Episode 66 - Grieving a Friend Who Betrayed You
INTRO: Hi, friends. Today, I talked to Alex Kuisis about the complicated and messy grief that can come after an ex-friend's death. In her case, the death of a friend who has majorly betrayed her, falsely accusing her of seven felonies she did not commit, which she details in her memoir, Truth Matters, Love Wins.
Alex describes the complex tangle of feelings that came with this kind of loss, and how she chooses to focus on the happy memories rather than the bad. I want to mention too that grieving a former friend, ex-friend, distanced friend, however you want to call it, can look a million different ways. Alex's experience might be very different from yours, and both are valid. We all grieve in different colors and shades. It's the beauty of the universality, and also the complexity of the human experience. Thanks so much for listening.
ALEX: I don't think there's like a right way to feel about it. It's not like I'm trying to get to a place of something with it. I guess acceptance would be what we all kind of want in the grieving process. It's just getting to a place of like, we can't change it. I don't know, I guess whatever flavor it has, someone you deeply are in love with, someone you care about with every fiber of your being, someone in your everyday life, or someone like I was saying, a former best friend who has betrayed you, who is you are not, that you don't have presences in each other's life anymore. And then you hear word that this person has untimely passed away.
And there's this like, just a really odd combination of feeling, because it's sad. And so there's a sadness, and there is a sense of a loss. But that person's one of the, it has seemed, it had seemed as though that person's like, one of their main focuses in life was like you, Alex, you. And so hearing about that person leaving, there was also a sense of relief.
HANNAH: Yeah, because they're not—
ALEX: Oh my god, I'm free from that now. Like that's not something hanging out there, niggling like when are they going to float back into my world? You know, my gosh, knowing that in the past there's been ill will that has caused them to enter into my world. Yeah. So it's just a really, it's an odd flavor. It's an odd flavor and trying—I mean, I'm not trying to talk in like vague, cloaked, whatever it's, you know, I wrote a book about a legal situation that I had been in. And a former best friend's daughter, who I loved like a daughter, falsely accused me of felony crimes. It's that former best friend who died.
HANNAH: Oh my gosh.
ALEX: It was Ivy, the mother figure, not the person, not the girl who accused me, right? That's Loretta, the daughter, but the mom who I was besties with, you know, for a time there.
HANNAH: Oh my gosh. I can only imagine the complicated feelings that must be happening.
ALEX: Yeah. And I found out belatedly that it had happened. So she had passed months before. I want to say she died in June of 22. And I found out in September of 22.
HANNAH: Okay.
ALEX: And again, just was not expecting, you know, Yeah. it's and then I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. And it really just has been, I mean, it kind of rocked me. And even in the moment of finding out, there was like a, like, much like I'm sure it is similar anytime you find out news like that about someone you know, you know what I mean? And like the earth kind of just shifts, everything changes ever so slightly. Yeah.
And it was one of those moments where I just was like, whoa, not quite sure what to do with this. Like this information doesn't fit in my brain. And then I just started crying. Like without having a realization of like, oh, oh, I'm processing some feelings and I'm having some emotional reaction. I just, my body was just like, and I just had tears rolling down my face and like kind of a sick feeling in my stomach.
And I, you know, as I tried to, as I did, share this nugget of information with like my sister and my husband, like people close to me, who obviously knew who I was talking about and we're very familiar with the entire story, if not the actual human being that I was referring to. And some of some of those reactions were sort of like, isn't that too bad? I'm not sharing your grieving.
They were in like a, why would I care? You know, we're like, huh, well, isn't that interesting karma? Or, you know, kind of mentality. And I had shards of that, not the why would I care? For some reason, I really, really cared and it made super sense to me why I cared.
HANNAH: Of course. Yeah.
ALEX: That wasn't, I wouldn't, I didn't question that. But there was that like relief and that karma bit and that kind of like push and pull of like, isn't that fascinating? Just from a almost objective viewpoint. That woman, Ivy, just in brief, had in part used a, you know, she ruined, in effect, my relationship with her children.
For unnecessarily, right? Like the piece that we also were fighting over was of falseness. Like it was an, there was an, it was a, the fight didn't have to happen. And part of the dissolution of what happened before the legal situation, like part of the dissolving of the friendship.
Was Ivy telling her children that I had smoked pot. Okay. That was like the story that fundamentally dissolved because the kids were like, what? And it was legal in Colorado and the whole thing, right? But they had, it was an afternoon at their house, they smelled it from the neighbors. The kids were like, oh, that's terrible.
And Ivy said, well, you know, Alex does that. And the kids were like, what? And it changed everything. And I was like, why would you have told them that? And then it became like this ugly thing, right? Ivy died of lung cancer. Never having smoked in her life. Yeah. So there was this weird, like, isn't that, again, fascinating, not in like a wow, cool kind of way, but in a whoa, huh? It just kind of like kind of twisted, like it's a coincidence. Like that feels so weird.
I don't know if irony is the right word or karma is something that, but it was, there were ugly intentions on their side. There was not an approach to me in a sense of we need resolution. We need to find peace. We need to find out what happened. When they came at me, it was with the police through the judicial system for just outlandish accusation.
There was no like goodwill. It wasn't in good faith. And the system doesn't allow for good faith either. So once we were in, it's just, as I mentioned in the book, guilty until proven innocent kind of thing. And there was just never any indication from their side that they were like, Oh God, this kind of got out of hand.
Why don't we sit down and figure out what happened here? Yeah. No, none of it. And then just again, the irony of within five years.
HANNAH: Five years. Wow.
ALEX: Within five years. I mean, we ended the case ended at the end of 2018. I wrote my book. I published April of 21. Once I learned this information that she had passed, believe you me, I went deep diving into the internet. I was like, what can I find out? I found her Caring Bridge site. It's no obituary. There's no obituary anywhere, but I found information. And so I know that the month I published my book is the month she got diagnosed.
HANNAH: What? I know that it doesn't work like this, but I'm just curious. Did she know about the book at all, or were you very disconnected from her?
ALEX: Well, it's a great question. Yeah. We are very disconnected as far as I know. However, there are people in my realm of friends who take it upon themselves, and I write about this in the book. To check in on the people from that family every now and again on social media. They keep an eye.
That's how I found this out. I actually found out that Ivy was sick because one of my friends found out from Ivy's Instagram and said, I didn't know Ivy was sick. And I said, I didn't know Ivy was sick. What do you mean Ivy's sick? Oh, I think she has cancer. I said, well, isn't that too bad? Genuinely, isn't that too bad? And I left it alone. I found that piece of information out.
I went on to Ivy's Instagram a couple days after that, saw the post that my friend had been talking about, and then scrolled back in Ivy Speed. And Ivy Speed over the years of entanglement had gone from being public to being private many, many times, back and forth. It was public at this stage when I was looking.
And I was scrolling back to like during the trial and things like that, just going backwards, seeing things she had posted, things she had said about me. And I came across a post that she posted the day that my husband and I left Colorado to move to Tennessee. And it was a picture, the square on her grid was a picture of the Wicked Witch of the West, her feet with the ruby slippers on it, that scene from Wizard of Oz when she's under the, she gets killed and just the ruby slippers are showing.
It was that scene. And what Ivy had written was something to the effect of, okay, maybe not dead, but at least she's leaving Colorado. Sorry, not sorry, sorry, not sorry, Tennessee is what it said. The day my husband and I left. And I was like, huh.
HANNAH: Was this before or after the trial?
ALEX: After. This was April of 2020. We moved here to Tennessee. Yeah, so I was like, oh, look at that. And now that was the post, was April of 2020. I was seeing it October of 21. Cause I had been in Chicago for a work event and then in October of 21. And then my husband and I had gone to Wisconsin where I'm from the weekend after. So we're like, we're all up in the Midwest kind of thing. And that, so that's the weekend that I found out, oh, she's sick. Oh, I didn't know. And I looked.
So that was a year and a half maybe afterwards that I saw that Wicked Witch of the West Post. And so I thought, oh, so she has eyes on me too, right? Like she like, they're, they knew things. So I feel confident. My book on Amazon has like 120 some reviews and most of them 100, just over 100 are five-star. But I also have a couple of one-star reviews.
And so that makes me think that Ivy and people in her camp have read the book because the one star reviews don't have any words to them. It's just a one star review. And I'm open to it one star, if you're like, this is not for me. The writing was this, the story line was that. Like you have your opinions, that's fine.
But if it's just a one-star review in a book like this, I just, it's so easy for me to write them off. You know, they don't say anything. It's like, oh, those are people from the other side. So I do think Ivy knew about the book at the very least, because she knew I was moving to Tennessee, and I had certainly hadn't shared that with her. And yeah, I think she read it, but I don't think it changed anything for her. Like, I certainly, and maybe that was just a matter of prioritization at that time.
She had bigger fish to fry than, you know, my stupid opinions or whatever about a situation, because she was, I mean, frankly, dying. So she had a perspective. She, like I said, got diagnosed in April of 21, which is the month that I published, shared it in October of 21. And that's the post I saw that my friend had seen. And then she passed June of 22. So it was pretty quick.
All things, I mean, about a year, a year and change, all things considered. But again, it's just like the irony of blowing up a friendship that your daughter's shared with someone who's like an aunt, who's like a godmother, who cared like deeply for them, a mother figure, right? A mother figure, blow it up, and now she's gone. And those kids don't have a mother. And it's heartbreaking. And they also don't have a mother figure.
I mean, they have other people who love them, don't get me wrong. It's not like they're out there wandering this, you know, whatever, what have you, but they could have, would have, would have, had just another really major support in their life had, yeah, just that all that ugliness not happened. So all that kind of is to say, grieving a past friend is a really complicated road.
HANNAH: Especially if they did you a huge, huge betrayal in which your life was blown up for like a couple years, and you almost go to prison.
ALEX: Right. Right.
HANNAH: I can't, I mean, it just feels like this huge dark cloud of darkness. I don't know.
ALEX: To wade through. Yeah, it's confusing. It's confusing because it's, you know, automatically, right? We do not speak ill of the dead. Like that is just like etiquette 101 kind of thing. And not that I've made a habit out of going around speaking ill of Ivy. But I definitely have, you know, talking about this book.
They read my book in book clubs and invite me to come be part of it. I've done that a handful of times, et cetera. So I'm talking, you know, I'm talking about the book. I'm talking about the friendship with Ivy. Ergo, I am talking about someone who is, has passed now. And I'm not always, not always like, yeah, I know, but gosh, you know, she was just being human.
Like she was a jerk. Yeah, there were, you know. And so just trying to reconcile all of that and having, really coming to a place of having a deep appreciation, like almost tipping my hat to her.
So this is where I kind of landed. This is the other thing, Hannah, that I had mentioned in the email, hearing this idea that when human beings transition, when they cross over to whatever comes next, and it was the afterlife, after this life, whatever that looks like, there's this notion that, well, once you cross over, the idea is you have, you know everything. There is to know, right?
Your questions are answered. Everything makes sense to a degree. Like the things that we're limited to by our humanness, all that goes away when just our soul is left. So there's that, there's that piece of this. Then there's the additional idea that with this knowing, this capital N or capital K knowing, you see where your human form got it wrong, right? You understand like, oh, that, you know, all of this is to say when Ivy crossed over, in theory, she understood that I was telling the truth.
She had full awareness of like, oh, I got that one wrong when I was on earth. Sometimes when souls realize there are those, and not just like, oh, she or her car really did die, that's why she was late, you know, like that was, this was a major, like you said, blew up someone's life.
Created major trauma and major consequences. So yeah, these are these like huge transgressions I'm talking about. Oops, I was wrong. Oops, she was innocent. She is innocent. I'm going to make amends. Souls sometimes try and make amends from the other side. So there's this notion that you can look for ways that the recently deceased, it's the same, you know, are reaching back.
HANNAH: Like signs.
ALEX: Yes, exactly. And so it's the same difference as if someone you super duper love and you're like, grandpa, please send me, you know, a sign that you're, and then there comes a crow just like grandpa used to. So it's still, it's a sign from someone who's passed.
It's just the different flavor of it is when someone who's passed, who's wronged you, they will sometimes try and offer an apology, essentially. And so I had a working familiarity with this notion already. And then when Ivy passed, I thought, huh, because again, pulling through these complicated emotions, trying to figure out where I felt, I had worked on getting to a place of forgiveness.
But as I'd read in, or as I'd written in the book, I had trouble. I could forgive the girls easily enough, her daughters, the sisters, because they were kids and they were trying to, but I had trouble with Ivy. And so now I had the second opportunity to kind of dive back in and say to myself, what does it look like to lead with grace here?
What does it look like to be in a place of peace? To have that as a baseline. I understand that’s not how life is all the time, but the baseline. And it was with this, as I mentioned, this tipping of the hat to Ivy to way, whoo wow, what a life you had, what a mission, what an assignment you had, to come down to this earth and live that life. I could personally consider Ivy to be something of a tragic character. Her mentality, the fixed mindset, the aversion to things being different.
She just, I hate it here, I hate living here, I'm kind of a victim of things. It just was always something. It was like a tragic, she didn't get to live where she wanted to. She didn't get to do, you know, and then it all ended kind of that way too in my eyes. It was a tragedy. And so it's the tragic figure and understanding again, like it was a soul assignment.
She came down here and I could come to a place of gratitude because how much personal growth I have been afforded because that woman was in my life. It's looked a lot of different ways and it's come from a lot of different directions. Part of it was ensconced as a best friend or as a living nanny, auntie to her kiddos, brawl in this together kind of mentality to literally being enemies, mortal enemies on either side of a court case.
How dramatic. Just all of it, all around it, and every bit of it, all those instances, all those years, all those iterations taught me about me. Everything does. We have the opportunity always to be learning about ourselves and how we interact with the world. But when we look back, right, some people just, they're richer lessons for us. We have certain people stand out as like those bigger forks in the road or whatever.
And Ivy was definitely one of those for me. Like she was, she was just there. She was there a lot. There were a lot of ins and outs and ups and downs and whatnot. And so I land, it's up to me to decide how I remember her. Right, it's up to me. I'm the one who decides which memories get real estate in my brain. Understanding that the memories that I choose to relive or replay are that going to affect how I'm feeling in this moment today, in this year. Even if those memories happened in 2016 or 2008 or 2003.
It has an effect on me here. And so I have a responsibility to myself and to my future self to curate to the best of my ability, which memories I'm going to allow to be the ones on repeat. And I'm deciding to allow the better ones to be the ones where she did come through and she'd make an apple pie and cut the apple super small because she knew that's how I liked it best.
She didn't normally make them that way, but she started to because I prefer, things like that. There were little, right? Tons of little things over the years like that. I've decided to keep kind of this running tab in my head of all the good things. And how lucky was I to have a friend like that? And then all that ugly stuff that doesn't go anywhere.
I'm not saying that didn’t happen. But I have, I wrote a book about all that stuff. Like that stuff has its place. I don’t need to relive it in my mind. Like I don’t need to carry that all around with me and be like, well, I ought to have, no no no no. Given that as place to live outside my mind. That doesn’t have to affect how I move through the world or moving forward anymore. Unless I choose for it too. So all of that is just to say that, I believe you know this about me, that I am a gigantic Swifty. I’m a big Taylor Swift Fan.
HANNAH: Oh yes, I love that.
ALEX: Yes, and Taylor Swift is in the midst of a world tour right now, her eras tour. It was in the US last year, which means the tickets went on sale in 2022, at the end of 2022. In fact they went on sale on November 15th, 2022. That’s my birthday, that’s how I remember.
Because I spent my birthday. I was like, that's like a present. Like, oh my gosh. Now, here's what else I'll mention. Fellow Swifties may know this, but other people may not. That trying to get tickets that day for the Taylor Swift era's tour was a debacle. It was a kerfuffle. It was something that Ticketmaster ended up in court over because it was such a, well, a disaster.
I mean, people were in line in these waiting room lines for up to seven to eight hours. People were getting kicked out. We're getting like tickets and going to pay. And then it's like, sorry, those are all gone. Now get back in line. It was over and over and over and over. Like every, every which way but up. They couldn't handle the demand. And so it was a scurry.
And people ended up like it went on and on. Like I said, Ticketmaster ended up in court. It was a whole thing. So people were pissed. I came out of that day with tickets to three different concerts, three different Taylor Swift concerts. That day, when people couldn't even get one. And I think that was because of Ivy.
HANNAH: Aww. That it was like an amends?
ALEX: Yes. The very first Taylor Swift show I ever went to was with Ivy, Loretta and Rose. Years ago. Years ago. I mean, I've been a Taylor Swift fan since 2006, 2005, like the beginning. And I'd loved her and I'd introduced her music to the girls.
And we'd, you know, they'd come up on Taylor Swift like they knew, and they were so excited to go to this show all these years ago. And then Taylor put out an album called Reputation, right around during my legal debacle. And so for her, it was about her kerfuffle with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, blah, blah, blah, like all these issues and problems she was having with people running her name through the and putting words in her mouth and all this stuff. And I really, really related. Like I really picked up.
HANNAH: The timing is crazy. Yeah.
ALEX: It was, it was, it really truly was. I just, I vibed with it so hard. I went to the Reputation tour during the legal debacle twice. I went in Denver and I went in Chicago. And I treated those concerts as like a, now I had one trial under my belt.
But as you may recall from reading the book, I was partially acquitted and they were going to retry the rest of the counts. So I was preparing for a second trial that was going to happen in the fall. And I went to the concerts in between the two trials.
And so these concerts were important to me. They were like a celebration of how far I had gotten through here. I loved that I was making new Taylor Swift memories without Ivy, Loretta and Rose, because they'd been so like linked to my love of the music and the singer up until that point.
So it was like a ripping away at that point. And so then now here in 2022 years later, when this Taylor Swift ticket debacle is like happening all around us, and it's just such a kerfuffle to have emerged that day and be like, I'm going to go to shows in Nashville, Minnesota and Los Angeles. I tell you, if I did, I looked right up to that sky and I said, thank you.
Thank you, Ivy. And I asked her beforehand as well. I said, you know, I've heard this thing about making amends. If you're up for it Ivy, like today's the day. And then I spent seven hours in line. It was a Tuesday. I had to do work as well. Like I was supporting a live coaching call. And on my laptop over here, I'm in Ticketmaster line, like watching.
And it was like, you're number 35,000 in line. Your weight is approximately five hours and 30 minutes. Like it was that kind of thing. We were like, okay, I'm watching it. And it's like, now you're number 18,000. Now you're number 11,000. You're just like hoping there'll be tickets, you know? The whole thing. Don't mean to harp on Taylor Swift this whole time, but it's like—It's such a, yeah, it's like a fundamental piece of this particular aspect of, you know, ask and you shall receive.
HANNAH: Yeah, and it's the whole idea of like, signs have so much to do with timing and emotional significance and the feeling you get. And like, when all those things line up, you're kind of like, I don't care if anyone else doesn't believe me. Like I 100% believe this is this person.
ALEX: And that's all it needs to be. That's all it ever needs to be, right? It's like a relationship with God. You don't have to go through a church to have it approved. Like, you know, when you're channeling. And that's, I really have come to believe more and more that we all are just little itty-bitty representations of God and our interactions with each other. That's where we find God. You know, there's like that saying where God is love. I don't think that's too wrong. Like I say, I used to laugh at that as a kid.
I used to think that was like nonsense. But as I've matured, that I don't think that's wrong. Like the love that we show each other, that's the instance of what like God is or source connection energy is. And so it's only what you decide. It has to have personal significance to you and you assign any kind of sign is meaningful because you assign it meaning. Right?
Like you decide. I have decided that when I see hearts in the world, in nature especially, it means I'm on the right track. Could a rationally minded scientific person come in and disprove that? I don't know because I can't prove it. So I don't know if they could disprove it. But they could certainly argue that that's me assigning this heart-shaped rock a meaning to say, I'm on the right track.
What does that mean? What is the other option? So yeah, it's a personal deciding. But that's what all our life is. It's like you experience what you choose to believe. That whole Taylor Swift situation really went a long way for me toward, you know, Ivy was just here on this earth doing what she could with her, you know, what she was given, what she had at her disposal, and what she chose to do with it. I get asked sometimes if you could go back and say, no, I'm not available to babysit your daughter. That very first time when that family asked me when Loretta was still six months old, would you say. No?
And I do, I think about it. I do think about it. But ultimately, you know, here we are and you can't go back and you have to just take what is. It can be a fun exercise, a fun thought exercise and a self-discovery thing too, to say like, what would I have done differently? Because then maybe that preps the pathways going forward. To make better choices.
But I don't think my wrong choice was saying, yeah, I'll babysit your kid. I don't know that I made a wrong choice. I mean, I can own like the and a half. Like I've gone through and picked apart. Like what can I own in this? Where was, where did I not show up as like an authentically good person again, and with integrity and with dignity. And there's plenty of examples of that, right? Over the years where I was a jerk too. And I still didn't deserve what happened.
HANNAH: As far as like going back and just using it as a learning experience, I'm curious if, I hate this word for it, but like red flags or even like orange flags. Not that you could have ever possibly known what would come from that, but where you're like, oh, I guess that was a little off, but I, I don't know, in the friendship or anything.
ALEX: Well, it's a great question. And yeah, I mean, just a couple of weeks ago, as I mentioned, I was a guest of honor or what have you at a local book club. And somebody brought up a kind of a question in a similar vein where she just said, God, it just struck me as like, why would Ivy be handing you all this parenting power?
Like this agency in her parenting, just, you know, you answer these questions, you handle these topics, you do this, you do that. And I found myself in this book club moment, almost wanting to defend Ivy, to be like no, no, well it wasn’t, no, like it made sense at the time. Like I needed a place to live and they were gracious enough to offer it.
And I was, I did my master's degree in early childhood education. So she wasn't wrong to be like, can I ask your input or your opinion on things? Like it, I was an expert in the field, you know, actively in the field at the time. In the moment, it didn't seem, it didn't seem as like strange as maybe it does now, looking back 20 years, going, well, but why did you even move in with them? They, well, I was emotionally bottoming out from breaking up a, you know, an engagement of a man who was like kind of stalking me.
You know, like I had my own and they were like, come, let us save you. And I was like, please do. This is hard. Like I'm not, I don't feel super safe, right? With like this man knocking on my windows at three in the morning and all this like weirdness that was happening. I mean, it was in my twenties and it was just like that ugly, the late twenties and we were just partying.
It just was not a good scene. It wasn't the me that I grew up to be. It was the me figuring out who I wanted to be. We lived away from home for like 3 or 4 years at that point. Like, we’re still finding my legs under me. Anyhow, this is just an ugly personal situation. And the timing of it all was such that they were the better choice, you know what I mean? Like, if I hadn’t gone with them, I’d been stuck trying ot deal with him. And he was definitely not a walk in the park.
And at the time, they felt like a walk in the park. They felt like the park. And so it's hard to look back and be like, oh, that moment. Now, again, I don't regret my friendship with them. To answer your question, Hannah, I can look back and think of particular moments or certain situations where I do wish it had like, if only that had gone a little different, perhaps we would have ended up where we are today. However, what's also true is that in the moment, as it was all happening, I loved it.
I loved them. I felt very valued for the skill set that I had, like the early childhood education stuff. They really just, neither one of them could wrap, you know, those parents could wrap their brain around.
Like they just weren't, hadn't been trained that way. And so what I knew how to do came in super handy and was really appreciated and valued and important. And so it's, it's, and even like when I was in the legal situation, pouring over old photos trying to come up with like, well, that couldn't be true because here's a photograph of me, you know, whatever, like all these different things.
I was reliving the years and years and years of the friendship. And I was so happy to be doing it. As I was looking through these years of memories, I was like, that was a good trip. Oh, that was such a funny day. I totally remember when she dressed up like that. Like I was in the best mood. I had emerged from those sessions for my office and I'd be like, that was so fun. I just like went back to Florida with the family and to that, you know, whatever it was. I wasn't looking back at these photos being like, oh, fucking, you know, like there was no animosity toward the memory.
Because I knew it was good in the moment. And I felt such sadness for them because they were taking all of that away from themselves. I relive the happiness looking back. What they've now effectively done, any memory they look back, anytime they see my face next to their baby, they, you know, whatever, that's a marred memory for them now. That's so they have effectively ruined X percent of their childhood memories, whatever it is that I was a part of.
Because they have decided it was different than it actually was. It's a fascinating study in just the power of mindset. You will experience what you choose to believe.
It's wild. It's wild. You can't step in. That's up to them. Just like it's up to me. Just like I was saying before, like the ownership piece, like I get to decide how I curate at this point, the memory of my friendship with Ivy, because it is now finite.
It had a beginning and it had an ending as far as our earthly coexistence. If I feel the need to revisit it, I can. I don't know that I do. Like I feel solved, I guess, in that arena now. Whereas before, and I didn't even really realize it until it was no longer an option. But before, there really was this like itty bitty, you know, the door was always just cracked ever so slightly over my shoulder.
When am I going to hear from her again? Because I knew it wouldn't be good. I didn't believe that it would be good. And so now it just feels like a relief. I wish those kids well. I still pray for them. Like I hope, I hope, I hope that they are able to find themselves.
HANNAH: Yeah, and you're able to hold two true but different things in each hand. Like she did this, she betrayed me and it was horrible. And I have these beautiful memories. And they're both true. Instead of having it mar the beautiful memories. That is wisdom. I'm thinking of all the ways I could do that.
ALEX: Well, and it's an awareness, right? Like I'm never going to not be aware of the negative stuff. Like I don't have to work to remember that. But they both shape, they both have the opportunity to shape how I move forward, interacting with brand new people. And so it's good to be aware of both of them, but you get to decide where you land. Because again, I'm not just like, Oh Ivy, what an angel, you know, like, no, I don't entirely.
But again, what I hold internally and then what's going to affect my thoughts and my feelings and my, that's what I choose to be very careful about how I remember.
HANNAH: Yeah, and I feel like writing the book and that process and getting it out has also helped you to make that decision of replaying and focusing on the positive memories. And maybe if you hadn't written that book, that would be much harder, I could imagine.
ALEX: Yes, 100%, 100%. That was part of, I mean, part of wanting to write the book was, like you're saying, just giving my side of this story a place to be and now I can just be existing in the world. And I don't have to be the defendant of this story, the spokesperson.
I mean, obviously, I am forever, like the spokesperson of my side of the story of the book. But yeah, someone can take this book and learn about the situation independent of having an actual conversation with me now. And so I am able to release it and just say, look, if you want to know more about it, it's out there.
I'm not trying to hide from it. It's nothing that I'm trying to keep like quiet about. But I also don't have to, you know, okay, from the beginning. So I met this family, you know, like I don't have to tell the entire thing from scratch every time, you know, that it were to come up. Now I'm not using this as like the beacon of, of here's what the rest of my life is. But it definitely is, is a major fork in the road.
Like we were talking about earlier, how sometimes those things happen and you're just like, well, everything's gonna be different from now on. I've had a few of those in my life and this is one of them. And I don't, I'm not special, right?
Like everybody gets handed these things. Sometimes it happens a lot when you're young. Sometimes it doesn't happen at all till you're old. But every person, you know, if you're granted the gift of living long enough, you have these opportunities for like Earth School. I think it's what Elizabeth Gilbert calls it. We're down here in Earth School, and we get these lessons, and it's like, oh, hot dang, this is in my curriculum, but not yours here.
Let me tell you about it. And that's what we're doing right here, right now. I had a lesson in my Earth School curriculum that led me through this crazy legal situation. I pray that never happens to you. Let me tell you what it's like. And you can kind of touch in to like the, you know, empathy of it or the fascination of it. Neither positive nor negative, but just like, wow, that's something that happens to humans. Those are ways that these, you know, human beings can feel while we're on this planet. Fascinating.
HANNAH: Yeah. That's why I love, I love memoirs. I don't think I've ever read a memoir I didn't like, honest to goodness. Like, because they're real people, they're real stories. And like, everyone's life is so fascinating. Even if they feel like it's the most boring life. I'm like, you're a teacher at a school? Like, tell me all about your class. Like, I'm just so interested.
So it's like, yeah, I just, and I think it's, it's a beautiful gift to other people to share about our lives because we learn, like you were saying, about what the human experience can be. We learn about people whose experiences are totally different than ours. And we can almost always relate to something, whether it's just even a core emotion.
ALEX: Exactly. Exactly. And that's where the bridges come in. Like we bridge through telling our stories. Because even if, even if you have not had seven false allegations of felonies against you, you can relate perhaps to someone putting words in your mouth or saying something about you that wasn't true, or the rug being pulled out from under you, or everything. There are elements of each of our stories that are transferable.
And then we ideally can ingrain that in ourselves and assume that when we move out to other people, looking at other people, you don't have to explain yourself to me. I understand that humanity is complex. I understand because I went through this situation, that what you see is not always what's happening under the surface. Yeah. You can take what happens, even if it's a totally different story, and you can apply those higher themes that just help make life easier then.