Michelle Scheibner · 67 min
Michelle Scheibner's lifelong sadness finally made sense when she traced it not just to her own wounds, but to secrets, silences, and sorrows carried across generations of her family, and learned that understanding the past is the first step to reclaiming the future.
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Michelle Scheibner grew up in a house full of adults and unspoken grief. Her childhood in South Caulfield was quiet, serious, risk-averse. Her grandmother was dying of cancer in the house. Her aunt, who had profound disabilities, lived upstairs. Her father carried untreated trauma. And there was a brother before her, a fact no one discussed until she found his name on her birth certificate at 17, with no date of death. When she finally asked why, her parents told her he had Down syndrome and had been institutionalised by doctors' orders. The silence around him, around loss, around her father's Jewish family who died in the Holocaust, shaped how Michelle saw herself: not good enough, perpetually waiting to be abandoned, unable to imagine a future that included her own children.
It took a psychotherapist named Sarah to ask the question that opened everything: what was your mother feeling while she was pregnant with you? That single question shifted how Michelle understood her own infancy, her mother's distraction, the grief she carried in her body without knowing its source. Through years of narrative therapy and family research, Michelle uncovered layers of inherited trauma, not as diagnosis, but as survival strategy passed down through generations. She discovered her grandparents' names in the Holocaust database. She found her father's hidden suitcase filled with German documents. She learned that trauma can live in our DNA, switched on or off by the environments we grow up in.
Understanding these patterns freed her from them. Michelle brought her brother's ashes home. She stopped hiding behind a professional image and started showing up as herself. She wrote her book, Hush, to help others see that breaking family silence is possible, and that healing your past lets you reclaim your future.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses abuse & exploitation, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • Blue Knot Foundation (complex trauma): 1300 657 380 · blueknot.org.au • 1800RESPECT (family, domestic & sexual violence): 1800 737 732 · 1800respect.org.au
“Missing people was the atmosphere I grew up in. But it was the unspoken.”
“When we are not seen or known or soothed by our mother, we start to form a different view about ourselves.”
“Maintaining the silence was survival. Maintaining the secret equals survival.”
The hero, today
When we are not seen, known, or soothed by our mother, we form a different view about ourselves and carry patterns of abandonment into adulthood without understanding where they came from. Silence and secrecy in families are often survival strategies inherited from previous generations, not character flaws, and understanding this changes how we relate to the stories we were told. Trauma can be passed down through our DNA and activated or deactivated by our environment, which means understanding our family history is not just emotional work but biological literacy. Narrative therapy works by looking at our story from different angles, seeing our own role in repeated patterns, and choosing a frame that is helpful and healing rather than staying wedded to a single painful version. When patterns in a family system become visible, a person can restore their own future by reframing their identity to include not just the wounds but the specific gifts and courage inherited from those who came before.
Yes. Michelle Scheibner is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.
Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.
When we are not seen, known, or soothed by our mother, we form a different view about ourselves and carry patterns of abandonment into adulthood without understanding where they came from.
Silence and secrecy in families are often survival strategies inherited from previous generations, not character flaws, and understanding this changes how we relate to the stories we were told.
Trauma can be passed down through our DNA and activated or deactivated by our environment, which means understanding our family history is not just emotional work but biological literacy.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 00:05
Welcome back to Kintsugi Heroes, helping people tell the stories they need to share so you can find the stories that you need to hear. In this episode, we meet Michelle Scheibner, who grew up feeling alone in a house filled with adults and heavy with unspoken grief. Through uncovering family secrets and exploring her own story, Michelle began to understand the patterns of loss and passed down through generations. Guided by therapy and narrative writing, she found a way to heal from feelings of abandonment and emotional neglect. Today, Michelle shares her journey to self-acceptance, showing how understanding our past can lead to a more authentic life and a stronger sense of belonging. We hope you enjoy listening to Michelle's story.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 01:08
Hello Michelle, and welcome to Kintsugi Heroes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 01:11
Hello Natalie, and well, thank you for having me. This is— I've been looking forward to this.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 01:16
Yeah, me too. It's such an interesting subject that you specialize in. Michelle, can we start this with your childhood? Can you describe what your childhood was like?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 01:27
Oh, I can. It's not very interesting. It's pretty boring, really. I mean, I, I, to me, until I uncovered all of this, I just thought it was very, very normal. We lived in South Caulfield in Melbourne, mm-hmm, in a house on a corner block. Um, and it was a house full of adults. I was an only child. I was raised an only child. Um, The only family were 3 cousins who lived the next block along, but the, the youngest of them was a decade older than me. Mm-hmm. So, oh, it wasn't a household full of kids and laughter, and there were no pets. There were, you know, it was just, I was very serious, very obedient.
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Narrative therapy works by looking at our story from different angles, seeing our own role in repeated patterns, and choosing a frame that is helpful and healing rather than staying wedded to a single painful version.
This conversation includes a house full of adults and unspoken grief, the layers of grief no one spoke about, finding a photo of the baby who was not her, the birth certificate that changed everything, sarah asks the question that opens the vault and the leather suitcase in the garage for 25 years.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 02:18
Mm-hmm.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 02:18
Very compliant. Time. If I just put in the little detail for your listeners here, is that, you know, when I was born, I, I came home as a newborn in my mother's arms into a house where her mother was living, right, and was dying of cancer. So her mother's carer, my aunt, was living, uh, upstairs in, in an attic room. Because she couldn't live independently because she had quite profound intellectual and physical disabilities and had never lived independently. And Mum was responsible for her care as well. And unbeknownst to me, my, my father was clearly suffering from PTSD. All right, so Mother— so there were 3 other said adults in the house, um, failing in one way or another. And so my mother, I appreciate now just how distracted she was. You know, newborn baby, it should be all about the baby.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 03:27
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 03:28
And I think because I was a very robust baby physically, didn't need a whole lot of much, and she could go about And, and I think, you know, my grandmother died when I was 10 months old in that house. Try and think about my mother caring for her, the grief of losing— about to lose her mother.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 03:54
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 03:54
The layers of grief just within that. And then the story around the boy, the baby boy that they'd had before me that they lost.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 04:03
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 04:04
I was like— and so that, that kind of feeling of grief and sorrow.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 04:10
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 04:10
Missing people was the atmosphere I grew up in, but it was the unspoken.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 04:17
Yes, yes, yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 04:19
So in terms of a kid, you know, yeah, no pet, no pets, no siblings, no kids in from next door playing, right? Um, didn't have a two-wheeler bike, you know, everything was all about can't take a risk. So I'm very risk adverse, and I didn't really have much of a sense of fun.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 04:41
Has that sense of safety and risk adversity— has that carried into your adulthood?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 04:50
It did, until I started. Yeah, for example, um, I remember as an adult— and, you know, in the book I talk about my former partner Chris and he had a real sense of fun. And when I first met him, he'd get quite irritated with me because I wouldn't play silly games, because I felt silly, because I had no sense of fun and I had no sense of risk. So I'd never learned to ride a bike, and it wasn't until I was 50 that I got a bike under his tutelage. And he was very patient with me, and he taught me to ride a bike because That was the, the closest to any kind of risk. Yeah, I just— yeah, risk adverse. And I think that was probably my parents protecting me.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 05:40
Yes, yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 05:42
Um, I was scared of dogs. I don't know where that came from. Incredibly full of dogs.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 05:49
Yeah. And in your book called Hush, which is in the background behind you, you Yep. You refer to patterns also of abandonment and emotional neglect. How did they show up in your childhood?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 06:04
Firstly, I didn't realize them as being— yeah, I didn't know that that's what was going on. And this is what I mean about— I just thought my life was normal.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 06:15
Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 06:16
Um, but as an adult, the benefit of hindsight, yeah, I can see that my father had a— had those feelings of abandonment. My mother certainly, um, I don't know, do we want to reveal it all now, Natalie, or we get into it as we go?
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 06:38
Um, but for example, yeah, about your childhood now, and then, and then we can move into what, what was unveiled.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 06:46
Yeah, so I think the one thing that I've learned through doing all of this work is that when we are not seen or known or soothed by our mother, yeah, we start to form, um, a different view about ourselves. Yes. And I don't remember being soothed, you know. I don't remember sitting on my mom's knee having a story read to me. I don't Yeah, I don't remember having anyone come in and read to me at night before I went to sleep. I was reading Gone with the Wind before I was 12 years old. I read that whole— you know, it's like that, because no one was reading to me.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 07:33
You're quite independent.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 07:35
Oh, very, very.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 07:38
And what happened when— in times where I was about to say when you fell off a bike, but you didn't, you weren't riding a bike— when you fell over and, and for example, and hurt yourself and needed soothing or comfort, what happened then?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 07:52
Uh, there would have been a dab of antiseptic on, on it, and there would have been a, um, 'You'll be fine.' So it was very much a 'We just get on with life.' Yeah, yeah. But again, I cannot in my mind picture myself on my mother's knee Or the one thing I can picture was I had German— I woke up one Christmas morning with German measles, and that's where I stayed in bed for about the next 3 weeks. And I had very long hair, and my hair got matted because my mother couldn't come near me to do my hair because I had all these, you know, things going on. And, um, and I remember her, when I was better, brushing my hair to get the knots out. That's kind of soothing, I suppose. That's the extent of my memory, right?
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 08:55
Yeah. And when did you first sense in your family that there was some very deeply hidden secrets?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 09:02
When I found a photo of Grant, my brother, the baby born before me, right? I was still, oh, early primary school, I would say. And, you know, as a kid, I'm going through photos, and I saw a photo of the baby on a, like, a baby baby, very small baby. And I said, oh, here's a photo of me. And it was taken from me, and it was, no, that's not you. That, that's your brother. Oh, what do you mean? We had a baby before— this is when I was first told— we had a baby before we had you, uh, and he had blue, blue blood. Don't know what that means still, uh, and he died, right? And there were no other photos. And then as I thought about it Later, there was a very small photo of him on— this was— this house was before built-in robes. So if you imagine a freestanding wardrobe.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 10:11
Yes, yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 10:13
I'm quite small, this is quite tall, and there were 3 photos on the top of my father's. Little teeny weeny ones in a frame, right? And in retrospect, I'm pretty sure that photo was in a frame up there along with my father's parents. Like, as a child, did I— I just had a sense of lack of information.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 10:37
Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 10:38
And every time I asked a question, I was pretty much shut down. We don't talk about that, right? Okay, you don't need to know that.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 10:52
And then something happened that actually opened the discussion, that revealed the truth. Can you describe what happened?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 11:02
So I was in Year 12, my final year of secondary school, and applying for scholarships and university entrance and various other things. And the application form required my birth certificate. And so I, I don't remember what response when I asked for it. I only remember the response when it was handed over, and it was like you know, it was— they were my— both my parents were there, were there in the kitchen when it was handed over. And I looked at it and I could see under siblings my brother's name and the date of birth, but there was no date of death, right? So I said, this is— why isn't there a date of death? And they kind of looked at each other And that was when I think it was my father said, your brother didn't die, he was born with Down syndrome. Um, and the doctors told us it was a very profound, um, condition for him, that he was unlikely to live past the age of 7, and that the best thing that we could do and the best thing for him would be to have him made a ward of the state, and then he would be put into an institution, a government-run institution with other Down syndrome babies, and they would care for him.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 12:37
Mm. Gosh. How did you feel when you first heard that?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 12:42
Oh, look, you know, I've come to recognise this feeling throughout my life now whenever I get news that shocks me, is it goes through my body, as if— I can only imagine what it might be like if you're hit by lightning, you know, something just goes right through you.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 13:00
Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 13:00
I then went very, like, very hot before immediately very cold, right? And I just couldn't comprehend.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 13:13
I could—
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 13:14
I was 17. I couldn't comprehend it.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 13:16
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 13:17
Why Where is he? Is he fine? Can I go and see him?
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 13:23
Yes. What were the answers to those questions?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 13:27
Can't give you those answers. We don't know because he was a ward of the state. We don't know. We haven't had any contact.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 13:37
Mm.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 13:39
And so I just had to put that somewhere. I had to put it in my head somewhere because there was no further discussion, right? And I remember going out that night with some friends. Um, I was in the Young Anglican Fellowship at my mother's urging, and I remember kind of being there thinking, do I tell people this?
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 14:06
You know, like, do I talk about this, or should I continue it as a family secret?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 14:13
Yeah. And so I continued it as the family secret. But what does that mean? Does it mean I really am a sister to somebody, or I do have a brother? I do have a brother. I just didn't— I just, you know, I had no capacity to do anything with that other than to feel some shame, right? Parents' behavior. But I just had to get on with it.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 14:41
And later on, you engaged a psychotherapist called, called Sarah. How did Sarah help you?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 14:51
So I'd— just for your listeners, because they might resonate with this— I've tried lots of different counselors, psychologists, um, self-help books, personal development, yoga, Uh, Reiki, kinesiology, like I'd tried everything over the years.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 15:11
More just a lot of therapies.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 15:14
Oh, everything to try and feel better about, because I just, I carried a load, right? I was aware that I was carrying a load, and Sarah was the first therapist, if you like, who said to me 'What do you think it was like for your mother when she was pregnant for you— with you? What do you think?' Because she knew about my brother. 'What do you think she was feeling and thinking?' And that was the first time I'd ever thought, 'Oh well, I guess she was probably really concerned. She was very worried and anxious about this next baby.' Yeah, yeah. So my brother was born in September of one year. Mhm. I was born in the December of the following year.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 16:06
Right.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 16:08
Quick turnaround.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 16:09
Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 16:10
So they did exactly what the doctor said. They went home after handing Grant over and made another baby, and there I was, 9 months late. So, so Um, I can only imagine that she was still grieving.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 16:27
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 16:28
When she carrying me. Yes. A lot of grief, a lot of sadness, a lot of shame, a lot of regret. So, and still looking after these other 3 people in the house.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 16:44
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 16:45
And it was Sarah that helped me see that part of my story. Because I'd never considered anything prior to— because I don't— my earliest memory, I don't know, I was at kindergarten. Mhm. I don't, I don't have any memories really prior to that. Right. And so I, and I'd never thought about my mother.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 17:09
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 17:10
For me, it just seemed so remote.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 17:13
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 17:14
So Sarah helped me see my story in a different way, right? And very much encouraged me to, um, to dig around and for more family history.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 17:33
And then, Michelle, you, you refer to the vault and opening the vault. What else did you find in, in that vault? And, and how, and how did, did those discoveries change your life?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 17:46
Yeah, so, um, my, when my mother died— my father died when I was my first year of teaching, right, in the middle of the first year of teaching. So I was 22, 23. So I don't remember, I don't, you know, I don't remember much. And then when my mother died, uh, I had to clear the house for sale. I found in the attic, um, hidden in the attic, like in the rafters, actually in the roof, the attic, this very old leather suitcase. My father's name on it. So it had been the, the case that he'd, he'd come with to Australia from Germany. And inside were these folders of documents and, you know, in that very thin paper of— that sort of told you something of the age. And they were in German, mostly in German, right? And I just looked at that and went, I have no capacity, I have no idea what to do with this now. So I just put it all back in the case and took it with me to my house, and it stayed in the back cupboard in my garage and for 25 years.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 19:09
Wow.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 19:10
And then it was when Sarah said, well, you know, what do you know? And I said, I don't know. But by the time I'd met Sarah, I had been to the Holocaust Museum in Berlin.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 19:21
Mhm.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 19:23
And I had found in the database, which is the book of memory of those that perished in the Holocaust, I had found my, my father's parents' names, right?
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 19:37
That's, that's how you found out that your, your grandparents died in the Holocaust?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 19:42
Ah, that's how I found out.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 19:44
Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 19:45
Gosh, here's the other thing. The story that I grew up with was that my father was Lutheran. And so I didn't— I couldn't join. I knew we had Jewish relatives, but again, I couldn't join the dots, and it was never discussed. So it just didn't, you know, like, it didn't make sense to me. Uh, and, and when I saw that, I thought, well, okay, so there's a— clearly he, he must have been Jewish. Clearly. Um, so when I started, the problem with these documents was a lot of them were in Old German. So whilst I, I'd never learned to speak German, my father didn't have a German accent, right?
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 20:32
Wow.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 20:33
From my memory. So again, it didn't quite, didn't all quite make sense.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 20:39
Where did you think your father came from?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 20:41
I knew he came from Germany, right? Right.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 20:44
His, his Jewish ancestry.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 20:46
Yeah, yeah, because it was never discussed. There were, there were my grandparents, and the story was how like my grandmother I was, how like his mother I was, right? Image. Oh, his mother Ellie, right? And I used to think, I heard this so often, and I used to think 'If I have a daughter, I'm going to call her Ellie.' Like, that, that's how strong it was in my mind. Yes, that's as much as I'm— Ellie.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 21:24
And it's a beautiful name.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 21:27
It is a beautiful name. Then I dig deeper into this, this vault or this case, and I found some translations, some documents that my dad had translated. There was his baptism certificate, um, of being baptized as Lutheran.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 21:45
Mhm.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 21:46
There was his mother's, baptized as Lutheran.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 21:50
Right.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 21:51
Ellie and Ludwig. Mhm. Ellie had to, had to, um, convert in order to marry Ludwig because Ludwig was Lutheran.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 22:03
Right.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 22:05
But I've since found out they're all Jewish, right? And they use the conversion, um, to hide their faith in the hope that it would keep them alive.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 22:19
Gosh.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 22:20
And, and I found out through some, you know, a bit more digging around, a cousin living in New York, like a a dad's cousin, not my— for the generation before me, was putting a family tree together.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 22:36
Mhm.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 22:37
And made contact. Wow. And we had some toing and froing. And he was— he told me he remembered seeing my father, uh, at the Jew— the family events like his bar mitzvah and, and other things. So clearly they continued to practice their faith. Right. Perversely. Yeah.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 23:03
Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 23:04
So it was Sarah who said to me, because I— when I first introduced myself to her, she's, well, what, you know, what can I do for you? Why are you here? Because I'm, I'm grieving, and I feel like I'm not just grieving the loss of my partner, I feel like I'm grieving the babies I didn't have, you know, my parents, my father's history that I didn't know about, and absolutely my brother. And I don't know what to— you know, I can't move through this. It's, it's overwhelming. And it was she that said to me, well, if you think about how your father would have been living as a child, how your grandparents living, that Silence was the, was the only option.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 23:57
Yeah, it was their safety net.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 23:59
The safety net. Maintaining the secret.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 24:02
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 24:03
Maintaining the silence was survive. That equals survive.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 24:06
Yes, yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 24:08
And she coined the term systemic grief.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 24:11
Tell us about that.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 24:14
So that alongside her very profound question of what was my mother experiencing when she was carrying me Those two questions led me to this whole thing around, do we inherit something? Can we inherit the, the grief of others?
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 24:33
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 24:33
Because I'd been sad since I was a child, right? Lost my parents, and I lost this man that I thought was my soulmate that I had cared for. And, and yes, that was an awful death and, and it was an aw— you know, it was a thing for me to— anyway, um, but this just felt so much more than, than all of that. Yes. And so it was Sarah that helped me see that it was, you know, it's almost the grief of, of generations upon generations.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 25:09
It's the generational grief and generational trauma that was just being passed down from generation to generation.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 25:16
It is the Jewish story of, you know, they tried to throw us out, we fought back and we survived. Yes, survived by being very resilient. Yes, staying together and maintaining silence. And that is how I lived. That is how I lived unknowingly, how I lived. Yes.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 25:41
Michelle, we're now moving on to the subject of epigenetics. Can you tell us what epigenetics is and, and why these generational patterns occur.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 25:52
So in, in, uh, the research was around about the 1980s when Dr. Rachel Yehuda from the Mount Sinai Hospital in, in New York started researching this with the children of Holocaust survivors.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 26:11
Right.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 26:12
And what she found was that they were displaying similar post-traumatic, um, symptoms as their parents, even though they might have been— in this case, they were raised in the United States, or primarily that's where she did her research. And so what we learn is that that legacy can be passed on. It sits in our DNA, but epigenetics, uh, is the sort of the combination of the external factors that can switch on or off how our gene code is expressed. So if you think a child of somebody who has experienced trauma sitting there inside that genetic code, uh, are the result of how the previous generations adjusted to the trauma that they experienced. Because, you know, trauma isn't something that happens to us. The, the trauma is how we react to it and what— how we make meaning of it and how we how we come to live with it. Yes. Or itself. And so she did, you know, there's been a lot of research with mice. So for example, uh, a family of mice, take them away from their— take some of them away from the parent, away from the parent, and then bring them back sometime later, and they will show— if they've been not, not raised with the parent, they'll show the similar sorts of depressions and, and various other responses to traumatic events that we can display.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 28:10
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 28:11
And then, just to make it clear for your listeners, Rachel Yehuda repeated her research with the children who were born of women who were pregnant at Ground Zero during 9/11.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 28:28
Okay.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 28:29
The World Trade Center. Yeah. So they were being carried by their mothers who experienced the trauma of 9/11. Those children, even though raised in normal happy families, showed the same symptoms. And so this plays like high, very high levels of cortisol. For example. Yes, yes. And other traumatic stress symptoms. So what we start to see now is it isn't just living in the silence. So you might, you might say, oh, well, you've just repeated, you know, you, you were raised in a quiet house, a silent house, so you've repeated the behaviors. What we can see now is no. Well, yes, there's that too, but there's also this other level at a level that grief is living within me and with others. Yes, yes, yes.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 29:27
And influenced by the environment.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 29:30
Influenced, turned on and off by the environment.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 29:34
Yeah, yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 29:34
So babies that are raised still, like, if I'd take my genetic code, for example, because it's all about me, you know. But, um, if, if I'd come home to a happy environment— yes, you know— and my mother was fully attuned, could see me, know me, soothe me—
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 29:58
yeah, comfort you— yes, comfort me.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 30:01
Um, if I'd, if I'd had a sense of, um who I was. If I was fully attuned growing up, fully attuned child, there's nothing switching it on or off.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 30:13
Yes, yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 30:14
And my life and the choices and decisions I made might have been quite different.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 30:19
Yes, yes. Let's talk about that. So how— you mentioned at the start about the emotional neglect or deprivation. How did that play out in your relationships as an adult?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 30:34
Well, unbeknownst to me, I was— I mean, unconsciously, I was conscious— I was not consciously— I was always waiting for the relationship to end. No friendships, relationships. I was just waiting to be abandoned.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 30:52
Yeah, yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 30:54
That was never a conscious thought.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 30:57
No.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 30:58
But my brother was sent away, sent out of the family.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 31:03
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 31:03
So that's abandonment.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 31:05
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 31:05
It was abandoned by his parents.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 31:08
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 31:09
And so that insecurity that I had in relationships, I was always just very insecure. So I would be very compliant. You know, when you're not seen by your mother or by your primary caregiver.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 31:26
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 31:27
Then you do whatever you can to tread carefully.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 31:33
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 31:34
You do become a people pleaser.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 31:36
Yes. To be accepted, to get that sense of belonging.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 31:41
And yeah, except to be accepted and belonging. Exactly. So I think I was probably pretty wimpish and pretty in relationships. I was just waiting for that time when it would end. So that's the abandonment part. And the emotional deprivation, you know, I mentioned earlier that I didn't ever have a pet, so I didn't learn to look after anybody or anything other than myself. And I was raised in this kind of social dialogue of only children are spoiled, you know, children you get everything. You've got the focus of both of your parents. You know, only children are spoiled. Well, you know, au contraire. I was certainly not spoiled. Yeah, but I did learn how to entertain myself. And as you said earlier, I did become very independent.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 32:35
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 32:36
And so inside a relationship, that can be a bit problematic because I wasn't used to living with other people. And again, this wasn't about everything's about me. It was, you know, reading social cues or, or responding to emotional care. You know, it took me a long time to learn that and to be Um, I was always compassionate and I always had empathy for others, but I didn't know how to show it. I didn't know how to care for others. I think— I didn't think.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 33:26
In time, you used various methods and approaches to overcome the sense of abandonment and, and and neglect, emotional neglect. And one of those techniques was writing therapy, narrative therapy. Can you tell us about what that is and how that helped you?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 33:49
So one of the— I mean, we talked about Sarah before, the psychotherapist I saw, and she was really a trained narrative therapist. You know, we're all sort of familiar with talk therapy And narrative therapy, uh, works with the story. And so when it— when, when she's asking me a question, she's hearing the story I'm telling, but she's hearing underneath the story. Yes, she's looking for the themes. And, you know, because I think one thing to remember here that I often forget is that Every time we remember something, we actually remember it differently, and we reconstruct the memory according to who we are at that time.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 34:43
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 34:44
So I reconstruct memories differently now. Yes, I can appreciate that.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 34:51
You've reframed your story.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 34:53
Reframed my story. And this is very much what narrative therapy is all about. It's taking what we have within us Mhm. Looking at the different perspectives. This is one perspective.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 35:06
Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 35:06
You know, one perspective is, well, your parents were neglectful.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 35:09
Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 35:09
That's one perspective.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 35:11
Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 35:12
Another perspective is they were dealing with a lot of their own stuff.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 35:16
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 35:17
And it— quite frankly, my mother didn't have much left in the tank.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 35:21
Yeah. So, and you, so you've chosen a narrative that, that's helpful to you, that's harmful to you, and that's healing for you.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 35:34
Yeah.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 35:34
What you did through narrative therapy.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 35:37
Yeah. Because the questions then from the narrative therapist come from a, is there a different way that you could look at this? So you actually, you don't know that's what's happening. I mean, the, the questions are more subtle than that, but what's happening is you're starting to kind of— I call it looking around corners. You know, it's like you've got this wall here that's a story, and you just got to look around the corner.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 36:04
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 36:04
And see what are the versions sitting on the other side.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 36:08
Yes, yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 36:10
This is what I always encourage people to do now, is because when you get wedded to one story Yeah, you know, for a long time I was that friend who would— every time a relationship fell apart, I would ring a friend and they'd have to listen to the same stuff, you know. Oh, he said, she said, and I didn't. And it'd be— they must have— oh, here we go again, right? You know, we've all had that experience of repeated patterns.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 36:43
Absolutely.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 36:44
A repeated pattern, but we hear the person caught up in the story.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 36:49
Yes, yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 36:50
Not seeing their role in that. Yes, we have to see— narrative therapy helps us, uh, it gives us that power to see ourself in that story and to see how we can pivot that. Yes, because it's all about change, it's all about transformation, and we can do that. If stories live in cells of our body, in every cell of our body, story, and, and we can shift it and we can reshape it.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 37:22
Yeah, fascinating. Michelle, you referred to a family system, family systems. So who belongs in our family systems and, and why is this important to understand?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 37:35
So we take ourselves where we're considering our parents and their parents.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 37:42
Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 37:43
So our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, right? What we're initially working with. Mhm. And it's important because a family, whether everybody's there or not— I mean, let's— because I'm fully aware that there'll be people listening to this who We'll say, well, you know, I— my family wasn't much of a system, but, but nevertheless, we are born into a system. You, you look at a family tree. Yeah, that's a system of a family, and inside that, our memories, our stories, our traditions, our invisible links, which is the DNA the, the, the, the links that, like, the, the biological links that keep us together. Yes. But it's like a network. And you think about a machine or any kind of, like, think about a bee, you know, that network of bees from the hive. When one of them goes out, the others go looking and they follow. So when, when somebody dies within the system, or is, in the case of my brother, yeah, there's this gap there.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 39:03
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 39:04
So you take a part out of a machine, the machine no longer starts to work. It kind of misses a beat. You think about your car, you know, something's wrong with the engine, it's going to miss a beat, it's going to miss a— and so what I've come to learn now is that in my family system there's a bit of a history of children being displaced from the family. So the first one that I was aware of was my brother. Mhm.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 39:33
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 39:35
But then with a little bit more digging, which only happened as I was writing the book— I didn't realize this before— I found two. So my great-grandmother, mhm, uh, 4 children. She had 5 children. One died at the age of 9 months. My grandmother and my— and her sister came, came with my grand— my, my great-grandmother to Australia, and she left 2 boys behind. My great-grandmother left her 2 sons behind in New Zealand, aged about 7 and 9, is my best guess. Gosh, who does that? Don't know why, but my mother knew, right?
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 40:23
And yeah, it was never, never told.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 40:26
Never told. So within that family system, yeah, those boys were abandoned, and then my brother was abandoned.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 40:35
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 40:36
And so it seems like at some unconscious level I have— well, what my brother couldn't have, I'm going— I can't have either. So he, he wasn't able to know his parents, know his siblings, uh, have a normal life. Well, he could never marry, and that's been my life.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 41:07
Yeah, yeah. So you think in some way you mirrored your brother's life even without ever knowing him? Absolutely.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 41:15
Yeah, it's anything that makes sense to me.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 41:18
Yeah. And, and I believe that your brother Grant has passed away, so you, you've never met him?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 41:28
No, but he did outlive both his parents. In fact, he lived to the age of He died at the same age as my father, right? 60, just before his third birthday, right?
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 41:44
Wow.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 41:44
Which happened to be the same age as my great-grandfather Ludwig, my father's father. And so this is one of the recurring patterns that can be an indication of something passed down through.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 41:59
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 42:00
So My parents both died. Oh, by the way, again for your listeners, they knew that he was alive. They knew he hadn't died at 7. My mother continued to visit him in the institution. Yes.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 42:17
Wow.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 42:17
Wow. Which I didn't— I didn't know until after she died.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 42:24
Yeah. Wow. So how did that make you feel, discovering that, that your, your mother was well aware that your brother was alive and she she actually had a relationship of some sorts with him?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 42:37
Uh, look, by the time I found that out— because when I was engaged in my 30s and thinking about, well, I'm going to get married, I'll have a child, you know, have a family, that's what I'd always thought I would do— and I mentioned to, um, a GP that I was a bit worried about this, what had gone on, you know, that my brother had been born with Down syndrome and what were the chances of me having a child with Down syndrome. And she said, well, you know, your mother was blah blah blah, could be just genetic, but if you really want to make sure, I suggest you go and speak to the genetic clinic. At that time there was a genetic clinic at the Royal Women's Hospital here in Melbourne. So I rang them and they said, yes, we can clarify all of that for you. You just need a blood sample from, from your brother and one from you, and we'll compare them, and tickety-boo. So I had to contact my mother and say, this is what I want to do, can you help me? Yeah, you think Grant is still alive, and if so, where is he? This is what I want. And she said, no, I don't know, I can't help you, right? So that— I was angry about that. That's the part I was angry about. But again, I mean, now I see it very differently, but at the time, because I just— I, I, I never consciously made a decision not to have children. Consciously made that decision. So I couldn't understand why I'd found myself in all of these relationships where they were never going to commit. Mhm. I was— it was not going to happen. And, and this is what I mean about how my story impacted my choices, because I think what I was doing was choosing the wrong men, and I was enabled to do that because I had no sense of who I was. Because we, we, uh, get our blueprint or our template for how we show up in relationships comes from our relationship with our mother. And so, um, yeah, I just think it was that coalescing of, you know, this happened and this happened and that and that and that, and here I am. And, but I always thought it was because there was something wrong with me. I just, as an adult, well, I'm just not good enough, no one wants me.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 45:20
And I realize with, with your, with your wisdom and from your personal growth that it's, that's not the case at all. Just underlying beliefs that were instilled in you as a young child and from your environment.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 45:33
Yeah, yeah.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 45:35
Michelle, in your book you say once patterns become visible a restored future is possible. What do you mean by that?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 45:45
So, you know, I, I think it's like a jigsaw puzzle. It's like, you know, once you can complete the jigsaw puzzle as best you can, you see the picture, you know, you see what it is that the puzzle pieces have been leading you to. So, and that's what it's been like for me, is putting all the pieces together. And so I've been able to move from that person who just always felt not good enough, not worthy enough. I never realized the success that I think I was capable of. And so now I can see what that means. And I— so the restored future is, well, okay, I'm, I'm not— I— children aren't going to be my legacy. I'm not, I'm not creating some fantastic humans to go out and take on the world. How can I restore some kind of legacy?
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 46:45
Mm-hmm.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 46:45
And I've done that in a couple of ways. The first thing I did was after my brother died, I had his ashes brought back to the Garden of Memory where his parents, my parents, our parents are. I kind of closed that circle.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 47:05
Mhm.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 47:06
His ashes are now in a garden of memory with his mother, father, aunt, uncle, and maternal grandparents. Mhm. And doing that was really healing. Like, it was a real level of closing a circle, closing that gap, healing that, that part that was missing in the family system. Like plugging that back, if you like. Um, so that was— that's been one thing that has been, uh, really, really powerful. And prior to that, I— oh well, I don't want to go down another track, but when I found out my brother was still alive, um, the his— I went to his funeral and the carer said, would you like some photos? And I, I was just looking, looking, looking for a resemblance, a family resemblance. And there's one photo where I, I can see this man who I'd never seen before, and clearly has Down syndrome, but I could see a glimmer of my father. Photo. And so I now have that photo when I come in the front door. There's a photo of my brother and my parents as younger. Yeah, not as they were then. And me as in, in my mother's arms. And I see that every day. Could not have done that at all before this, but I see it every day and it reminds me that, that there is a family that I belonged to.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 48:56
Yes, yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 48:58
Um, because there's this, this lack of belonging has been really something that's kept me very, um, alone, that sense of aloneness almost.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 49:13
Yeah. Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 49:14
Um, but now I kind of, you know, I'm restoring that by— I have some very good friends who I consider family. I'm kind of reshaping what family means. And therefore, you know, you, you see yourself through the eyes of others, don't you? And, and so I can see myself as a, a giving family member. Yes, rather than wonderful, other than sitting on it like a black sheep. Like, I seriously felt like a black sheep for most of my life, sitting on the outside.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 49:51
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 49:52
And being—
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 49:53
sense of belonging is anchoring, isn't it? You feel anchored when you're, you're part of a family, of whatever that looks like. Absolutely. Group.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 50:02
Yeah, yeah, absolutely it does. Mm.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 50:07
Michelle, how has the healing of your abandonment wound— how has that changed your relationships now?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 50:14
Oh, look, I think it is that part about being able to, um, uh, show up as more authentic, can I say, which is a very overused word. And if you'd asked me 20 years ago if I thought I was showing up authentically, I would have said, oh yes, absolutely I am. But I wasn't because I didn't live home, and I was hiding who I was. You know, I created, uh, I created and collated a very professional image that I— yeah, very capable, very competent, but don't come to me.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 50:54
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 50:56
And I, I show up in a very different way now.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 50:59
Yes, because you know who you are. You have the sense of, I know who I am.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 51:04
I know I am enough, that I am enough. Yes, yes. I stopped, you know, I stopped deflecting, um, with my— in, in, in my professional world, well, in every world, I, I was very good at— if someone said, how was your weekend? I'd say, terrific, how was yours? Tell me about what you did. So that I didn't have to answer the question, right? There wasn't much to tell, and I didn't want people to know that I was alone because I felt judgment.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 51:41
Yes, yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 51:42
Now I don't feel the judgment. Now I think, well, look, despite all of this, you know, I'm doing okay.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 51:50
Yeah, wonderful.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 51:51
Oh, self-acceptance, self-compassion, self-love. Of love.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 51:57
Yeah, yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 51:58
And look, you know, none of this happens overnight. Yes, none of it happens overnight. And there are times when I still, you know, like when I sense that I'm not being told the whole story, someone's not telling me something, it is still a trigger, right? Okay, still a trigger, but I know exactly what's going on now. And I'm able to kind of go, okay, you know, that gut feeling that I just had and that feeling of anger or that feeling of disappointment, okay, now I know what it is. It's not that person. Yes, it's the past.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 52:41
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 52:42
Um, so I, I'm able to bounce back a lot quicker.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 52:47
Yeah, self-regulation.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 52:48
I can see it self-regulate. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 52:52
Michelle, for those in the audience sensing that they may have some unhealed generational trauma in their family, what's the first step you would advise them or suggest they would do if they have a real sense of that?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 53:07
They may have a sense of a recurring fear. They may never have told anybody, but they may never be thinking about it every day, but it's kind of there. And so that's what plays out in a repeated pattern.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 53:25
Mm-hmm.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 53:27
So if they have a sense of that, I would suggest that starting with a family tree, and not a complete family tree, we don't want everybody and everybody and everything. Yeah, just sit down with a piece of paper, put yourself in the middle. Yeah, put any siblings before you and after you.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 53:50
Mhm.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 53:51
You put your parents and any siblings and then their parents. That's all we want. And then start asking questions like Were there any miscarriages? Were there any stillborn children? Was, you know, there, there are a whole bunch of safe questions like, well, did anybody go to war? Did anybody in this diagram lose a lot of money?
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 54:23
Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 54:24
Um, did anybody— was anyone in a car accident or a dreadful fire where someone lost their life? So you just start looking at it, imagining it like you were piecing together a movie of your story so you can detach from that a bit. Yeah, wouldn't often—
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 54:41
would be difficult to find that information when previous generations have, have died. Is there a way of uncovering family history?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 54:53
Well, you can do like— well, so in order to prove some stuff for myself, I had a— I did a DNA test.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 55:02
Mhm.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 55:04
And, uh, some folks that have read Hush have done that and have let me know that they've found family members that they didn't know about. But healing is possible here even when we don't have all the pieces.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 55:20
Okay.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 55:21
And so it's not really that critical that we find everything out. Because what we're ultimately looking for are the themes. Yeah, we're not looking for— we're not looking for all these detailed stories. Yes, we're just looking for themes. Yeah, because what happens is this repetition of things, like I talked about the abandoned boys. Um, so it can be stuff as simple as, are you named after a grandmother or a, a mother or an aunt? Um, do you share the same birthday? Have there been things happening like, um, like I talked about my father and his father and my brother all dying at a similar age? Now I know you said, but what happens when you don't know? And I didn't know, but, but I knew you, you can just start piecing some of those pieces together. Mhm. But if you can't—
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 56:26
detective work—
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 56:28
you, you do become a detective.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 56:29
Mhm.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 56:30
Absolutely you do. And you know what, this is really weird, I had no interest in genealogy and I really didn't know where to start and, and I didn't feel like I needed to. And then a girl that I'd been to school with that I hadn't seen forever saw my TED Talk and emailed me. And as it happens, she has a real passion for genealogy.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 56:59
Wonderful.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 56:59
Just random, it was. And it was she that, um, started digging around in archives, New Zealand archives, and was able to track down these boys.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 57:13
Mm.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 57:14
So you never know when you start talking to people, when you start sharing what you're doing.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 57:20
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 57:21
And if you, if you use ancestry.com for your DNA test, uh, that's one of the largest, you know, the biggest databases in the world now.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 57:32
Yeah.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 57:32
Which is constantly being updated. And look, you know, if you— once you shake the family tree You can never be sure what will fall out. However, um, those bits and pieces can be quite interesting. And if that's all too much, then you come back and you work with that recurring— because so my recurring fear was— and I didn't know that that's what it was until I was asked to name it— but the thing that I kept thinking was you know, when I die, no one's going to remember who I was. No one's going to know who I was, and it's just like I'd never existed.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 58:15
Michelle, is that partly why you wrote your book Hush?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 58:18
Yes, it's legacy. It's legacy, absolutely. A legacy, not for a purpose though.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 58:26
Yes, yes, yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 58:28
And so it's a legacy in that I dedicated it to my mother And its publication date was Mother's Day, because for as long as— since my mother had died, which was 25 years or so, I found Mother's Day absolutely intolerable, really.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 58:50
Right.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 58:50
I couldn't do it, you know. And people would say, oh, what are you doing for Mother's Day? And how did you spend Mother's Day? And I'd be like, yes. And so Hush was birthed on Mother's Day. Dedicated to my mother. And so when I think about Hush now, I think about— my hope is that people read it, yeah, and are encouraged to deal with that unconscious self stuff themselves. Because what happens when there's intergenerational trauma and attachment trauma, breaking the bond with the mother is that things start to show up and go wrong in our relationships, our relationships with money, work, and health. And so we can do a lot around resolving issues in those four areas by, by taking a closer look at our family with a different lens. And I want to give people the opportunity to become familiar with epigenetics. Yes, familiar with some of the questions to ask within the family so that it— you just can start rewriting your story. Yes, don't need to get stuck. You can get unstuck.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 1:00:18
Yes, you can get unstuck.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 1:00:20
Get unstuck.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 1:00:21
Yeah. Michelle, from your own journey, what is your— the key insight about identity and belonging that you'd like to leave with our audience?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 1:00:32
What really strikes me is now that realization that we really truly are unique. Everyone's story is unique. Even siblings in the one family have had a different experience of growing up. Family.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 1:00:53
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 1:00:54
And in a world that is constantly asking us to, you know, what, to focus on ourselves, and in business you're asked to bring your unique self to the, you know, to, to your client or your customer, um, to always think about, um, how special you are. And, you know, that's what self-love is all about. But for me, identity, you know, that DNA recipe— no one has our recipe, nobody. And so whilst within that recipe there's the, the identity story that is marked by some sort of trauma, possibly, it's also marked by our gifts. Yes, and that intersection— I'm all about intersections. So when I think about it, when I think about my, my father's courage, yes, to leave and come to Australia and then be thrown in an internment camp as a person of no, you know, what do you call it, no state, no legal state, and, um, be bullied beaten. He had a nervous breakdown. Um, this was all in the documents. Yeah, but I think about— he survived all of that. Yes, yes. And he went on to make a life. Um, and he would say that, you know, he never spoke German because he's in Australia now. He's married an Australian. And my wife and my child speak English. That's what courage, bravery, resilience.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 1:02:40
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 1:02:41
And, or, you know, my mother— I can see that my mother, um, had a, a, a break in the bond with her mother and her mother with her mother. So that, you know, she inherited that. I didn't inherit that. And so my identity is forged by all of these different things. Now, no other person has that recipe. No, but we all have our gifts and we all employ our gifts in a different way. And, and so it becomes elements of our, our identity. And when we just spoke about legacy, my identity externally now is about being the person who's, who's shining the light on. And by the way, it's, it's really way more accepted in Europe than it is in Australia, this whole body of work. Um, so I think that's, that's one thing. And I think the, the thing is we assume that our, our identity is that kind of that, that genetic code that we are born with. And so in terms of nature versus nurture, I would say it's both. Our identity is the intersection of both.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 1:04:02
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 1:04:03
And it's everything below the line that we don't pay attention to. That's probably more than 3 things, but it's 2 things in a lot of detail.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 1:04:13
Yes. And Michelle, I love the way that you refer to the, the strengths that— and, and the gifts you, you've inherited from the previous generations, not just the, the emotional deprivation and the abandonment and the, the, the unwanted things, but there's also gifts that you inherited through your family.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 1:04:33
Yeah, absolutely. And I couldn't have looked after Chris, and I couldn't have granted Chris his last wish if I didn't have that internal, um, what do you call it, you know, um, resolution and capacity.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 1:04:49
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 1:04:50
To push through something that was really difficult, but for the sake of someone else. I, I— where did I get that from? You know, so that's— yes. And, and we do, we all have our own set of gifts.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 1:05:04
Yes.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 1:05:05
We just don't always see it.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 1:05:08
Yeah. And finally, Michelle, where can people find your book and contact you if they would like some help with their, with their own discovery of their, their genetics and their background?
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 1:05:22
The easiest thing is to jump onto Amazon, quite frankly, uh, and, um, and look for Hush and my name, or Booktopia. And, uh, internationally, that's the international Amazon site and Barnes Noble in the US. Um, but my website is simply michelleshibner.com. Or oneworld.com. Okay, and there are links to buying the book there, and you can go on to the tab that says Contact Michelle and send me an email, or you can find me on Instagram at the_identity_activator, and again, that link is on my website. So you can just hit the little Instagram link or the LinkedIn link, okay, on the website, and you can contact me.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 1:06:19
Wonderful.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 1:06:20
Now I would love to hear from anybody who reads Hush and has an aha moment.
Michelle Scheibner (Guest) · 1:06:27
Wonderful. Michelle, thank you very much for sharing your story and, and your wisdom. It's been fascinating. Thank you.
Natalie Stockdale (Host) · 1:06:38
Thank you for listening to this episode of Kintsugi Heroes. Thank you to Colin Lilly for permission to use Broken as our theme music for this series. If you enjoyed this conversation, share the podcast with a friend and let us know by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to support support Kintsugi Heroes and the stories we share, head to kintsugiheroes.com.au and follow the instructions to make a tax-deductible donation. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.
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