EP 35: A Survivors Guide to Healing

Our mission is to give you tools and strategies that will help you move from being stressed to feeling your best.

Our guest is Shenandoah Chefalo. Shenandoah Chefalo is a graduate of Michigan State University (holding a Bachelor of Arts with a Major in Interdisciplinary Studies in Social Science), a Core Essentials Graduate from Coach U, a Certified Law of Attraction Advanced Practitioner, a member of the National Speakers Association, and author of Garbage Bag Suitcase the true story of her dysfunctional journey through a childhood with neglectful, drug-and alcohol addicted parents.

Shen wrote a memoir about her child and time in foster care after realizing her story could help others heal and create awareness about the broken foster care system. Now, Shen works to help organizations understand why trauma awareness is vital to changing the way we do business and helping to promote equitable access for all children. 

Co-hosts Deb Timmerman and Barb Fletcher are certified HeartMath® Trainers, and certified stress educators, who are skilled at helping people discover the power of living form the heart.  To take the Stress and Wellbeing Assessment in Canada, click here. To take the Stress and Wellbeing Assessment in the US, click here. 

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Barb Fletcher, Shenandoah Chefalo, Deb Timmerman

Deb Timmerman  00:00

You're listening to the Less Stress in Life podcast. Your hosts, Deb Timmerman and Barb Fletcher are on a mission to help individuals and organizations manage stress and change. Together, they bring you real conversations, inspirational stories, and strategies to help move you from being stressed to feeling your best.

Barb Fletcher  00:22

Hello, everyone. I'm Barb Fletcher. Welcome to our series of 52 Practical Tools for Less Stress in Life. This is episode 35.

Deb Timmerman  00:33

Hi, Deb Timmerman. Our goal is to give you tools and strategies that help you move from feeling stressed to feeling your best. Today we're talking with Shenandoah Chefalo. Shen is a graduate of Michigan State University holding a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in Interdisciplinary Studies in social science. a Core Essentials graduate from Coach U, a Certified Law of Attraction advanced practitioner, a member of the National Speakers Association, and author of Garbage Bag Suitcase the true story of her dysfunctional journey through childhood with neglectful drug and alcohol addicted parents. Welcome, Shen.

Shenandoah Chefalo  01:14

Thank you, guys, so much for having me Go Green football season's just around the corner, right?

Deb Timmerman  01:19

Oh, we're going to have a fight here. Go Blue!

Barb Fletcher  01:24

So good morning, So nice to meet you. Can you share briefly what led you to write about your childhood?

Shenandoah Chefalo  01:33

Yeah, thanks for thanks for that, Barbara, it's actually kind of quite a complicated story, because it was really my intent to keep it a secret forever. I had made a promise to myself at 18 that I would actually never talked about my childhood, or talk about my time in foster care. And I did really good with that, that promise to myself, for nearly two decades. And then in the work that I was doing at the time, I was an office manager for a law office where we probably were primarily working in criminal defense work. And I was struck by the fact of our clients and the types of cases we were seeing the fact that we were representing whole families, right, so multiple people within the family were coming through and we were seeing them, well, that's good for business. It's not great for communities as a whole, right? So we were my spouse and I at the time who at the time I hadn't disclosed to my spouse, my previous run ins through the foster care system, we're talking about how we could help our clients make better decisions, we sort of landed on that naive question. And it sent me back to school to get a coaching certificate with this idea that we could coach our clients to better decision making, right, because somehow at the core, it had been drilled into us that like, if you just would make better decisions, you wouldn't be in this situation. And of course, this was like in the late 90s, very early 2000s. And that's kind of where the work was. That's sort of what the Movement was moving to, but through talking with our clients, and a lot of our clients and one client, in particular, a female client, who had a very similar story to me, right, which then began rustling up all of these, it says if a parallel universe and I had collided, and I was looking at myself, had things slightly then changed, right? Like had I made one different decision earlier in my life, that would have been me, and she would have been me and we would have been changed. So I really related to her story. And what it did was prompt me to go to my desk and type into Google foster care statistics. And what I was floored to learn was that about 90% of people incarcerated in federal and state facilities had spent time in foster care. And that started getting my brain thinking and percolating about bigger issues, right, like, Wait, this isn't just about decision making something else is afoot here. And then I learned that with death row inmates, for example, in the United States, we know like 95% of those had spent time in the child welfare. So, I started thinking about root cause. And because of my time in foster care, I thought, hey, maybe child welfare is root cause. And then I landed on the adverse childhood experience study. That of course, was just finished up by Dr. Felitti And on the CDC, right in the late 90s. It was sort of their findings were just coming out. And my brain began clicking Wait, there's these things that happened to us right in the study was answering questions for my client, but also answering questions for myself. And so, the combination of those three things came together and I thought The only way I would get people to listen is if I share my story. And I knew a lot of people who had similar stories, but they were in a privileged position to tell their story. In other words, they were still with mass healing to do. They hadn't necessarily been recovered from their trauma. They didn't have the time, right? They didn't have all kinds of things that allowed them to do it. So, I decided to write the book garbage bag suitcase, really only with the inclination that people would read it that wanted to change the system. And so, the idea was, yes, I'll share sort of what I call the car accident part of my life, right? Everyone wants to know what happens when they see a car accident, like, Oh, what happened there? That's interesting, right? They want to they everyone's a little nosy with what happened piece, but I thought I would share that if people committed to sort of the second half of the book, which is what can we do to change things. And so, I did that. That required me admitting to my husband some things from my past that I had never disclosed to him. And so, the book took me six years to write to get to the point to be able to share that story to do the changes that I'm so proud to be involved in now.

Deb Timmerman  06:25

Wow, what a story.

Shenandoah Chefalo  06:29

It's a lot to think about sometimes when, because it's been so long now. Right, that now I when I look back on it, people asked me if writing the story was a healing process. And I said, at some point, I crossed a line where now when I talk about it, it almost feels as if I'm talking about a different person that the story has is no longer my own. It's, it's the story of a group of people, right, like, everyone owns that story now.

Deb Timmerman  06:58

Speaking of a group of people yesterday, Barbara and I were having a conversation about what is it that happens in families, where you have maybe six siblings, and one of them is resilient as I'll get out and comes out unscathed from all the stuff, although I don't know if anybody could come out unscathed, and some of them struggle. Could you speak to that a little bit, and I know Barb will probably have some follow up questions about that.

Shenandoah Chefalo  07:28

Yeah, I think resilience is such a complicated piece that that many people struggle to understand. And sometimes because I'm fortunate enough to talk about it, people in the audience will say, so what was the magic pill? Shef? What made you, you? How did you do this? How did you overcome all the stuff you've told us about? And I always say, there is no magic pill. And I'm not healed. I'm not recovered. I'm not done. Like my work continues. And every time I think like, Hey, I've, oh, look at me, look what I just did. You know, life will throw me something that reminds me of everything and of everywhere I came from, so I think it's a two thing. I once had a nurse when I was first doing this work. One of the first groups that I actually trained were nurses who are working with patients with early onset Alzheimer's and dementia. And they were interested in this work about early childhood adversity for a completely different reason. But their questions and really, I probably learned more from them than they learned from me, and all truthfulness was that people are going to deal with their trauma one way or another. What they were seeing is they had patients who most likely suffered trauma in their early childhood for which they've never disclosed. And now at the onset of dementia or Alzheimer's, they were making disclosures in the family was struggling. Because is it truthful? Is it not? Is it part of their illness? Are they not remembering correctly? Are they remembering correctly and now just saying things? And for one in particular, you know, a mom who had disclosed early sexual abuse in her childhood, for the five siblings that remained it was finally an understanding of why their mom was so overbearing and over protective and why they couldn't have sleepovers as kids right and began to answer long childhood beliefs about things that they were still angry with their mom about, but it was also causing disruption. So that's the thing about trauma is sometimes we can appear like we have it all together. But we are really struggling, and we are having difficulties. So, I do think everybody faces that at different times and in different ways. The other piece about resilience is that I'm super fascinated with and in the center of the developing child has really done a tremendous job at this and I'll lot of work studying resilience, right? So, we know it's a, it's a learned behavior. And so even if we're in a sibling set, the people we're connected to can oftentimes be very different. Based on our age based on our own interest, you know, so maybe in a sibling set of six, if the one child was really good at sports and had a really great coach, their resilience might be much different than the other five siblings, even though they all were in the same household. Because that's the thing, our household dysfunction is only one part of this really big piece. There's also what's happening in the community at the time. So, birth order matters, not just because we have these ideas, right of beams, about the firstborn, the middle barn, and the baby of the family. But because different things are going on in society at different times, and so they will impact us at different times as well. And then the environment, you know, I think about kids know who their whole lives have been under the COVID pandemic? Well, that's going to be very different than if you have a sibling who was a few years older than you, who had most of their life not under the COVID pandemic, right. So, this, this change of what's happening out in the world, I think does affect our resilience, it does affect how we respond to the things going on in our household as well. And so, it's learned behavior, it's did we get the same thing as everyone else, even when we come from the same household. And I usually say to people with siblings, you know, just think about anything, if you ask a group of siblings, their version of a story, Christmas 2015, every sibling has a different version of what happened that that Christmas, right. And so that's the thing, we each interpret the trauma in a different way, we each get our resilience in a different way. And so, we can expect that just because we came from the same household that will impact everyone the same. And that will have the same amount of resiliency as well.

Barb Fletcher  12:14

I can make a couple of points that really resonate with me, and one of them is that even though everything looks good on the outside, from a perception of others, where we're successful and contributing Well, in society, we can still find a layer two that needs to be dealt with. And I think that that's really important. I think, you know, it's one of those jobs that we never seem to be completely at the end, I think the opportunity for us is to have the skills to help us process that in, in a way that a little bit. Like what you said that those events and those experiences are almost outside of you, they don't necessarily define you the same way they might have them when we're at the beginning of our journey. So that and I think, you know, that interpretation of all of these events is really powerful. And having somebody who creates that connection with you at an early age, whether it's a teacher or a coach, we can underestimate, even though they're outside the family, how much impact that really can have. And this case, the situation was, you know, this person was bright, and the teachers all loved this person, the end. So, you know, they continually made that connection from an academic perspective. And so that probably guided him. The other children were bright but didn't come across that same person that inspired them the same way. So, I think, you know, some of it is the phrase good management and some of its luck, and where we find our path.

Shenandoah Chefalo  14:20

Yeah, I think so. There's a couple of pieces in there. Right? So, I'm thinking about this family I know of 12 siblings who like by like both standards is like a great like family of 12. Like they just had a lot of children in their family. And by all accounts, like really no big trauma, things to talk about other than the chaos of being a family of 14. So, but they talk about their experiences in school and like the first half of the family talked about how they loved school, they did really well. But one of the middle children maybe had some more issues right and teachers began to maybe tire of the family in general Right, in the last half of the kids have a completely different way that they talk about school. So, it's a really interesting thing, once the same school never moved, they all know each other. It's a huge family that everyone in the community knows, right. But I do think there is something where it's like, someone's perception, right. And this is where we can get into talking about equity and inclusion and belonging is one person who has enough power can switch it for a whole lot of other people who follow after, right. And so, in this case, this particular teacher just didn't like one of the kids, I mean, other 12 people, it's possible, you're not going to like one, right? So, so but that that then affected all of the kids who came after, versus the experience that all the kids came beforehand, right from the same family. And so, I think this is a really critical one is that we are all unique, different. And the thing that gets someone going won't get the next person going. And I think why some people get frustrated in this work is, we want to make it really technical. And like, here's the checklist. And here's what you do to make resiliency or to help people heal from trauma. And then people just don't fit into boxes like that. And so, you have to really just like I think about all the work guys who carry around just a truck full of tools, right, because you don't know which one you're going to need. I'm sure they would love to simplify down to just a little toolbox. But they have a truck full of tools, because they just don't know what they're going to need where and I think as society, that's how we have to start thinking about trauma and resilience is we need a whole lot of tools, because what works for debts not going to work for me. And what works for me is not going to work for BB, right. And so, we have to try all of these different things to find what's going to work for individuals. And remember that trauma doesn't care about income. It doesn't care about race, and it doesn't care about religion, and it doesn't care about your status. And so oftentimes, I say that can be a red herring, because we can say, well, Deb comes from a very nice family. And she's got a house and a picket fence and 2.2 kids and a job. And everything is just fine there. And I often say Right, so it's knowing your trauma story and your resiliency story that gives us a fuller, broader picture of context around that. Because we can get confused when we say well, Shannon lives in poverty, and she's homeless, and so they need different services. And the truth is, they're probably more alike than different.

Deb Timmerman  17:40

So, Shen your business does a lot with educating other businesses and organizations about trauma and why it's so important to understand that trauma is a player in people's health. Why is that awareness so important?

Shenandoah Chefalo  18:01

Well, here's the positive about COVID-19. I think it's highlighted how important understanding trauma and mental health is not only in the nonprofit sector, and those of us who care about the social justice movement, but also in for profit business, and how employees are showing up to work and whether they're showing up to work. So, I live in a community that is really tourist driven. And so, I remember saying 10 or 15 years ago at meetings when they were like, Hey, we're, you know, we can't find housekeepers for the hotels, we can't find this frontline staff, right. And I kept saying, you don't have a people problem, you have an empathy problem, because you have to begin understanding what's happening in people's lives. And sort of these hard and fast rules that we tend to live by in the business world, right? Like you must be at your desk from eight to five, you must produce. And we're sort of seeing the blowback after COVID after people work from home, and they're like, Why do I have to go in? Like, what is the point of all of this? If I can do my work and less time does that matter? And if I can do it on my own time, and then I don't need a babysitter? And how do I pay for childcare? Because my job pays me $14 An hour and childcare is $10 an hour, right? It begins to not make sense at some point. So, it's important, both from a financial perspective, and just a people perspective. So, I think what's changing the shift that's happening, and there's going to be some businesses that are prepared for this is that those on healing journeys are going to be more attracted to businesses where the culture is healing, versus the chaotic culture. And so, the United States I say, you know, it's the difference of walking into a Walmart and feeling completely overwhelmed in the environment. A lot of people you know, if you walk into a Walmart on Black Friday, it's overwhelming, right? Like there's so much going on. that it's it can be harmful for everyone, their employees, customers, it doesn't matter, versus walking into a really small boutique, where there's one person working and one person there. And it's this really healing, engaging environment. And what we're really trying to do this live thing, centering DEI work is so important in this conversation is, it's about being inclusive for everybody, that it's a healing place for both staff and your customers that you're serving. And that we really begin thinking about this concept of universal precaution, which is, let's just assume everybody's had something that's happened to them. And how do we just offer up to make it safe for everybody versus worried about Deb, what's you’re a score, and here's the services you need. And Barb, okay, you don't need any services, you're just a to, and not having the whole context and picture of everything. So please say, let's just assume everyone's had something by using a universal precaution approach. If BB hasn't had any trauma and adversity, I've not met that adult bar, by the way, but maybe they exist somewhere. I say to audiences quite frequently, if I find someone who hasn't, I'd love to become friends with them and just cause a little chaos for their lives. So they can see what the rest of us are dealing with. But, but if Barb hasn't experienced any trauma, it turns out universal precautions won't harm her either, right. And so it's just a way to keep her safe and keep me safe, and not re traumatizing people in reach, triggering them and making that more circumstances for which we have to recover.

Barb Fletcher  21:36

It's kind of like, in Canada, we talk about age friendly, whether it's the curves or whether it's, you know, ease of, of actually living. And what we've found is that a lot of those strategies are really helpful to new moms. And their ability to move along. So often, what's good for people who are aging is good for the other end, as well. And so I love this notion of, you know, let's, let's just be conscious of everyone.

Deb Timmerman  22:10

I love that because, Shen you shared that you're still on your healing journey. And obviously, certain things trigger those flashbacks. When we walk into a business, they have no idea what we carry with us. But that interaction that we're able to have at the counter may be the difference between us keeping it together that day, and being able to shift and move on positively or having a big blow up where we're stuck in that space for, you know, an hour or days or week. 

Shenandoah Chefalo  22:42

Yeah, so I talked about behavior quite often like the outward behavior as the red herring, right? It's like it's the distraction to what's really going on. And, you know, in this day and age with video, we're just everyone's got a recorded for everything. So we're all a little movie paranoid as well and on edge. But so every time I see somebody yelling at a customer service agent, do I think that behavior is appropriate? No, of course not. Right? Or someone who is calling the police on a Black family for having a picnic in a park, for Pete's sakes, like it's inappropriate behavior. But what we need to understand is what's behind the behavior. So we get oftentimes distracted by the behavior. And the thing is, it's a yes, and proposition, we can still hold someone accountable in a trauma informed way. So just because you've had trauma doesn't mean you just get to behave however you want to behave. But what we don't fix when we just record it, and then the rest of us watch the video and laugh and point think, what was that person thinking? Why would someone do that? What we miss is what's really going on. And so you know, there's been a big movement with Oprah and Bruce Perry and Brené. Brown to get people to move from what's wrong with you to what's happened to you, which I think is a great shift. But I tell people that's going from like red to yellow. And if you want to go yellow to green, it's really about taking that behavior and now saying what's strong in you, right? How do we begin to see behavior? Not from problem focus, but from strength focused? So how do you get to see someone who's bossy as willing to stick up for them? Right when you make that, that switch? So when I see one of those videos, I think what's going on for that person? What's actually happening for that person? What kind of day did they have? And I talked about this because I was grocery shopping one day, and it was in a very long line at the grocery store. You know, one of those lines where you think I should just not have any groceries this week. I could just go home and I don't need groceries. This was before we had delivery by now we've all saved ourselves a lot of time. And the woman in front of me goes in the cashier says did you find everything you needed? Okay. And the woman just goes ballistic. And everyone in line is reacting to her going ballistic because now they think they're held up, it's going to take even longer. Now what do we do, we've already waited in this line, right? And she's screaming at the cashier, the cashier is crying. And all I can hear her is mumbling something about not finding peanut butter. Now, in the old days, I'd have just been like, there's something wrong with this woman. This isn't my business like now, I put myself in a little bit different position in life. And what clicked in my brain was, nobody gets this upset about peanut butter. This has enough like, no one like this, because clearly not about peanut butter, right? But nobody can see that. Because everyone's focused on how loud she is. And she's making a cashier cry, and it's causing all this pain for everyone else. And so I just said to her, ma'am, I'm really, really sorry. If there's anything I can do, just let me know. And I just said that to her made eye contact with her. And she started to cry. Because it wasn't about peanut butter. So it turned out that her husband had just passed away. And her mom was in the hospital and was sick. And like she'd been couldn't find peanut butter. And so that was like the peanut butters, that thing that breaks your back, right? Like, and then you begin to empathize. And you're like, I'd be mad, I couldn't find peanut butter, too, if I have all this going on. And all. You can't give it to me, right? Like at this gigantic store, there's no peanut butter to be had. And so I talk about that often is that, does it make it okay that she yelled at the cashier? No. But if we would have just let it go at that and said, there's this crazy woman who's yelling at cashiers about peanut butter, we don't get to the root cause and she doesn't get to the root cause and she doesn't receive support, and then she's going to walk out angry, and she's going to be angry with 40 more people that she runs into. Instead of, we could sit there for three seconds. And I could just say, I'm really sorry, I couldn't fix any of that I can't fix that her mom's sick, I couldn't fix that her husband had passed away. But I could say I'm sorry, I see you and I can empathize with that. And my hope is, is that that made it so it doesn't settle into her body, that she doesn't have to take that anger on to the next conversation, and that she can find healing quicker from what she's experiencing. But I think that's our duty as community members is to start saying, what's really happening here? What is this really about? And I found myself doing that, you know, through the election cycles recently in states where I'm just like, What is this really about? Why is everyone so angry? What's really going on here? What are we really concerned with? And I think I get different answers than maybe others who continue to focus on the behavior other than what's really at play here. What's the bigger picture here?

Deb Timmerman  27:56

Wow. So this week, I think our call to action is really about awareness, looking at the interactions that you have out in the community and looking where you are judging what you're seeing, and maybe asking yourself to be curious about what's behind that behavior. And what are we doing to add to the crazy collective? Like, are we carrying that on and telling that story and spreading that? This was such a rich episode, there could be a million calls to action BB, do you have something that you think people should try to be aware of this week?

Barb Fletcher  28:38

Well, I took a whole lot of notes. You know, one of the things that popped up to me, which is it's not a people problem, it's an empathy problem. And so I think if employers who think they don't have the people that they want, perhaps can dig just a little bit deeper and see if they can find empathy and compassion. The results may be different for them.

Deb Timmerman  29:02

So Shen you do a lot of work with organizations, and I'm sure you'd love to answer questions for anyone who has an organization of who are looking at exploring the trauma informed movement, so they can reach you on your website, which is

Shenandoah Chefalo  29:22

www.chefaloconsulting.com it is the one reason having a unique name like Shenandoah shuffler is great. You're the only one on the internet.

Deb Timmerman  29:31

We will put the links to this podcast connecting to Shen’s website. Any last words before we wrap up for today, Barb?

Barb Fletcher  29:41

No, just really appreciated your time and I'm sure that people who spend the time to listen to this will find so many nuggets that may cause them to pause and change how they show up.

Shenandoah Chefalo  30:00

I appreciate that. Thank you guys both for having me.