Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello, and welcome to what's your story?
Threads of human experience, a podcast of perspectives that weaves past, present, and future.
I'm your host, Julie Patton, and in this episode, we will explore how one individual has dismantled their traumatic past to create a brighter future.
Every family has trauma. Crystal Allen is no stranger to this. After growing up with parents who survived the residential school system as a mother, she continued the chain of intergenerational trauma through emotional unavailability and toxic behavior. But when she realized her mistakes in her fifties, she started down a path of healing. Now, as she continues to heal and learn, she helps others identify the mistakes they made and begin correcting them.
Every morning at 06:00 a.m. Crystal Allen starts a TikTok live with a homemade latte in hand.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: First I started like 20 people, then 40, then 60, then like 100. And I remember when I started getting 100 people attending my TikTok lives. I'm like, wow, 100 people want to hear what I have to say.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Her channel is fifties rediscovery.
It has 127,000 followers, and it's still growing.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: You don't get to go, well, I kind of messed up with my kids, so I'm going to do better with my grandchildren. They are not a do over.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: It's where she explores the act of breaking intergenerational trauma, going no contact with parents and healing family dynamics.
She's not a licensed therapist. She's a woman with experience.
Crystals healing journey began in July 2023, when she realized she needed to make big changes if she wanted to keep her children and grandchildren in her life. She also needed to repair her relationship with her husband. However, change isn't as straightforward as people make it out to be. Crystal had a past full of trauma that needed to be dismantled if she were to overcome, persevere, and grow.
Crystal was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, to indigenous parents.
Her mother attended indian day school, so.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: I don't think I need to get into that story. Just suffice it to say that she was. She suffered a lot of abuse there, and it traumatized her horribly.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Residential schools operated in Canada from 1831 to 1996. The last school to close was the Gordon Indian residential school in Saskatchewan. Although Crystal never attended, the lasting effects on her parents seeped into her life.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: I don't remember my parents being around most of my childhood, like we were just on our own. Go and play outside till the streetlights come on. We don't want to see you.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Research shows that trauma from historical events are collective, affecting not only individual survivors, but their families and communities. The trauma and lasting effects of residential schools not only affect mental and spiritual health, but physical health too.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Both of my parents are good people. They were just really hurt. They were just traumatized, right. And so they were in survival mode their whole life.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: Crystal is a middle child with brothers on either side and she was daddy's girl. However, she remembers her father leaving a lot. Going out to play pool with the guys could take two weeks or two months.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: My mother put up with this for quite a few years until I was probably, I think I was just about seven years old and I remember her standing at the back door with her arms crossed and my dad's standing at the door and she said to him, nope, you're not coming back. We're done, we're done.
I don't know why. It's interesting because my dad left a lot and that's the only time I remember him leaving.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: From then on, Crystal remembers poverty. While her mother struggled and went on welfare, Crystal's father worked and started a new family. Crystal was already afraid of abandonment, but her perception of men warped further when she was sexually abused at 911 and.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: Again at 13, I became totally boy crazy. I thought my happiness was going to lie in a man. I was like, just find yourself a man and you'll be happy.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: A year later, at 14, she met her first husband.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: By August I was pregnant so I knew that I was going to be sexually active. I could feel it coming only because I thought that was the only way that he was going to stay with me. I thought he was going to love me that way.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: Right after giving birth to her first daughter at 15, she fell pregnant with a second daughter. This time her mother and boyfriends parents were adamant that they marry.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: So we got married by a justice of the peace and then my husband was stationed here in Calgary because he was in the armed forces and we moved here. And so by the time I was 16, I was married with two kids, living 8 hours away from anybody.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: After being married for two and a half years, Crystal's husband told her he wanted a divorce. With that, she lost her girls.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: I had no family, I had no job, I had no education, I had nowhere to live. I was homeless. So I tried to, I did try to get a lawyer and the lawyer told me I didn't have a pot to piss in.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Crystal slowly repaired her life. She got a part time job at Wendy's and finished her high school diploma. She then went on to college to become a paralegal. And although her life was gaining stability, Crystal didn't pursue custody of her girls.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: I couldn't rip them out of the home that they came to love just to make myself feel better. I just wanted them to be happy.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Yet Crystal was a mother without a child, which led her to having her oldest son.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Horrible, horrible, horrible reason to have a child. Don't ever do it. I don't recommend it.
Not because I regret my oldest son, but because I was doing it to fill a void in me.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: After having her oldest son, Crystal met her second husband, who she had her youngest son with. She had a new family, two boys and a husband to patch the holes of her past. But what Crystal had hoped to be a fresh start was the opposite.
Both Crystal and her second husband were unfaithful to each other, and her oldest son was treated unfairly by his stepfather.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: And that's probably another one of my biggest regrets in my life, is that my oldest son was allowed to be hurt by someone that I loved, and I didn't protect him as well as I could have, you know? And then after we'd been together about 17 years, he came home, and he said, one day, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm like, what do you mean, you don't want to do this anymore? And he says, well, I don't want to be married anymore. I'm, like, very confused, because at that point, we'd been trying to repair the relationship for about five years, and I thought we were doing okay.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: After Crystal's husband left, she spun into a deep depression.
She began abusing alcohol and drugs to cope with the abandonment. She also relied on her youngest son, who was 15, for emotional support.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: And so he saw his mother fall apart. He felt responsible for my emotions, and he said that he would come into my bedroom every hour on the hour to see if I was breathing. And I had no idea what that was doing to him, but I leaned on him, and it should have been the other way around. I should have been there for him. His parents were getting divorced.
He had a lot that he was supposed to be dealing with, and instead of dealing with his emotions, he was babysitting me.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: Six months after her second marriage ended, Crystal met her present husband. But they were both suffering, and together relied on alcohol to cope with their broken realities.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: So July 29 of last year, my husband and I had another blowout. And because he's an avoidant and I'm anxious, he runs and I chase. So I started chasing him. Well, I didn't chase him, but he walked out the door. And that triggered once again, that abandonment issue that has haunted me my entire life. Don't leave me. Please don't abandon me. Love me. And something happened in my head, and I'll never forget it. This voice came into my head and said, crystal, you need to fix this, or he's gonna leave, and you're gonna kill yourself. You won't survive it.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: As Crystal had this revelation, she called her oldest daughter.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: I said to her, I don't have to do this anymore, do I? And I wasn't talking about the marriage. I was talking about how I was living my life. She goes, no, you don't, mom. And I said, I can fix this, can't I? She goes, yes, you can.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: Crystal knew her problem wasn't addiction. She had been to rehab. She had shaken addiction before.
What she needed was to heal the trauma inside.
Western medicine neglects indigenous approaches to wellness, which many scholars argue make mental well being worse. For indigenous people, they value holism, relationality, spirituality, and connection to the natural world. A holistic approach that worked for crystal was EMdR, which is a rapid eye.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Movement thing, and it's like a ball that goes around on a screen, back and forth.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: By integrating emotional, sensory, and physiological elements, EMdr can lead to more comprehensive healing.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: And the first time I did it, I was like, what the hell is this gonna do? This is. And be damned if I didn't start to open up and see things. And I'm like, what's happening to me? Why am I having these little light bulb epiphany moments? I deconstructed from all of these oppressive systems, and I recognized I don't have to live under these systems. I can make my own life. I can make my own rules. I don't have to live to be a perfect wife and mother. There's more to me than that. But I didn't know what.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: In addition to trauma therapy, crystal began plant medicine and connected with her indigenous culture.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: So I started. I actually started smudging. I started connecting with my ancestors internally. I started trying to figure out what my spirituality was. I went on three plant medicine journeys, and the plant medicine journeys have been incredibly helpful.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: In a 2023 study, it was found the most effective therapies for indigenous people fell under two major tailoring therapy to cultural preferences and augmenting therapy with indigenous traditions. By connecting therapy and culture, crystal started healing. However, she found the most effective therapy was sharing her story.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: This is all part of the biggest trauma of my life. I don't even know what video I'm on anymore. I don't know what part? I started recording TikTok videos and being very vulnerable.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: Crystal had downloaded TikTok during the pandemic and began making videos about herself. Often, she'd share a story and be called out for her toxic behavior by her followers. However, after her July 29 rebirth, she opened up and leaned into the vulnerability.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: I did a video called call to arms. Ladies, I think I'm in an abusive relationship. Help. And holy frick, that thing went viral, and I immediately took it. I got so scared, I took it down and went private. And a few times I've done that. In the beginning.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: As Crystal would share stories from her past, she would share words of wisdom, telling her followers what she had learned. Soon, she found a topic that resonated between her and her followers. Estrangement.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Because I went low contact with my mom, because of the trauma, because I needed some space to heal, because my mom triggered me a lot.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: Just like Crystal needed space from her own mother, her youngest son needed space from her.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: I called my son. Apparently, I don't remember this.
I called my son in a drunken stupor and asked him to come rescue me.
And when he got here with his very pregnant wife, I think she was very pregnant at the time. He couldn't wake me because I had combined alcohol and benzodiazepines. So he couldn't wake me. He could see I was breathing, and I was fine, but he couldn't wake me. And shortly after that, he sent me a text and said, mama, I don't want to expose my children to this.
I don't want them to have this kind of inconsistency. You need to get help, and if you don't get help, I'm gonna have to go. No contact.
And my world crumbled.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: While Crystal continues to heal, she continues to repair her relationship with all four of her children. And as she shares her story online, she takes accountability for her past actions.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: I've had estranged parents attack me to say, oh, these kids are so entitled. They're so spoiled. We gave them everything. I'm like, I gave my kids everything. They had a good house. We had a home.
I made them lunches. I did it all. But I wasn't emotionally available to my kids, and I wasn't emotionally in tuned with my kids, so does it matter how much I gave them?
[00:15:09] Speaker A: By sharing each lesson she learns, Crystal hopes she can help adults with estranged children identify their mistakes. With her experience of going no contact with her own mother, she helps estranged children feel seen in their experiences.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: And so many parents have a very hard time taking on and acknowledging what happened to their children. And I'm a firm believer that if we're going to stop intergenerational trauma, somebody's got to draw the line in the sand. Somebody has to say, it stops with me.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: As Crystal's online words set with people across the globe, she found more and more of her followers asking if she was a therapist. So in December 2023, Crystal got her life coach certificate. And in January, she started taking clients through TikTok.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: So I work with both. Anybody who's got I work. I specialize in intergenerational trauma and in addiction because I believe our system in this world for treatment and recovery for addiction is broken.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: As a life coach, Crystal's job is to help people down the path of recovery and healing.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Cause I'll say to people, where are we starting from and where do you want to end? What's your goal? And then I'll say to them, we're gonna go on a path, but it's your path, not mine. So I'm just gonna put on a backpack of tools and a flashlight and I'm gonna walk with you down this path of yours and show you a couple of different ways. And we're gonna pull out tools whenever you need them. And you're gonna say, nope, that's not working for me. But that is to help sever the.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: Chain of intergenerational trauma for good. Crystal is ensuring her children have the correct resources to heal. Thankfully, through class action lawsuits against residential schools and indian day schools, family members and survivors qualify for 60 trauma therapy sessions.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: I found that resource and set it up so that everyone in my family, when they're ready, they have trauma therapy available to them.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Crystal's children respect her healing journey and her need to share her story, but they also have their own healing to do. While Crystal wants to share, they want to stay private.
Crystal and her husband are currently listing their Calgary home for sale and her husband is beginning therapy.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Yeah, when we sell this house here in Calgary, we're definitely going to be closing a chapter. We've lived here for a long time. My husband's lived here for 20 years and I've lived here for 13 and we've experienced a lot here. But there's some bad juju here too, as well. And I think we're ready to retire up in Cold Lake and just enjoy our time together and connect and reconnect and build this relationship that we kind of tore to the ground for a while. We're both committed to making it work and we love each other very much.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: At 57, Crystal's life has restarted. She's a new woman with new ideals, but there's still more work to do.
She is still healing her family, and she's changing her ways as a mother and wife, and she's learning how to live with her trauma.
But more than that, while she navigates her own healing, she helps others.
You've been listening to what's your story?
Threads of human experience.
I'm Julie Patten, and special thanks to Crystal Allen.
This series was produced in Mokistes, also known as Calgary, the ancestral lands of the Nitsitopi, Yahe, Nakoda, Sutina, and Metis peoples.
This series is a part of the Community podcast initiative based out of Mount Royal University, where we are grateful for the opportunity to create, learn, and grow.
As our stories intersect, we see value and importance in learning about the people and places where our lives unravel and recognize in our responsibility to decolonize our media practice.
Be sure to subscribe to what's your story wherever you get your podcast to pull more threads and discover new stories.
