S6 EP27: Heather's Story - A Fireball, And Everything Changed!

When Heather White was 27, she was driving with her fiancee, at 2:00am, on Memorial Day weekend, 1981, when all of a sudden, her car stopped dead in the middle of the Long Island Expressway. With no warning, a car crashed into them from behind. The car immediately burst into flames, they were taken to a local hospital and her fiance died shortly thereafter - leaving his two young sons without a father. Heather never saw him again. She had 3rd degree burns over 25% of her body including my face and hands. 

The trauma that Heather experienced that night seem incomparable. Where does someone even begin to recover! 

Today, Heather has been happily married for almost 40 years and she has an amazing daughter and lives a happy and fulfilled life. 

Join us for an utterly breathtaking and inspiring episode!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Welcome to another episode of Well That Fucked Me Up. I am your host, Luke Colson. Today we're joined by Heather White. Hi Heather, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:38

I'm fine, Luke. How are you?

SPEAKER_02 1:40

I'm great. Thanks for coming on the show. Where uh where are you calling us from?

SPEAKER_00 1:44

About a quarter mile from you, Les.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Oh, very good.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

I'm on Glencoe.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

No, well, that's literally crazy. Some of my son's friends are right there. So and I take that street through, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

I've driven down that road, you know, near your apartment. Saw you once. I nearly stopped to say.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

Oh, we'll stop next time. That's funny. Um every week we have a guest who comes on and we talk about surviving life-changing events and experiences, and um often rooted in trauma and our survival through those events and experiences. And that can be a one-off event that happened, it can be a lifetime of emotional stuff, it can be physical, it can be diagnosis, can be illnesses, can be relationships, normally resulting on in you know, some sort of adversity that we've had to come through. So we like to concentrate on the journey through. Heather, where would you like to begin the conversation?

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Um, I guess we can start the night of, and then I'll provide some context around the backstory to that, and then we can move forward. Does that sound good? Sounds great. Okay. Uh so um I was driving, I was 27. I was driving on the Long Island Expressway. I'm a New Yorker, born and raised in Manhattan. Um, and I was driving with my fiance to our house on the eastern end of Long Island, and it was late, maybe two or three in the morning. And I have driven on the Long Island Expressway my entire life. I know it very, very well. My parents had a house there, I've always had a house there. So I know the road very well. So it's not unusual for me to be driving at that hour. But anyway, um, our car had just been in the shop, and I ended up um it ended up stopping in the middle of the highway at two in the morning. And I was driving and I tried to get it started and I couldn't. And then um somebody got out, came to the uh passenger side window and said, Watch out, someone's going to hit your car. Yeah, and then one hit my car from behind, the car exploded.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Um, we my husband, my fiance, and I tried to roll down the windows. Um, I ended up going over him out the passenger uh window, which was halfway open. Yeah, he had more trouble getting out, so he was in there a bit longer. The fire was fairly intense.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

We both got out, and then the kind person who had stopped to help us um drove us to a hospital. Oh my god. And it was, yeah, it wasn't. It was very, very horrible. That sounds horrible.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Horrible.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Yeah, yeah. So we were in a hospital in the middle of Long Island at two in the morning, and they took my fiance away. I never saw him again. He died three days later from the burns, and then I was transported by helicopter to New York hospital, where I stayed in the burn unit for about six weeks.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

They did a number of skin grafts on me, um, on my neck, uh, on my chin. They luckily did not do my nose and um on my leg where the worst burns were. So literally out of nothing.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

You don't know, do you? You just don't know where life's what's gonna happen. Like you're one minute you're fine, you're driving, the next minute it's literally like uh a horror movie, and you for some reason are the victims of the most one of the most hideous things a human can go through uh out of nowhere. How did how do you pro firstly how much do you remember about that exact event, and then how do you process that in your mind? I know it's obviously been a few years now, but there must be so much to contend with mentally in that in the recovery as well as the physical recovery.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Well, that's that's very true. Um, I I remember a lot of it, um, good or bad, I just remember it. Um I think of it often, but yeah, um the thing was we had been living together for five years. He had two sons from a previous marriage. Um we had a publishing company together, and we published a book by photographs of Helmut Newton called White Women. Um, we did some amazing things, but he, while I started going out with him, became um, I would say I think he had a history of drug abuse beforehand, right? And I did not, right? And through being together, we both ended up taking some heroin and nothing, nothing with needles or anything, but right um enough to for it to be a fairly standard behavioral car.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

So um, you know, I think they probably when the time came to sue the car company, they probably took that into account. But the good thing is they we had just had the car fixed, so we were able to sue the car company, yeah. Uh luckily, um, his ex-wife was able to get a settlement to help grow, you know, help fund the children.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

And and I actually ended up being since we had lived together and we had a company together, I ended up with actually nothing. No way, I had no home.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Um, I I had no job. Well uh I had nowhere to live.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

I had, you know, to get over taking heroin, and so I went on a methadon program.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Um gosh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

This is why I don't tell the story to anyone.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

Yeah, wow, what an incre I mean, listen, I've got a history of drinking drugs and I'm not ashamed of it anymore. You know, it's like it is what it is.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

I listened to your TikToks, I know all of that.

SPEAKER_02 8:09

Parts of the story, you know, it's part of our lives, yeah, part of us.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

And especially, you know, growing up in New York at that time, you know, it was just there were a lot of drugs around.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

I managed to avoid it for a very long time, although I had many friends who did not. Um, but yeah, I think just being with this person was the what it took for me to get involved. But luckily it wasn't part of my nature, and it wasn't that hard for me to eventually get off it. It was just I was on food stamps. Um I just I had to go from place to place to try and find some place to live. Um yeah, it was it was incredibly a very dark time. It was literally, I would say for three years, I was like, do I want to live? I mean, was this what have I got to live for? I mean, I literally didn't have a pimple on my face before. Yeah, and then I had to wear a plastic mold on my face to reduce the scarring for a year and go on public transportation and get on the bus to go to the clinic and also it was a different time back then, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02 9:21

Everyone's looking, probably judging, you know, it's just horrific.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Yeah, it was uh just a complete absolute loss of my entire life and personality.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

I can only imagine. What about friends and family at that stage? What were did you have people around you?

SPEAKER_00 9:41

I did. Luckily, my my sister took me in for a number of months. Um, I had two sisters, one was just horrible, and the other was very helpful. Um, my father was very angry at me. Um, I barely spoke to him, and um, my mother had already passed. Um, so yeah, I was uh I was kind of struggling, you know, how to how to survive. Yeah, and it I'll tell you what what uh changed my life, and it was um it's interesting how simple that can be in the end. Um I had been in therapy and I just thought, you know, no one can possibly understand what I'm going through. There's no way I stayed all the help, but I wouldn't want anyone to understand what I was going through. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Um, but at a certain I went to an Earhard seminar training est and I was very much um thinking this is a waste of my time. Why am I doing this? Yeah, like this is stupid. Yeah. Um, and it was like three days of sitting there and blah, blah, blah. And at the end, like the last day, the the sort of leader gave a metaphor for life. And it's just always stayed with me and helped me forever, which is that um you can look at you know, pain and suffering and your past like luggage. And the longer you carry all of that with you, the heavier it gets. And it takes more and more and more and more and more to just try and hold on to what you had. And you can try and let go. And and literally, I can't explain it, but in a moment, I let go. And I said that was then that was what it was. I mean, I'm madly in love with this person, and I will never be madly in love with someone like that again. Yeah, and I don't want to, yeah. Um, and I have to start completely fresh. So the thing that's quite amazing about when you do that is um when you start fresh, but you can't like you still have all the learnings, right? You still have all of the the kind of what I've been through and how I am overcoming this. So it actually gives you tremendous strength.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

And um I I don't ever think people should have the same experience that I've had, but I can tell you that I have a whole different level of understanding about life, about people, about pain, about what's valuable.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Um it's interesting that like something so dark can lead to such enlightenment, if that makes sense. It's like I completely understand what you're talking about, like get rid of the baggage. Nothing is gonna change the past, and nothing we do is gonna change what we went through, but we can use it to benefit us, and we can use it to learn, and we can use it to understand. So once you shed the weight of the luggage of all those things and all everything you went through, and have a reset, which is what I did when I came out of my like awful, awful alcoholism and addiction and lost my everything. I took I exactly like you, I heard someone say, like, this is the beginning of the the next stage, like you can't continue crawling along the floor with all this baggage. And so once I took this is like ground zero, this is day one, this is day two, this is day three, this was the rebirth, or this was the new me. The last seven years for me have been like literally learning, learning, learning, understanding, building a completely different version of myself, which is uh it infinitely better than what I done what the Luke that had gone before me, you know. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 13:54

I oh absolutely, because what I actually learned, and this is I think where people really get scared, is that our our potential is unlimited.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

And and it is only our own fear of using that potential that keeps people from succeeding. And so I have this, I mean, I tend to think of myself as always being good, always being right, you know, instead of like, oh, there's something wrong with me, you know. I err on the other side of like, oh, this is of course. I I look at the bright side of the show, and that is empowering. And um, I obviously feel like I have a huge weight lifted off me because I feel there's a potential for me to choose my path. And I've always said to my daughter, who has has not as easy a life as I would have hoped, that you know, you always know when you're on the right track, like and make sure that you're going in the right direction.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

So you know, we have to choose the our paths, like things happen to you, and you can't help that, but then you have a choice where to move to from there. And so you always have to think, am I moving in the right direction for myself? And there really aren't any answers other than knowing yourself and believing in yourself to be able to make those decisions.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

I think belief in yourself is a huge thing because uh I gone through my life not believing or trusting myself, not believing in myself, not having any love for myself. And it took some dark, dark, dark, dark things and dark days and dark moments to make me appreciate who I am, and that I have a really big role to play in this life that I have, right? And so while mine wasn't like a one-off, like crazy thing that like tragedy that happened to you, my 20 years prior to my like alcoholic breakdown was a slow burn into how like a into the depths of darkness, and so coming out of that and and realizing oh okay, uh I I deserve to be happy, and I have the tools to be happy, and I have the understanding of life doesn't need to be this giant weight, which is how I always viewed it, right? It can be it can be light and it can be a wonderful thing, but I was just I was just in the I was just in the dark, I was just in the absolute darkness for so long, and I didn't know it could be any other way, you know. It's amazing that this thing that happened to you has created this version of you, and I'm s I just want to go back again, not to dwell on that fateful night, but like it's okay, it's okay, it's 40 years ago, 50 years ago. Sure. How many years? Um, like almost 50 years ago. 50 years ago, yeah. I mean it's it's yeah, I had a a uh friend of mine died in front in front of me when I was 11, and uh, you know, we were on our bikes, and he came off his bike and he hit his head and he he died. He died right in front of me. I was 11 years old, and I can recall that the events of that day like it was yesterday. I had them imprinted in my brain, um, but it no longer sh it no longer controls me. Those like um unwanted thoughts don't sneak in and tell me that it was my fault or that I'm a terrible person, or I should have done better, or it should have been me that died, you know? But that stuff you deal with when you go through a tragedy that involves someone close to you dying, right? How did that go with for you in terms of the actual physical and mental trauma of going through something like that? The moments, the flashbacks, all of that recovery must have taken a long time, right? On top of like eventually starting to heal, there's some immediate, like major effects of something like that, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Yeah, um to be honest, I mean, even though I was driving, I did not feel guilty.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

I did not know it definitely wasn't your fault, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Yeah, it wasn't which it was relief, right? I mean, I felt bad about his children, I felt bad about everything, but I also know that to a certain extent he might have been on a bit of a death wish, you know, yeah, because right he lived so close to that edge, you know. Wow, I just to a certain extent, I almost think that it was his karma. Oh wow, yeah, brought on it was yeah, I so anyway, I I don't blame anybody. Um for the first three years, it was literally just waking up in some kind of a I don't know, coma state. Like, what is today? What am I why am I doing this? Why should I bother? It's it was really bad. Um, yeah, it was the driver.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

The driver didn't do anything wrong, right? He just was driving and there was a car with no lights on in the middle of the freeway. So he he wasn't to blame, or was there like act at lawsuit against that?

SPEAKER_00 19:06

And how did that guy was there was a lawsuit against the car company because it seemed like my car shouldn't have stalled, but yeah, there was hardly anybody on the road. Yeah, so why didn't like pull over when he saw I mean, I don't know if the car lights were off or not. I don't I think that it was still running, it was just stuck in a gear. And so I I don't know the the I eventually, you know, they they did sue the car company, and I think it was um like six years later that we did get um this this is what's great, we did get a payout, right? And that really changed my life, of course. You know, it wasn't a shit ton of money, no, but I went from literally being on food stamps, yeah, having money in the bank.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

Thank god. Six years, did it six years? Yeah, you've lost absolutely everything, and then it took six freaking years for someone to give you the insurance money, is is wild, you know.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

But luckily, I was in the right space to accept it correctly. You know, I'd found like a new partner, and um we've been together for 40 years now, since then. Wow, and we have a daughter, and um as I told you, I I mean, getting I had to get a job anyway, so that was really hard. Yeah, like you when you have something wrong with you physically, you have to present yourself as if there's nothing wrong with you. Cool, and then let the other people decide. Wow, you know, I I think it was interesting that my injuries were incredibly visible, yeah. A lot of people have invisible pain. Yeah, mine was complete, I couldn't hide it from anybody. Wow, it was, you know, I mean, my face, if you ever see me up close, yeah, like right now it doesn't look too bad. No, it doesn't look it, it doesn't look like anything. Yeah, I know. If you see me up close, it's like very old wrinkled skin, right? Because it just it luckily is not keloid scarring, right? That that's lucky because I wore that mask. I don't know. I mask every day.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Wow, it worked. The mask worked.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Yeah, yeah, it was it was brutal. I mean, I looked so horrible.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

And so I mean, I ended up, you know, just acting like I was normal. And I must say, there's no doubt, I ended up moving, I was always like a photographer. I'd always taken pictures and living in New York, it's such a wonderful place to to photograph, you know, street photography. Um, and so I ended up thinking, well, let me go work in film. And I was working in the camera department, and I know that many a time no one would hire me because of the way I looked. I mean, it just it was just, and then I was like, okay, you know, it is what it is. I'm gonna present myself the way I am, and people can expect me or not.

SPEAKER_02 22:05

Yeah, because yeah, but you don't want to be you don't want to be the victim, I guess, in that situation. It's just that this is me, take it or leave it. Do you think times I I think I keep saying times have changed, but I feel like they have a bit, haven't they? Like from back then, that 40 45 years ago. I feel like equal rights and equity, you know, I felt like it was worse back then.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

I don't think so. I mean, especially with social media, social media is is so brutal to people. It really is perfect. It's really rude and horrible. So I mean, I've grown into my face now. I'm old enough, so it doesn't look too unusual. But when you're 30 and everybody's living fantastically, and you're like, you know, just trying to survive. But again, it's that silly adage, what doesn't kill you, you know. And um so, you know, I've just been very clear about what's important to me, how to build on that, and you know, and it's wonderful. I mean, you know, I I wouldn't wish it on anybody, but on the other hand, I feel like what I've done with it was the right thing, and then I can be a role model for us some people who might also, you know, think you because you would think, why would if if someone had said To me, when you're 27, you're gonna be in this situation. You know, I grew up like upper middle class and park avenue. We had everything, you know. I mean, someone said you're gonna be on food stamps, you know, your face is gonna be you'll be homeless, yeah. No money. How would you? I would say don't just I would never do that.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

Yeah. You know, wild how life can change in the blink of an eye. And that, you know, I used to have anxiety about that because of because of what I went through in my front when my friend died. I just thought, you know, at that age, I was so terrified of everyone dropping dead. I just thought we were all gonna like all cut well everyone was gonna have something terrible happen to them. And that's still sort of half with me. I still have these like catastrophic thoughts that creep into my head out of nowhere, and I have to just, you know, bat them away because it's like that I know where that's coming from, and I know that's my trauma, and we learn, don't we? And I think I've heard people obviously you said you'd never want to go through it again, but the person you've become as a result of it is nothing short of miraculous, and we get to live these lives where we have this knowledge, and we don't hope that anyone else will have this knowledge for that reason. But when you go through something so life-changing, it and and then the trauma afterwards, and then for me, even more trauma, which just went on and on and on till I was in my mid-40s when I suddenly realized that all of this trauma was the reason I was treating myself the way I was treating myself.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

I heard that story about you in that hotel room, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:14

Yeah, so there you go, right. You know, nothing like drinking myself to death, and then you you finally come out like you did when you got the money and you start to rebuild, and and now I'm like, what what an amazing thing, like what an incredible journey that for me is just beginning, you know, and it's nice, it's it's nice to be able to say it's nice to be alive, you know.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

It's so interesting how you know, especially in my case, where it literally flipped in almost like a moment, yeah. Where you know, it wasn't hard, it wasn't, I mean, it took hard work once I made the decision. Yeah, I once I made the decision, that was like an instant. I was like, Oh, I'm just gonna let that shit go. Yeah, and then and then the rest was day by day, but building on it day by day, exploding in like some coma state.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

That's it.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

And um, you know, and so I think that the other thing that I learned is you know, time is time can be your friend, you know. I mean, I try and use everything, every tool to benefit me, right? So I mean, yeah, I kind of always had like something about me that was addictive, whether I liked rice pudding.

SPEAKER_02 26:26

Yeah. Yeah. I know I'm the same. Always got something.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

But you know, I mean, now I use that to like I've been doing yoga, you know, for 35 years or something like that. And you know, so it's it's building on those strengths, you know, that could be going the other way. Of course, of course, careful.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

It's it's funny, isn't it? I'm the same. I've got my addictive personality, but it's like I'm using it in different areas now and learning the hard way. It's so great for your two sons because you know it is great because I have knowledge now and I have openness, and I watched it.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

You're you're completely open with them about you know of course that you're so open about it.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

Of course. Well, I have to be. It's that's it's all over the internet now, you know. It's I that's how it is.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

And that's very brave of you, very brave.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

It it is what it is. I like sharing my story, and I think my I think my story helps other people, and people know me from when I was drinking, and people know that you know I looked like I was having a good time, but the blackout drinking and then the the going missing and not knowing where I'd been, and you know, that's dangerous at that point. You're dangering your family, your kids, you know, and uh it just got so so dark and so bad. And and my kids know they're like, you know, they know I don't drink, they haven't touched a drop for and what what what made the change for you?

SPEAKER_00 27:48

Because I remember you said you finally called your friend and you said, Come get me.

SPEAKER_02 27:51

Yeah, it was my I think my um it was my kids, really. It was like knowing that I could fight this to get my kids to to just be alive and try. And you know, again, it was I didn't want to lose that. So it it was I was kind of I was kind it was interesting. I I there's a device called a sober link, which is like a breathalyzer. So when we started the separation, I committed to I agreed that if I wouldn't get custody or visitation rights with my children unless I blew a sober breathalyzer. And the breathalyzer, it's a really cool company, and they the email goes the result of the test goes directly to your partner, right? Your your your ex or your whoever you're so they use it for legal rights, they use it for people to try and get back on the straight and narrow. I use that thing for years afterwards because it get it it made me proud to be blowing a zero every day of my life. It became like a routine for me, and it held me accountable. And I'm not saying that I would have drunk again without that thing being part of our settlement, but it just made me realize that it was easier than I thought it was to stop drinking if I wanted. Here's my choice drink and drink myself to death, or live my life and have my beautiful sons as part of that. And that was the equation. But there was still a part of me in my mind that was saying, I'd go for the drink. I need to drink, I need to drink because I'm miserable and depressed. Now, once I started realizing I was drinking to self-medicate because of the traumas of my past, then I realized I didn't need to drink on that, I just needed to talk to people about it and figure out what the fuck it was that I was running away from. Then I started doing all the work, then I didn't need to drink anymore. And now, you know, my ex-wife is in my life, she's around the corner, my boys are here week on, week off, week on, week off.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

And I love your text message with your sex.

SPEAKER_02 29:59

Oh my goodness, yeah, yeah, yeah. On the t on the TikTok. Yeah, it's it's wild. And I love them to pieces, and we have a great relationship. And it's what it's crazy. I had an alcoholic father, and of course, I said to myself, Oh, that won't be me. I'll never do that. But you we don't, we you don't know, we don't know. I don't know, you know, I couldn't tell you why it got that bad. It just it just it did, and that's the problem with addiction, you know. I mean, you you were nearly there, you were maybe on the road, who who knows? Excuse the terrible pun, but you know, you were in a relationship with someone who was addicted to heroin, and God only knows how life's twists and turns, right? You just never know. You just never know.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

Yeah, no, I mean, and that's why I think it's very important to just you know make sure you're on the right track. Yeah, like you know, you can be on the train and see the brick wall ahead of you, and it's like, well, get off the train, yeah, you know, yeah, get on another train.

SPEAKER_02 30:55

Sometimes it's easier said than done. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 30:58

Pretty simple, but yeah, I think the real nub of everything is that for me, is that human beings do not wish to recognize their true potential. Like, I think we are incredibly powerful. And it's much easier to play the victim, to be afraid, um, because the success might be even more scary. Yeah, you know, you can't understand failure. Oh, okay, I know what's gonna happen here. Yeah, but if you succeed, you're like, well, what happens when I succeed? Then I gotta do this, or then I and so I am just a huge believer in like understanding your true potential and leveraging that as opposed to leveraging the fear of failure, yeah. And it's funny, I have a twin sister, and she is the opposite, it's like complete victim her whole life. Wow, and uh we bear we we were extremely close for a long, long time. We used to live across the street from each other in Manhattan. And my husband at the time was like, She is abusing you. Oh shit, because I was like, I wanted to help, yeah, right. So it was like I wanted to help. I have a very small family, yeah. I'm first generation American. My parents are like my mother was from Northern Ireland, my father's from England. I I don't have family here, so it was like a twin sister and another sister, and so I didn't. He was like, You have got to let her go. So that was another hard thing. And I literally this day, I was just like, she either wanted to abuse me, or I would have to get angry at her, or I would just have to like walk away. And so I'm not friendly with my my sister at all because she loves being a victim, and I I can't support it, and I can't help her.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

And well, I think like one, you know, one thing is when you especially when you've been through something like you've been through, but when you're living life and you want to embrace life, and there's people around you who want to I either bring you down or make you feel bad, or it is any kind of toxicity, I don't do that anymore. I've just I'll walk away from those people too. I don't need a large friend friend group, I need three or four people in my life that I can trust, and that's fine with me. And I had a recording with a uh a lady last week who did the same with her parents. She said, My parents were abusive and toxic, and every time I tried to reconnect and make as I went through life, I'd meet them to try and reconcile, and they would continue the abuse and they would continue the toxicity. She said, I made the decision 15 years ago to cut and cut contact, no contact with my parents. She said, I've never seen them since and I've never been happier.

SPEAKER_00 33:48

So I know it's so sad. We can't really choose our relatives.

SPEAKER_02 33:52

No, Heather, thank you so much for this amazing conversation. Can we find you anywhere? Are you on social media or any websites or anything like that? In case someone is going through some stuff and they can reach out.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Sure. Um, well, um, I am on Instagram. I think in my email is my Instagram.

SPEAKER_02 34:12

I will put it in the show notes so there's no need to read it out. But if Instagram's a good spot and you're listening to this podcast, go to the show notes and you can find uh Heather's Instagram. Perfect.

unknown 34:23

All right.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

And that's that, Heather. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. And if you see me in Venice, please.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

I will come and say hi. I might even run into you on Ralph's.

SPEAKER_02 34:35

I'll be looking out for you. I'll be there helping. I'll be there helping the shorter generation with the uh tin beans on the top shelf. That's funny. Um, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

Thank you, Luke. Be well.