106. Overcoming trauma and complex PTSD ft. Amy B Chesler

00:00:04
Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Before we get into this episode, I do want to let you know that this conversation does include discussions of domestic violence and sexual abuse. There will be resources in the description of this episode if you need or require further help or information, but listener discretion is advised. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the podcast. Welcome back to the show, new listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world today, we have an incredible story and incredible guest on the show to share their experience with overcoming adversity and hardship, mainly a trauma and an event that happened during their twenties.

00:01:12
Speaker 2: I think it's always phenomenal and a good idea to view our lives as more than this decade and receive the input from someone who has lived through their twenties, lived through some incredibly hard things, and come through it so that they can teach us, teach us the way and show us that there is a path forward. So amy, it is so amazing to have you on the show. Can you introduce yourself for the audience?

00:01:42
Speaker 3: Oh lord, you know it's funny. I don't get nervous often, but I don't know why I'm a little nervous right now. That was quite the introduction in such a beautiful, you know, space to enter, So thank you. I my name is Amy B. Chessler, and I am an author, a podcaster, a mom first and foremost, to be honest, I should have said that first, and I am a victim advocate. I often start by sharing my story by saying I am a victim and also a survivor of domestic violence. My mother, however, is not She did not survive the domestic violence we faced. So just I'll I guess a long story short, because I do believe my upbringing led to me led me to the culmination of a lot of abuse and trauma in my early twenties. But long story short, I was raised by a very tenacious, strong single mother. I grew up in Calabasas, California, So like the Kardashians like, which was a not reality again, Like there's really a lot of reality TV made about the place, but there's it's not a reality based place. However, I was raised by a single mom and we didn't have a lot of means. My brother was ostracized there because, you know, again we in the eighties nineties, we didn't have the cool stuff that everybody else had. We kind of were just scraping by. We were latchkey kids, and we both got picked on a lot. But he just kind of never found a place to fit in. That developed and turned into abuse over the years. He scapegoaded my mom and I, I believe, for a lot of the feelings he was feeling. My dad was never really in the picture. In fact, my mom likes to tell me I was the last time they had sex, so like I was conceived that time, So I never actually lived with my father. I guess I was probably a lot less affected by his absence because I had never even known his presence. My brother was deeply affected by it because he left when he was three, So just from then on he kind of was an angry ass person. He really directed a lot of the anger towards myself and my mom. He abused me in many different ways over the years. The abuse started around when I was probably ten or eleven. I say that like the abuse was environmental where he would get really angry and punch holes in the walls. He was really volatile, he was really moody. Then actually the abuse became sexual and he sexually abused me as a child. That was when I was around twelve, and it took me decades to figure out what he had done because his abuse was so shrewd. And I share, like I don't generally like to share that, like the intimate details of it live because I write about it more than anything. Because again, as much as I digest all this trauma for other not for content and awareness and all that, I get to choose the boundaries of that, So my boundary generally. But yeah, that was extremely devastating. It kind of manifested when that ended. A year later, when I was around thirteen, he became extremely violent and angry, ended up dropping out of high school, and ended up going in and out of the army a couple times, the US Army, and just really could never find a place in life. My mom led him in and out. An abusive relationship is really hard. We know the toxicity, we know the cyclical nature of it. Now there's a lot more language we have than when we did in two thousand and seven, when at the height of our abuse. Eventually, unfortunately, the abuse got so bad he threatened my mom's life several times and eventually killed her on September twenty fifth, two thousand and seven. The exact date actually became America's National Murder Victims Remembrance Day, like her exact murder date, but that was coincidental. I didn't find that out for many years. However, that that day, after a heated argument, he stole her life. I came home to find her, even though he had told me he had killed her. On my drive home, i'd reached him, he told me not to go home. I didn't really believe him because of the nature of his abuse and his kind of cycle of behavior. It was so up and down. He would sometimes joke about stuff like that. I know that sounds really weird, and I've gotten a lot of slack on about that on the Internet because people just don't understand how that's possible for me to underhear that and think he was joking. But when you live in constant abuse or fear, sometimes those things are jokes. And that's a mechanism of coercive control that I've now you know, identified with time. But so when I was twenty two my brother murdered my mother. It was shocking, it was gutting. It threw me for a major damn loop. I found many mechanisms of healing afterwards, some healthy, some not. And now that I am thirty eight, I have a grand perspective of our experiences. My degree going into that. You know, my brother actually killed her two weeks before, two weeks after I graduated college, and my degree is in psychology, so I actually went on in all of that in my healing, went on to start my MFT. I did drop out because I realized it just wasn't exactly where I wanted to be. But I think I utilize psychology, and obviously I utilize my own healing journey and my work and my advocacy and my sharing in my endeavors, and it's just, yeah, it's been a bit of a mind fuck the journey that I've gone on since then.

00:07:39
Speaker 2: I can imagine, and all of that is just so terrible. Obviously we've spoken about it before, but it's just every time you tell me, I literally just get like this terrible feeling in my stomach that you had to live through that because it's yeah, no words, really no words.

00:08:00
Speaker 3: And I like to add too, is that the nature of my podcast, not to plug it so earlier talk about it, but the nature of my podcast it's called what Came Next? Because quite literally, people think that victims, endeavors or journeys or hardships kind of end with the trauma and then we get to heal. But the idea is that there's always something coming next. So we'd like to think that, like, like you said, thank you for acknowledging that, however, the trauma didn't even end there with him. Yeah, you know, the nature of our and I think it's important to know that, like the nature of our criminal justice system allows for I think I believe the correct term is litigation abuse. So my brother was caught that evening. He was admittedly guilty, but it took four and a half years to convict him. And the last ditch effort he made before he actually got convicted or actually pled no contest to second degree murder in two thousand and eleven, I believe, was he tried to hire a hitman to kill me. He tried to pin the murder on me, say I planned everything I like promised him a huge lump of money that I didn't have, Like I don't know where he was coming up with any of this shit, and basically told this inmate in jail that was getting out or you know, potentially being released, like, hey, my sister did all this shit? Can you can you try to stalk her? He created like a stalking plan for him, and then he said, like off the record, like hey, if you don't do it, I mean, if she doesn't do it, if she doesn't admit to what what I'm saying she's should admit to, just wipe her out basically, So that was like a continued abuse from within jail. He eventually pled guilty and then I only got nine and a half years before his first parole hearing, And those nine and a half years I kind of had that like looming death threat over my head. I guess I had always thought that like maybe I'd given to I give him a lot of power in those years. I think that I shouldn't have that. I didn't have the tools to not give like I was definitely so bring with some severe PTSD lingering after all of that, So I think I don't even think I started healing until twenty eleven, when I was about twenty six, which is my mom's lucky number. So there we go.

00:10:14
Speaker 2: Oh, that's sweet, that's very sweet.

00:10:16
Speaker 3: Because I never really thought about that.

00:10:17
Speaker 1: Look at that.

00:10:18
Speaker 2: Twenty six is a special number, honestly, and because you were twenty two when it happened, So that's when you said this before, but that's you were just still basically a child, you know, technically an adult, but it's well still in that formative decade.

00:10:34
Speaker 3: Well, the ironic thing is is that my brother always got the comfort of a youth offender status because he killed my mom when he was twenty five years old in nine months instead of twenty six. Twenty six in America is the number that we I guess the law sees your brain firm, fully formed, and so I guess now I'm putting all these pieces together. I didn't even realize I was twenty six when he was technically sentenced. And that's kind of interesting, all these like alignments. But yeah, there's a lot of different, little weird alignments that I've gone through similar traumas at the same time that my mom did, or just similar kind of like, yeah, anyway.

00:11:12
Speaker 2: Grief and trauma never really does leave the body, as we know. So it's just amazing to still see you doing really well and your show is incredible. But I do want to ask you, know this, this is a show about your twenties. Yeah, this is a major, I would say, defining event and defining experience of your whole life, but your twenties life, and it culminated. Yeah, So looking back on that, what would you what would you tell her now, this this young person who's just lived through possibly the most life changing thing to ever happen to her.

00:11:47
Speaker 3: Oh goodness, well that's a really big question. You're making me tear up. But I think a lot of abuse survivors have will carry a lot of shame and guilt, and as much as I don't anymore at all, I've done a lot of hard work in a deep digging, I think I would just tell her that I love her and that none of it is their fault. I never shared the about the sexual abuse of my mom, so I always thought when it happened, initially that when I was twenty two and my mom was murdered, I initially immediately thought, God, if I had reported that my mom would be alive today. Because she would have created a harder boundary with my brother, knowing how bad the abuse was towards me. I always she was my fiercest advocate, so I thought, in not advocating for myself, I didn't advocate for her too. I have had to. There's this very like religious tenant that people have to forgive their abusers. I don't believe in that. That's some bullshit. I believe in forgiving your younger self, in allowing quote unquote, although that is not really allowing you are being abused, but that is the sentiment that usually that is a victim. You know, we think, oh gosh, I've allowed this. I have to allow healing and forgiveness to that young girl who didn't have the tools and resources to establish the boundaries that she needed. And that's what I give myself every day. I also something I say to that young lady. I talk to her every day. Quite honestly, you know that sounds crazy, but I doesn't. Well. I believe in being mindful, and I believe in having healthy schemas in your head. The way you talk to yourself is of utmost importance, and the way I talk to myself at that time was not healthy. A lot of young women in the world, and a lot of young people in general, not just women, do not speak health.

00:13:41
Speaker 1: You know.

00:13:41
Speaker 3: I don't think our society in general breeds too much mental health innately. And so I constantly talk to her by healing how I speak about myself, and in that, I'm speaking to her too. And I'm just like, I tell myself a badass all the time. I say, I forgive you, I love you. You are safe. Now, look at you, Look how far you've come.

00:14:05
Speaker 2: I love the tenets of Healing your Inner Child, and I did an entire episode on it. It's my favorite episode because I think there is this misconception that it's really wishy washy, that it's a pseudoscience. But positive self talk and healing your Inner Child is so based in so much psychological theory. It goes back for decades, and I just think it's a beautiful practice to visualize your younger self and care for them because they're still within you. That version of you has not disappeared. You're not replaced each a year that you age. So I really really like that you brought that up. I have to ask something, though, do you think that a part of part of your struggle was also survivor's guilt, or the fact that you felt that you could have saved your.

00:15:00
Speaker 3: No, I never really thought about that, to be honest, I know that sounds a little callous or selfish, perhaps, but I knew the mechanism of abuse was all my brother's hands. I had seen his volatility in his violence for so long. I knew that was all his right. Like I didn't really, I didn't think. I never actually thought, because I always thought if I had been there that night and he had lost it, I'd be dead too, to be honest, So I get to carry on, and I don't have survivors guilt. I have survivor's responsibility, perhaps in making her death not in vain, in making my efforts heard, and trying to change whenever I can, by using our story as an example. My mom was a teacher. I used to be a teacher before I turned into tell and actually, well, I had my own kids. But I also was like in my having my children, I knew I had a lot to heal in my ear. I had kids in my twenties as well. I was twenty eight when I had children, so that is super formative too. I never thought I would have children in my twenties. I had so many conversations with my mom growing up, saying I want not have kids until I'm at least thirty. And then I went through this massive trauma, and all I wanted to do was recreate a healthy family system, or not even recreate, because I don't think we ever had that with him. Maybe when we were very young, but my brother was just always, always beyond reach for her and abused her. It was a really toxic relationship. So I think my twenties and being free from the murder I mean from my brother unfortunately, at the loss of my mom, really it knocked me for a loop. It was fucking traumatic, beyond belief. What I saw I wouldn't wish on any of my worst enemies, but it changed my life. Ultimately, I've got freed from my lifetime abuser. I finally got So Yeah.

00:16:54
Speaker 2: It's big cost. There's very layered, it's very layered, very nuanced. I just imagine, I just can't imagine what it would be like to be in your head stepping through all those different scenarios and all those different outcomes and consequences.

00:17:08
Speaker 3: And I will say sixteen years later. Obviously, the way I talk about it and navigate it is a bit different than I was then. I couldn't talk about it and navigate it. I was surviving, so I was Yeah, So it's just definitely interesting. The perspective I've gained.

00:17:23
Speaker 2: It's very intricate, And I wonder you've already mentioned this about how it changed your life. Really and now you do so much work around victim and survive, the advocacy, and you have this entire show that is dedicated to extending the story or sharing I guess more of the side of the story that isn't always made available. But how do you think it's kind of changed your perspective and your mindset on life? Do you think that it obviously has had an impact, but in what way?

00:17:56
Speaker 3: You hit me so deeply with that question. When I saw it, quite honestly, it changed my life forever. Like we talk about the brain development, right, our brains are not entirely developed at twenty two, So I saw the most traumatic thing I could ever see in my life at twenty two. I experienced extreme abuse in the couple years before, right when I was around twenty, like, it became very extreme, So that abuse. That event changed the way I literally react to everything. I mean, I watch movies differently. This was a continuing argument in my marriage while I was still married. Was my ex husband never really kind of understood where I was coming from. When I would watch a bloody movie, I would cover my eyes or I would have him turn it off or something, and he'd be like, come on, it's just fake. And I always would say, if once you see it for real, you don't want to see it for fake. Yeah, And he never kind of I know, I understand the instance of it. There's a lot of time back over there too. I was like, I met him when I was I met him like two months after my mom was murdered, so and here came and a gentleman quote unquote that was like very much love bombing me. I now know a lot of mechanisms of coercive control and emotional abuse to a certain degree from a lot of my relationships. I will say that. But it changed the way I just literally see things, my perspective on everything violence in the media. Like I was saying true crime content, I'm my mom and I growing up I always loved true crime. Not that I hate that statement because you can't love true crime like you can love the content in true crime. I don't love crime basically, Yes, was fascinated.

00:19:35
Speaker 2: By the stories. Maybe that's why I was.

00:19:38
Speaker 3: My mom and I both were right that all of her books in her shelves were true crime books. So now on the other side of things, and once I was healed to a large degree, I could consume those stories, and really it made me see everything differently, even the true crime space that I had always really been interested in. I navigate my relationships differently. I'm triggered by different things than other people are. I had PTSD for a long time, so even just when I go to concerts, it's very unnerving. I'm thinking about shootings all the time, Like the America's state right now, the amount of shootings and gun violence. It's I literally just navigate world differently. I know, like I'll literally drop my kids off at school, wave to them through the gate, and the mom that I'm standing next to their i'm friends with, I'll be like, I just hope there isn't a shooting today, and she looks at me like, what the fluck, And I'm like, I know that they are in the same America as I am, but I have known a violence like that. It was in my home, so for me to see it replayed all the time everywhere, it is highly triggering for me to even just to persist in my country. So it's just a very layered state to be in. And it's a forever state. You said, grief is to a certain degree forever. Trauma can be too. Major trauma, especially I think before a certain point in your life is forever to a certain degree. That is not too a establish a quote unquote, which is my favorite least favorite statement in the world. And when you google victim, I mean, when you go to Instagram and you type in victim, the first thing that pops up is victim mentality. I hate that, but I'm not perpetuating like I think that's thet scummiest term on the planet because victim victimhood, when you're talking about extreme trauma or persistent trauma over the years, that is kind of forever and it is a not a mentality, but a state, to be honest, when you're that triggered. PTSD can be forever to a certain degree. I see PTSD, I mean that's generally what it's called so.

00:21:40
Speaker 2: Complex post traumatic stress disorder, and I think often people associate that with like, oh, you have to have gone to war or experienced like like yeah. I think we often think about it in terms of veterans, but there is so much everyday trauma that happens in the world that is going to impact all of us in a different way. I do want to go back though, to this idea that we mentioned at the very beginning, which is adversity and hardship and how we overcome that. Now. I think everyone in some capacity sits on this spectrum. Everyone experiences something. No one goes through life unharmed or escaping kind of some level of adversity.

00:22:24
Speaker 3: And what might be traumatic might what might not be traumatic to you might be super traumatic to me. So that is another level of that too. Sorry, go on, no, I just I agree with that.

00:22:34
Speaker 2: I always say that trauma is subjective. That's like a massive thing that we stay on this show. But how would you approach hardship? You know, a massive part of my audiences people under the age of thirty, who are probably experiencing some of them are be experiencing the things that are going to old to their life right now. Looking for answers being like, how do I get through this?

00:22:54
Speaker 1: So?

00:22:55
Speaker 2: How do you approach how did you approach this experience in this journey?

00:23:00
Speaker 3: Wow? So I actually wrote in my book and this is a silly but it's a silly anecdote, but it's from my childhood and it kind of summarizes how I take on anything because it's what my mom left me with, Like I honestly think the main I had many adults in my life that invested in me and made sure I was successful along the way, but my mom was the main. Absolutely. She left me with so many lessons, but I think one of the biggest ones was and it's something I repeated over and over and over again throughout my life, and it's how I get through everything. Is that I remember. I think I always wanted to be. I know I'm a leader, but nobody in my youth saw that, Like none of my peers saw that. So every year I would always run for office in school and I would always lose, even into high school, even into college, believe it or not, Like every single year I ran and still run that I lost. And every time, you know I did, every time I lost my mom and I maybe took off a year here or there or whatever. But like my mom would say, Okay, so if you lost this time, what are you going to run for next year? And that was literally how my mom trained my brain. So when I she was gone at twenty two, I was literally left with okay, so what are you gonna do next? It wasn't like she she just trained me that you always keep going. That tenacity was like the main theme in my entire life that she always left me with and without her reminders and without her you know, firing up my But like that was left on me when I hit twenty two and I was left without her, And that's what just what I did. I kind of perseverance and tenacity I think has a lot to do with self talk. I think it. And even when it was sometimes negative, when I felt ineffective at times, or or I lacked the confidence to do something I really wanted to do, I still had that voice saying, but you're gonna try because you've already dealt with the I already dealt with the worst thing I could possibly have happened, anything else, like rejection letters for writing fair nothing. I just saw my mom murdered. Like they're like, you know that is literally how I got through. I know that sounds a little twisted and dark, but I literally got through by saying that was the worst that could have ever happened. The rest has to be better. And it's not that I feel that the world owes me anything. I know trauma will still happen to me in the future, and it has in my life since, but it's put things into perspective. I think sometimes we think how people will ask me, how did you survive? And my only question is the only alternative is not, and you just get up, You put one foot in front of the other. I'm finally in a place right now where I can be really mindful. I think I just gave myself grace in all of those years, and I maybe wasn't as my I had PTSD. Like I said, that makes you no mindful. You can't live in the moment. You live in your anxiety and your fear and your panic and your all of that. But the way I got through is just literally knowing that there is better. The world had shown me better. My mom she showed me better, teachers had showed me better. I'd shown myself better and all of that too, No matter what was going on at home that like all of my hard work paid off, and I like, I think the other thing my mom always left me with was like, the only way to fail is not try. So the only way to fail at life or to just is just to give up. And I couldn't give up, Like I Yeah, that's I know. It's like Also, obviously therapy really helped. Yeah, And I have to be honest, though not all therapy helped. Not all therapists are helpful. I think it's the right therapist. I definitely think that there's this fallacy that any therapy helps. I've really been to some harmful therapists from anything really like benet a benevolent harmful where like the second meeting, like obviously, therapists often ask you what brings you here. Obviously, one of the first things I say is my mom's murder. And the second interview with this one woman, she said, okay, so how's your relationship with your mom? Do you talk to her daily or weekly? And I was like, wait, hold on. That was harmful to me because she couldn't even remember who I was at a certain degree. Other there have been other ones that have been harmful in other ways, but the point is, is that a healthy therapist that gives you tools and doesn't make you think that you have to live by going to them every week for the rest of your life. Oh yeah, is a great space. I think that knowing therapy is a space for reflection and resources to get through something. But it's not an end all be all. I don't think anything can be an end all be all. I exercise has always been a really great resource for me in getting through anything. In my twenties, I honestly coped a little unhealthy, like I dealt with not a diagnosed eating disorder, but I definitely had disordered eating at times. That was something I controlled when I couldn't control other things, which is a big.

00:28:07
Speaker 2: A big thing. A big think to disordered eating is when you've gone through trauma.

00:28:12
Speaker 3: So absolutely, and I saw that as more of a symptom. I was also plagued with really bad stomach aches around that time too, because of all my anxiety. There was no diagnosis. I couldn't I wasn't gluten intolerant, I wasn't this, I wasn't that. So I do believe I eventually, like you know, I just I got I got a divorce. I escaped some toxic situations. I put in the time and the work in healing and I thrived. So just like investing in myself, I think self care has been one of the most And self care can be legal care, it can be therapeutic care, like in a you know, a regimented therapy therapy. It could be like you know, one on one talk therapy. It could be writing my book, and any of those things. I you know, I started my book really young to in my twenties. It took me a long time to finish, but like all of these things were practices I needed.

00:29:10
Speaker 1: Oh.

00:29:10
Speaker 3: I started writing and doing live pieces to share my grief with people that were also grieving or people that were mothers, and all of that really showed me I wasn't alone and that has been a big saving grace as well. Is community building a community around not like off of the trauma, but building a community around or surrounding the trauma to kind of encapsulate it and to put finite borders around it and to heal together.

00:29:40
Speaker 2: Which I think is remarkable. Community is such a healing force. And you know, you lost your mother on that day, but also you you know, your brother sounds like an awful person is an awful person, but you also lost him in the sense that like suddenly there was no family.

00:30:01
Speaker 3: I had no family.

00:30:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, whole family, Yeah gone. And I think that building community is something I say to like everyone, it feeling less alarned just makes everything seem more manageable.

00:30:14
Speaker 3: And I should have said that from the beginning. You said, how did you get through? I honestly, in my book, I explained how I got through those four years just to convict him, and in it, the recurring theme I would say is the people my mom left me with, the community that I built through my work, through her, through everything, through school, through my sorority, everything that all was literally what carried me when I couldn't carry myself. Those people were there. And then, you know, once I started sharing my story more publicly, the people that reach out to me and say I'm a victim of sibling abuse as well. You know, in my research, I found out like fifty percent of American kids are affected by sibling abuse in some manner. And I'm sure you talk about abuse in the in the definition of it at times, but the abuse, you know, abuse can be anything where they're using a position of power or you know, to manipulate a behavior, so that is you know, emotional, physical, you know. And I get messages all the time from people saying I was abused by my brother, or women who say thank you for showing me what my son could potentially do, and just the allowance to know that we're not alone is huge. I write back to everybody that writes to me, and even like, well, I'll get to the bed, Like even when my book came out, my uncle hit me up. My dad is my dad's brother, and he said, thank you for naming something that I went through at the hands of your dad, like he and I had known that he had never shared that with me, but my mom had told me similar like stories about it, and so I help like this was in within my home. But in the messages I write back to people that send me like, you know, thank you, I went through this. I'm so glad to know I'm not alone. I know, and I write a variation of this to everybody, but bab like, my heart breaks for people who go through something similar, but it gives each of us a little bit of solace and knowing that we aren't alone and that it's literally in the sharing is the lifting. When you share a load with someone, they're literally helping you lift it up. So that is what community did for me too, is that when I shared, when I was roused, I had someone to go to. I utilized friends, therapists, family. I'm so blessed to have family. I mean, oh my god, that's massive. Yeah, so many good, many good thing. Yes, I'm very blessed, which sounds very weird to say that, but iView about my mom's murder. But yeah, well it just feels so dichotomous. But I two truths could be true exactly.

00:32:46
Speaker 2: I totally agree with that. I want to ask you one final question before we wrap up, and I think the big thing that I take away from talking to you is that people who experience these things should be in child to their stories. It's not for other people to interpret. It's not for other people to use as entertainment. You know, obviously there is a core element of education. But if we as the audience, and I'm going to include myself in that as well, because listening to you speak is just incredible, But if we as the audience could take away one thing from your story, what would you like it to be?

00:33:27
Speaker 3: Well, First of all, thank you for interpreting what you did thus far. That was a great takeaway you said. You took away that each person should be in charge of their own narrative and have the power to tell it. That's I absolutely agree. What I was thinking is actually, like I mentioned at the beginning of this, you asked how April seventeenth went, which was actually my brother's final sentencing, which just happened out of nowhere, and at the end of my victim impact statement, which I almost didn't get to make because he pled guilty and then said, if she makes the statement, I'm going to retract all my guilties. Like he literally fuck tried to fuck with me with that. Yeah, and the judge kind of putting him in his place a little bit, but then he made he talked through my whole victim of back statement. But whatever, I like, I was a badass. I just kept pausing every time he talked, and even though the judge wanted me to keep going, I did not. But at the end of it, I said, and that's what the takeaway will be A long story short, I'm sorry, I'm a talker. The thing that I want everybody to take away from my story, from mom's story, from the trauma that we faced, from everything that's ensued after is that, and especially from my brother's actions. It's that one person's actions can deeply affect someone else's trajectory. We see that all the time, right, like in a million different ways. But I actually saw that recently at that hearing on April seventeen, which I actually like, give a full rundown. I'm going to release an episode in a little while about like the update but and how that changed my life for.

00:35:09
Speaker 2: The know, this was your So your brother's final hearing date was on April seventeenth, so it was.

00:35:14
Speaker 3: A sentencing for a new crime. They also went backwards and gave me some more justice for other for my mom's murder as well as another crime, the death threat he was threatening me. So at that sentencing, my last sayment was again I said, like my brother's actions proof one person's choices can mentally affect someone else's trajectory. But the DA proved me that that to me too that day. He believed in me. He took made a little bit of more effort. He did, he went a little bit of above and beyond his job, and he changed my life forever. And I think that just knowing that your actions carry much weight, even you listening, everybody. I didn't mean to say even you, especially you listening, because you're listening and leaving yourself open to change and evolving. But everybody's actions carry immense weight, and we all have the great ability to change things. And I really do challenge everyone to step outside a little bit of their comfort zone and do more for others and try to just you know, go that extra little mile. It might make a huge fucking difference for people. I love that mentality, and I just think that even with mental health and everything, you know, people that might be struggling, being there for friends, whatever, it is, just doing a little bit more giving that compliment when you see somebody walk by, you don't know what their day's been like, whatever it is. I do believe in the power if individual I mean I believe in individual power. I believe in you the listener.

00:36:50
Speaker 2: Amy. I love that you have ended the show on that note, because I do just think it's like the most beautiful trajectory of this story right from the start of this episode, hearing what you went through and not just what happened on that day that your mother passed away, but everything from childhood to now and the fact that you're saying to us, just do that little bit extra for people, because people are good and think about others. It's just so beautiful. It's just so beautiful. And I just think the theme of this, the topic that we you know, this all links to, is like overcoming adversity and hardship and your story through that, and it's just really, I don't know, really inspiring to me to hear that you can still have that mind frame and mindset and that you've done so much good stuff for the world. Like I can't wait to watch that vice.

00:37:47
Speaker 3: Is it a documentary or yeah, you know, there's just a tiny blip. I don't even know if I'll be in it, although they did ask for like how to spell my name, so I think they. But my friends who are actually releasing a podcast tomorrow, they're kind of coinciding. They are kind of the main focuses of the of the documentary, but it kind of goes through and like they just actually they interview a whole bunch of really famous I hate to say that victims from and just kind of get their take on how the whole genre. Go, Yeah, I guess it's today for you, though.

00:38:16
Speaker 2: I'm going to go and watch it after this. Actually, I'm going to sit down and watch it and probably send it to some of my friends because I think that is it's just it's interesting. I think sometimes we need to be a little bit more conscious about how we consume our media. And I think often the time we think like, I don't I want to spend less time on my phone or YadA, YadA YadA, But it's actually like sometimes a bit more ethical than that. So I think this is it's just an interesting, a really interesting, fascinating perspective that I'm glad you were able to share. And I want to thank you very sincerely for coming on.

00:38:50
Speaker 3: Thank you to be honest, thank you so much for opening your platform to my story, to leaving your heart open and listening. Thank you just for the thoughtful questions and for the care through this whole process. That's a whole nother facet. I know this is not a true crime podcast, but you know we talked a lot about ethics, So thank you for contributing. Whether you are a true crime content or not, you are an ethical show that Kate creates a safe space for victims like me, and I just appreciate you doing that and contributing such a thoughtful show to the conversation and such awareness.

00:39:24
Speaker 2: So that is you the big the biggest compliment I've ever received. I'm never going to forget that. That's oh my god, when having such an emotional time over here. And where can people find you? I think that everyone needs to listen to your show? Can you can you plug yourself a little bit? Please?

00:39:43
Speaker 3: Yes? Thank you? So personally you can find me on all platforms at Amy M y b As and Boy and Chessler that's my last name, c H E. S l E R. And then my podcast which recently came out, and again I kind of go through history and I'm I'm interviewing victims of relatively notorious crimes or just crimes that happened consistently and talking about how navigating their after story, basically navigating the after the trauma, how it affects them to share their story in the media, how you know, how just like navigating the legal system, how that's affected their trajectory. And that show is called What Came Next. You can find What Came Next on your preferred podcasting platform. I know I mentioned my book before. The title is Working for Justice. One Family's Tale of murder, betrayal and Healing, and that honestly, that was fourteen years in the making and I can't go through an interview without mentioning it because I think it was. It's a beautiful tribute to my mom. I actually include some diary entries of my mom's in throughout the book, so I just think like it's important again, like you said, to give victims voices, and I think I did that even in my mom in the books.

00:40:58
Speaker 2: Thank you again, Amy for coming on sharing your story. As always, if you think there is a friend, a family member, a colleague who would benefit from Amy's perspective and what she had to say today, feel free to share this episode with them. She was so generous and brave in coming on and I very much appreciate it. If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to give it a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify wherever you are listening right now, and if you want to provide some feedback, if you have an episode suggestion, you just want to reach out and say hi, follow us on Instagram at that Psychology Podcast and we will be back next week with another episode.