E2. Looking Back

A single sentence on a phone call—“We only have one daughter”—can divide a life in two. We sit down with Sadie to follow the arc from being erased by her family’s story to authoring her own during a winter spent alone in a Wisconsin cabin: a wood stove, a dog, a wary cat, and a stack of notebooks. Stillness pulls up images she has outrun for years, and the only way through is to let the questions stay.

Sadie walks us through the mechanics of memory work—starting in third person to protect herself, making a “grocery list” of scenes, and slowly shifting into the first person as ownership returns. 

We also push against a popular myth: that reconciliation with family is always the preferred goal.  Sadie explains why distance was her survival, how “she went crazy” became the convenient cover story, and why some doors must stay closed to keep a life intact. 

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Special Thanks to our supporters, who have made this podcast possible.

• Lucy Mathews Heegaard: Audio Engineer
• Terry Gydesen: Photographer

• Polly Kellogg
• Kate Tillotson
• Dawn Charbonneau
• Jacob Wyatt
• Molly Tillotson
• Julian Bowers
• Wendy Horowitz
• Pat Farrell
• Lynette Tabert
• Laura Jensen
• People's Farm Collective
• Deborah Copperud of "Spock Talk" podcast

Chapters

• 0:00 Framing The Story And Stakes
• 1:04 Reading: The Goodwill Encounter
• 3:06 Erasure, Secrecy, And Survival
• 5:18 Locking Away The Past
• 8:45 Cabin Winter: The Pinhole Widens
• 11:22 Rage, Images, And The Knife Memory
• 14:20 Journals Open The Door
• 17:20 Living With The Flood Of Memories
• 21:05 Reaching Out And Hiding In Plain Sight

Transcript

Framing The Story And Stakes

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Sadie Green Story, a podcast that explores the lifelong effects of childhood trauma. This is a conversation between Sadie Green, who changed her name as an adult, in part to hide from a family she remains estranged from, and me, Pam Colby, her dear friend of many years. I'm a storyteller, filmmaker, and now a podcaster. Sadie, now in her 60s, looks back on that early life and tries to understand its repercussions. In addition to our conversations, Sadie will read from a manuscript of memories she documented in her 30s. Thank you for joining us. Sadie?

Reading: The Goodwill Encounter

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Hi Pam. Good to be with you. And welcome back to listeners who returned from our first episode. Yay! In the second episode, I want to share more about my process and going back to that other life. And I will start with a short piece from the manuscript. In the winter of 1972, when I was 17 years old and living in a Minneapolis foster home, I ran into an old schoolmate at a Goodwill store. She was a cashier there and I came through her checkout line. I recognized her as some kind of ally from those awful days at Lincoln Junior High. She'd been a misfit then, like me, thin and skittish, with dull dishwater hair. She wore clothes a little big for her, and cat eye glasses. I remember her standing shyly outside English class one day, holding books close to her body, and my surprise when she spoke and walked beside me at a time when no one else did. But I couldn't hold on to friendships then. Not till I was gone from there entirely, and safe inside those locked walls of the psych ward. But now in Minneapolis, a hundred miles away, and four years passed that day when we were both thirteen, this old schoolmate and I spoke again for the first time. She told me someone called the farmhouse one night after I had disappeared, and the woman's voice on the other end had said, Susan Who? I'm sorry, we only have one daughter. And hung up. She told me the word around there was that I'd gone crazy. I scribbled her address on the back of my receipt, picked up my paper bag, and said, I'll write sometime. That other life loomed close around me as I walked out to the parking lot with Stevie, my foster guardian. I have my own life now, and for the most part, I have it sewed up tight. So tight, not even a pinhole lets the light in to look back on the other side.

Erasure, Secrecy, And Survival

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Wow, so she called your house and somebody answered the phone and said that there was only one daughter, meaning you no longer existed.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Yeah, I'm not sure it was her that called the house, but she did give me that message that someone had called the house. And my mother and my sister were the only females in the house. So I assumed it was my mother. And I remember being surprised, like jolted, that she would lie like that, but I also remember how important it was what the neighbors think was really important.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

So the other powerful point is that you had kind of stitched up your life so that you couldn't see your other life, and you were actually looking back in time. What was that like to open that door again?

SPEAKER_01 4:04

I did really keep that life separate. My life after I moved to Minneapolis was so different, and it was so painful before. I didn't talk about it. I was in the hospital for a month before I said anything about my family. And I remember that conversation. Well, through the years I just didn't talk about it. I didn't think about it. I just moved on with my life. So I didn't look back.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Do you think that's common of people who've had the kind of severe abuse that you endured to lock it away and not think about it?

SPEAKER_01 4:41

I think in my case, it was all about the secret. It was such a secret. You know, it was just beaten into me do not tell. And related to that, do not tell is if you do tell, it means more trouble rather than help. People did try to help. When I was in junior high, the counselor tried to help, but I hated him asking me questions.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

By junior high, you were really indoctrinated in the secret behaving as your mother wanted, which was to keep things secret.

Locking Away The Past

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Do not tell. If anyone asked, if anyone confronted my parents, it would be awful. So I just kept it inside. And once I was gone, I really did not talk about it. Stevie knew a little bit about it, my foster parent. And I had talked about it with a staff person.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

And how do you think for those years of your twenties where you didn't talk about or think about it, did you feel like it was cooking away inside of you, or do you feel like it impacted how you behaved?

SPEAKER_01 5:51

I remember when I was actually still in the hospital, I was there for six months. I remember going to church as soon as I was allowed to go out with someone. I remember doing things that I thought I was supposed to do.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

That your mother would have wanted you to do.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Yeah. Yeah. And in my twenties, I don't recall being conscious of my family much. It was like this jumble or a tangle in my head. It was this mass that wasn't clear. I avoided holidays. Even if I was invited to a friend's family event at holidays, I would not go. It felt false somehow. I'd hang out by myself and just generally feel depressed. I remember one year sitting at a bus stop on Christmas. I don't remember thinking of my family, but I did not want to be with another family. I did have this wanting, even into my forties, really, where I still wanted my mother to just like me or tell me why, or apologize, or simply acknowledge what happened. I wanted that for years and years.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

What was it like for you when you really started to write down those memories?

Cabin Winter: The Pinhole Widens

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Well, it happened totally accidentally. When I was thirty. I moved to a small cabin called the Valley House in rural Wisconsin for a winter to escape the daily stress in Minneapolis. I was so overwhelmed. I just was running full tilt all the time. I was involved in all kinds of things. So when one of the people in this collective asked me if I wanted to stay there for winter, I said yes. And this is where a pinhole view of that other life begins to tear wide open. One afternoon, alone in the valley house as usual, I am sitting at a wooden table pushed up against the wall, where I write every day in a notebook. I was in my head and I heard outside this plastic sheeting that was on the wood pile was flapping in the wind. Sounded kind of like this loose shutter. And then inside the cabin, a log fell in the stove. And I had this image. I'd had stabbing images come into my head before. Just anytime. Like riding my bicycle, walking over railroad tracks, often about my face. And this time I just screamed out loud. I was just rageful. And I just screamed at the room. Why? Why? Why do I have these images? I sink down on the chair, I start to cry. I wonder, is it the operations? Is it self-consciousness about my face? Is it about my mother? And I'm 15 years away from my mother. Often it was about knives. And my mother never hurt me with knives, but she threatened me once. I was standing in the doorway of the kitchen. There were knives on the counter, and she pulled knives out of the drawer. And she's hurling just really ugly words at me. And I'm wondering if she would use a knife. That's really how it started. I'm alone in this cabin. I have four months ahead of me. I do have my dog, thank goodness. And there's also a straight cat called Scary Cat. So the three of us are there for the winter. That's where it really opened up, and I started thinking about what happened in that other life.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

That's so interesting because I know a lot of people who've done long Buddhist meditation retreats where you're just by yourself and things start to come up like that.

Rage, Images, And The Knife Memory

SPEAKER_01 9:59

I hadn't ever really allowed much exploration of these images or flashes. I just kept going. I'm very practical. But I had been filling all these notebooks where I'd record daily events and all my promises of self-improvement. So I had a habit of writing. Let me read from a journal that I kept alongside of the memory book. Like an open wound, I bow down under the weight of it, but finally lift my head and see my face reflected in a mirror in front of me. I'm tired. I have no idea where I am headed. While gazing steadily at my reflection, I vow that I will let the question stay, to invite the images to stay. I place a new journal in front of me, open it, and like opening a door that leads back to a life behind, I finally begin to tell about a girl who hid in the garage, who stole food to stay alive, and who, in freezing nights in Minnesota, wrapped herself in old wool overcoats and slipped into abandoned cars to sleep. No idea, no idea. But the memories, I would start remembering something. I made a list, it was almost like a grocery list, where I would remember violent scenes mainly. I think trauma is what I remembered most, even though I'm sure there were a lot of other memories. I would make a list like red tennis shoes, the iron barrel, the barn, wearing the gunny sack at night I would sit down and try and remember who was there, what was happening, anything I could remember.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Once you were in that, did you stay in it? Like, for example, when you're going to sleep, did you dream about it, or were you able to leave the memory for the day or the night?

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Well, it wasn't anything conscious really, but I became it it affected me dramatically. I slept a lot, I didn't wash my hair, I didn't change my clothes, I overate. I I'd always had food issues, and I really got into that where I would just binge, binge on food until I just was miserable and I hated myself. Then I would try and fast for days, so I I really regressed into that old food issue. I also was very scattered in my brain.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Were you reaching out to people? Were you letting people know what was going on with you? I mean, back then there were no cell phones.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

I did a lot of correspondence by mail, and I still have all that mail. I wrote to a lot of people and I received mail back. And then it's always been hard for me to initiate reaching out. I'm very reactive, but I would go into town sometimes and feel like I couldn't function as a normal person. I would pretend that I was normal. I wanted to hide. I also felt very needy. I often was so relieved to just get in the car and get back out there because I felt like I was I was just a wreck. But people would also come and visit me. And I had a lot of normal times. I do think I can compartmentalize easily. I can get in my head and leave my feelings easily, and it would be great to see people.

Journals Open The Door

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Well, I remember I visited you. I don't think I realized the degree to which you were going inward at that time.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

I would talk about it sometimes to people who I would least expect to talk to about it. There was this expectation that I'd be a certain way in my head. I remember once running into somebody on the street, someone that I hardly ever saw. We walked and I just poured my heart out. It wasn't someone that I planned to meet or intended to share stuff. It was just this moment, and it meant so much to me. I think sometimes people that were closest to me, it was harder to expose myself.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Yeah, let me just say for people who didn't know you then what you were like. You always went at about 150 horsepower, continually moving. You were fast, you were busy, you were working all kinds of places, you had lots of friends and connections. You gave the impression of somebody who was really in control and had a lot of balls in the air. When you went to the cabin and were just like settling down with your dog, it was a new Sadie.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

You know, I remember one night somebody called me, someone who I knew well, and I was in a bad place, and I gave her certainly she knew enough so that she told me what to do. Go out and buy a six bag. I mean, that actually was her advice. But at the time, anyway.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Yeah, but you've never been somebody who drowns your sorrows.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

No, I was never a big drinker. Thank goodness. I was really lucky. So while it was painful, it was deep sorrow or grief. Some days I couldn't get out of bed. I didn't change my clothes. My hair got so dirty, it would stand straight up. But I also had this intimacy with myself. I feel like I got to know myself in a way in that cabin for the first time.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

It's really interesting that you felt like you were getting to know yourself in that cabin. And I'm wondering because you were really reaching back to Susan, who was your original name and finding that lost little girl and reclaiming her, would you say?

Living With The Flood Of Memories

SPEAKER_01 16:52

It was like it happened to someone else at first. Although I did have nights where I would literally hold myself. I'd make hot chocolate and I'd put my hands around the cup and think of that girl being me. In the ways that I really got to know myself more. It was a simple life. I hauled water from the spring, I chopped wood, I sewed clothes, I took pride in myself for doing these things. Another thing that I did a lot was I would look at myself in mirrors. I tried to like how I looked. All this knowing of myself, appreciating myself, is a long journey, of course. I assume it is for everyone. We all have insecurities and we don't recognize other people's insecurities. We take others at face value most of the time. We don't see under the mask unless we are vulnerable with each other. Really being vulnerable with others is almost impossible for someone who has been terrified and betrayed by those closest to us. The vulnerability with Sadie was all about who I was at the time, how I felt about myself, my body, my face.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

30-year-old Sadie.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Yes, 30-year-old Sadie. You know, because I'm so task focused, the memory thing became like an assignment. And some days I just couldn't do it. I'd have this discipline with myself, and I generally can be quite disciplined. But sometimes I I just couldn't go there for days at a time. But still operating in my head somehow, it was still in me. Over the months, eventually that process showed itself as being me talking about this girl in third person and then becoming me. That was part of this whole process of remembering and admitting.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Do you think if you hadn't started to write in third person, it would have been not as easy to tell the story?

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Yeah. That is absolutely true. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Did you make up names for everybody then? Different names?

SPEAKER_01 19:14

I did. I did make up names. It was a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

So even in your most secret doing it yourself in the cabin by yourself, I was still hiding. Remembering the memories. You were still hiding their identity. You were still keeping them safe.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Even though they didn't keep you safe.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

And I still am hiding in a way. I mean, I still have a loyalty, of course. I know there's this message out there that kids should be reconnected with their family. And maybe that's true for many. But I have never felt that was true for me. It would never have worked, I don't believe, for me to reconcile with my mother, at least as a child.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

There is this sense out there from the greater public that people should reconcile that it's a healthy thing for families or siblings or parents and children to have resolution. And you do not feel like that.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

Well, I definitely do not feel like that could have happened in my family when I was there. I believed in the end that my mother was going to kill me. I really did. And I trust that feeling. She almost did, if they hadn't gotten you out of the house. I really thought that she might. The only way I believe that I could have been saved or helped was to get me out of there. There was no way that any kind of people coming in and supporting some reconciliation. That was not gonna work.

Reaching Out And Hiding In Plain Sight

SPEAKER_00 20:53

And really, you were the rest of your life or the life of your mother, evidence of her crime and a memory for her that she never resolved. So she compartmentalized you as not existing, really.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

I don't remember ever having when I lived there having any kind of normal conversation. I probably did and can't remember, but it was so destructive in the last two or three years that it was impossible.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Yeah, because we know what it took for you to look back. That was just not ever gonna happen with her because that is not who she probably wanted to be, the person who did those things. I mean, there were crimes. People don't want to admit to their crimes.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

Yeah, and the whole narrative became that I went crazy. And it made sense because I, you know, I did go to the hospital and then I was moved up to a psych ward, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I love that place. But that was the message that anyone close to my mother, I'm sure that was the message they got.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

Right. We don't have a daughter, or she's done crazy.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

And because those last years I would be in these just humiliating outfits or nothing at all. You know, I'd be sent to school in a coat with nothing on underneath. There were all these ways that I looked like I was crazy. People didn't know what was going on behind the scenes.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Right. And stay tuned to this podcast because we're gonna really get into that and what was going on behind the scenes. And I think that's really important for you to tell and for us to hear.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Thank you, Pam. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Thank you, Sadie.