Jewish custom and celebrating holidays and bar mitzvahs and all the rest of it, but I didn't know. Any of that.
Catherine:And yet, you had undertaken study to understand intergenerational trauma and, and identity, and yet you had no idea that this was in your own history at this point in time, did you?
Michelle:Well, it was sort of happening, one was making me do more of the other. It was like, like this. Yeah, right.
Catherine:Yeah, so working in parallel. Working
Michelle:in parallel. I did take a DNA test before I started the study. I mean, I just had that in my back pocket. I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? Have you ever had, done a DNA test with Ancestry. com? No. No,
Catherine:I haven't. But I do know people that have.
Michelle:So it's interesting, because what you get back is some results that, that say, Oh, this percentage. I'll show you a map, and it could be all the yellow, and it might be England, this and that, and they'll tell you Danish, English, whatever, whatever. On the other hand, they said. So if you're Jewish, it says European Jew, you know, it is actually a category because it just is. And it doesn't say half Christian. It says I'm none. You're 50 percent European Jew. So Again, it was like, oh, okay. Okay. Maybe that's why I've always thought I want to go walk the World. The Sandy Roads of Jordan and Palestine and you know, because I have it's always what I've wanted to do, but I didn't Understand that there was something else Drawing me to that and you know What seems like a hundred years ago now I was in a meditation group in fact, I was it was a spiritual healing and meditation group and I was learning to be a spiritual healer and And A woman, one of the other participants, during a meditation one night, when we finish, she said, Oh my goodness, I had the most amazing vision of you in biblical times. You had a child in either arm and one at your hips and one at your skirts and it was, this was you, this was your role in biblical times. You were mother to many. I don't know. Okay. That doesn't surprise me, I thought to myself. But now I kind of think about that in a different way. I mean, I might sound a bit woo woo, but that's, I really think that when something is on your DNA, when it is in who you are, it just is.
Catherine:Yes, and that leads us to the very interesting conversation about epigenetics. Yes. So, Michelle, could you please tell our audience what epigenetics means and what the study involves?
Michelle:Well, I think we start with the fact that we all know that we are born with DNA. DNA is like, you know, our fingerprints and on it is characteristics such as our eye color, our hair color, maybe our shape, maybe whether or not we're left handed and it turns out Whether or not we like coriander is one of the things that can be carried on our DNA. And we think that nothing impacts that, that's what we're born with. This is the code, this genetic code here from a shell shiner is this. But what we now know is that external factors can influence the tags on our genetic code. And can determine how elements of that are switched on and off, if you like. And so, for example, if a generation has had to live through famine, so there are, there's research that shows us that in the Netherlands, there was a famine. Can't remember the century, you know, I've got it all here somewhere, but I've got so much in my head I can't remember it all. But what we see is that the children and the grandchildren, born of parents who lived through extreme famine, We'll then start to show particular behaviors and biological makeup that would be as if they were preparing themselves to survive the famine. So the first research was done by Dr. Rachel Yehuda from the Mount Sinai School. Everyone's probably heard of Mount Sinai Medical School in the U. S., New York. She did her first research with the children of Holocaust survivors. She redid that research after 9 11 with the children who had been born to mothers who were at ground zero, who were pregnant at ground zero and went on to have children. And those children showed the same markers for anxiety and levels of cortisone as the pregnant mother did. And so we can't say that something that our parents or our grandparents experienced hasn't been passed on in some way. Because now we're seeing that epigenetically, it can be. Because if you think about it, the egg that we developed from was already formed in our mother. For anybody who's listening, if you don't know who your birth mother was and there's, you know, if it was IVF, this is fully taking into understanding that I'm talking about what we, when we do know and what we do know. But the eggs are in the ovaries of the mother, all the ones that they will have for their life were already formed, and then when conception takes place, if the father has been exposed to trauma right up to 24 hours before conception, then his sperm can be impacted by the traumatic event that he may have. experience. So when those two things come together and we have an embryo, but then there are a number of external things, some of which have been carried forward from the previous generation, some which could be like from yesterday, together impacting how the baby in vitro is going to be impacted and develop. It's a science. I'm not a scientist. That's my best explanation.
Catherine:And it was at this point that my head exploded when I was reading Michelle's book and I promptly text her. You did. To say, oh my goodness, we really have to talk.
Michelle:So what, can I ask you what it is for you? What prompted that? We need to talk query for you.
Catherine:Well, It makes sense, you know, because there was two things that happened in that week that I was reading that, that section of your book. Firstly, I related to it immediately because obviously I have had my own experience of personal trauma as I've, you know, you know, grown through life. But then I also have the genetics of the fact that my father was an alcoholic. So I know that him being an alcoholic, you have a predisposition to develop alcoholism or some other form of addiction. So it's something that I'm always very mindful of and haven't drunk for many years now. But so I'm like, well, this, you know, is not much of a stretch, but at the same time, it's huge, like, because it, it really forms the fact that, that what we talk about is, you know, that passing on of those traits, whether it be, you know, You know, the physical traits, we've always known that, you know, you may look like your uncle or you may look like, you know, someone in, in your family history. If you're lucky enough to have those photos, you can go, Oh, gee, that genetic trait is really clear. So it's, it's not surprising, but when you think that it's something external, such as trauma and something that could have actually done damage psychologically to someone, because we always view it as something that maybe medically. would be the thing that had changed, but viewing it as something as, as trauma, it just took it to a whole other level for me. And it really made me review, you know, just that, that difficulty of generations past and what they've had to struggle and go through, and how that may have actually, you know, Built resilience or you know, so it was really really quite fascinating for me. And then how do I interpret that? Yeah, and the and the other thing that was also really interesting is it was that week that they had announced that Research that they were doing had analysed a particular strain of DNA whereby the, you were saying how there was, there's code that could be turned on or off and they discovered that there was this particular code. with autism that was found when the mother was exposed to high levels of plastics while in utero. The child was in utero that they had a higher possibility of developing autism. And I'm like, this is what Michelle's talking about, you know, so it really. resonated in, in that, that physical manifestation again. Uh, yeah, look,
Michelle:fascinating. Yeah, I think from, I mean, there are a lot of practitioners, health practitioners now who are using DNA testing to drive natural therapies and the way they would treat a patient because there's, there's no doubt there are certain predispositions that, that show up. And look, epigenetic changes The problem is that it's, it's a change that prepares a child for a life that the child's not going to live. Yeah, because we're not, we don't live in, you know, we're not living in war. We're not living the same lives that our parents or our grandparents or indeed our great grandparents. And so we don't need to be ready to cope with a famine because we're probably most unlikely, in this environment, are we going to need to, to deal with a famine. But then I think the other part of this that has meaning for me is that if you look at conditions like Crohn's disease, you know, you look at any condition to do with the gut, pretty much you can trace that back ancestrally. Crohn's, for example, Irritable Bowel Syndrome are things that are triggered by trauma, by stress, by anxiety, because the gut is connected to our brain. If there's something that's going on here, we're going to feel it in our gut, and, and in fact, the gut, gut health is now often referred to, or the gut is often referred to as the other brain, and, and so when we see that somebody is, so Chris, who I talk about in the book, had Crohn's disease, and when I look at his background and the trauma that he himself experienced. Not to mention the trauma that his father and grandfather experienced. We can see that there has been a repetition of a pattern of response to external events. It has us looking at our health, both our physical health and our well being and emotional health, in a very different way. And I can see now, the situation for my mother. I can also see how things that are a little harder to define, such as grief, also can be passed on between one generation and the next. So if I think about the grief that I could not work my way through after I lost Chris, I'd lost my mother, I'd lost my father. I had experienced the grief of losing other people close to me. But this time I could not get back on track. And when I said to Sarah, I'm just, I'm sad. I'm, I'm just, I'm continuously melancholy, colic, and I don't know why, but I feel like I'm grieving more Then while I've lived and experienced and she was the person who said to me There is a family history of grief your father your father's parents and by the way This is not even touching on my mother's side Because there's great deal so but it's systemic it gets passed on as well and so my feeling of sadness since I was a child my feeling of of being alone and not being connected and belonging anywhere. Had been with me since I was a child, but there was no reason for it. I hadn't experienced trauma. I hadn't experienced grief as a child. I hadn't been beaten or isolated because of, you know, I just, it was something that was born with me.
Catherine:And there's two ways that I'd like to go from here. I think perhaps understanding your mum and what you discovered and then moving maybe on to Chris. And I think it's important
Michelle:because all of this work, you know, when, when we do any of this work we always start with the individual's relationship to their mother. Because the relationship with our mother and or our primary caregiver from before we're born through our experience of our birth through the first nine months of our birth especially through the next three years through to about the age of seven. That is the blueprint for all our relationships going forward. So anything that's been withheld or anything that's been when there hasn't been a a close and loving bond between mother striped primary caregiver And the baby, when there's an absence of attachment between those two, the child grows up with an internal, you know, we talk about our core when we're doing exercise, you've got to strengthen our core. So we have a physical core, but we also have an emotional core, which is why we look for this because Somebody who has a very solid emotional core could be impacted epigenetically, but be solid enough and have a great enough sense of self for it not to impact their choices and decisions in life. My mother was just a little distracted during her pregnancy with me. No doubt she was grieving the loss of a child previous to me. I was a replacement baby. My brother was born in the September of one year. And I was born in the December of the following year. And in between, he was removed from the family system. So, she would have been feeling guilt, and shame, and grief, and wondering if this next pregnancy with me was going to be normal. Was I going to be a normal child? So, somebody, you know. Who I was talking to said, you know, it would have been like you as the baby was marinating in cortisol during that time. Yeah, then she brings me home from hospital and she's looking after my father who clearly was living with some form of post traumatic stress syndrome and she was also looking after a disabled, very disabled aunt who lived in the house with us. And she was also caring for her own mother, who had cancer and died when I was 10 months old. So she was just a little distracted in that first year of my life. And in fact, I mean, the aunt didn't die until I was about seven. So my mother had a lot of responsibility, a lot of distraction, just within the home. And when I look back on it now, I can see she just did not have the emotional bandwidth for a little baby. Who was, you know, like, I'm pretty robust. I didn't, you know, I didn't probably need a lot physically, so I, I, I don't feel like there was a solid attachment. How could there have been given that there was so much that wasn't spoken of? There was, I don't remember sitting on her knee and having been read to, I don't remember any loving warmth stuff, you know. She might have brushed my hair when I was sick once, but I don't remember being seen. And so what I've come to understand is that when you're not seen through your mother's eyes, the love of the mother, and you grow up with this kind of Swiss cheese like holes in your emotional core, when someone else comes into your life as a adolescent teenager, young adult, old adult, and sees you. You can't go, whoa, okay, that person sings me, and you're so enamored with that. That you don't necessarily make the right decisions and make the right judgment call as to whether you're being seen for the right reasons or not. So, yeah. Something you can only see in hindsight, isn't it? Yes, but attachment parenting, of course, is now becoming more commonplace as part of the discussion around parenting, which is interesting in an age when Many parents are glued to their phone rather than making eye contact with their child.
Catherine:Yeah, yeah. Now you just talked then about how your brother was removed from the family. Could you just pop that in context
Michelle:for our audience? So the first point about that is I thought he had died soon after birth. That's what I was told when I was a toddler. When I was 18, I found out that, because he was absent, well he wasn't absent, he was on my birth certificate, but there was no date of death for him. When I asked the question, the answer was, well, no, he didn't die. Yeah, that was wrong, we shouldn't have told you that. But he was born with, profoundly impacted by Down Syndrome. And the medical team strongly advised us to put him in an institution. Which is what was done in those days, and in Victoria, that institution was Kew Cottages. Some of your listeners are probably familiar with that. And he was made a ward of the state. So, never to return to his family. And I said to them, okay, so where is he now? And they said, we don't know. We don't know if he's still alive. We don't know if he is alive, where he was living. We can't know. And so, they both died. Not knowing, ultimately, well, I think when my, when my father died, he probably knew Grant was still alive. But my mother, I don't know whether she did or she didn't, but at the time of their death, I did not know. And I assumed he had indeed died, because, you know, in those days we were told we were dancing around children very rarely. lived past the age of seven, particularly if they were born with other profound physical ailments, which apparently he was. So it was very convenient for all of us to assume that he hadn't lived very long, but he outlived both his parents.
Catherine:And this period would have been in the, the 60s, Michelle? Yeah. This was. And at what point in time did you realize that he, um, A, existed, and was still alive.
Michelle:So, oh, this was only, um, like a decade ago, it would have been, and that was only because I met somebody, became friendly with a woman who had a real interest in genealogy. And she just, she said, oh, I see an only child. I said, well, yeah, I am. But, you know, there wasn't, so I told her the story, and she said, oh, well, we need to find out. And I said, well I don't know that we can, and I'm not sure, I think we'll just find out that he isn't lying. And she was just not going to let it go. And it took a while, but she found him in care in Victoria. So he'd been in one institution. After another, because two colleges closed and they were moved into other forms of, you know, as a ward of the state, into other forms of care, so he was in supported housing situation in country Victoria.
Catherine:And you never got the chance to meet Grant, did you?
Michelle:No, I didn't. But I did go to his funeral and that was, oh my gosh, again, I don't think I'd probably run as much as I did. Grant? I mean, I was consumed with shame. I was consumed with guilt, not just my own, but my parents. But knowing what I now know about him and resolving that missing piece, a male that was missing from the family system, bringing his ashes back and having them placed in the Garden of Memory alongside his parents and his maternal grandparents really was such a healing thing for me. Recognising, closing the circle, having him finally rest. With his parents was a huge moment a huge healing step for me
Catherine:We've briefly talked about Chris. He was your significant other. I think that you've referred to him as and Chris perhaps you would like to talk through the story Michelle
Michelle:I
Catherine:think
Michelle:the part of the story, well, I was trying to have a relationship with someone who had experienced a lot of trauma in his own life. And as I mentioned before, as well as his father and his, so there was an inherited family story there as well as his own trauma, childhood physical trauma. And I think, Together, we didn't know. I mean, I just wish he was alive now so that I could share all of this learning with him. It would be, oh, goodness, so different. But he knew more about me than probably anybody else did. And so losing him was momentous. But I think what's important is that whilst we couldn't make an intimate relationship work in the long run, Our bond was much tighter than many couples, many married people who, you know, we, we were in each other's lives on a daily basis. We didn't do anything without the other one knowing. We shared all our learnings. We shared our mistakes and our wins, and because he had Crohn's, it left him with a predisposition for a particular type of cancer. And there was absolutely no question that I would not go on that cancer journey with him and support him through that, from diagnosis, through seven hour surgery, through two full cycles of chemo. And by then the cancer went into his liver and pancreas and, you know, you know, it took time than it was. And his wish was, he did not want to die in hospital, he wanted to die at home. Now for somebody who had never, like I just. I'd never looked after another living thing, you know, I mean a cat, yes, but not, it was, I'd never been in hospital myself, I'd never broken anything, I'd never had any severe abnormalities, I just thought, how on earth am I going to do this? So I see that as a gift, you know, he really gave me A gift that enabled me to find my inner fortitude, my courage, my resilience, and I was able to look after him, care for him at home, take responsibility for his final weeks and days and have his wish fulfilled because he trusted me. I hadn't been trusted like that, ever. So, it's a significant part of my story. I think it's also, it is, it was the trigger for all of this other grief to sort of surface, because that's one of the other things we learn is when, when there is something sitting in your unconscious, it doesn't go away. And it just tries, just tries making itself heard. And when, when we don't address it, things like a major life changing event can be the thing that just ultimately triggers. And now you've got to attend to this, which is what I've done. So I thank him and I honour him and I wish he, because he had such a, a search for learning. But a lot of this work around epigenetic, um, impact and understanding it has only really become into the mainstream since 2016. He, he died in January 2016. All these books are only being written now. We didn't know. It's new. But if he, oh, he would have just, yeah. It's an important part of the story.
Catherine:It is, and, and, So is the, the relationship with Sarah, your therapist, who was integral to really you moving through that grief that you experienced after Chris's death. And, um, Really discovering yourself in the process, wasn't it? Oh,
Michelle:absolutely. One of the things I've learned, and this is really interesting for us all, I think, is that in order to really begin healing, we have to let go of the story that we've been telling ourselves. And I had to let go of the story of I'm not good enough. No one ever wanted to marry me. I wasn't good enough to have children. I wasn't good enough to make my business as successful as it should have been. I'm the problem. Oh, and I'm the problem because my dad had this awful, difficult life. Blame, blame, blame. That's my story. Oh, you know, brother down syndrome. Oh, gee, no wonder. No wonder. I had to let go of that story. But in doing that, One thinks, well, who will I be without that story? And what Sarah took me by the hand and gently showed me over a number of years was that if we let go of that story, we can actually find a better story. That is truly our story, because my original story was built on half truths and an absence of information. And in the absence of information, we always want to fill the gap, so we make it up. Not intentionally, but we look for answers. Which is why I just love the whole notion of narrative therapy and narrative coaching because we have techniques that help us to rewrite the story. We don't need to live a story that's full of holes and isn't true. And so she helped me see that my legacy is to help others change their stories, to help others resolve the missing pieces. in their life stories. And when I saw her, the first time I said, It's like, there's a piece of my heart that mourns the babies I didn't have. It's the part that's missing, that's mourning Chris, my parents, the relationships I didn't have. All these things are being mourned. But now I've resolved all of those empty holes. I understand it. I'm still working on healing them. Healing is a lifelong process. But there isn't blame anymore. There's no blame. There's simply understanding, resolution, the bits that come together. There's thanks. Instead of the, Oh, gee, my parents could have told me a whole lot more and life would have been a whole lot better and I wouldn't have been. But now I think I've also inherited their courage. My father's bravery to leave the country, get on a ship, be turned, you know, went to, went to the U. S., And they said, sorry, you can't come here. Put him back on the ship, sent him back to Germany. But he kept, he kept going. My mother's bravery, my mother's courage, my mother's resilience. Which is, you know, I think, why didn't I turn to anti depressants, or alcohol, or other things. You know, all those things. decades of grief. Somewhere inside I had, I must have had the resilience of my parents. So now I celebrate that. I don't blame them.
Catherine:And what advice do you give to others, Michelle, that find themselves developing an awareness that they carry? I suppose other people's stories on their shoulders that really, you know, how do you help them? What do you suggest? Well, I
Michelle:think the first thing is we don't always know that what we do carry is another person's story. You know, I think the first thing is we look at what do we blame others for? What are we continuously complaining about? What are the patterns that we seem to be repeating, whether it be relationships, whether it be Work and not holding down work, or not being happy at work, whether it be financial issues. What are the things that seem to be repeating in our life that we can't resolve and we can't change? So that's where we start. Then we start to look for the reasons. And I kind of, like for me, it was I liken it to, I tried everything. Like I told you before, I tried meditation, spiritual healing, astrology, kinesiology, Reiki, personal development. I tried every form of counseling, everything. I tried everything. And I was fine for a little while and then I got sick. I'd go downhill again. And part of that was depression. I'd lock myself away for days at a time, not see or speak to anybody, not answer the phone. People didn't know. I was very good at hiding it. So it's about saying, well, okay, that was a behavior I wanted to change. But also I wanted to, I wanted, I really wanted to change the pattern I seemed to be repeating around toxic relationships. And so we look for it as someone who now. Helps people uncover their life stories in this respect. I start listening to the language. So we look for the language, and you can do this yourself, you look for the language that's really emotionally charged. So we ask a lot of questions, and if I'm sitting with someone, I'm looking to see what's the emotional, what's the somatic reaction I'm noticing when that person is telling me the story or saying particular words. Because the hints for all of this are in our language, in our core language. Then we start unpacking that, and asking some other questions, so there is a process. But failing that, finding a talk therapist who is familiar with unwinding stories and rewinding stories is really, it's a good way to start. Any unexplained feelings, for me it was the unexplained misery, grief, you know, but there might be other unexplained feelings that people have where it's not connected to anything You know you didn't experience yourself, but you feel that you could, you feel it, but you know you didn't, you're not conscious of experiencing it. Then we will go, okay, what's going on there? So, they're all starting points, but journaling, you know, journaling, what do you blame your mother for? How would you describe your mother? That's always a great starting point.
Catherine:That's really good advice of where to start, um, unpack or maybe tell your own personal story. Mm. Is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners, Michelle?
Michelle:I would just urge people to really, anyone who isn't journaling, Can I get yourself a journal with blank pages and a whole lot of colouring pencils or pens? Do not do this on a computer. We unlock a different part of our brain when we actually use a pen and write. Put a question at the top of the page. Just start with the question. Something as simple as, Are there any feelings I have that I blame others for? Really as simple as that. And work your way from there. Use different colours for different feelings. Pause, read it back out aloud. When you say those words, do you feel it in your body anywhere? Do you get an emotional charge when you say, I don't want to be like my father, or I don't, whatever it be. Whatever it be. Notice, do you feel it in your body anywhere? Open another page. Are you allergic to anything, physically? Are you allergic to any types of people? Just start observing yourself. Note it all down and find somebody to help you unpack it. This stuff isn't hard. You know, this doesn't require medication. You know, it requires the information. We can resolve so much of this. By finding out as much as we can of our life story and our parents stories, and I fully appreciate that that's not always possible, but when it is, and we don't need to know a lot, I mean, I still don't know enough, but I know enough to be able to join St. Dot's.
Catherine:Michelle, thank you so much for being with us today.
Michelle:Thank you for having me. Thank you for your insightful questions, and I hope your listeners found something uplifting and optimistic from this conversation.
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