Amy Griffin
speaker
222 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Amy Griffin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
It was a form of, if you could just keep building and keep hiding and keep making everything look perfect, then you wouldn't be found out.
It was the night before our rehearsal dinner for our wedding.
First, can I also just say, I'm sorry for what happened to you.
But, you know, I think that that's the realization as I look back, and that's part of the process that I went through in coming to understand that comment from my sister, who is the most loving human on the planet. And even then, the night, two nights before our wedding with, you know, all the emotions being high of a wedding,
I recognized why am I reacting that way, even then, 20 something years ago, but only in the reflection of it, after really diving in to go and do this processing, could I realize that was shame. That was the word shame.
And in many ways, if you had asked me five years ago in the life that I'd built around control and perfection and making everyone else happy, if I knew what the word shame was, I might have said no and turned around and walked off.
Right?
Shame was not going to be a part of my story. And also, let me say, too, that in doing all this work, I can now go back and also look at the parts of me that I want to keep. And so I've been able to take those parts and recognize that leadership at its core... for me, was something that I was told I was a leader.
I was groomed by this person to use something that was an intrinsic part of me to say, oh, you're a leader, you're a leader. Well, guess what? I got to go back and reflect on that and recognize who I was before all of this. And the two things that I come to are kindness and And I'm a leader. Yeah. And I can say that.
I get that from both my parents. On both sides, I get that from my matriarchal grandmother who started the business, the Tootin' Totem.
I get that from an incredible father who is fierce and a hardworking and an incredible businessman. And I get it from my mother, who is also like my sister, the most loving, wonderful person on the planet.
Well, Oprah, days after I had my first psychedelic-assisted therapy session, John was standing in the room with me when I was in the bathtub, And I threw a bar of soap because I was 42 and I recognize, and I finally, I describe it as putting a puzzle above my head, the fuses. It was like the pieces snapped together, the entire, the corners, all of it came together in one place.
And I threw the bar of soap, hurled it across the room because I said, I understand how he got to me. And he said to me, He used the intrinsic part of me that I am a leader. He told me, he said, you are the leader of this school. And this person, this trust, the word trust is the idea of all of this, is that I trusted this person. This wasn't a stranger.
This was someone I trusted inherently and someone who was also supposed to be shepherding me. To become the best person that I can version myself.
One of the things that's been really hard for me was in the telling, in this process, in the third part of the book, which is, you know, I say the second part is a crime novel that I go through and it goes up and down all over the place, but the third part's in the telling.
And I think it's really interesting as an observation that in many of the adults and family members and friends, when I went to tell them, their reaction was, was more of why, how, in the adult brain, they wanted answers because they wanted to help me. But one of the most beautiful parts of all of this realization for me goes back to my daughters. And that when I did go to tell my girls,
They didn't say, why, how, why did we not know earlier? Instead, they said, we see you. They just said, we see you. We understand. We now know why you tried to be perfect. They validated me in the mind of a child. And I can see that connection now between how the adult brain and any adult can want an answer in one way and how children can just be present in the moment.
Then you believed him. And that inherently I wouldn't be loved. And to be told as a child that you will not be loved... Isn't that the basis of what we all want? Yeah, that's what everybody's striving for.
Gosh, thank you for that question. It also gives me the opportunity to be able to say to my parents that I don't think that there is anything else they could have done in this world to have changed what had happened. but also look where we are now and the hope that I can help other people in sharing my story.
And so I want to make sure that they know that they are off the hook because they try to keep themselves on the hook for this.
Showing 161–180 of 222 · page 9 of 12
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