Jo reconnects with their friend, Kristin, who took them in as a homeless teenager after Jo was removed from Donna’s care due to her alcoholism. As a young mother in the midst of her own difficult situation, Kristin’s relationship with Jo had its challenges, but as they recount their time together, it’s a healing and clarifying moment for both of them. Jo continues on their rocky road to freedom from their mother’s clutches as they look for help from the medical community outside their mother’s influence. *A warning for listeners this episode does contain descriptions of disordered eating. Please take care. *** Links/Resources: Preorder Andrea's new book The Mother Next Door: Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy Click here to view our sponsors. Remember that using our codes helps advertisers know you’re listening and helps us keep making the show! Subscribe on YouTube where we have full episodes and lots of bonus content. Follow Andrea on Instagram for behind-the-scenes photos: @andreadunlop Buy Andrea's books here. To support the show, go to Patreon.com/NobodyShouldBelieveMe or subscribe on Apple Podcasts where you can get all episodes early and ad-free and access exclusive bonus content. For more information and resources on Munchausen by Proxy, please visit MunchausenSupport.com The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children’s MBP Practice Guidelines can be downloaded here. National Eating Disorders Resources: https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/get-help/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This episode contains descriptions of disordered eating, so please take care.
Resources are available in the show notes the strangeness of what was happening with my sister hit me little by little and then all at once, because, of course, these behaviors of hers with deception and medical issues went back quite a ways.
We both moved out of the house for college when we turned 18.
And, you know, I went to California for college and then went to New York for the rest of my twenties.
And, you know, I was just being a young person and living my own life, and she was on the other side of the country.
Our family really stayed close throughout most of that time, even though there was this sort of escalating series of strange things, which was really exemplified by the fake pregnancy that she had when she and I were both in our twenties.
You know, you would think that that would have been enough.
That's a situation that I look back and think, like, how could you note, have understood how serious this was when that happened?
And I think that she just had enough sort of markers of still having a normal life at that point.
You know, she had this full time job that she, as a nurse that she'd had forever.
She still had a lot of the same friends at that point for myself and for my parents.
It was when her son was born and he was born early, and he started having this, you know, series of escalating health issues that the situation just became intolerable.
And I think when I talk to other people who are either family members or non offending spouses or survivors like Joe, we all kind of have this commonality in our experience of, like, it was our normal with the person, and it sort of seemed normal until all of a sudden it didn't.
And then you're looking back at a whole bunch of incidents that led up to that, and you suddenly see them in this very dramatic new light.
And I think for someone who's outside listening to this experience, it's easy to say, how could you not know something was wrong?
What about this?
What about that?
And you don't realize how entrenched you are in that person's world when you're close to them.
And I think that's obviously extremely potent for survivors because that's their parent and that's sort of the person who created their whole reality when they were growing up.
One of the huge benefits from having some kind of peer support with this issue, so talking to other people who've been through cases is that you feel this relief that you're not crazy.