April 3, 2025 • 28 mins
This week Dr. Leslie has a very special guest: herself! Leslie talks about how she got started on her career path to becoming a doctor, and then in the second half of the show, talks about how she almost died....twice.
Hosted by Leslie Dobson.
Produced and edited by Liam Billingham.
Executive producers are Paul Anderson and Scott McCarthy for Workhouse Media.
The views expressed in this podcast episode are solely those of the guest speaker and do not reflect the views of the host or the production company.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another episode of Intentionally Disturbing with Doctor Leslie.
Today's special guest is me. Aren't you lucky?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Okay, you're here.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I actually think I should take a break and explain
to you who I am professionally, because I know I
joke around a lot on social media. I mean, the
satire is ripe to the point where people don't even
know if I'm actually a psychologist.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
But I am. Yeah, I am.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I did a bachelor's degree at Colorado State University, and
I went there when I was eighteen years old. I
loved it. I absolutely love Colorado. I wanted to be
a veterinarian, but it was so hard. The science was
so difficult, and they were also they were really discouraging,
(01:03):
which was surprising to me. Well, it just didn't click too.
It felt like a real uphill battle to get through,
like pre med prevet classes. But when I got into
psychology classes, I finally realized that it didn't feel like
an uphill battle. It felt like how I already thought,
(01:24):
and it gave me language for the world I was
already experiencing. I had already spent my life feeling like
the black Sheep. I spent my life feeling like adults
were sweeping things under the rug, and I didn't understand
why they weren't authentic, why they weren't transparent, why they
(01:45):
couldn't just tell the truth.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Now I don't know. Was I raised around a bunch
of fucking liars? Maybe, But I think.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Most adults, most people, most people I see in therapy,
don't have the capacity to know themselves, don't have a
full identity, and also don't want to dig for it.
They struggle to find that identity and it's really hard
work to do it. But early on I had strong
(02:15):
morals and I really wanted things the way that I
wanted them, And as my dad says, you know, I
was unstoppable and I would be on a mission to
get what I wanted, and I always got it and
it always worked out because I fought, because I educated myself,
because I worked my fucking ass off for these things.
(02:38):
So Colorado State was great, didn't get the best grades.
Halfway through Colorado State, I did a study abroad program
in Northern England University of Leicester, where the dorms are
actually castles.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Amazing beautiful.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
I loved it, and some of the best Indian food
ever in Korma to die.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Oh my god, I loved it.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
I should have probably realized then that I had celiac disease,
but whatever, I learned that the hard way over time.
So I loved that. But that's when I had all
these surgeries and I had to come back to America
for the surgeries. But I also had to come back
because I had to finish my math and my science,
(03:24):
because you can't do all of it in a foreign country.
You have to finish it if you want the American degree.
So while I was finishing all of that in Colorado,
the only school I had applied to was the University
of London University College London for a master's degree in
Freudian psychoanalysis and dream interpretation.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yes, that's really what it was.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
And so once I was all healed up from my surgeries,
that was the only school I had gotten into. I
really wanted to do it. My boyfriend at the time
had actually dumb to me while I was in the
hospital in California. Nice, so I just went solo. I
went to London, and I should say I didn't actually
(04:08):
get in. It was the only one I had applied to.
I got rejected. Yeah, I still went on a one
way flight, knowing it was going to be a sixty
thousand dollars a year if I stayed, and their masters
is like twelve months or eighteen months.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
So a little more than.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
A year, but not quite the full two years like
in America. And I said, you know, I don't have
anywhere to go. I need a place to live. I
found actually what we would call section eight housing and
I shared it with this Italian woman. I got the
master bedroom and she stayed in the family room. She
also let me know that I was horrible at cleaning
(04:54):
and I never cleaned the way that she liked cleaning.
So but she taught me to cook her well, which
is amazing. And I started going to classes. I started
my master's degree. They let me in provisionally and they
really appreciated me. I did well. I really liked the content.
(05:14):
I loved traveling around. Living in England gives you access
to so many countries and so many amazing, beautiful places
and experiences.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
It was amazing. I loved it.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I had a tough time with friendships, because you know,
English people aren't very welcoming and especially to Americans. But
I made some friends and things worked out. I was
actually a barmaid for a while. I can pour a
guinness like nobody's business, and people would come in just
to hear me say their name because of my California
(05:48):
vocal fry accent. I guess it's just very much like
how they see like celebrities and California people, I guess
on TV.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
So aways that worked.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
I wanted to do a doctorate, but it was a
five year wait list and I wasn't going to wait
five years, so I applied to lom Linda University in
southern California. Now I fully recognize that Loma Linda is
a very Christian university. It is also one of the
best medical hospitals in the world.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
It is incredible. Now.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
I was raised atheist, which is for a different video.
I need to have my dad on where we just
hash out religion. I was raised atheist, but I always
felt like I really really wanted to have faith. I
wanted to spirituality, but it never clicked for me. I
could never really believe it. And still I still have
(06:42):
such a limitation. I still have a barrier in my
mind when I struggle, like when I had my son
and he almost died and he was in the nick
You for months, being emergency intubated. His lungs wouldn't contract.
Birthday today these four he made it. But I prayed.
(07:07):
I don't know who I was praying to. I don't
know what I was doing. And I realized that I
was only praying because I was in distress, and like,
I don't pray or say, you know, thank you God
or anything when I'm happy. So I'm still very confused
by all of that. But what that school did for
me was it it took away my judgment of religion,
the negative judgment.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
It made me step.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Back and really see and understand why people have faith,
why people have spirituality, and what people do with religion,
more so, what religion can do to people.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
I thought it was an incredible experience.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
I also focused on forensic psychology, so my first job
was in the Los Angeles County jail, which was extremely
dangerous and just overall insane. People just could not believe
that I was doing that, and I sought it out
as my first gig, and then I slowly moved into
specializing in sex offenders, in pedophiles and rapists necrophilia, I
(08:10):
mean mass raping. I can tell you the mind of
a predator. I can tell you that when you are
returning your shopping cart, someone might be watching, and I
can tell you what they're thinking, and they might have
been watching for a while, and no matter what you do,
they're keeping that in their mind, and they're using that
(08:31):
to decide how they're going to approach you, if they
are going to approach you, if they are going to
harm you, or if they're going to leave you alone.
So when I say I don't return my shopping cart
in that stupid ass viral TikTok video, I don't return
my shopping cart back all the way to where it
needs to be if my kids are in the car,
(08:52):
if my grosbewes are in the car, Because then I
look like a.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Vulnerable victim to the predator.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I look like somebody who is taking a social norm
over the safety of my body and my children's body
and my car. I to them look vulnerable. That is
a point of target for a predator, and that applies
to so many other situations in life.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
If they think that.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
You aren't fully alert, if you aren't going to just
choose what is the most right, the most sacred, the
most direct, decision, then they can use that to their
advantage and take advantage of you. So that's a little
bit about my career and I wanted to kind of
throw that out there because, you know, I want to
(09:42):
talk about horrible things that have happened throughout that in
my personal life while still doing all of this education
and getting through it, and then will dive in later
into what it really is like to work.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
In jails and prisons.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
But a lot of the trauma with my colostomy, a
lot of the trauma with becoming infertile and you know,
not being able to have successful IVF treatments after eight times.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
That all was through.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
School, and that was all at the beginning of my career.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Hoop's commercial time.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
I want to talk about some big things that happened
in my life, and I think there are things that
you can probably relate to, especially women, but husbands too.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
We often forget about the husbands. So I want to talk.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
About how I almost died, had a colostomy, learned that
I was infertile, and then almost died again during IVF
when I was working in a prison because they had
it out for me.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
So let's run through that. Yeah, I had a colostomy.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I had what was a normal tumor on my ovary
and I had it removed when I was living in England.
Now you know, you can't trust every doctor. You can't
trust every surgeon you want to.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
But it didn't go well.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
It was removed, but it grew back quickly and I
had to fly back to California, and in doing so,
I had surgery in California and she found that there
was gauze, There was stuff in there that the surgeon
had left in there, pretty disturbing, so she had a
bit of a mess to clean up. She said she
(11:29):
was successful in doing so, but it took several days
to find out that I was actually septic, and I
went into a coma and I had to I was
in the hospital for months. I had to have a coloss.
To me, it was one of the most horrifying moments
of my entire life. It was the first time I
(11:51):
thought about ending my life, you know, being in your
early twenties with a coloss. To me, nobody tells you
things like if you put all of oil in bag,
it helps the fecal matter slide out faster. Nobody tells
you that it farts and you can't control it, but
over time you would learn to control it because you
could push on parts of your intestines. Lovely, luckily, I
(12:12):
had it reversed and I was one of the fastest
reversal cases. And they talk about it in medical school
to this day because they were surprised by it. So
I'm just happy that stage was over. One of the
most horrible things, too, was that nobody helped me. Like
when I was in the hospital, there was no psychologist,
there was no mental health care. The only person that
(12:34):
came in was a social worker and she gave me
a handout for dating with colostomies. Dating with colostomies, I
wanted to end my life.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
This was not me.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
I was not going to be somebody who shit out
of her belly button practically for the rest of my life.
Like no, oh my god, hello medical care, mental health,
behavioral health within hospitals, you suck and you need major improvement. Anyway,
So after that, I was, you know, I had stables
in my stomach, but I had to finish school, and
I went back to school with staples in my stomach
(13:07):
and I got it done. And whatever, we get things done.
Let's make sure this microphone's on because I don't do
this much.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
So I got it done.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
And you know, I had a really successful educational experience.
You know, I finished a bachelor's, I got two masters,
and I got a doctorate in psychology in clinical and
forensic psychology with an emphasis in high risk sex offending.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
And it took me all the way to working.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
At a Tascadero State Hospital, which is a maximum security prison.
So if you can imagine twelve hundred inmates, inmates or
patients free roaming, you know they or they're on the
honor system, so you get to leave your unit. Each
unit has thirty to fifty guys in it. The rooms
are not locked, and they have cards one through five.
(13:58):
So if you're not if you're really unstable, or if
you're violent, or you're not following rules, then you would
get card number one, which meant you couldn't leave the unit.
If you were doing a little better, your behavioral health team,
which was psychologists, psychiatrist, nurses, everybody on the floor would
meet and say, okay, you know, we're thinking about giving
(14:19):
him a two. That means the guy can leave the
unit and go to one place like the mall, the
mall was a group where we had.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
It looked like a mall.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
All the group therapy was there, so you could have
art therapy, talk therapy, music therapy, all these different things.
You could go there if you were good, and then
you'd return. So it was actually a very very dangerous place.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
I wore an alarm on my hip.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Alarms went off all day every day. There were violent
episodes all day every day. And during that time, my husband,
he was my boyfriend, engaged at fiance and then we
married while we were working in that system, and we
had different last names because we didn't want anyone to
find out that we were together. And we had heard
(15:08):
so many stories about inmates attacking one spouse or another spouse.
Either they were infatuated in love, stalking one's spouse and
they wanted to hurt the other. Either it was a delusion,
it wasn't even real. Sometimes it was real. Sometimes the
people staff were getting it on with clients. But also
(15:29):
there was serious, serious injuries to individuals out of retaliation.
So if somebody made a decision about your care that
you didn't like, they might retaliate and hurt your spouse.
So we went this whole time, I thought with no
one knowing that we were together.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
And so we were together.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Right, we had done all the good stuff, we had
gotten licensed to a psychologists, and now it was time
to try to have a baby. And it's not working. Right,
his sperm counts go. Everything seems good, but it's not working.
I'm not getting pregnant. I'm not even having miscarriages, like
just nothing's happening. So we get all this fertility treatment done,
(16:09):
and what they realize is that there's scarring to my
Philippian tubes because of the sepsis back when I had
the colostomy, so I couldn't have a baby.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
They did that dye.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Test where they stick the blue dye up your Philippian tubes,
and it stopped halfway through, which meant that we we
couldn't do Iui, we couldn't do anything. We had to
just do straight up if fertility treatment hundreds of thousands
of dollars, and that is what you'll see in a
future episode.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
That is when my dad came and.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
He really helped us financially with fertility treatment because we
weren't in a place to pay for it. And he
said the sweetest thing I've I think I've ever heard.
He said, don't worry, honey, We'll get you that baby.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
And he did.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
He helped, and we have two beautiful kids now. But
it was it was utterly terrifying going through fertility treatment.
I mean, you've got to basically go on birth control.
You've got to shut down your system, and then you've
got to amp it up. So you are like building
basically grapes, a whole bunch of grapes on each ovary
(17:20):
and hoping that they are just going to grow perfectly
and that your hormones are just so perfect. You're going
to the doctor constantly. You're taking shots every morning, every night.
Some are like you know, the nice shots that are
just under the skin, but some are deep, deep shots
in your butt. And when my husband would have to
do them into like my glute, oh, if he hit
(17:42):
like I don't even know what it's called a vein,
he hit something, blood would squirt out, he would pass out.
It's horrible, but I couldn't do it myself because of
the angle.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Anyways, we got it done. So we did this several times.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
And the problem was that you're supposed to have this
perfect grouping of eggs to release and you have a
surgery and the doctor goes in with a needle and
pulls out each egg. So twenty four hours before that,
you take a trigger shot and it kind of makes
them into the biggest, most just the perfect egg that
(18:15):
the doctor would want to take out, and then they
would fertilize.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
In a petri dish. I don't know what they do there.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
So I would get so excited, and right, this is months,
this is six months, months and months getting to the
egg retrieval. And I'd get there and I'd go into
surgery and he would put the ultrasound on me, in
me or whatever, and they'd all be deflated. They'd all
be dead. Every egg was dead. And it was horrifying.
(18:43):
I can't even tell you the sobbing, the tears, the money,
the just thinking all I want is a child. Seeing
everyone I know around me get pregnant and being jealous
and mad at them. I wasn't happy. Every time I
got a baby shower invite, I didn't want to go.
(19:06):
I didn't want to go, and I didn't know how
to say no. I wish I had said no. I
wish I had said no and said boundaries for my
own mental health at that time.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
I didn't. I've learned a lot since then.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
So we actually ended up going to an adoption attorney
in Santa Barbara, and it was a it was a
grim picture.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
It was basically like, if.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
You want the type of baby that you want, then
you know, like a healthy baby, you're gonna have to
let the mom be, the biological mom, be a part
of the picture. In a private adoption, She's going to
be more likely to pick you, to put you and
your husband at the top of the list if she
knows she can keep tabs on the baby over time
(19:49):
and throughout life.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
And I don't know.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
It just didn't sit with me, like I wanted my
own kidd't.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I didn't want to share my kid. I wanted to
I wanted my own.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
So my husband and I got a shit faced drunk
that night because we were just so upset. We went
to see Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry, if you're watching this, thank you.
We came back to the hotel and we had lots
of sex, and there you go, magically.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
We conceived our first child.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
I have no idea how the doctors, have no idea
how the nursing staff, everybody. When I went in for
an ultrasound and said, I think I'm pregnant, but it's
not from my vf utter shock. But they say medical
miracles come in three, so hopefully there were two other
women that got.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
To have that too.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
I gotta get paid commercial time, so we had our
daughter and it was It was absolutely amazing. But the
weirdest thing for me was that while that was all happening,
I didn't tell anyone at the prison. I didn't tell
anyone in the jail. And there was this one day
(21:09):
where I had just found out I was pregnant.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
And this was the real one. This was the one
that was going to stick.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
And a very psychopathic, high ranking gang member who I
trusted because we had worked together for a long time
and we had done each other favors. So you know,
he would tell me when there was going to be
a hit on a staff member and I might make
(21:41):
sure he has a new mattress or an extra blanket.
And you kind of learned to work with the more
psychopathic individuals in that way, because they'll work with you,
and that's the level of respect that you need, and
I need to respect him in that way. They're not
going to be emotional individuals. They're not going to be empathic,
you know, it's tip for tat, and that's what we
(22:01):
got anyway. So he because he respected me, because I
was the person who, you know, I honored that relationship
that we had. He asked me to go into the
visiting center, which is weird. Again, Like I said, this
is a free roaming facility. We've got twelve hundred inmates
or patients. We have about two thousand staff, and people
are walking, if they're good, back and forth throughout, and
(22:23):
it is huge.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
It's miles and miles long.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
I still get panicked, not full panic attacks, but I
get really panicky when I'm in long, hollow hallways because
it reminds me of those of those eerie moments when
I was in these prisons and jails and hospitals and
there was just silence and then extreme fucking violence. I mean,
(22:48):
like when a psychotic man begins to punch someone.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
It is their arms look like the road runner. They
come alive.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
It is so fast you can't even get in there
to stop it.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
You're not gonna make it.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
And the amount of times I would walk down the
hallway and somebody would run by and just cold cock
a person I was walking next to. I was lucky
enough that that never happened to me knock on wood,
but it was utterly terrifying.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
So I still have major anxiety.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Like if I go into a mall and it's really
empty and it's like a long hallway and I can't
see an exit, I have to ground myself. I have
to seriously ground myself a breathe, and sometimes I just
need to leave. So all of this was happening, and
this guy asked me to meet in the visiting center,
and I meet with him and he says to me,
(23:40):
this is the last time you're going into the hospital
because a bunch of the guys are taking bets on
kicking your belly and killing your baby.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
I had just found out I was pregnant.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
I barely knew this was failed IVF that doctors.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Didn't even know how this had happened. How did they know?
Speaker 1 (24:05):
I mean, sure I was bloated from ongoing fertility treatment.
I did it eight times, but they had someone on
the outside. And you know, we just aired an episode
with Jeremy Viking, who used to be an inmate, and
he was the first one who told me. He said,
(24:28):
I don't think that the inmates had someone on the outside.
I think the custody officers do. The officers were following you,
The officers were probably the ones that told the inmates that,
and for some reason someone had some kind of gripe
against you. That to me is terrifying. So I go
(24:52):
from almost dying from a clost to me to probably
almost dying if they had really.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Had their way with me.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
And I had seen people in their broken necks, broken faces,
taken away in stretchers day in and day out. I mean,
you're talking about the most violent individuals in our country,
and they have severe mental illness, and a lot of
them are not medicated properly, or they're refusing medication, or
(25:24):
they're cheeking the medication. They're putting in the side of the
cheek and then throwing it out or selling it.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
And I was.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Amongst that, So went from nearly dying to nearly dying. Anyways,
that was the last time I went in because.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
I believed him. And I've gotten some messages.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
I've been on TV and I'll get some random phone
calls from somebody who's connected to him that says, you know,
great job, keep going.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
It's such a weird relationship. I don't know how he
gets my phone.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Number, but anyways, I carry a gun everywhere I go.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Just an FYI.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah, but I wanted to share that story with you
because it was incredibly fucking hard, all of it.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
The tears, the pain, the money.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
The loss of hope, the desire to have a child,
to not even be able to explain to people how
much I wanted a child but I couldn't have one.
Oh and to be like eight fucking months pregnant and
have some stupid bitch ask me what my exercise routine
is and I said it's nothing, and she said I
was doing marathons when I was eight months pregnant.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Well, you can fuck off.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Watch what you say to pregnant women, because we are
already so insecure, and we are already terrified that we
are growing this little person inside us, and we are
terrified that something is going to fuck it up or
harm this baby. Just watch what you say. My god,
I hope you can relate to that story, because life
(26:55):
throws you very unexpected things. But now that beautiful baby
is eight years old. She is the wittiest, most hilarious child.
She has no filter, just like me. And she is
truly my best friend in the entire world, and I
cannot wait until she is old enough to watch this
(27:18):
episode and just see how much Mommy loves her and
adores her, and how much Mommy and Daddy and Grandpa
fought for her.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Thank you for.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Watching another episode of Intentionally Disturbing. We'll hop back to
interviewing incredible people, and then maybe I'll hop back to
doing solo episodes and sharing more stories because God knows,
you know, watching people rip their eyeballs out, watching brain matter,
score it out of somebody's will pocket where they had
(27:51):
hidden it because they had taken it out of somebody's brain,
having pea and poo thrown all over me in prisons.
A lot of fun, exciting things have happened. But I
look forward to you joining this journey amazing people and
their resiliency, and I'll share personal stories of my own
(28:14):
and the resiliency that I have, and the ways I
have used psychology, the ways I have used life lessons
and my education to get me to where I am now,
which is forty two years old, with two awesome kids,
an amazing husband, an awesome career, and maybe a little
(28:37):
hyper vigilant
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Oh, hey, you're here,
Welcome to another episode of Intentionally Disturbing with Doctor Leslie.
Today's special guest is me. Aren't you lucky?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Okay, you're here.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I actually think I should take a break and explain
to you who I am professionally, because I know I
joke around a lot on social media. I mean, the
satire is ripe to the point where people don't even
know if I'm actually a psychologist.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
But I am. Yeah, I am.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I did a bachelor's degree at Colorado State University, and
I went there when I was eighteen years old. I
loved it. I absolutely love Colorado. I wanted to be
a veterinarian, but it was so hard. The science was
so difficult, and they were also they were really discouraging,
(01:03):
which was surprising to me. Well, it just didn't click too.
It felt like a real uphill battle to get through,
like pre med prevet classes. But when I got into
psychology classes, I finally realized that it didn't feel like
an uphill battle. It felt like how I already thought,
(01:24):
and it gave me language for the world I was
already experiencing. I had already spent my life feeling like
the black Sheep. I spent my life feeling like adults
were sweeping things under the rug, and I didn't understand
why they weren't authentic, why they weren't transparent, why they
(01:45):
couldn't just tell the truth.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Now I don't know. Was I raised around a bunch
of fucking liars? Maybe, But I think.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Most adults, most people, most people I see in therapy,
don't have the capacity to know themselves, don't have a
full identity, and also don't want to dig for it.
They struggle to find that identity and it's really hard
work to do it. But early on I had strong
(02:15):
morals and I really wanted things the way that I
wanted them, And as my dad says, you know, I
was unstoppable and I would be on a mission to
get what I wanted, and I always got it and
it always worked out because I fought, because I educated myself,
because I worked my fucking ass off for these things.
(02:38):
So Colorado State was great, didn't get the best grades.
Halfway through Colorado State, I did a study abroad program
in Northern England University of Leicester, where the dorms are
actually castles.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Amazing beautiful.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
I loved it, and some of the best Indian food
ever in Korma to die.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Oh my god, I loved it.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
I should have probably realized then that I had celiac disease,
but whatever, I learned that the hard way over time.
So I loved that. But that's when I had all
these surgeries and I had to come back to America
for the surgeries. But I also had to come back
because I had to finish my math and my science,
(03:24):
because you can't do all of it in a foreign country.
You have to finish it if you want the American degree.
So while I was finishing all of that in Colorado,
the only school I had applied to was the University
of London University College London for a master's degree in
Freudian psychoanalysis and dream interpretation.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yes, that's really what it was.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
And so once I was all healed up from my surgeries,
that was the only school I had gotten into. I
really wanted to do it. My boyfriend at the time
had actually dumb to me while I was in the
hospital in California. Nice, so I just went solo. I
went to London, and I should say I didn't actually
(04:08):
get in. It was the only one I had applied to.
I got rejected. Yeah, I still went on a one
way flight, knowing it was going to be a sixty
thousand dollars a year if I stayed, and their masters
is like twelve months or eighteen months.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
So a little more than.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
A year, but not quite the full two years like
in America. And I said, you know, I don't have
anywhere to go. I need a place to live. I
found actually what we would call section eight housing and
I shared it with this Italian woman. I got the
master bedroom and she stayed in the family room. She
also let me know that I was horrible at cleaning
(04:54):
and I never cleaned the way that she liked cleaning.
So but she taught me to cook her well, which
is amazing. And I started going to classes. I started
my master's degree. They let me in provisionally and they
really appreciated me. I did well. I really liked the content.
(05:14):
I loved traveling around. Living in England gives you access
to so many countries and so many amazing, beautiful places
and experiences.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
It was amazing. I loved it.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I had a tough time with friendships, because you know,
English people aren't very welcoming and especially to Americans. But
I made some friends and things worked out. I was
actually a barmaid for a while. I can pour a
guinness like nobody's business, and people would come in just
to hear me say their name because of my California
(05:48):
vocal fry accent. I guess it's just very much like
how they see like celebrities and California people, I guess
on TV.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
So aways that worked.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
I wanted to do a doctorate, but it was a
five year wait list and I wasn't going to wait
five years, so I applied to lom Linda University in
southern California. Now I fully recognize that Loma Linda is
a very Christian university. It is also one of the
best medical hospitals in the world.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
It is incredible. Now.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
I was raised atheist, which is for a different video.
I need to have my dad on where we just
hash out religion. I was raised atheist, but I always
felt like I really really wanted to have faith. I
wanted to spirituality, but it never clicked for me. I
could never really believe it. And still I still have
(06:42):
such a limitation. I still have a barrier in my
mind when I struggle, like when I had my son
and he almost died and he was in the nick
You for months, being emergency intubated. His lungs wouldn't contract.
Birthday today these four he made it. But I prayed.
(07:07):
I don't know who I was praying to. I don't
know what I was doing. And I realized that I
was only praying because I was in distress, and like,
I don't pray or say, you know, thank you God
or anything when I'm happy. So I'm still very confused
by all of that. But what that school did for
me was it it took away my judgment of religion,
the negative judgment.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
It made me step.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Back and really see and understand why people have faith,
why people have spirituality, and what people do with religion,
more so, what religion can do to people.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
I thought it was an incredible experience.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
I also focused on forensic psychology, so my first job
was in the Los Angeles County jail, which was extremely
dangerous and just overall insane. People just could not believe
that I was doing that, and I sought it out
as my first gig, and then I slowly moved into
specializing in sex offenders, in pedophiles and rapists necrophilia, I
(08:10):
mean mass raping. I can tell you the mind of
a predator. I can tell you that when you are
returning your shopping cart, someone might be watching, and I
can tell you what they're thinking, and they might have
been watching for a while, and no matter what you do,
they're keeping that in their mind, and they're using that
(08:31):
to decide how they're going to approach you, if they
are going to approach you, if they are going to
harm you, or if they're going to leave you alone.
So when I say I don't return my shopping cart
in that stupid ass viral TikTok video, I don't return
my shopping cart back all the way to where it
needs to be if my kids are in the car,
(08:52):
if my grosbewes are in the car, Because then I
look like a.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Vulnerable victim to the predator.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I look like somebody who is taking a social norm
over the safety of my body and my children's body
and my car. I to them look vulnerable. That is
a point of target for a predator, and that applies
to so many other situations in life.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
If they think that.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
You aren't fully alert, if you aren't going to just
choose what is the most right, the most sacred, the
most direct, decision, then they can use that to their
advantage and take advantage of you. So that's a little
bit about my career and I wanted to kind of
throw that out there because, you know, I want to
(09:42):
talk about horrible things that have happened throughout that in
my personal life while still doing all of this education
and getting through it, and then will dive in later
into what it really is like to work.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
In jails and prisons.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
But a lot of the trauma with my colostomy, a
lot of the trauma with becoming infertile and you know,
not being able to have successful IVF treatments after eight times.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
That all was through.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
School, and that was all at the beginning of my career.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Hoop's commercial time.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
I want to talk about some big things that happened
in my life, and I think there are things that
you can probably relate to, especially women, but husbands too.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
We often forget about the husbands. So I want to talk.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
About how I almost died, had a colostomy, learned that
I was infertile, and then almost died again during IVF
when I was working in a prison because they had
it out for me.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
So let's run through that. Yeah, I had a colostomy.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I had what was a normal tumor on my ovary
and I had it removed when I was living in England.
Now you know, you can't trust every doctor. You can't
trust every surgeon you want to.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
But it didn't go well.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
It was removed, but it grew back quickly and I
had to fly back to California, and in doing so,
I had surgery in California and she found that there
was gauze, There was stuff in there that the surgeon
had left in there, pretty disturbing, so she had a
bit of a mess to clean up. She said she
(11:29):
was successful in doing so, but it took several days
to find out that I was actually septic, and I
went into a coma and I had to I was
in the hospital for months. I had to have a coloss.
To me, it was one of the most horrifying moments
of my entire life. It was the first time I
(11:51):
thought about ending my life, you know, being in your
early twenties with a coloss. To me, nobody tells you
things like if you put all of oil in bag,
it helps the fecal matter slide out faster. Nobody tells
you that it farts and you can't control it, but
over time you would learn to control it because you
could push on parts of your intestines. Lovely, luckily, I
(12:12):
had it reversed and I was one of the fastest
reversal cases. And they talk about it in medical school
to this day because they were surprised by it. So
I'm just happy that stage was over. One of the
most horrible things, too, was that nobody helped me. Like
when I was in the hospital, there was no psychologist,
there was no mental health care. The only person that
(12:34):
came in was a social worker and she gave me
a handout for dating with colostomies. Dating with colostomies, I
wanted to end my life.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
This was not me.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
I was not going to be somebody who shit out
of her belly button practically for the rest of my life.
Like no, oh my god, hello medical care, mental health,
behavioral health within hospitals, you suck and you need major improvement. Anyway,
So after that, I was, you know, I had stables
in my stomach, but I had to finish school, and
I went back to school with staples in my stomach
(13:07):
and I got it done. And whatever, we get things done.
Let's make sure this microphone's on because I don't do
this much.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
So I got it done.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
And you know, I had a really successful educational experience.
You know, I finished a bachelor's, I got two masters,
and I got a doctorate in psychology in clinical and
forensic psychology with an emphasis in high risk sex offending.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
And it took me all the way to working.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
At a Tascadero State Hospital, which is a maximum security prison.
So if you can imagine twelve hundred inmates, inmates or
patients free roaming, you know they or they're on the
honor system, so you get to leave your unit. Each
unit has thirty to fifty guys in it. The rooms
are not locked, and they have cards one through five.
(13:58):
So if you're not if you're really unstable, or if
you're violent, or you're not following rules, then you would
get card number one, which meant you couldn't leave the unit.
If you were doing a little better, your behavioral health team,
which was psychologists, psychiatrist, nurses, everybody on the floor would
meet and say, okay, you know, we're thinking about giving
(14:19):
him a two. That means the guy can leave the
unit and go to one place like the mall, the
mall was a group where we had.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
It looked like a mall.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
All the group therapy was there, so you could have
art therapy, talk therapy, music therapy, all these different things.
You could go there if you were good, and then
you'd return. So it was actually a very very dangerous place.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
I wore an alarm on my hip.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Alarms went off all day every day. There were violent
episodes all day every day. And during that time, my husband,
he was my boyfriend, engaged at fiance and then we
married while we were working in that system, and we
had different last names because we didn't want anyone to
find out that we were together. And we had heard
(15:08):
so many stories about inmates attacking one spouse or another spouse.
Either they were infatuated in love, stalking one's spouse and
they wanted to hurt the other. Either it was a delusion,
it wasn't even real. Sometimes it was real. Sometimes the
people staff were getting it on with clients. But also
(15:29):
there was serious, serious injuries to individuals out of retaliation.
So if somebody made a decision about your care that
you didn't like, they might retaliate and hurt your spouse.
So we went this whole time, I thought with no
one knowing that we were together.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
And so we were together.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Right, we had done all the good stuff, we had
gotten licensed to a psychologists, and now it was time
to try to have a baby. And it's not working. Right,
his sperm counts go. Everything seems good, but it's not working.
I'm not getting pregnant. I'm not even having miscarriages, like
just nothing's happening. So we get all this fertility treatment done,
(16:09):
and what they realize is that there's scarring to my
Philippian tubes because of the sepsis back when I had
the colostomy, so I couldn't have a baby.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
They did that dye.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Test where they stick the blue dye up your Philippian tubes,
and it stopped halfway through, which meant that we we
couldn't do Iui, we couldn't do anything. We had to
just do straight up if fertility treatment hundreds of thousands
of dollars, and that is what you'll see in a
future episode.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
That is when my dad came and.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
He really helped us financially with fertility treatment because we
weren't in a place to pay for it. And he
said the sweetest thing I've I think I've ever heard.
He said, don't worry, honey, We'll get you that baby.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
And he did.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
He helped, and we have two beautiful kids now. But
it was it was utterly terrifying going through fertility treatment.
I mean, you've got to basically go on birth control.
You've got to shut down your system, and then you've
got to amp it up. So you are like building
basically grapes, a whole bunch of grapes on each ovary
(17:20):
and hoping that they are just going to grow perfectly
and that your hormones are just so perfect. You're going
to the doctor constantly. You're taking shots every morning, every night.
Some are like you know, the nice shots that are
just under the skin, but some are deep, deep shots
in your butt. And when my husband would have to
do them into like my glute, oh, if he hit
(17:42):
like I don't even know what it's called a vein,
he hit something, blood would squirt out, he would pass out.
It's horrible, but I couldn't do it myself because of
the angle.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Anyways, we got it done. So we did this several times.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
And the problem was that you're supposed to have this
perfect grouping of eggs to release and you have a
surgery and the doctor goes in with a needle and
pulls out each egg. So twenty four hours before that,
you take a trigger shot and it kind of makes
them into the biggest, most just the perfect egg that
(18:15):
the doctor would want to take out, and then they
would fertilize.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
In a petri dish. I don't know what they do there.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
So I would get so excited, and right, this is months,
this is six months, months and months getting to the
egg retrieval. And I'd get there and I'd go into
surgery and he would put the ultrasound on me, in
me or whatever, and they'd all be deflated. They'd all
be dead. Every egg was dead. And it was horrifying.
(18:43):
I can't even tell you the sobbing, the tears, the money,
the just thinking all I want is a child. Seeing
everyone I know around me get pregnant and being jealous
and mad at them. I wasn't happy. Every time I
got a baby shower invite, I didn't want to go.
(19:06):
I didn't want to go, and I didn't know how
to say no. I wish I had said no. I
wish I had said no and said boundaries for my
own mental health at that time.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
I didn't. I've learned a lot since then.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
So we actually ended up going to an adoption attorney
in Santa Barbara, and it was a it was a
grim picture.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
It was basically like, if.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
You want the type of baby that you want, then
you know, like a healthy baby, you're gonna have to
let the mom be, the biological mom, be a part
of the picture. In a private adoption, She's going to
be more likely to pick you, to put you and
your husband at the top of the list if she
knows she can keep tabs on the baby over time
(19:49):
and throughout life.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
And I don't know.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
It just didn't sit with me, like I wanted my
own kidd't.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I didn't want to share my kid. I wanted to
I wanted my own.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
So my husband and I got a shit faced drunk
that night because we were just so upset. We went
to see Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry, if you're watching this, thank you.
We came back to the hotel and we had lots
of sex, and there you go, magically.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
We conceived our first child.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
I have no idea how the doctors, have no idea
how the nursing staff, everybody. When I went in for
an ultrasound and said, I think I'm pregnant, but it's
not from my vf utter shock. But they say medical
miracles come in three, so hopefully there were two other
women that got.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
To have that too.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
I gotta get paid commercial time, so we had our
daughter and it was It was absolutely amazing. But the
weirdest thing for me was that while that was all happening,
I didn't tell anyone at the prison. I didn't tell
anyone in the jail. And there was this one day
(21:09):
where I had just found out I was pregnant.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
And this was the real one. This was the one
that was going to stick.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
And a very psychopathic, high ranking gang member who I
trusted because we had worked together for a long time
and we had done each other favors. So you know,
he would tell me when there was going to be
a hit on a staff member and I might make
(21:41):
sure he has a new mattress or an extra blanket.
And you kind of learned to work with the more
psychopathic individuals in that way, because they'll work with you,
and that's the level of respect that you need, and
I need to respect him in that way. They're not
going to be emotional individuals. They're not going to be empathic,
you know, it's tip for tat, and that's what we
(22:01):
got anyway. So he because he respected me, because I
was the person who, you know, I honored that relationship
that we had. He asked me to go into the
visiting center, which is weird. Again, Like I said, this
is a free roaming facility. We've got twelve hundred inmates
or patients. We have about two thousand staff, and people
are walking, if they're good, back and forth throughout, and
(22:23):
it is huge.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
It's miles and miles long.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
I still get panicked, not full panic attacks, but I
get really panicky when I'm in long, hollow hallways because
it reminds me of those of those eerie moments when
I was in these prisons and jails and hospitals and
there was just silence and then extreme fucking violence. I mean,
(22:48):
like when a psychotic man begins to punch someone.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
It is their arms look like the road runner. They
come alive.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
It is so fast you can't even get in there
to stop it.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
You're not gonna make it.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
And the amount of times I would walk down the
hallway and somebody would run by and just cold cock
a person I was walking next to. I was lucky
enough that that never happened to me knock on wood,
but it was utterly terrifying.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
So I still have major anxiety.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Like if I go into a mall and it's really
empty and it's like a long hallway and I can't
see an exit, I have to ground myself. I have
to seriously ground myself a breathe, and sometimes I just
need to leave. So all of this was happening, and
this guy asked me to meet in the visiting center,
and I meet with him and he says to me,
(23:40):
this is the last time you're going into the hospital
because a bunch of the guys are taking bets on
kicking your belly and killing your baby.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
I had just found out I was pregnant.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
I barely knew this was failed IVF that doctors.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Didn't even know how this had happened. How did they know?
Speaker 1 (24:05):
I mean, sure I was bloated from ongoing fertility treatment.
I did it eight times, but they had someone on
the outside. And you know, we just aired an episode
with Jeremy Viking, who used to be an inmate, and
he was the first one who told me. He said,
(24:28):
I don't think that the inmates had someone on the outside.
I think the custody officers do. The officers were following you,
The officers were probably the ones that told the inmates that,
and for some reason someone had some kind of gripe
against you. That to me is terrifying. So I go
(24:52):
from almost dying from a clost to me to probably
almost dying if they had really.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Had their way with me.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
And I had seen people in their broken necks, broken faces,
taken away in stretchers day in and day out. I mean,
you're talking about the most violent individuals in our country,
and they have severe mental illness, and a lot of
them are not medicated properly, or they're refusing medication, or
(25:24):
they're cheeking the medication. They're putting in the side of the
cheek and then throwing it out or selling it.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
And I was.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Amongst that, So went from nearly dying to nearly dying. Anyways,
that was the last time I went in because.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
I believed him. And I've gotten some messages.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
I've been on TV and I'll get some random phone
calls from somebody who's connected to him that says, you know,
great job, keep going.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
It's such a weird relationship. I don't know how he
gets my phone.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Number, but anyways, I carry a gun everywhere I go.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Just an FYI.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah, but I wanted to share that story with you
because it was incredibly fucking hard, all of it.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
The tears, the pain, the money.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
The loss of hope, the desire to have a child,
to not even be able to explain to people how
much I wanted a child but I couldn't have one.
Oh and to be like eight fucking months pregnant and
have some stupid bitch ask me what my exercise routine
is and I said it's nothing, and she said I
was doing marathons when I was eight months pregnant.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Well, you can fuck off.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Watch what you say to pregnant women, because we are
already so insecure, and we are already terrified that we
are growing this little person inside us, and we are
terrified that something is going to fuck it up or
harm this baby. Just watch what you say. My god,
I hope you can relate to that story, because life
(26:55):
throws you very unexpected things. But now that beautiful baby
is eight years old. She is the wittiest, most hilarious child.
She has no filter, just like me. And she is
truly my best friend in the entire world, and I
cannot wait until she is old enough to watch this
(27:18):
episode and just see how much Mommy loves her and
adores her, and how much Mommy and Daddy and Grandpa
fought for her.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Thank you for.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Watching another episode of Intentionally Disturbing. We'll hop back to
interviewing incredible people, and then maybe I'll hop back to
doing solo episodes and sharing more stories because God knows,
you know, watching people rip their eyeballs out, watching brain matter,
score it out of somebody's will pocket where they had
(27:51):
hidden it because they had taken it out of somebody's brain,
having pea and poo thrown all over me in prisons.
A lot of fun, exciting things have happened. But I
look forward to you joining this journey amazing people and
their resiliency, and I'll share personal stories of my own
(28:14):
and the resiliency that I have, and the ways I
have used psychology, the ways I have used life lessons
and my education to get me to where I am now,
which is forty two years old, with two awesome kids,
an amazing husband, an awesome career, and maybe a little
(28:37):
hyper vigilant
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Oh, hey, you're here,
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