Transcript

[0:00] Intro Montage

[0:42] Intro

I am the experiment. You can write your own story. Not stop trying and don't give into the fear.

[0:54] Justin McMillen

You're enjoying your time down here?

[0:56] Karen Willock

I am, I always do. It's good to connect with everybody again, see everybody, talk, watch.

[1:03] Justin McMillen

Yeah. Listen, we like having you around. The place changes when you're here.

[1:08] Karen Willock

For sure.

[1:09] Justin McMillen

The guys are... there's always a little bit of a buzz because Rob's getting everyone ready for you to be here. And then when you're here, everybody's in learning mode, which is nice.

[1:22] Karen Willock

Yeah, and we did that training yesterday or Wednesday on grief. So we did 2.5 hours and we'll do another 2.5 hours next Wednesday.

[1:34] Justin McMillen

Okay.

[1:34] Karen Willock

And talking about grief with a group of men is always interesting.

[1:40] Justin McMillen

Yeah.

[1:41] Karen Willock

Because they don't want to... there's a lot of shame associated with having big emotions, big feelings. And men in particular oftentimes had the symptom of shame, which is I don't want to appear weak. And vulnerability can appear weak. That can be... had that whole belief system, fear. And so it was it, but you know, just like I knew they would, they took risks. This could have chances. They're good. They're really good group of guys, as you said.

[2:16] Justin McMillen

Was Tanisha there? Was it just all guys?

[2:19] Karen Willock

It was all guys.

[2:20] Justin McMillen

Guys?

[2:21] Karen Willock

Yeah. Well, Annie showed up from the family program, so she attended, but everybody else was all guys.

[2:27] Justin McMillen

Nice. Do you think... man, before we get into this too far, we're very excited to be talking to you. You're one of my absolute favorite people in the Tree House sphere. We never get a chance.

[2:41] Karen Willock

We do actually, in fact.

[2:43] Justin McMillen

Yeah, usually when we meet for hours.

[2:45] Karen Willock

Yeah, we get on something.

[2:47] Justin McMillen

It's always like... it's like a two hour conversation. I feel like I've known you forever. So it's really great to be able to sit down with you, and I'm excited to hear about your life story, for you to talk about Tree House and what you do. And I think you're a super rare bird.

[3:05] Karen Willock

And you have a ton of knowledge.

[3:08] Justin McMillen

So I don't even know where this... didn't go, exactly. So we'll start with grief because we were talking about it, but whatever direction it goes is fine. There's no boundaries here, we just kind of go wherever. Yeah, I just need to introduce you and get a sense. So you're currently running our family program, but you're much bigger than that. You're sort of a developer, right? At Tree House, helping to develop curriculum, overseeing the program across the country, even helping take care of staff mental health in general. So you're all over the place, and we'll talk about all that stuff. So we'll get to it. But going back, do you think men and women grieve differently?

[3:57] Karen Willock

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[3:59] Justin McMillen

Do you think it's natural, or you think it's cultural, or do you think it's like...

[4:04] Karen Willock

I think it's a little bit of both, and I'm not saying either. I think both men and women avoid grief. They avoid it differently. And men are given, you know, the very strong message of, you know, carry the weight, be strong, get over it. If you have a thousand tears and you cry 500, you still got 500 left. And you can't rush grief. And it's... and I was, we were talking during the training. People from their first call to us are grieving because they're losing the thing that has allowed them to live. They're... chemically, they're saying a big goodbye.

[4:49] Justin McMillen

Yeah.

[4:49] Karen Willock

And so grief starts with very small things all the way to death. And women, the kind of... I'd like to teach people the symptom of that, there might be some grief on board. So with men it's, I'm not going to appear weak, I will never let you see me weak. And with women it's, I can do everything and you'll never see me sweat. So they'll take care of everything, and they'll have a lot of balls in the air. The kids, the house, the family, the home, the work. But they'll never... Nobody will ever see that they can't quite keep up.

[5:25] Justin McMillen

Wow. Okay.

[5:25] Karen Willock

And so those are just symptoms that just tell me that there's something going on inside of me.

[5:32] Justin McMillen

So the reason that I... what piqued my interest with this topic in particular was the losses that we experience in this field.

[5:42] Karen Willock

Yeah.

[5:42] Justin McMillen

I want to... so, grief and letting go of the substances that you've been using, that obviously death and loss of life. But can we go back even further? Just, and I want to make sure I understand, because I don't know that I know for sure, but what is... how would you define grief? Is it sadness? Is it a feeling? Is it a state of being? What... what is grief?

[6:07] Karen Willock

It's... it's all of those. It's really a life experience. There's no one who lives that isn't going to experience grief. And the grief continuum goes all the way from losing your keys to, I can't believe I can't find them, where are they, to acceptance.

[6:25] Justin McMillen

Okay.

[6:25] Karen Willock

And it's the same with everything else, every other loss that we experience. So what I would say grief... sorry, that's like a hard question, right?

[6:36] Justin McMillen

Yeah, it's kind of abstract.

[6:38] Karen Willock

It's a process.

[6:39] Justin McMillen

Yeah. Okay.

[6:40] Karen Willock

And it's very similar, and it's not... we integrate the grief into our lives, we don't get rid of it and move on. So and the key... like, I have my little Penny Lane, my little dog, is, got severe heart disease, and this is, you know, going to die over the next period of time because it's really bad. And so there's anticipatory grief, just thinking about it. And then there's when it actually happens, and then there's the long period afterwards. And if I allow myself to feel, cry, be angry... we are more comforting to people who are angry. You know, if someone punches a wall because they just got bad news, people telling me, hey, get your act together, right?

[7:32] Justin McMillen

Right.

[7:32] Karen Willock

You know, but if somebody's sobbing, someone will sit next to them. And so, so we as humans put judgments on how people are dealing with their grief, how they're processing their grief. And grief is... it's just such a huge, consuming topic. And I think the United States in general doesn't grieve... other countries, when someone dies or passes away, they wail.

[8:00] Justin McMillen

Yeah, you know, I've told my wife, if... if and when I die, let them cry it out. I don't want anybody blaming me for their relapse, you know? Yeah, feel your feelings, get that casket open, make them look. You know, I wonder about this. I've been going through some stuff recently that is causing me a lot of emotion in my psychology. I'm fine, like, I really feel like I'm able to handle mentally. But then there's a secondary thing that's popping up out of nowhere, and that's grief, I think. And it's confusing because it doesn't match up with my psychology.

[8:43] Karen Willock

Well, grief is in your limbic system, it's not in your prefrontal cortex.

[8:48] Justin McMillen

And for people who don't know, what do you mean?

[8:52] Karen Willock

But what's so... so our brain has... well, our brain is so amazing, but the prefrontal cortex is the last to develop. The limbic system is the seat of emotion, it's also where addiction resides. So that's the hub, so to speak. And it's the instincts. It's the part of me that sees a snake and jumps back before I can even say snake, like fight or flight.

[9:18] Justin McMillen

Yes, chasing pleasure, avoiding.

[9:19] Karen Willock

And they have a new one, it was fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Fawn is where you get busy taking care of everything. Okay, so you get busy, busy, busy cleaning your house because you're stressed out.

[9:32] Justin McMillen

Yeah, I think my wife would laugh, she knows that mode.

[9:36] Karen Willock

I get it, it's a way to release the energy, right? Because our body wants to release this energy that gets all built up.

[9:45] Justin McMillen

So... I can't believe that's my phone, I don't hear it right, it's okay, we're in the 21st century, phones are normal, sorry, let me put this on do not disturb. This is great because, you know, I've felt compelled to want to get over and listen to some of the training you were doing, and I'm going to get... I'll probably get a really nice download.

[10:08] Karen Willock

I bet you'll love it.

[10:10] Justin McMillen

No, I'm here with you, I mean we can talk about a little of this, so that'll be good. So what happened in... I mean, there's a lot of, when we avoid what we're feeling, when it's sadness or grief, when we avoid that, it shows up physically, it shows up emotionally, it shows up in our interactions.

[10:34] Karen Willock

And grief is very isolating, you know, people stop talking. I'm meeting with a veteran now from the Vietnam era, and his grief dates back to when he walked on shore, came back to the United States. And that was my generation, and they were treated horribly when they returned. And when I first met with him, I said to him, thank you so much for your service. And I am so very sorry the way you were treated when you came home. And here's a 79 year old man that tears up. That's how old grief... doesn't just go away, it doesn't disappear.

[11:23] Justin McMillen

So does it never disappear?

[11:26] Karen Willock

I think we integrate it. When the love becomes bigger than the grief. So the sadness and anger and the disappointment and the fear and the acceptance. But the grief isn't... the grief will get smaller and the love will get bigger. But with our limbic system and our prefrontal cortex, if I experience a loss here, my unconscious, my limbic system automatically, any old wounds, so to speak, get touched on. And that's why sometimes when I have too much, there's too much of a reaction, too much anger, too much fear, too much sadness. I'm feeling. And I can tell you a perfect example of this.

[12:20] Justin McMillen

Oh my goodness.

[12:22] Karen Willock

When Joe, my middle son, was out using, I was actually up in Portland when I heard from him for the first time. It had been 5 or 6 years since I had talked to him, and he was still using then. And I would say maybe 15 years ago, I had gone to an establishment that I noticed had a graveyard next door to it, and I don't know why, I'd seen many graveyards, but that particular day, it's like I absorbed that visual of that graveyard. And that night, when I was laying in bed, I thought, I'm going to bury him. Here, because he was horrible in his addiction, overdosing and running with people that were trying to kill him. And it was just awful. And I was laying there in bed, and I think that's when I came to acceptance, which doesn't mean there's no pain, right? It just means realizing there's nothing I can do to stop that train. And the next morning, when... and I knew I'd been depressed, I'd been distracted. I wasn't connecting with the people who were around me. It was like I was there but not there, like a fog.

[13:53] Justin McMillen

Yes. Got it.

[13:55] Karen Willock

And they were over here, and I'm back here, and my connections were weak with other humans, my family, the people that were present. I couldn't even be present, you know. Slowly but surely, it was just absorbing me. And the next morning I asked somebody I care deeply about, how do you know when you're feeling too much? And they said, when it interferes with your ability to go about your day. And they said to me that one of the things they did during a particularly hard time was they spent time every night when they got home from work, cuddled up with their animals and crying. And I thought, you know, that's just crap.

[14:42] Justin McMillen

Yeah, that's just ridiculous.

[14:43] Karen Willock

You know, I'm not going to curl up with a dog and cry.

[14:48] Justin McMillen

Sure.

[14:48] Karen Willock

Well, the next morning I thought, you know, I'm going to try it in the shower, because I don't particularly care for people touching me when I'm in pain. So, and oftentimes we reach out and you say something and the person stops crying.

[15:05] Justin McMillen

Yeah, and tears and snot do not stop people, right, it won't kill them.

[15:10] Karen Willock

Right. Okay, let it go.

[15:12] Justin McMillen

Right.

[15:13] Karen Willock

And so I got in the shower and I cried, and thought about Joe as a little baby, and cried, and it lasted seconds, not days like I thought it was going to. And I did that every morning for a solid year. Well, and, you know, I noticed that pretty soon I wasn't crying about Joe, I didn't even know what I was really seeing. And what I realized is my disowned emotion was sadness. My anger, I had that, guilt, I'd rather be guilty than helpless.

[15:51] Justin McMillen

Sure.

[15:51] Karen Willock

You know, so those feelings I had. But the feeling that I had denied, probably from the time I was 2 or 3 years old, was sadness and disappointment. And so during that year, every morning, I would just cry for a little bit. And I started noticing, as my days went on, that I was laughing, I was enjoying people, I was connecting again. He was still using, nothing had changed out here, but I was more alive. And I remember that night laying in bed, he wasn't the only one dying. I was.

[16:37] Justin McMillen

Yeah.

[16:38] Karen Willock

And then if I didn't do something, I was... it was going to take me out too.

[16:44] Justin McMillen

Just, like... did you figure out a way to release some of that, but you don't ever really let it go? So it's almost like you're redefining it for yourself, it's more... so do you suppose that people who... So let's, I'm curious about this, tell me what you think about this. So if a person has a lot of grief, a lot of pain, and they figure out how to accept or make sense of all of it, does that... then I don't know how to say this, but does that make them into like a more profound person? Because the grief is... builds, like, what does accepting grief do to a person's personality and psyche?

[17:27] Karen Willock

Well, and actually the person that I studied under for this grief training I went through is David Kessler, and he talks about the sixth stage of grieving, which is finding meaning after your loss. Okay, so for me, that rocketed me into studying about parents. I mean, my whole life from birth has either been active addiction, somebody else's or my own, or recovery. I mean, I'm not doing this rodeo again, right? This is a one time shot.

[18:08] Justin McMillen

Sure.

[18:09] Karen Willock

And so, to be able to sit with a parent who is consumed with the terror, and I've sat with a lot of parents who've had to bury their kids, you know, and to just sit with them, and one of the things that happens is you're not afraid of other people's pain. And because you had your own.

[18:40] Justin McMillen

Yeah.

[18:41] Karen Willock

And you lived.

[18:42] Justin McMillen

Got it.

[18:43] Karen Willock

You know, we have all these beliefs, like, if I start feeling I'll never stop, I'll cry myself to death. And we don't want to unleash... I tell folks, you don't want to go taming tigers until you've had some tiger taming classes, right? You don't want to jump into a gorilla cage when you have no tools, because that gorilla is going to win. And so there's a method and there's a process. And most of the time we can trust ourselves, but if we bury it alive... I had a Vietnam vet, clear back in the day, early in my career, who said that it was explained to him like an abscess. I was a nurse, not a very good one because I was under the influence, but he said that oftentimes what would happen is you would puncture it enough to let some pressure off. And we see that with our folks that we work with, that they do this acting-out crazy behavior, they get into all kinds of trouble and they avoid dealing with the real problem. And so anyway, he said it was like an abscess, and he says, you need to slice it up and drain it and debride it, and let it heal from the bottom up. And that's what, in my opinion, recovery is. Not a one-and-done kind of thing, you start a process and then you continue on for a very long time, and it comes in pieces. I was, gosh, over 30 years sober, then 30 years studying therapy, paying attention, and then I finally was able to say, okay, that's interesting. I think what's fascinating to me about this whole subject is, with my background, I would say I was overly emotional and I had my heart on my sleeve and was very expressive. And then substance abuse really was like my way of numbing that.

[20:56] Justin McMillen

And then now in my life, with a family and children and all of the things that I've got going, I'm constantly in situations that are extremely stressful, and I feel as though I have to maintain my cool and calm and collected nature. And I can think of so many times in the past where, say, Tree House was going through some hard time financially or something, and I was struggling. Had I allowed myself to feel, I would not have made good decisions. And so it becomes like you sort of temper this. But later, when things are difficult, you need to feel about other kinds of stuff. Then I'm so confused. I mean, I get really confused, Karen, because I'll have, when I'm driving home, I'll get emotional about something and I'm like, my mind doesn't feel logically like this is a problem, but I can feel it. And so I think I understand, but I also, how do you find that balance between being resilient, which I think is important? And then otherwise it'll eat you alive. So where is the balance? I mean, how do you train yourself to be resilient, but also make sure you know when you're supposed to be letting emotions out?

[22:23] Karen Willock

I think part of it too is knowing that we have say over this organism that we live in. Like, oftentimes I might be working with a client and they say something that reminds me of something. We were just talking about this the other day with one of the guys. And all I say to myself is, I'm going to set that over here for now, because I'm here with this person. And my commitment to myself is that I will visit that. So sometimes that's by talking to somebody about it, or journaling about it, or just sitting with it. Sometimes I've given up the idea that I need to know what is creating the feeling. What for me, really, I learned for myself was an illusion of power. It's like, if I could figure out why I was thinking and feeling the way I was, then I could control it. And all it did was distract me because I was trying to figure out the why. The other question I try to ask myself is, what? What just happened? What is this about for me? Why am I... what is going on that I'm reacting to this? So, if I can kind of segue backwards here for a minute. So the way I grew up was in a very violent home. Both my parents died of alcoholism, my mom...

[23:56] Justin McMillen

Where did you grow up?

[23:59] Karen Willock

Omaha, Nebraska.

[23:59] Justin McMillen

Yeah, I didn't know this.

[24:02] Karen Willock

Yep, I moved when I was 26 to Oregon, and had... I didn't like Oregon, it was all green.

[24:10] Justin McMillen

How... what year?

[24:11] Karen Willock

1976.

[24:12] Justin McMillen

Two years before you were born, is that right? Yeah, see, 27... yeah, 28 years apart.

[24:18] Karen Willock

Yeah, 28. I could be your mother.

[24:21] Justin McMillen

You could, you could, or your grandmother.

[24:23] Karen Willock

Yeah, or... I don't know, I'll just be your friend, it makes it easy.

[24:29] Justin McMillen

I like that.

[24:30] Karen Willock

Yeah, so Omaha.

[24:31] Justin McMillen

Yeah. So mom and dad, both?

[24:33] Karen Willock

Both of them. My dad was still alive when I left. My mom died when I was 16.

[24:40] Justin McMillen

What kind of work did they do?

[24:43] Karen Willock

My dad worked for the post office, he was a mailman and a bartender. And my mom stayed at home, she had a lot of physical issues, and she was the big secret in my family growing up. Was how old everybody was. Even on my birth certificate, it has the wrong ages for my parents, because my dad was considerably younger than my mother.

[25:08] Justin McMillen

Interesting.

[25:08] Karen Willock

So my mom was somewhere in her 40s, I still don't know, it's the wrong date on her tombstone. I don't know how old she really was, but she was somewhere between 20 and 25 years older than my dad.

[25:24] Justin McMillen

Whoa, interesting.

[25:25] Karen Willock

And my dad had just gotten out of the Korean War, he was a veteran. I suspect he was taken captive because he had shrapnel scars down half of his body. And he had such an animosity towards Koreans, that was a big trigger, of course we didn't know what triggers were then.

[25:46] Justin McMillen

Sure.

[25:46] Karen Willock

And brothers and sisters, I have an older sister, that was my mom's, not my dad's, a stepsister, Kitty, who was just... she never did drugs or drank, she was just a good person.

[26:00] Justin McMillen

Was she around when you were young?

[26:02] Karen Willock

Only til I was four, okay, and then she left. That was probably the big first loss for me. Because I adored her. And then my brother, a year younger, my full biological brother.

[26:15] Justin McMillen

So it's the two of you, you're the oldest one, were you guys close?

[26:20] Karen Willock

We were very close growing up because we were surviving together. And I took care of him, I made sure he was safe.

[26:28] Justin McMillen

Were you in Omaha proper?

[26:30] Karen Willock

Were you more like rural? We were pretty central, but on the outskirts, not in Omaha City, not in the city part. So we lived in what was called prefabs, so they were not very well made, in the winter the frost would come in and frost down the strips that connected the house. Because they were not well insulated, it was freezing. It was kind of a post-World War Two thing, right, they just slapped them all together. They weren't hooked up to the sewer line, so like 20 or 30 years later the front yards are caving in.

[27:12] Justin McMillen

Oh yeah, it was crazy. Crazy. And was this a whole neighborhood?

[27:16] Karen Willock

Yeah, it was a strong community there.

[27:19] Justin McMillen

Were you close with a lot of the other kids and stuff?

[27:24] Karen Willock

Some people, you know, there was... I reconnected with some folks that lived across the street, Catherine and Don and their kids. Catherine, for some reason, could deal with my dad when he would get into his rages. I still never knew why, and probably never will, but she could calm him down.

[27:43] Justin McMillen

And so was he physically your age, or was that... mom's age?

[27:49] Karen Willock

My... she was more of my mom, and dad was probably somewhere between mom and dad. So my dad, he was very conflicted, he went through treatment once and he punched his counselor and left. I have no doubt he had severe PTSD.

[28:09] Justin McMillen

Was his name Carl?

[28:11] Karen Willock

Yeah. And I'm sure he had very severe PTSD. He talked very little, and his jaw was always very set. And he drank, and when he drank, he got mean.

[28:25] Justin McMillen

Did he drink late nighttime after he got home from work, kind of a deal, or was he...

[28:33] Karen Willock

Not until later. Later in his career, he started. He had to drink all day and he'd go through the DTs and shakes, and he was very chronic, very early on. He was in his 40s. So they were from Poland, his family, and my mom's family was from Ireland. They both were born in the US, and their parents were first generation here. And so alcoholism in my dad's family was rampant, and the same in my mom's, a lot of alcoholism with the Irish and the Polish. He was just such a tortured guy. I would see him... we were raised Catholic, I would see him kneeling beside his bed praying, and two days later he would beat my mom almost to death, you know. So the conflict... and of course as a kid I didn't know, but he was just such a tortured person. Yeah, and my mom was also very angry, both of them had terrible anger problems. And, you know, back then, this is in the 50s and 60s, as long as you kept your stuff in the house, nobody really cared. It wasn't like now where people call the police. I don't think the whole time I was growing up the police were ever called. Sure, and I'd go to school where he... you know, hurt us and have bruises, nobody ever did anything.

[30:11] Justin McMillen

Yeah.

[30:11] Karen Willock

So I learned very quickly that there was no help.

[30:14] Justin McMillen

Did you think that was like culturally... was that what was going on with your friends and stuff too, was that part of the times with all these war fighters that were trying to raise families, or was it really specific to your house?

[30:29] Karen Willock

I think generationally it was, I think there was a lot of it going on. Because I had friends that we would go back and forth between the two houses, and see which house was worst going, and make a decision where we were going to land based on that. And so I think that the ability for people to think about what might be going on with somebody's mental health was zero. Yeah, even the people that went to treatment back in that era, it was very confrontational. It wasn't trying to get people to have insights about who they were, or what was going on, or how they might change. You know, that was before neuroplasticity and all of this was on the scene. People thought, it's just the way I am. Well, now I know that's not true at all, right? Just the way I am does not exist. The term, I don't think PTSD as a term even had come out yet. I don't think shellshock, or something like that. And so it was all mixed in with this weird kind of spirituality with the Catholic Church. And my mother had been divorced, and so they couldn't receive the sacraments there. And I remember, as an 11 year old, going into church and telling God, you'll see me here, but I'm out, there's nothing I'm seeing that I like.

[31:57] Justin McMillen

Sure.

[31:58] Karen Willock

And of course I had to announce it to God.

[32:02] Justin McMillen

So were you closer to Carl or your mom?

[32:07] Karen Willock

Yeah, I try to take care of my mom, because she was... I mean, from probably the time I was 5 or 6, she had surgery, she ended up in a wheelchair. She weighed 70 pounds when she died. She was just a very weak, physically weak woman. You know, just, she was your typical battered woman. And then she would fight, like she threw a pan of grease on my dad once, I remember. And he had a huge scar on his chest from that. And just all kinds of craziness in that house. My goal was to get out.

[32:55] Justin McMillen

I was going to say... Just like you had a chance to be a kid.

[33:00] Karen Willock

Oh, no, no, no. And I learned very quickly, because my reaction and my response is, I'll fight, I'm not going to flight. So you're going to come at me, I'm going to come back. Which isn't a good thing for a 74 year old woman to do, but I do.

[33:18] Justin McMillen

It's a deal. I think you're a badass, I think everyone around here knows that. It's like you're the person everyone loves, wants to be close with, but we're all like, man, if anything ever went wrong, she would be a bad person to have angry at you, or calling you on your shit.

[33:32] Karen Willock

Okay, so people call me on my shit. I might not know... I mean if you call it...

[33:37] Justin McMillen

Yeah, I've been... it's like I feel sometimes when I'm talking to you, like... in fact, you said to me, you're a bit avoidant, you said that to me like three months ago, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. And it just shows how much weight people put in the words you say. So, you know, it was funny because we were driving a week or so ago, Lisa has this car that goes from 0 to 100 like that, and just really fast, it's one of these electric cars. And some guy pulled up, a young kid pulled up behind us, revving his motor, and he got really close and scared Lisa. I don't like people scaring my wife. And so he pulls up beside us, Ruth is injured, and I roll... I hit the power button to get the window down and yelled some obscenities at him, and he looked over and sees two old ladies in a car yelling obscenities.

[34:39] Karen Willock

Oh Lord.

[34:40] Justin McMillen

So he probably was like...

[34:42] Karen Willock

He eventually smiled, I smiled too, I said, I know dude, I know, it's awesome, I couldn't help myself. So, when mom died, when I was 16, I was surprised when my dad cried, because I didn't know... she ended up having a stroke.

[35:02] Justin McMillen

Okay.

[35:03] Karen Willock

She drank till the last day, drank and smoked cigarettes, both, right to the last day. And she had a stroke, and I knew something was wrong. I've always had good intuition. That morning I remember standing at the window thinking I should go ask Mr. Gibson to check on her today, because I just had that feeling. And it wouldn't have made any difference if he had checked on her, other than she might have been found a little earlier. So. But she had a massive stroke, really high blood pressure. She had Addison's disease, and she had all kinds of really... which Addison's disease has an excessive amount of cortisol where it burns out your adrenals.

[35:50] Justin McMillen

Oh, geez.

[35:51] Karen Willock

And so she'd had a very stressful life, no doubt. And the brothers and sisters that came around, ever was there. You know, there was not much connection between the families. They were my dad's family, the brothers were, are pretty violent too. So the connection piece in my growing up years was very fractured. So there wasn't a lot of that, you know, everybody was kind of on their own. And I developed some really great skills, and some really maladaptive behaviors, because of it. So it was very hard, I think, when you grow up kind of thinking you're all that and you're independent, you take care of your own business, you don't ask anybody for help.

[36:52] Justin McMillen

It really... and I wonder how Covid, with a break in the social interactions that people experienced during that time, the young people especially, developed some ways of navigating their life that aren't in anybody's best interest.

[37:09] Karen Willock

And so, mom passes at 16, yeah, and at this point she's not really a mom. Take care now, you, because you're always worried about her. And I knew I couldn't move out of that house till she was dead, I just couldn't leave her with him.

[37:30] Justin McMillen

But then you're facing, like, okay, you're here with him, right?

[37:35] Karen Willock

I didn't stay long.

[37:37] Justin McMillen

And you and your brother talk about this? Or were you kind of on your own?

[37:43] Karen Willock

We didn't talk openly about it, but we both knew. And my dad treated him differently, he went into the Navy, my brother did, so that's how he got out. I got married, because that's how people in my generation got out. And I remember standing in the back of the church thinking, I didn't like the guy who was marrying me that much, but I liked him better than my dad.

[38:08] Justin McMillen

Yeah, it's not a good place to start a marriage.

[38:11] Karen Willock

Of the times, that's right. Yeah, yeah, so that's how I got out. But I was already using drugs, so drugs came into my life when I was 14. The very first drug I used was heroin.

[38:23] Justin McMillen

Wow.

[38:24] Karen Willock

And I was working, back in those days you could get what was called a work permit and you could go to work, and the woman I worked with did heroin, and she's the one that turned me on to it the first time. It was in the 60s, this... I would have been 1964. And that's when heroin was really starting to...

[38:44] Justin McMillen

But was it pretty widespread? In the 60s?

[38:47] Karen Willock

Heroin was widespread use, there was just little small pockets of it.

[38:51] Justin McMillen

Is that how it worked?

[38:52] Karen Willock

I don't know, well, with her, she was my connection for a while. All I know is the first time I used it, I felt like I had been rocketed into another dimension, and I liked it from the get go.

[39:06] Justin McMillen

And which makes perfect sense, you know, opiates are a painkiller, physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual painkiller. And I mean, imagine all this family stuff, and if that's your baseline, it's like the distance between... their euphoria is so great, right?

[39:22] Karen Willock

Oh, I loved it. Yeah, that was it.

[39:25] Justin McMillen

Did you smoke it, or did you...

[39:28] Karen Willock

She shot me up.

[39:30] Justin McMillen

Are you kidding me?

[39:31] Karen Willock

No. And that's a big jump though.

[39:34] Justin McMillen

Yeah.

[39:34] Karen Willock

I liked it right from the beginning, though.

[39:37] Justin McMillen

And you were 14?

[39:38] Karen Willock

14.

[39:39] Justin McMillen

I'm sorry, I... I wondered what happened to her, I'm sorry, only... I mean your life has made into such a, it's such a beautiful thing now, it's weird to say I'm sorry, but to imagine a 14 year old, there's no...

[39:53] Karen Willock

Yeah, it's pure victimhood at that point.

[39:55] Justin McMillen

And I'm not a big victim guy.

[39:57] Karen Willock

Yeah, that's... that's so fucking young.

[39:59] Justin McMillen

Yeah, I was young, I was young, but I was very old, you know, it was kind of both at the same time.

[40:07] Karen Willock

I know people talk about smoking pot, I tried it twice, that... yeah, you don't bother me with that, you know, hurt your lungs. You know, like I was at one time... go and then... or was it like, now you're going to get a habit going real quick?

[40:22] Justin McMillen

I didn't get a habit going really clear, but I got it going quick enough.

[40:26] Karen Willock

Okay, and so we had a little cough, I totally forgot to mention, that little pedal, had all that and a mute the bike.

[40:34] Justin McMillen

So if you want to speak or anything, like it's good, good idea, I'm really sorry for interrupting.

[40:44] Karen Willock

It's okay, yeah, so... okay, so far so good.

[40:49] Justin McMillen

Yep, okay, good.

[40:50] Karen Willock

Yeah, and so that began my using, and it was periodic, obviously, different times I would find drugs, pills. Percodan was big back then. Yeah, I enjoyed it right from the beginning.

[41:06] Justin McMillen

It's insane and crazy, that starting point. I don't know that there's... I mean, some people have that story. I had a buddy that I met when I first moved out here, who's since passed away, but his first drug use was with his dad, and it was around that same age, I think 13.

[41:23] Karen Willock

That happens a lot.

[41:25] Justin McMillen

That was heroin? Yeah, it's like... what could you imagine, even me as a high parent, I couldn't imagine turning my kids on to something like that. It's like, why would I introduce you to that?

[41:40] Karen Willock

I don't know. So that... that was by then, I was already pretty much checked out. Anyway, you know, I worked because I wanted to get out, and I knew money was my way out. That's why I went to nursing school, I don't really like sick people.

[41:59] Justin McMillen

How old were you when you got married the first time?

[42:03] Karen Willock

I'm a serial marrier.

[42:04] Justin McMillen

So the story was like, how many times?

[42:07] Karen Willock

Let's see, five.

[42:08] Justin McMillen

Oh, wow.

[42:08] Karen Willock

Yeah, that's until I met Lisa. Part of that was the gender, is Lisa number six. Yeah, okay, you don't even count, that's like the starting point. So, in 1970 I went to see a psychologist and I said, I'm attracted to women. And he said, you live in a heterosexual world, adjust. That was his 1970 advice.

[42:32] Justin McMillen

Well, we've come a long way since then.

[42:35] Karen Willock

Yes, thank God. And so, the first husband I had, I met him when I was 16. He was 22. But he was kind to me, he had a big family, and their dad was alcoholic. I don't even know if I was capable of loving anybody, really. It seems like... yeah, it was all just about survival and getting out. And so you're 16, he's 22.

[43:11] Justin McMillen

What's he do for work?

[43:13] Karen Willock

Well, he actually went into the Army.

[43:15] Justin McMillen

Okay, so you become an army wife, and that gets you out of your house.

[43:20] Karen Willock

Well, he got out of the army before we got married. So, so I got married, I'm terrible with dates, but... and I can hear Lisa saying, they're not important, but it was around, I was around 18-ish. As soon as I graduated from high school I was out. I graduated in May, by December I was out.

[43:39] Justin McMillen

Gotcha.

[43:40] Karen Willock

And I don't think my dad and I had many conversations. He came out to Oregon once, when I lived out here, he was drunk when he got off the plane, and was inappropriate with me at the airport. It was just, he stayed overnight, literally, and then went back. He was such a mess, he really was. And he died falling in a snowbank in Nebraska, and lived in South Omaha, which was where a lot of Polish folks lived. There was a bar on every corner, you didn't even have to cross a street to get drunk. But he fell, and I went back. He had married again, he had gone through the DTs, I don't even know how many times, horrible withdrawal. And he was in his 40s at that time, it was like he was an old guy. And I was so dead inside. I think when I look back on those times, I was so absent. I remember standing at the bottom of his bed feeling nothing. He was just... he died around Thanksgiving. I didn't use any drugs when I went back because I wanted to remember it. He was just such... they're not buried in the same place, they were buried in different places. His wife at the time, I was so mean to her, you know, all this displaced anger towards him I took out on her, because I saw her getting what I thought my mom should have gotten. And I told her that for a six pack of beer I could have her killed. And she didn't like that gangster. I thought I was being all nice because I didn't do anything. So my amends to her was that I would never contact her again. They taught me, give back what you took. I took her sense of safety, then you give it back to her. So we never spoke again after he died. That was her third alcoholic husband, the third set of ashes on the TV.

[46:13] Justin McMillen

So she was a career...

[46:15] Karen Willock

Sure. And by then I was on husband number two, the one I met was... husband number one was in Omaha, and we moved out to Oregon together.

[46:29] Justin McMillen

Moved out to Oregon together, okay. And then where in Oregon?

[46:35] Karen Willock

Portland.

[46:35] Justin McMillen

Portland, so you've been in Portland...

[46:37] Karen Willock

I wasn't in actual Portland, I was in Tigard, I didn't even know there was a whole other city, for several years.

[46:45] Justin McMillen

Yeah, that was a mess.

[46:46] Karen Willock

Got it. You know, and... was he a drinker, or...

[46:50] Justin McMillen

No.

[46:50] Karen Willock

So he was a codependent to the extreme, and we had a kid right away. David, my oldest son, is in his 50s. And thank God he was there, because he took good care of David, I was incapable of being a mother.

[47:08] Justin McMillen

Were you in nursing yet, or did you go to school?

[47:13] Karen Willock

I was a nurse, okay, I went to school, became a nurse, worked between three different hospitals. My social security looks like, between 1976-ish or 1970s. Right in there until '83, it looked like I would drop into a coma for 2 or 3 years, just disappear, and then I'd come and I'd work for a few thousand dollars, and then I'd disappear again. And it's very interesting to look at, because it just shows during those years, between 20 and 33, I mostly didn't work. But every now and then I'd work, I'd try, you know. But I always, even then, worked with people who were dying, you know, people who wanted to talk about stuff. Always worked the midnight shift, because you're not going to be high on days, right.

[48:09] Justin McMillen

That's for sure.

[48:10] Karen Willock

Yeah, I always checked the pupils of all my doctors and nurses and anesthesiologists. Now, my amends in that arena is, I did a group for physicians in Washington for 25 years, once a week. Well, I met with doctors who were monitored for addiction and mental health behaviors, for 25 years.

[48:30] Justin McMillen

That's crazy.

[48:31] Karen Willock

And that was a way to give back to that community what I took so horribly.

[48:37] Justin McMillen

So your addiction was going, ramp constant.

[48:40] Karen Willock

Yeah, and it was mainly opiates.

[48:42] Justin McMillen

Only opiates, only?

[48:44] Karen Willock

I might have used, I mean I used, drinker?

[48:47] Justin McMillen

No, no, no.

[48:49] Karen Willock

I do not like to be drunk.

[48:51] Justin McMillen

Yeah, I don't either, no, doesn't appeal to me at all.

[48:56] Karen Willock

I don't drink, nor would I drink working in this field. We were just talking about that over there too. Even if I was an alcoholic, how could I go sit at a bar after what I see all day, it just repulses me. It's like, are you kidding? But drugs were my thing, I wasn't going to be like them.

[49:18] Justin McMillen

Sure.

[49:19] Karen Willock

Yeah, I was worse than them.

[49:21] Justin McMillen

Were you able to... I'm trying to get a picture of your life at this point. So are you hanging out with other drug users, or are you getting prescriptions and sneaking, and living, being wife, mom, working as a nurse, or... how's that going?

[49:40] Karen Willock

No, I would be gone for days and then come home, and I'd use alone. At one time I had a three story house, and I used to run card games out of it to make a living, and so... But I came down the stairs and I knew there wasn't one person in my house I knew.

[50:06] Justin McMillen

Wow.

[50:07] Karen Willock

And that's... this is illegal, card house, it's not good, it's speakeasy kind of.

[50:12] Justin McMillen

Yeah, yeah, but I could make money.

[50:14] Karen Willock

Sure.

[50:15] Justin McMillen

And were you married at this time?

[50:17] Karen Willock

Yeah, he was, okay, I'm telling you, whatever I wanted to do. He was a painter, or painted houses or whatever, this is, I have my wife has this hustle. Did he know you were on drugs too?

[50:30] Justin McMillen

Did he?

[50:31] Karen Willock

Oh my God, I know, he used to tell me, I love you no matter what. And I said, you're sicker than I am.

[50:39] Justin McMillen

Yeah. Was there any of these relationships, was there any real... I'm sure, of course it was, but like, was the love, was there some substance there, you know, or would you just throw it all in the category of sick and codependent?

[50:54] Karen Willock

I mean, I loved them, I had never fallen in love until I met Lisa, that was the difference. I cared about the people I was with. I just cared about myself more, I guess, I mean I was just into my thing, I didn't necessarily need them. So with the first husband, we got involved... that's where we started getting involved with the communes.

[51:17] Justin McMillen

Okay, I want to hear about this.

[51:20] Karen Willock

So in Oregon at that time too, there was a lot of that going down.

[51:26] Justin McMillen

Yes. So how did that all start?

[51:31] Karen Willock

So I was... I think, who I was really with, I had met husband number two, I was still with husband number one, at one point, in this commune that I was living in, husband number one was upstairs. We were divorced, I was with husband number two, and husband number three was across the hall. Oh, I know what I should... so... whoops, I didn't mean to say that, but you can say so on here. And we were living in the basement, then two drug addicts in the basement was serious.

[52:16] Justin McMillen

Is this... is this Portland?

[52:18] Karen Willock

This is in Portland. And so, is this a big commune, or is it small? It started with... it's religious based. The first one I bumped into is called Christ Brotherhood, and I knew something was off with them. And then the second one was a Catholic charismatic movement, where there was all kinds of weird stuff going on there too. And then this group broke off from those and became their own. Two of the people are still out there, kind of living off the grid, doing their thing.

[52:55] Justin McMillen

Is this also part of the 70s, or were you just a magnet for weird shit?

[53:01] Karen Willock

I think I was a magnet for weird shit, but it was part of the 70s too. Yeah, and so that's where I met my first friend, Donna. She's since passed away. They did all kinds of stuff, they did deliverance, they were radicals, they were... deliverance from evil spirits, which I was full of.

[53:28] Justin McMillen

Sure.

[53:29] Karen Willock

So they, she's screaming at you, make him go away. And it didn't work, because I still got high, but it was interesting.

[53:40] Justin McMillen

Was there anything real about it in your mind?

[53:44] Karen Willock

I did, I met Donna, yeah, Donna for sure, she definitely was. I think they genuinely cared about people. I probably would have been dead without them because they did give me a safe place, even though it was very radical. But I was kind of a radical person then too, you know, I wasn't mainstream, that's for sure. And I loved the idea of communal living, it really made sense to me. And David, my oldest son, was about, let's see, seven, eight, right around, so we're in the mid to late 70s. Donna, I met at one of the events that they had, where I can see these people's faces in my mind right now. I mean, wow, Donna was at one of these deliverance events that I don't even know how I got there, I just, I don't know how I got there. It was somewhere in Tigard, and I walked in on it, and I was like, this is odd. And I met Donna there. And Donna lived not too far from where I live right now, and I drove to her house. I had a hard time finding it, it took me 2 or 3 hours. I mean it was, high, driving to her house, going to say hi to a lady I didn't know. And, you know, she never judged me, I saw her not long before she died, Donna. Never judged me, she had to know that I was high. I was a horrible mother.

[55:40] Justin McMillen

Was she older than me?

[55:42] Karen Willock

Not much, not much. She had four kids of her own. She played cards with me, she was probably the most normal person I'd ever had in my life. I remember watching her, one of her kids fell and skinned their knee or something, and she got the iodine out, and she got this out. Big bandages, which puzzled me, you know, because my thing with David was, you know, toughen up. You know, when they handed him to me, when he was a little five pound baby, and I say to this little baby, I will teach you how to make it through because it's ugly out here. And so I went home that day. I bought a box of Band-Aids on my way home, and I went home and put 20 Band-Aids all over David. And I said, this is for all the Band-Aids... and I'm still a mess, but I said, this is for all the Band-Aids I never put on you. Because I watched her, she taught me, she mentored me without knowing she was mentoring me. I bet I spent days at her house, something.

[56:57] Justin McMillen

And so you're with this person, and you're getting this weird glimpse into normalcy.

[57:04] Karen Willock

Yes.

[57:05] Justin McMillen

And you had no prior understanding of that?

[57:09] Karen Willock

No, I was 33, this was pretty close to when I got clean. And I met her when I was 26, and she was very normal. She really was. And she was part of this commune, she always thought there was a little... some of it was a little weird, her husband was really off the charts into it, he was the deliverance master or something. And she...

[57:37] Justin McMillen

How many people are we talking about?

[57:40] Karen Willock

We're talking about 25 or 30.

[57:42] Justin McMillen

Okay, and were they genuinely unified by a belief in God?

[57:45] Karen Willock

Yeah, for sure.

[57:46] Justin McMillen

You know, for sure, so it's not like a sex cult or some other weirdo.

[57:52] Karen Willock

Although I thought I was, their lead person, Tom, he was the leader. And he passed away too, but almost all of them are dead and I'm still alive, it's kind of interesting. But Donna did not like to sleep with him. So this was the first time I got counseling. So I went to Tom and I said, hey, I understand Donna doesn't want to sleep with you, and my thing is, I will take it off her plate, you can leave her alone. I thought I was being helpful.

[58:28] Justin McMillen

Yeah, yeah.

[58:29] Karen Willock

And his eyes got about this big, and the next day I'm in some psychologist's office.

[58:35] Justin McMillen

Wow, so there's some... most of the time you think about like, these sort of cults or communes, and you just... predator. And, you know, Tom is a good dude.

[58:46] Karen Willock

Yeah, he was a good man. And I told the psychologist, I don't know why he said, what did you...

[58:52] Justin McMillen

I, yeah, I did.

[58:54] Karen Willock

I said, I thought I was being helpful. I really like Donna, God, I was such a mess.

[59:00] Justin McMillen

Did Donna find out?

[59:01] Karen Willock

I don't think she knew, we never talked about it.

[59:05] Justin McMillen

It sounds like, though, she sounds like such an amazing person, maybe she did know and just understood.

[59:12] Karen Willock

How she really... I think she really knew, north star, yeah, she really knew. I was just, she taught me so much. I remember, we were driving about six months after I met her, we're driving down the street and I said, you know, Donna, I have never known anybody for six months in a row unless I married him. I'm not even... I've never had a friend this long. And she said... And she said, well, we'll just keep driving. She was just, I will always love her. Yeah, I can feel it. Because she was, she was, and you know what, Justin, I am that for some people.

[59:54] Justin McMillen

I was just going to say, do you think that getting... I mean, you've made such a massive shift from your statistically just zero... You broke every yes rule, right, you shouldn't be sitting here. No, you should not have a wake of thousands of people that you've helped, none of that should exist. Do you think it takes a Donna person?

[1:00:21] Karen Willock

Yes, I think it always... I think it always boils down to someone sees you, and somebody connects with you. One person. And even when I looked back in my childhood, Mr. Gibson, when I was a kid, he would sit on this porch, and I know he heard what was going on in our house, and yet he never brought it up, but for minutes I would sit on his porch and be okay. Mrs. Deeds, my shorthand and typing teacher, knew that I... That I was a mess and I could sit in her classroom and be at ease for a little bit. So all along the way, when I looked back, when I was finally able to look back, I could see that there were people always, there was always someone that was willing to reach out. And even if I couldn't reach back... Donna, even when I divorced Tom, who was in the commune, to get with Steve, and later with Pete, she never judged me. She just didn't. I don't know, it's pretty unusual for a person to not judge. Yeah, and she didn't drink, she wasn't... she was a good mom, she was just a very normal person. I think it always is, because one person sees somebody, she saw something that I sure didn't see in myself. And so I definitely think that's a big piece of it. So, I work... no.

[1:02:17] Justin McMillen

Okay, I tried competing, maybe again, I found it, all right. Is the mic working right now?

[1:02:23] Karen Willock

Yeah.

[1:02:23] Justin McMillen

Okay, I think if you step on it and hold it down while you cough.

[1:02:28] Karen Willock

Oh yeah, is that how it works, a little bit?

[1:02:31] Justin McMillen

Yeah, okay, make sure you leave this in the podcast.

[1:02:34] Karen Willock

So she was more real.

[1:02:36] Justin McMillen

All right, it's live. So there's this book I learned about in high school called Fahrenheit 451, and there's a girl in there named Clarisse. And the guy who taught the book to us called it the Clarisse experience. It's like when you meet somebody and it completely shifts your understanding of reality in one way or another. It's just through knowing them, it's not like they tell you the profound thing or something, it's just, it's one human being touching another human being, reaching out. You think that's just by chance, or do you think that comes from some other place?

[1:03:16] Karen Willock

Yeah, I don't think it's by chance. And I also think I could have missed it. So it probably wasn't the first time that somebody crossed my path that could have created what I call defining moments. I think all of us have defining moments in our life, and she probably wasn't the first one. There was another woman, when David was maybe 3 or 4 years old, we moved 22 times in six years, so he couldn't even read in the sixth grade because we'd moved so many schools. And finally I quit telling him we moved, and just kept him at the same school. I thought, how are they ever going to know?

[1:04:00] Justin McMillen

Sure.

[1:04:01] Karen Willock

Oh sure, I lost my train of thought, rocking and defining moments. Oh, defining moment, you said maybe there was this other person, so when David was younger.

[1:04:14] Justin McMillen

Yeah, so when David was...

[1:04:16] Karen Willock

I lost the entire thought.

[1:04:18] Justin McMillen

Okay, yeah, you don't need to remember, it was important.

[1:04:22] Karen Willock

Yeah, it's gone.

[1:04:23] Justin McMillen

You were describing... we're talking about Donna, and you said, well, maybe there was another time, and then you mentioned, oh, there was.

[1:04:32] Karen Willock

So it was, we were using, I was working as a nurse during this time. David was about four, we lived, we moved to a duplex. Oh God, and we had a turkey in our basement.

[1:04:45] Justin McMillen

Yeah, crazy shit.

[1:04:46] Karen Willock

My husband, on purpose.

[1:04:47] Justin McMillen

Yeah, well, I didn't know what to feed a turkey, and he didn't either. He brought it home for Thanksgiving. Like, what, am I going to kill it, live turkey?

[1:04:57] Karen Willock

Yeah, and I could have killed it, but I didn't. And I put it in the basement, it pecked out five stairs out of the basement. I tried to feed it corn and oatmeal, and yeah, it was just a big massive turkey, we're not supposed to have pets.

[1:05:13] Justin McMillen

Yeah, that's turkey, that's awesome.

[1:05:15] Karen Willock

And so he comes home with a turkey, that was very much him, he might not have been drinking and using, but he did some crazy stuff. So the woman... I was yelling at David, and he was about four, and the woman next door comes over to my door, and this was the first time somebody heard and saw my disease. And she knocked on the door and I opened it, and she said, it sounds like you're having a hard time. And I said all kinds of things to her. Slammed the door shut. But I remember leaning up against that door and realizing she had seen me. And that was another one. I can still remember her face, because that, too, when we're so much with drugs and alcohol, is to not see or be seen, you know, it's to just dissolve. So in 1980, January 4th, 1980, I was married to my second husband, and his four year old daughter was murdered by a 14 year old.

[1:06:28] Justin McMillen

Okay, let's rewind. So you're with... this is Steve?

[1:06:31] Karen Willock

Yes, this is Steve, and you met him at the commune. He had a motorcycle, so I handed my Bible to somebody and got on the motorcycle, that's how that relationship started. So he had already had a daughter, he had two daughters, Bethany and Ruth. And so on January 4th, we get this call that Ruth had been found. We knew she was missing, people were looking for her.

[1:07:03] Justin McMillen

No, how long had you been married to him?

[1:07:07] Karen Willock

We got married in '78, '79. So a couple years.

[1:07:12] Justin McMillen

So you were close with Ruth?

[1:07:15] Karen Willock

Yeah, she was a beautiful little girl. And they found her body, and it was a 14 year old girl that lived next door that drowned her in about four inches of water, in a pool in the backyard. And that was the second child, she was with... Ruth was with her when the first child was drowned up at the zoo, and didn't die right away. And I had so much hatred, it was for me, it was like every injustice or harm that had ever happened, or been done to anybody, it was like I had laser focus, and I was obsessed with her. The court went on for a long time because she confessed before they read her her rights, and there was a law at that time that talked about the fact that you could not, if somebody confessed and they're a juvenile... she confessed to both of them, they couldn't do anything. So she was going to get off. And her dad came into court, he's in prison up in Washington now for killing somebody else. And they made her... her mother was already dead, had been killed by her grandfather, I mean it was just the whole family was killing and murders.

[1:09:11] Justin McMillen

Wow, Karen, that's so unusual.

[1:09:14] Karen Willock

And I was so obsessed, Michelle Gates, you can look it up, and Michelle was the girl that killed her. The Catholic girl. And that was a second person, the first one was attempted, second, when... the first one died too, they lived for a little bit before they died. And then Ruth was after that.

[1:09:42] Justin McMillen

Is that... I mean, obviously it's not normal, but I've never heard of that kind of pattern of murder within a year.

[1:09:52] Karen Willock

And they think she was a serial killer that was caught early. Yeah, she saw her mother be shot by her grandfather, it was... she comes from, her mom, I guess, was a prostitute, and the grandfather thought he was shooting her pimp, but it was her. And her dad was a drug addict. He was dirty, he was using heroin. I found this all out later when I met him, because he came into court and they were going to make him take custody, make Michelle a ward of his. And he admitted to using, which I didn't know, this was all planned, and refused to take custody, which then sent her to a psychiatric institute on the East Coast. And they held her till she was 18.

[1:10:51] Justin McMillen

She's out now?

[1:10:52] Karen Willock

She's out, she's a grown woman with two kids of her own, which just... I had to do a lot of work around all that.

[1:11:04] Justin McMillen

Yeah, and so the your stepdaughter was held for...

[1:11:08] Karen Willock

Yeah, little blond, sweetheart, and she just disappeared one day. One evening, and then they found her that evening. I mean, they knew she was gone, they just didn't know where. And Michelle had babysat for them, people used to drive miles to get her to babysit because she was so good with kids.

[1:11:31] Justin McMillen

Freaks me out.

[1:11:32] Karen Willock

After that I couldn't leave David, he was eight. I would never leave him with anybody, he'd be better off home alone, because I lost, like, anything can happen. It was a horrible time.

[1:11:50] Justin McMillen

And then, has Steve...

[1:11:52] Karen Willock

Nope, no, that was Steve, he's... he was just destroyed.

[1:11:57] Justin McMillen

Yeah, yeah, just destroyed.

[1:11:59] Karen Willock

And Gail was her mother, and Bethany, her sister, because Bethany's about 50 now. She's about the same age as David. And so she was made a ward of the court. And that's what got me to go try and get help to stop drinking and using, because I wanted to get revenge, and in order to do that I knew I couldn't be using.

[1:12:30] Justin McMillen

So as all this is going on, you're taking breaks to slam heroin, and it's like, you got this son who's eight, he married this dude... His daughter got murdered, it's just chaos and stress, right? And you're working or not working at this time?

[1:12:52] Karen Willock

On and on and off. That I'm on... January 4th 1980, when that happened, everything shifted for me, and it also made me very vulnerable, this was right before we got into this commune, so it made me very vulnerable. I picked up hitchhikers, and, you know, I did all kinds of crazy stuff back then, everybody picked up hitchhikers, it isn't like now. And that's how I met some of those, I was just, it was a crazy time. So I had met Donna, Tom and Donna in that community, then I met Christ Brotherhood, which was the other community, and they kind of meshed for a little bit. But then we found out that there was some really inappropriate stuff going on with the kids, like they wanted to not have your kids call you mom or dad, they wanted to fracture that because then their loyalty would go towards the leader. So this group of people separated from this Christ Brotherhood, which was shady business, all of them used drugs, you know. And so after Ruth died, I thought I wasn't using anymore, I only took pills, I did not use any IV drugs, and for some reason they didn't affect me the same, you just kind of held me over for sure. But I really thought I wasn't using. And the court stuff, because of the fact that she confessed before they read her her rights... It dragged on for a long time, I was so full of hatred, just, oh my God, I hated, and just hate coming out of my pores, and I wanted revenge so bad.

[1:14:51] Justin McMillen

Of course. I mean, I can see, and also, prior to that you have your whole life experiences, like, this is maybe your first time where you're really seeing injustice towards children from the outside, right? You had... I mean, you went through injustice yourself, but you lived it, right. But now you're actually seeing it, so you're starting to frame... yeah, should not happen to it, right, ever.

[1:15:19] Karen Willock

Yeah, yeah. And so that's when I went to all the court stuff, I paid attention, I knew they were holding her at a hospital. I tried to get a job there so I could get in there, you know, luckily I didn't. I was five years clean when I realized, even if I had come face to face with her, I couldn't have killed her, because I'm not a murderer, right, and that, I almost felt disappointed in myself. So I went, in December of '82, I went to my first... I went to a 12 step meeting because I didn't have money, I wasn't going to go to treatment, I think I might have signed into treatment once, I remember telling them no and walking out, but I never even thought about treatment.

[1:16:10] Justin McMillen

But you were still with Steve at this time? So you were with Steve for a while?

[1:16:15] Karen Willock

Yeah.

[1:16:16] Justin McMillen

You have kids with Steve?

[1:16:18] Karen Willock

No.

[1:16:18] Justin McMillen

Okay, no. And so, is he just falling apart even years after?

[1:16:23] Karen Willock

Yeah, he's passed away, he... and then he got, just like we know with grief, he got into some crazy behaviors, he used drugs and drank, he didn't drink as much as he used drugs, and he got into some weird sexual behaviors, and he went off the rails. It takes a lot of noise to quiet that inner voice, you know? And so during that time, Donna was there during all of this, just a steady force, not telling me what to do or how to do it, or she would listen to my anger. So in December of '82, I must have used something, or I knew that if I didn't get some help, I was going to end up, because I knew if I started shooting dope again, I would get so distracted because I never did anything I said I was going to do when I was that high. Ever. So I ended up walking into this meeting in Portland, it's called Scully's, which is very hardcore, there's no love, they don't hold hands, it's just, they teach you how not to get high and drink. And I lasted 45 days without doing anything. I mean, there's some funny stories in there too, because we're all living in this commune stealing, because people who don't use drugs have a lot of drugs, you know, in their medicine cabinet. And unbeknownst to me, my current husband, myself, and my future husband are all stealing drugs from the same people upstairs. We laughed about that years later. But yeah, I found... I think I found, what was it, I found... it was a powerful opiate. I tore that bathroom apart looking for a syringe because I thought they delighted. I thought, they've got to have a syringe, but they really didn't. God, what a waste, I had to eat it, yeah, it was barely worth it. So during this whole time, they finish, I get into recovery, and lasted 45 days. I still regret this, I drove from the meeting hall past a 7-Eleven on 20th and Broadway, and I went in to get a soda, and I bought two bottles of Mad Dog 20/20. I don't even like to drink, but I didn't have much money back then, syrup, like, I know syrup. And I didn't even mean to, I didn't even want to, because I knew once I started on a train, you know, I've never bought stuff and looked at it and tortured myself, ever. So if I had it, and it was mine, I was using it and I wasn't sharing it. And I couldn't look the guy in the eye, the clerk at the 7-Eleven, like he gave two shits what I was doing, you know, and drank, drank and blacked out before I left the parking lot. And when I woke up the next morning, this is a defining moment, when I woke up the next morning, I said to God, if there was one, I don't want to get chummy. I just don't want to get high. And I called the meeting hall where I was going to meetings down at Scully's, and I haven't had a drug or a drink since February 19th.

[1:20:03] Justin McMillen

February 19th, 1983?

[1:20:05] Karen Willock

Wow, right, so little time.

[1:20:07] Justin McMillen

Another year here.

[1:20:08] Karen Willock

Yeah, little did I know that I was about to launch into something that I had no idea what was happening. Because I'm full of hate, you know, I'm just, I'm not a nice person, when as a human you haven't built any... you know, the basic stuff.

[1:20:33] Justin McMillen

No.

[1:20:33] Karen Willock

And so, boy, if I had known, and I didn't intend to stay clean and sober either. So she got out of the psychiatric hospital that she was in. I thought I saw her over by an Almost School of the Bible, I put my car in park, and I charged at this woman that I thought was her, and it wasn't her. And I realized that I could have hurt somebody that didn't deserve it. I mean, Michelle did, so she didn't deserve it, but... and that was the first day that I, what we call, a perception shift. I didn't have the name for it then, where I had to think about, I had to change what I was doing, I couldn't, and I didn't really think I could not hate, could I, I didn't see how, I didn't see a way out of that. And boy, was I surprised, that began a willingness, maybe, that I didn't have before I got into some counseling. I tried to help people that were in the meetings.

[1:21:58] Justin McMillen

We're nursing still?

[1:22:00] Karen Willock

No, I left nursing in 1980, you know, I tried to get a job when, after Michelle killed Ruth, so I was still working right when all that happened, and I worked for a little bit, it was a good distraction. I was working in a rehab for quadriplegics, and they've got some funny stories there too, because I used to let them go out at night and drink and come back, and sometimes they'd follow their wheelchairs and I'd have to go scoop them up and get back in. Oh God, that was such a shit show. One young guy snapped his neck, thought he'd never have sex again. So I hired a hooker.

[1:22:46] Justin McMillen

Nice.

[1:22:46] Karen Willock

Because I thought, I knew if he knew that he could... because there's all these different reasons, and if you have a certain valve that still works even though you're quad, you can perform.

[1:22:57] Justin McMillen

Sure.

[1:22:58] Karen Willock

And I found out from his doctor he did, so I thought, he needs a professional. Yeah, he doesn't need some 19 year old girl that doesn't know what she's doing. So I locked him in the room, and he went out. He ended up going to college, I've often wondered what happened to him, because I think I helped him realize he could have a life.

[1:23:22] Justin McMillen

That's beautiful, it's very unorthodox with it, but there's a TV show out now called Landman, and it's hilarious. Is this the main guy? He's like an oil rig person, and his wife and her daughter decide they're going to try to help these people, this old folks home, and so they take him to a strip club and stuff, it's hilarious, but they love it, and they're having so much fun with these folks, and get them drunk and take him all over the place.

[1:23:48] Karen Willock

I mean, these were all young people, and they need to know they can have a life.

[1:23:53] Justin McMillen

Sure.

[1:23:53] Karen Willock

You know, you think, because he jumped into a river, snapped his neck, the ambulance started on fire, is it, dude, you're obviously still supposed to be here.

[1:24:02] Justin McMillen

Yeah, so we need to figure out how to help you want to be here.

[1:24:07] Karen Willock

Sure, I love it. So I was working during that time, and then when they let her out, and I ran, I thought I saw her, that was a pivotal point, because I either needed to do revenge, or I needed to figure out how to release that desire. And so a lot of different things happened. You know, I met people, that's been kind of the story of my life, is that at different times the right teacher appears, and I learn. So I started learning, I dived into the principles of recovery and what they're all about. And I was nine months clean when I got my first job in the field, which I lied about. They said they wanted me to have a year, I said, yeah, I pretty much have one, pretty much, nine months is coming right up on it, I wish, my months, 12 months, same difference. I signed myself out of the same hospital that was going to hire me, I was in the ER for a gallbladder attack, I signed myself out, went to my job interview. No, and then went and saw the surgeon. So I was a night attendant, and I had all the clients, we call them patients back then, were all downstairs with me, we'd cook food and play games and talk about recovery. And I didn't know I was supposed to be watching the phone, I had no idea.

[1:25:39] Justin McMillen

What hospital was this?

[1:25:40] Karen Willock

Providence. And that's when they had their behavioral health, and it was, charts were awful, little folders, this is 1984, so these little folders with the face sheet, and I said, you know, we need to get a charting system set up for when the joint commission comes in and closes us. And so they brought me on days, and some counselor didn't show up. And they said, can you do a group? And I was nine foot and bulletproof, I could do anything. So I went, and I came out and said, what do I got to do to be that? And I've worked in this field ever since.

[1:26:21] Justin McMillen

Wow, ever since, when, how long? So as you're doing this, and you're still married to Steve?

[1:26:27] Karen Willock

Hello, we rarely do. I was married to Steve probably five years, 5 or 6 years all together.

[1:26:34] Justin McMillen

And how did your recovery... was it just you needed to get away from him because he was not healthy, or were you starting to realize who you were, or did you fall in love with somebody else?

[1:26:47] Karen Willock

I think it was a combination of things. A lot of times when a family loses a child, the partnership dies with that child, and that's not too unusual, I've since learned. I mean, it was really more of an agreement, my marriage with him, because he had a good job, and I needed somebody with a good job, and... He got into recovery too, I don't know if he ever really quit. Those were not good years. But what I did continue to do was work, get counseling. I had a friend who taught me how to dress for jobs, and I said, if I ever wrote a book I'd call it... How do you keep your pantyhose up when you're wearing boots? Because that's a dilemma that men wouldn't necessarily know about, but boots pull your pantyhose down, which was already a big enough problem for me. So, sure, and then I had already met my two other boys' dad, Pete, and he was, manufactured methamphetamines down here in California, in Oakland. They used to call him some interesting names. And I met him in this commune. One of the things we did was we fed people, so they'd make soup or food and we'd take it downtown Portland and give it out at night. And I met him at Baloney Joe's. So here's a room full of homeless people, and I meet my future husband. Another match made in heaven. And Pete had a lot of PTSD, a lot from... he was never in the service, his was from sexual abuse. He did a lot of work on that. He became an alcohol and drug counselor. He had chronic pain, and he came a long way. We were friends for 6 or 7 years before we ever got married.

[1:29:28] Justin McMillen

So you were friends with him while you were still using?

[1:29:31] Karen Willock

And then you get sober, and eventually I remember asking the guys I worked with, I said, he always gets a hold of me, what should I do? And they said, put him in contact with us when he gets a hold of you. But he wasn't interested, and then he did get clean, and he actually had opiates at the end, and he was out of pain, I think, for 6 or 7 days, and they almost made him psychotic. He didn't sleep for 6 or 7 days. I took the kids and left the house because, you know, again, my intuition, and I had written that morning, this was in '95, and I had written that morning that there was death in this house. I could feel it. And I went to work, I was working at Springbrook Hazelden now then, and when I came home that night, he had called me and wanted me to get another prescription for him. And I said, if you want a script, you're going to have to call and get it yourself. And when I got home that night, he was so angry with me. And there had been a couple of instances of physical abuse with him. And Joe, who was seven at the time, had gone camping with our neighbors, Pete, who was three, was at the house. And when Big Pete went to bed that night, David, yeah, David was an adult. He moved out.

[1:31:24] Justin McMillen

Got it.

[1:31:25] Karen Willock

And so then there were 17 years between those sets of kids. And so when Big Pete went to bed, I picked up Little Pete, and we left. And I'll never forget, the check engine light was on in my car, and I thought, well, I'd better keep working. And we went to somebody that nobody knew, because I knew Pete, and I knew where there was space, he was in, that he would find us and it wouldn't be good.

[1:32:01] Justin McMillen

True.

[1:32:01] Karen Willock

And then on Sunday, I came back. To pick up Joe, and Pete had him already, and I drove away to get the police to come, and had him... I already had him with me, and he wouldn't let him come with me, he wanted me to come into the house. I've never known, I've told the boys this too, I knew that if I went in that house, he was out of his mind, and he would kill us. I knew he would. And Joe and I have talked about this, because he has some memories, Pete was too young. And our neighbor intervened, I still am in contact with him. And Pete called the police on himself, and the police showed up, and I don't know what he told the police, I was schizophrenic and abused the kids. And I told the cop, I said, well, I'm way too organized to be schizophrenic, and have I slapped my kids on the butt, absolutely, and we can deal with that later, but I'm not leaving this child with him.

[1:33:20] Justin McMillen

Right.

[1:33:21] Karen Willock

And they said that they couldn't, they couldn't enforce that.

[1:33:24] Justin McMillen

What the hell?

[1:33:25] Karen Willock

I know, I know, I know, and I don't know what Pete said to them. He said something, because the next thing I know, he's up and in handcuffs. So he said something, I'll never know. And he went to jail. I went in the house, he had moved everything from the house, he had moved everything to the center of the rooms, emptied out every dresser drawer. We had some birds and gerbils and stuff. Every animal was outside, it was just bizarre. And I got the kids' clothes and some of their toys, and I packed the car up, and I wasn't coming back till he got help. And he got out of jail on Monday, he went around looking for us, nobody knew where we were, and I did that deliberately. And Tuesday morning he hung himself and died, at the house, he called my work and he told Walt Bird, who is the physician there, that he was going to kill himself, hung up, and he did it. And they came and got me, and I said, you need to call the police, because he's never threatened to harm himself. And they went out, and he had died by suicide, hung himself, he almost decapitated himself on a doorknob. And when I talked to the coroner, he told me that the amount of anger that he had to have to do that, there was no attempt to remove the rope or anything like that. And he said it's usually a homicide-suicide, and I said, I have no doubt. And I told my boys, your dad loved you, and he never would have wanted to harm you, and I don't think he could have helped himself. And that was, boy, that was, I had all kinds of survivor's guilt and, like, what right do I have? Because we used so much the same, you know, what right do I have to have a life? It was just so tragic. Trying to get him help wasn't easy, because we were barely making it financially.

[1:35:53] Justin McMillen

Yeah, it was... what kind of work did he do?

[1:35:58] Karen Willock

He was an alcohol and drug counselor. And he was really good at it. He went through Saint Joseph's Hospital in Washington, their Vancouver, through their intern program back in the day. But he wasn't sober, he was sober for 12 years, and then the last week, he was prescribed opiates for... it was just right at the end. But he helped everybody that nobody else wanted to talk to. He was always... what do you think was torturing him so much? You said PTSD, he had sexual abuse. He was raised in a commune, interestingly enough, a Catholic commune, where in every household there was an alcoholic. He was raised in an orphanage because his mom was alcoholic and had a seizure at the school, and so the kids were all sent to different orphanages. And he didn't come out, it was a brother at that orphanage that sexually abused him, and then just all the years of the craziness with drugs and manufacturing, he was exposed to a lot of really bad chemicals with crystal meth back in the day, right, and then the chronic pain.

[1:37:23] Justin McMillen

So now you're a single mom, and that taught you how to compartmentalize.

[1:37:30] Karen Willock

Yeah, yeah. And so, we were just talking about the two children you had, at that point, never saw... they were seven and three when he died, and they never... I, I remember when I found out I was pregnant with Joe, because I hadn't gotten pregnant since 1970. Now we're in the late 80s, and when they called to tell me I was pregnant, I said, it's impossible. He's 17 and I'm 38. And I hung up the phone. They brought up... my boyfriend was 17, oh, my son, sure. And they're like, yeah, 17 year olds can do that, Karen. And bang, I was pregnant, and I was working at Providence Hospital, and I would go over to a... This was my thinking, I've always enjoyed my thinking. So I thought, if a mom can... because oh my God, now I'm going to be a mother, I don't even know how to be a mother, I'd done it wrong the first time, right? And so I started going over to this pediatrician's office, watching, because I knew if you could take care of a sick baby, you could take care of any baby, right? So I would go over every day on my lunch hour and watch these mothers take care of their kids while they're waiting for their doctor's appointment, eat my lunch, and then leave.

[1:38:55] Justin McMillen

This goes all the way back to you putting all the Band-Aids on.

[1:38:59] Karen Willock

Exactly, just curiosity, like this is motherhood.

[1:39:01] Justin McMillen

Yes, so because you had no example...

[1:39:04] Karen Willock

And I could tell some were better at it than I was, sure, but some of them were really naturals, they were just naturals. And so when they handed me Joe, I didn't know I could love anybody that much, and I still adore him. And then I had 2 or 3 miscarriages, I would have had five kids. I would have dug Pete out of his grave if he loved me, with five boys to raise. And then I had Pete, and then, thank God, no more, because I was 42 and I had Pete. So yeah, and I've worked the whole time, and I'm really pretty happy.

[1:39:54] Justin McMillen

That's beautiful, I think it's really beautiful that there's a purity in so many people. We recreate generationally what we... that's how it works, I mean, you have your genetic download, your traits, and then you have the secondary bit of information, which is what you learn from your family, and then you sort of, through a lot of interesting circumstances, just created your own reality.

[1:40:27] Karen Willock

I did, this one psychologist, I said that there's certain kids, and it's probably genetics. When they grow up they become super kids, that somehow they grow up with this stuff. And we know this with our veterans, you can have 5 or 6 veterans all experience the same thing and not all of them will be affected the same.

[1:40:50] Justin McMillen

Yeah, and so is that the brain, you know, is that...

[1:40:54] Karen Willock

I don't know if I would have made it if I wasn't in this field. Yeah, I think, I had to, I'm an intense personality, so when I was using I get very dedicated, and so when I got into recovery I got dedicated to that. Yeah, I'm not sure what would have happened, I don't need to know because it isn't what happened. But there's a lot to be said about genetics.

[1:41:32] Justin McMillen

Yeah, I've been on that kick lately, I've been working with this geneticist who's so brilliant, he's a world renowned guy, he manages this thing for the FDA, it's like the largest trove of genetic information. He thinks it's like 80% is genetic. But even with genetics, a person's sensitivity and their predisposition to epigenetic changes from environment can be a factor. So a super kid could be less sensitive, meaning that they're not going to experience as much genetic alteration, genetic expression and alterations, so they won't have as much trauma, like real trauma, where it actually changes them. But I don't know, I mean, I'm so clueless on that stuff, but I think this is amazing to hear. So you have all of these life experiences, you end up helping people, and this isn't the end of it, you know, nowhere near, right. So you have your two children, you lose your husband, and you've got this child, at this point are you starting to think about life experience and like, how the fuck have I been through all of these things? Or is it just normal?

[1:42:55] Karen Willock

I think it was just normal, you know. It was strange, you had a stepdaughter who was murdered, a husband who had committed suicide, I mean, because I've seen a lot of ugly stuff in my life.

[1:43:10] Justin McMillen

Yeah, for sure, that wasn't related to me, just observing it.

[1:43:15] Karen Willock

And I don't, yeah, I don't think it's normal, but actually I've met a lot of people who've had family members murdered.

[1:43:24] Justin McMillen

Sure.

[1:43:25] Karen Willock

Yeah, and I've had a lot of people who have been impacted by suicide, and both of those have a pretty profound... people don't know what to do with you, they don't know how to be with you, you lose friends and family, because people don't know what to say or do. And, yeah, there's a... maybe that's why I'm drawn to wanting to know about grief, wanting to have more ability to think about it. When I look at my life, I think about the first, because even five, six, or ten years into recovery, I was still pretty loose cannon.

[1:44:24] Justin McMillen

Yeah, yeah.

[1:44:25] Karen Willock

I mean, it wasn't like I got clean and was rocketed into wonderfulness, you know, that's not what happened. I was still pretty disorganized in my thinking and behavior. Very erratic. Once I got to work, work for me was, what would you call it, it was like an oasis, because I just loved it, and I find people so interesting, and how people deal with different things, and how they think, it could be a bit of an obsession, right, because it's like, you can't solve a human, right. It's the most difficult challenge or problem. And I think somewhere in there I realized that, and I try to teach the guys I mentor this, that they're one little piece in their big story, and you don't know what that one little piece is going to do, sometimes they don't even know until years later. Like when I look back on my life, how did I know that this one little event was going to catapult me into a life that I was unaware of? So I think if I've learned anything, it's not to make a judgment about whether something is good or bad, because the worst things in my life have provided, or presented, I'm not even sure what the right word is, the opportunity to do something different. And the one thing I love about myself is once I make a decision, I'll do it. That's a done deal.

[1:46:19] Justin McMillen

I saw that when the first time we met, when you were the first one to jump into a giant bucket of ice out in Joshua Tree, right, and got instant respect from all the tough guys around you that were going to jump in, and you...

[1:46:34] Karen Willock

Yeah, it was like, this is what I'm fucking doing.

[1:46:37] Justin McMillen

And that was just... yeah, there was like a moment where I was like, I think I just saw the whole human, here, she goes for it, she's not afraid, she was laughing afterwards, and supporting everyone else, you were cheering people on afterwards too.

[1:46:58] Karen Willock

Yeah, yeah, that's, I really think that's... so maybe helping people find meaning, I like working with the people that are hard to work with. You know, the ones that, I mean, it's like trying to feed an alligator, and they're hungry, and they'll bite you while you're feeding them, and I'm okay with that.

[1:47:22] Justin McMillen

Yeah, well, you do really good work with that, I think.

[1:47:27] Karen Willock

Yeah, it's like when we're trying to understand if we have somebody who's a difficult case, and it's like, oh, she should receive care, we'll take this guy. And that's always... and I wonder now, especially now, knowing more about you, I wonder if your ability to see such a big picture of possibility then, like I said, statistically, you shouldn't be right, you shouldn't be even just normal, let alone right, high functioning as you are, right.

[1:47:59] Justin McMillen

Exactly. So for you, your only understanding of the world is that you can have an extremely difficult childhood, and still you can write your own story.

[1:48:10] Karen Willock

Yeah, yeah, yeah, or you can keep letting them write it.

[1:48:14] Justin McMillen

Yeah, yeah, your choice.

[1:48:16] Karen Willock

Yeah, but that's not a theory for you, you know, that's not... I know it's a fact.

[1:48:22] Justin McMillen

Yeah.

[1:48:23] Karen Willock

And I've seen it so many times, right, and I'm unconventional, like, I had a client back, it would have been in the 90s, early 2000s. Who threw a rock through another treatment center's windows, they wouldn't treat him anymore, he had just gotten out of prison, he was just a mess. He came in at Christmas, sat down beside me and grew up. And I'm like, boy, this is going to be a tough one. And I started meeting with him, he had a pet snake. That was his connection. And I said, I knew that doing a treatment plan, I'm going to educate you about addiction was not going to cut it, to learn how to get a job, how to fill out a job application, how to smile. He was, he had to be socialized, he'd been in the penitentiary for 25 years. So I did everything different for him, we didn't meet in my office, we went outside, everything, nothing conventional for him. And his girlfriend, who was his buddy, is all it was, she died while he was in treatment. And he came in, and he allowed me to touch his shoulder because he had had a loss. And he said, I want to get my kids, he had two kids he hadn't seen in years, and I helped him connect with his kids. He got a job at Walmart, he ended up moving to the state they lived in. And every time he would come back to town, he would stop and see me.

[1:50:04] Justin McMillen

See that? What is it, that... to see someone go from that, to what is... I mean, what is it about... do you think humans are naturally built to want to act to end some sort of unnecessary suffering with other humans, or do you think it's certain people?

[1:50:27] Karen Willock

I think... are we all that way? We just don't know it.

[1:50:34] Justin McMillen

Yeah, that's a good question, that's a really good question.

[1:50:37] Karen Willock

Because, I mean, if you throw two two year olds into a playpen and drop a toy in, you're not going to be nice to each other. And so sometimes I don't think it's human nature, we're pretty self-centered and greedy and, you know, kind of mean spirited until we tap out. Yeah, and so everybody has to come to the end of themselves, you know, and that's what I watch for. I listen for that, you know, you can do this or you can do that. I do best with the people that are at the end of themselves, that think they're nothing, because I know that's not true. Sure, but then it's like, you could build. And that's the hardest thing. There was a guy I was talking to the other day that had a crystal meth history, sober four months, and he still has, he's young, and I could still see him romanticizing, he's still romanticizing drug use. And sitting directly to my left was a guy who had used meth to the point where it now disgusts him to think of it. And I told him, I said, it worries me about you, because he's not at that point where he's done enough damage to where he hates himself. And so you wonder, like, is this guy going to have to rip a hole in his soul, and maybe even destroy his brain, before he gets to that end of himself, you know? Yeah, you know, I've watched it, I love watching, I love watching others, and then I develop my own narrative about them, and then watching to see whose narrative comes true. And I've seen people leave getting help and I think, man, they've got this solid, and they don't. And I've seen, there's one guy I remember, the last trip down here, I talked to him. I actually gave him some groceries, because he'd spent all of his money on energy drinks. And so I gave him some vegetables that I had leftover, and meat, before I left. He has since gone home, he's still clean and sober, he's had a baby and he's going into the Coast Guard.

[1:52:58] Justin McMillen

Wow.

[1:52:58] Karen Willock

And I thought, I didn't give him two nickels that he would be sober after he left here. I thought, boy, we're going to read about this character, boy was I wrong. Isn't that weird? Because his mom keeps in touch with me through the family program, so she sent me pictures of his baby. I got to remember to tell those guys that, because here's this guy that not in a million years did I think...

[1:53:25] Justin McMillen

And what did he... you got some, we get off of this, like, who that is, I'm curious.

[1:53:31] Karen Willock

He had some mental health issues too.

[1:53:34] Justin McMillen

Okay, yeah, it's extraordinary.

[1:53:36] Karen Willock

I don't know how you can, you can't guess who's going to make it and who's not. I mean, there's been people that have come to Tree House and done well. You look at them like a perfect client, and then they don't do well. I do think maybe belief has something to do with it, like for example, I was trying to describe this to guys in the class the other day, I was saying, asking them to rank their teammates in terms of belief, and they struggled with it. As I said, you can believe that something is going to help you but actually do a really piss poor job in participating in it. And they go, but I do think that the belief that it's going to help you is actually as important, or more important, than even the participation. Because there's guys that do everything perfect here, but they don't really believe that this is the solution, like this way of living or being or connecting, or that drug use is even something they shouldn't be doing anymore, right. But I think that's a big piece of it, is if there's a part of you that knows this is not what I want, it's sort of like going to church, and you can go to church and go through the motions. But if you don't believe, it's not going to do the same thing as if you believe.

[1:55:02] Justin McMillen

Yeah, I don't know, so, just going back, I'm just curious, so how did you find peace with Pete's passing?

[1:55:12] Karen Willock

That took a couple of years, and I shared this yesterday in the training, one of the things that I kept, like I said, I had this, what right do I have to still be alive, and clean, and that survivor's guilt is the only thing I can think to call it. For the first year I was pretty distracted, just with the kids, because that was a big change for them. And the second year was the most difficult, and I moved out of the community I had been in, because I kept running into people that knew Pete, because he and I used to give trainings, and we'd do all kinds of things in the community, and they would just be finding it out, and it kept making it too raw all the time. So I moved us to a little town in Oregon, Silverton. And I was working on a ranch on the side, always had one or two jobs, at least two, and this ranch was on the side, and it was people that had been through treatment a million times, and they lived on this ranch with this Episcopal, I don't know, Anglican... He was an Anglican priest, because he could be married, and they'd be there at least a year.

[1:56:45] Justin McMillen

Are you religious? Is that why you kept going to this?

[1:56:49] Karen Willock

No, no. Am I religious? No, not now, let's say, back then, were you... you mean, these cult-like...

[1:56:56] Justin McMillen

Yeah, I mean religious.

[1:56:57] Karen Willock

I think I've always been a searcher. Okay, because it's like, there's got to be something going on here. And I didn't know Scott, he later also committed suicide when he went back to using, but he and I were good friends, and we did a lot of laughing together, and I didn't know he was a priest because I kind of had aversions to priests. And when he came to work for the first time with Colleran, I was like, WTF, I don't understand all this. Did you just get it, or what's the deal? So then eventually he opened his own place and treated the untreatable, you know, they lived there, they ate together, they went to church together. They did it all. So we lived in Silverton, and that's where my both boys started using drugs. You know, people think that a small town is safe, and nothing, there's nothing safe. And so two of my boys are opiate addicts, and one of them is cannabis and cocaine. And so we moved out there, and it was at the end of the second year that every night when I would go to bed, I asked myself, how come I didn't see that? How come I didn't see that he was going to do that? And I was really, here I am, I work in the field, I do suicide assessments all the time, why did I not see this? I mean, I knew he was in trouble, he wouldn't go to a hospital or anything, but I knew he was in trouble, but I didn't... Why was I not seeing it? And for a solid year, I did that for two years, and I realized all I was doing was distracting from the pain by looking, trying to change the outcome, which I couldn't change. So I would go over the events from that Friday all the way through to that Tuesday morning, over and over and over. There was no way to change that. And then I felt the grief.

[1:59:29] Justin McMillen

So you try to rationalize it, you're trying to rationalize it instead of just experiencing the emotion.

[1:59:38] Karen Willock

And I think that's what we all do with grief, we try to avoid the pain by guilt or anger or thinking, you know, thinking I had some control over it. And I couldn't, unless... there's no way. And so that was the beginning of the recovery, then. I realized the outcome is what it is, no matter how many times I review it, think about it, I can't change the outcome, it is what it is. And I took about nine months off of work, I don't even know how we lived, because we were living really on the kids' social security. I can't, my rent was 850, I don't even know how I paid my rent, but I stayed home with the kids. I got them help, I got myself help, I took a breather.

[2:00:37] Justin McMillen

Was your oldest living with you too, the one who moved out, or David?

[2:00:42] Karen Willock

David, you know, he was deep in his disease.

[2:00:45] Justin McMillen

Okay. So local, though, or was he local to Oregon?

[2:00:49] Karen Willock

No, he was in Washington. And, you know, him and I didn't really connect until he was an adult, that bond between me and him was very fractured. And it was actually when I had Joe, that he said to me one day when he came, I was giving Joe a bath, and he said, it wasn't like that for you and me, was it? And I said, no, it was not. And so of the kids, he was the most gravely affected by my inability to form a true relationship.

[2:01:26] Justin McMillen

Sure.

[2:01:26] Karen Willock

And with Pete and Joe, I probably did too much, you know, how that pendulum swings from doing nothing to trying to do everything. And so I enabled their addiction for quite some time, and their behaviors. So Pete has bipolar disorder and suicidal ideation. And Joe had...

[2:01:52] Justin McMillen

Did you see that in the young?

[2:01:56] Karen Willock

Yes.

[2:01:57] Justin McMillen

Yeah, which kind of fits with that, right.

[2:02:01] Karen Willock

Right. Okay, and he's still smoking marijuana, but he's taking medication and is much more stable, he's learned he needs to take his meds. Yeah, and he's got an amazing tenacity, I don't know if Joe had to deal with some of the same stuff Pete's had to deal with, I don't think Joe could. That's what I mean about genetics, here's this kid, I mean, they're both so different, grew up in the same home, had the same circumstances, and how they're navigating their life is entirely different. And how come this one can do this, and this one, Joe is like a steady person, he's the oldest, he remembers losing it, he remembers, and it was almost like his dad didn't exist. I remember asking him one time, he was turning 16, and I'd gotten him a little beater vehicle. And I said, do you miss having a dad? And he says, you are my mom and dad. But I also got to say that there have been some good men in their lives, because the one thing I did know, I couldn't mentor a man into manhood, as much as I think I can, I can't, yeah, they need men. And so there have been some really good men that have gone through their lives, and is it happenstance, I don't know, more of that same Donna experience, you know. There was, their names, both of their names were drawn out of this lottery at the school, and they had the same mentor for seven, eight, nine years. An older guy that owned a landscaping business, and he met with both of them weekly for years. I still, when I drive by Silverton, I always check in on him, he had a profound impact on my kids, he was just a good, steady man. Maybe between Mr. Gibson and Donna...

[2:04:17] Justin McMillen

Yes.

[2:04:17] Karen Willock

And the landscape man, yeah, maybe there's like this series of angels in your life.

[2:04:26] Justin McMillen

Oh, he's talking about angels, yeah.

[2:04:29] Karen Willock

So, back when, okay, so I was working at Lutheran Hospital in Omaha, David was maybe 12, 18 months old. I was using a lot, we had our electricity turned off, which, I mean, that's kind of normal. And so I took a big extension cord and ran it down to the laundry room, one of those big ones, the orange ones, and ran it upstairs so we'd have some electricity. And I was down to the last thing I could use for a diaper, the last thing. And this woman comes to the door, and she has diapers. In a plain white wrapper, and she says, we want people to test these, would you be willing to? And I'm like, yeah. And so it was like 50 little diapers, right size for him, and I got him. And later that day, because it was kind of a, the complex was kind of full of a lot of druggies, you know. You know how those complexes are, and they have their own, and you do socialize, you go down and yuck it up with the other druggies. And so I go down, I said, what did you think about that woman with the diapers? And everybody looks at me like I'm high, and they didn't see any woman with diapers. Yeah, she never came back, I don't know who she was. Those were diapers, those were real diapers.

[2:06:06] Justin McMillen

What if, so we'll just go down this road for a second, just... God's real, and what if the plan was always to turn you into the best healer? And so it was like, all right, we got to make this woman's life... So let's make her born into this house, let's figure this out, she had to go through all the stuff, who knows.

[2:06:34] Karen Willock

Who knows, I think... I have my own little philosophy, I think, I think we do choose. I think there's a moment right before you launch, whatever point that happens... That you're given a choice, and that's where I learn and continue to learn, that I don't want to call it, it's nothing till I collate it, you know, if I call it bad, my big thing is I don't know what it's going to be, I don't know what this means, I'll know in a few years what this means. But I don't know what it means right now, and when I remove that judgment and just look at it, I think... so I think we choose, and I think I chose the exact family, I think I did a lot of this, I don't think it's fate, but I think we have some choice. And I do think there's a power, or a god, whatever you want to call it. I think there's something, my definition is orchestrator of the universe, where everybody's a winner, even the people I think don't deserve it, because that's, I like that, otherwise it's just, yes, I have a hard time believing there's an orchestrator of your life and everything else, but where everybody's a winner, even the people I think don't deserve it. See, that's my idea of God, is he's bigger than us, he figured shit out. And I do spend time asking for guidance, whether my intuition has saved me many times. And I don't know where, I often say when I die I want to be an intuitive thought, so, oh, that's good, I know, when people all of a sudden you think, yeah, it's time to move, or... Yeah, it's a guess, I want to be an intuitive thought. Yeah, so I was, I always have known there's a god, but I was a god hater for a lot of years. I used to say, no wonder you have no friends, man, look around, this is a shithole. And then... And I had to have somebody to blame, right, who do you blame, you know, I went through, I'm, my name is Karen and I'm a blamer, and I had to give up the blank check about what happened in my life, and now I get a blank check to do whatever I want, right. You know, I got to quick cash in that check, you know, I just enjoy my life, I am so grateful that here I am, 74, I'm in good health. My doctor and I laugh about, we don't know what kills people in my family, because they die from addiction, yeah, and that's not how I'm going. No, and so... And I have had this whole life that it's like having two lifetimes, two different life experiences entirely. I don't see the world, I used to carry a gun always, I would have one today if Lisa was okay with it, and she's almost getting a tattoo, kind of cool if you just had one, like if you're strapped. Listen, one time somebody came chasing David, my youngest, because he picked a rose from the sky, is Rose Garden, and he comes running up. He's got his pole, and he's all pissed off, and I just went like that, showed him where my gun was, I thought, fuck you. You can chase my kid, it's, anybody's chasing him, it'll be me, right? And so, but my big, big moment for me was when I moved the gun to the trunk of my car. This is where my spirituality began, because Scott, who is the Anglican priest, said to me, you don't trust God very much. I said, who are you to tell me what I do? And he said, if you're carrying a gun all the time, you're pretty obvious you're not trusting God. And I thought, yeah, I don't know what planet you grew up on, but... and so I started thinking about it, you know, kind of like you said when I said avoidant, what's wrong with me, I thought, what did that mean? You know, how do you hear somebody, you don't let them know, but it rings with you. So I put my gun in my trunk, and I said to God, you got from the door to the trunk, don't waste any time.

[2:11:20] Justin McMillen

That's so good.

[2:11:21] Karen Willock

And then eventually it shortened, but it's only going to be like as long as it takes you to get out of my car. The door to the trunk.

[2:11:29] Justin McMillen

Yeah, that's really good.

[2:11:30] Karen Willock

And so, but the world's not unsafe.

[2:11:33] Justin McMillen

No.

[2:11:33] Karen Willock

Now, I look at people, you know, and every place has its homeless population. Right now, when I was living in Eugene, working for a while, and I took my little dog out for a walk one morning, it was cold, it was all frosty. And here comes this old man walking down the street with his pack, and his nose was running and his nose was red, and he wouldn't look at me, but he'd look at my dog. And the thought crossed my mind, because this was in 2012, 2013, I thought, why him and not me, right? You know, why is he still walking around carrying a pack? He's somebody's son, he's somebody's brother, probably, maybe dad, you know, how come him and not me? And boy, I kept thinking about that and thinking about that. And when I crossed over the threshold to the place I was staying, I thought, that is one decision at a time. We always want to make these big decisions, and it takes a lot of feathers to move that scale. So it's like one decision at a time, it's not... you know, one time I said yes instead of no, one time I listened instead of talked, you know, one little thing at a time. And I think the one thing about me that I appreciate is I've always been teachable. I'll learn. Even when I was using, when I used to sit with, I worked in a hospice cancer ward, where the guys, when they were admitted, were assigned to the same nurse every time. And Mr. Bateman died many years ago. I was probably 20, and I was taking care of him, and he talked to me about his whole life, he'd gone out on his wife, should I tell her? I said, dude, you're dying, you're going to lay that shit on her? You know, that's ridiculous. That's when you could sit in their room and smoke with them. Yeah, smoking in a cancer ward. And his partner was embezzling from him. How I met him was, I went, we had to do cross isolation, so we would dress up, so we didn't give him anything, okay. And so we'd have to gown up, masks and everything, before we'd go in, because he had leukemia. So I go in there and he's just mean. He's just nasty. And I said, we have to gown up to come in here, which is a lot of work, quite frankly, and then when you're a jerk it makes it even harder to do, right. And I said, what the hell is wrong with you? And he said, well, I'm dying. I said, everybody on this floor is dying. The whole place, me too, we're all dying. And I said, so what's really wrong? And he said, I hate the masks, because we had to wear masks. I said, dude, that's so easy to fix. So I went out, I called his doctor, who wasn't happy about me calling in the middle of the night, but that was all right, and got an order to not wear masks. It's all I gotta do is talk to us, and from then on we were buds. Nice. And when he died, I got so high that day, instead of feeling sad, I got high. That was in the same apartment with the no electricity, and I ran the extension cord, and the woman that came with the diapers. And I sat at my window looking out, knowing that I was sad and couldn't feel it. Jesus and Mr. Bateman. So when I die, first of all, I'm going to high five a lot of gay haters when they come into heaven, high five, I'm queer, swore I wasn't going to be there.

[2:15:40] Justin McMillen

Yeah, yeah.

[2:15:41] Karen Willock

And then I'm going to look for Mr. Bateman, I want to see him, Mr. Gibson, some of my buds.

[2:15:49] Justin McMillen

So they're angels?

[2:15:50] Karen Willock

They're angels?

[2:15:51] Justin McMillen

Yeah, there's a lot of angels in this world, it's incredible. Like, if you boil everything down to its core, it's like, humans are born, you were born into this difficult situation, you go through a lot of your own personal hell in the world, there's unjust injustice, there's suffering, there's pain, there's joy, there's love. You threw yourself right in the middle of that, and because of your existence, you have helped alleviate so much unnecessary suffering, by taking what you've learned and then applying education to it. And so ultimately it's like a net positive when you leave.

[2:16:32] Karen Willock

Well, I need the good press.

[2:16:35] Justin McMillen

Yeah, you got some making up... I got some making up to do. You went far beyond that, though, some of these guys were dealt a good hand out the gate.

[2:16:45] Karen Willock

Yeah, it's probably not.

[2:16:46] Justin McMillen

But I tell these guys when they go home, I say it's okay for you to kiss up.

[2:16:51] Karen Willock

Yeah, yeah, you know, you've been a jerk for a lot of years, you know, you're in your 30 days and you're all that. Now go home, be nice. I'm always telling Lisa, be sure they show up at my funeral because I'll be watching.

[2:17:06] Justin McMillen

Good, I don't think you're anywhere near that.

[2:17:09] Karen Willock

I've been talking about death since I met you.

[2:17:13] Justin McMillen

Well, it's a reality.

[2:17:15] Karen Willock

I know you're not afraid.

[2:17:17] Justin McMillen

No, yeah, at least that's what I want to... be awake. I mean, think about it, the day you're born and the day you die are the most important days.

[2:17:27] Karen Willock

Yeah, they really are.

[2:17:28] Justin McMillen

And you hear that, and then the middle is just the dash. I was talking to somebody about, a really cool thing to write, a book called Bookends, and interview people that deliver babies and interview people that are with people in their last moments. And I think you could probably capture the most truth.

[2:17:45] Karen Willock

Okay, that would be good, wouldn't that be a good one to do? Because people, when they're dying, tell the truth, and they don't beat around it, and if you want to know what's most important, certainly that's where you can learn it all. You go up to the hospital right up the street here and sit in any ward where people are dying, and be like, what matters most? And probably most people are going to say the same shit, you know, there's certainly not going to be like, make it as much money as possible, which is what we've all been taught to believe, or most of society, or even pursuit of greatness.

[2:18:22] Justin McMillen

And I think that's a, yeah, it's like family, if you, the people you love, you know.

[2:18:29] Karen Willock

And I think too that we, I think life is about being right sized. So there's been times in my life that I've been too little and too big, and there's something about just getting right sized. Let me explain.

[2:18:55] Justin McMillen

Well, I think it's knowing...

[2:18:58] Karen Willock

Knowing what, what is mine to deal with, which is this brain, these emotions, this body, this right here is my responsibility. And I've spent years either trying to predict and alter the future, and just wasted so much time, or looking back at the past and trying to undo something. And when I'm in either of those, I'm either too big, like in the future when I'm trying, it's like I got my God coat on and I'm going to change this happening. And then when I look back, it's this little, you know, just probably exactly what I felt as a child, which is unable to change what was happening.

[2:19:52] Justin McMillen

Sure.

[2:19:52] Karen Willock

And I think the biggest job, which I'm going to talk to these guys about next Wednesday, is re-parenting yourself. So after I met Lisa, I was 25 years clean and sober when I met her. And I had done so much work on myself, so much, I still have a therapist, I still have my people that I talk to, and I still had this anger, and I couldn't predict what was going to set it off. And I don't have anything against anger, or an anger problem. It served me really well, you know, it kept me fighting, but it was also, it kept me separate. And a situation happened early on in our relationship where I got really angry, and Lisa had not been exposed to anybody who raised their voice, and it wasn't anger, really, it was rage. And I knew I had it, and it was way better. But once it was touched, I felt like I had no power, like it took me. And the next morning Lisa said to me, I'm not here to judge you or tell you what to do, I just can't be around that. And I remember sitting on the side of that bed and I said, Lisa, I have worked on this my whole life, and I'm not sure I can change it. And that's when I met Julie Valenti, and she had come and talked to my staff, because I would always interview people before I would refer to them, because there's too many nutcases out there. And she had come and talked about childhood attachment, trauma, and PTSD from that, and how her reactivity and all this... And I thought, yeah, that's nice, and so it makes sense personally, yeah, until I got personal. And quite frankly, until I met Lisa, I don't think I ever loved anybody enough to care. My motto was, if you don't like me, go on, sure, it's not the end of my world. So I went to see her, and I told her what was going on, and she... She said, I'm going to teach you how to breathe. And I leaned up in my chair and I said, I just told you that my life is in a dumpster, I'm about to lose the person I care about the most, and you're going to teach me how to breathe? And she said to me, I didn't come to see you. You came to see me.

[2:22:52] Justin McMillen

At that point, well taken.

[2:22:54] Karen Willock

Yeah, so I thought, okay, so she taught me how to box breathe, and then she taught me what triggers were, and then she taught me how to navigate my own triggers, and then she taught me how to be kind and gracious, even when triggered. And I took every class she had. Most of them I didn't even understand, because I was very, I'm not sure what they would call it, but I was very logical, I had had behavior modification, when you feel this, you do this, when you do that, you do this. But there had been no integration, now what I know, between my limbic system and my prefrontal cortex, it was either one or the other. And she taught me how to feel and be sane at the same time, and that is what I needed to learn, which is important, because you can't just ignore limbic response and just become like Spock from Star Trek and just be logical. The limbic system is also one of the more beautiful parts of where we are. This is us being human. And so I did every class, and this was when, and I have never raged again from that first breathing, which I still kind of keep waiting for, and it's been a lot of years, but I have gotten angry, but I have not raged, that came back into my control. I'm powerless over a lot of stuff, but not this organism that I live in. We know more about our cars than we do this that we get into every day.

[2:24:40] Justin McMillen

Sure.

[2:24:40] Karen Willock

So when I started that, it launched me into learning about the brain and the body connection, and that taught me that where my job is, is that right sized. So I started, I went to every class. She had a chakra class, I didn't even know what a chakra was. And in this class, everybody is experiencing all this stuff, and I'm not, right, I felt nothing from my neck down, and I remember the wall I was standing against, and I said to myself, I'm not going to my deathbed half alive, I'm going to be fully alive by the time I get there. And so I started learning and studying and practicing, and that wasn't too long after I met you, you know. And I worked, I retired during that time, I went to work for her, which helped me, because when you learn something and then you teach it...

[2:25:36] Justin McMillen

Oh, yeah.

[2:25:37] Karen Willock

Then you've got it. Yeah, yeah, you know, and so I started doing that, and learning those concepts, practicing, and I still do to this day. When I get angry, I breathe, when I'm triggered, I shut my mouth, I have never spewed words and said, thank God I said that, right, when I'm... all training, right?

[2:25:58] Justin McMillen

Yeah.

[2:25:59] Karen Willock

Nobody, and so I've learned how to navigate this organism, and what a relief. And continued to grow. And then I was sitting, I don't know if you knew this, but the day I heard about you and Tree House, you were looking for a clinical supervisor up in Portland, and somebody had called me that you had talked to, and they didn't want to do it, but they thought maybe I would be interested. And somehow we got connected, I was sitting in a parking lot in a probation, parole officer's parking lot, while a gal that I was working with went in to get her son signed out, meet the parole officer. They were in there for two hours, and you and I started talking about the brain and the body, and rewiring, and neuroscience. It was everything, everything that I had heard about with recovery from addiction that nobody was doing.

[2:27:01] Justin McMillen

I remember that too, I was also sitting in my car.

[2:27:04] Karen Willock

Were you?

[2:27:05] Justin McMillen

Yes, and I was sitting in a parking lot, I'm not sure if it was over here or if it was, but I was definitely sitting in my car. I've had several long conversations with you.

[2:27:18] Karen Willock

Well, I'm sitting in my car, but I remember that very well, and it was like, I remember going home that night and said, Lisa, you're not going to believe this, I said, they are doing this, they're doing the rewiring with the brain and getting the body and the brain, there's rapid firing neural pathways between limbic and our core words, neuroplasticity and that. Also, I hadn't heard that in terms of psychologists, like you were hearing about it from people that had brain damage, and the fact that the brain could heal, but nobody was talking about it.

[2:27:53] Justin McMillen

Yeah, and you told me about the book, and keep going now, sorry.

[2:27:58] Karen Willock

Yeah, it's been a minute now. That was about seven years ago when Portland opened. And I think I was just 4 or 5 hours a week for a long time, but I was so intrigued, I came down and watched one day, and actually it was a day with the boats when they were doing working with anger. And I thought, holy smoke, you know, because here we are at the ocean with boat guys.

[2:28:27] Justin McMillen

Well, yeah, I remember that too, we were, it was in Huntington, and I remember thinking to myself, she's going to hate us now, because I was like, is this going to be too weird and out there?

[2:28:40] Karen Willock

Yeah, I remember it was pretty weird and out there, I thought, and are there people who will just not go on these boats? Yeah, it was pretty stunning. And then that's when you were at the old building, and it was, it was pretty pivotal, talk about another defining moment, because one of the things I realized, as I remember, I'm a realist, so, is that as I age, there's so much information that I have in my brain.

[2:29:18] Justin McMillen

Have to say something before you finish this. The thing that made me just like, I'm going to do whatever it takes to work with this person, and I think you're about to go there, so I want to say first, was you said to me, you'd just said about how old you were, I don't remember what it was at the time. You said, I'm not going to work anywhere else, and I'm looking for a place to download my brain to.

[2:29:44] Karen Willock

Yes, this... I want this to be the last place I work, this will be...

[2:29:49] Justin McMillen

And I felt, I felt it in my heart that you were completely sincere. And I called Clayton and I was like, this is what she said, literally, you could ask him. This is what she said, this is really important. And yeah, that might be the most important thing you've said to me, because I was like, that meant a lot. Karen, I don't think you could really do more of a gift for somebody, I mean, because you're talking about your entire life. So I appreciate you.

[2:30:19] Karen Willock

Thank you.

[2:30:20] Justin McMillen

Yeah, and I didn't mean to cut you off, but...

[2:30:24] Karen Willock

No, that's exactly, that is exactly, and I don't think I even knew it until I knew it. I think when I said it to you is when I knew it, because I'd had that thought before, you know, I gotta give this out. And when I saw, and I tell the families that I work with too, when somebody is in trouble down here, the team surrounds them. The guys I have, and I've worked for a lot of years, I have never seen a team in any of the facilities that I've worked with through Tree House that are more dedicated and care, you know, it's just, I've learned a lot too. And they have the opportunity, I was telling Lisa because she said she knows, you know, George and I were laughing about it because I'm not like these 25 and 35 year olds, you know, by 6pm I'm toast. And George and I were laughing about it, and Lisa said, I know that doing this travel and stuff, and all this training, it takes a lot of energy, because I put a lot of effort into putting it into a language that somebody their age can grab onto. And to see, and then hear them say to me afterwards, I want to talk to you, that feels so good, because, you know, old people are invisible now.

[2:32:03] Justin McMillen

I don't know, yeah, maybe, but maybe not.

[2:32:06] Karen Willock

I don't know, not here?

[2:32:07] Justin McMillen

No, because these guys understand, so the unifying thread between all of us, and God, God willing, it stays the same way forever. But the main reason it works so well is because for some reason, all of us are bound together through this crazy, similar feeling of just, there's this draw to want to help. The same thing I was asking you about, like, what is it, you know, you talking about the two year olds, and we all feel that. And so some would say, like, these guys know you intuitively, could tell us what to do without even writing a lesson plan. I mean, I'd like that you do that, but you could come down here and just explain what it's like, the journey of a healer, right? Because none of these guys, if they left tomorrow, they're going to go... They're still going to do this work, right? They're just built for it, they've got a taste for it, and that's why they're surrounding people, it's obsessed. It's, if anything, it's like, you got to tell them to try not to think about it. And that's what I like to teach them, that there's like, halfway on my way home from work, wherever I'm working, I put a lot of the pressure, I guess, is the word, or the responsibility. I put it right here, so that I can walk into my life, so then my work won't visit my life at home, you know, if something happens, there's a crisis or something. And when I'm at work, my life doesn't visit my work, so there's a degree of separation there. Because if you can't... a meeting with a couple of the guys, I'm going to have coffee with one tomorrow, and then Monday with another guy. They're young in this field, and I want to see them 40 years from now still working. And so that we don't lose people, so how do we do that, so that we don't, because when people like us burn out, we relapse, that's our ticket out. And maybe in different times I took time off, you know, I took nine months. One time, when Pete, my youngest, was having a particularly hard time, I went from full time to part time, and somebody said, you're not going to have health insurance, I said, I'm not going to need it if he's not here, right, you know. And I've always, I think that's one of the nice things about living off nothing, is I can make it if I have a lot or a little.

[2:34:45] Karen Willock

Yeah, I can relate to that, I can make it. I like Kevin, but I've been in the have-nots, you know, I used to hang out with this guy that said he loved this book, Siddhartha, and he said the great thing is he's like, I know how to starve, and I know how to wait. Say those two things, those two traits are like, the two skills make me capable of anything, I don't have to eat every day, and I'm not afraid of that, and I don't need to have everything right now, I can wait.

[2:35:19] Justin McMillen

But yeah, the thing with all these amazing people that work here, and that you're working with, and this is sort of a bigger picture thing around Tree House and its future, is that in order for Tree House to really grow, to be able to affect more people... And I think that is what everyone wants. A while back I asked everyone to tell me their five year plan, and it was like, all right, I need to decide, it's not just me deciding where this place goes, it's like, what does everyone want? And everybody collectively was like, we need to grow, we need to... There needs to be more accessibility, so what that would take is that every one of these guys would have to be running their own place. And so then what does that look like when you think about, like, Brandon Fender in Tennessee, or Brant, or Devin? It's like there's some kind of love that exists, and then it's got to get grown. And these people have to be so full of it that it just is contagious around them, right, and that's sort of the fuel, and then the skills are on top of that, right. I have always called it the factor X.

[2:36:29] Karen Willock

Yeah, you mentioned this to me. When I'm hiring somebody, when I was doing that as part of my job, oftentimes people, you can have the education and you can have the life experience. And there's this factor X that happens somewhere between the two. Because I've also seen education cripple somebody, where they don't listen to that factor X, you know, like I had a group one time, it was all men, it was an outpatient group, they all talked about, all they want, they didn't want to be there, it was fine. I didn't want to be there with them either, they were just so awful, and all they talked about was cars and sports, they would never get with them what we were doing there. So I kept thinking about this group, and I thought, I gotta do something to wake them up. So one night I went in and I said, okay, this is what we're doing. You guys don't want to be here, you want to talk about cars, I have a mechanic, you want to talk about sports, I don't like it, I'm going to go into my office, which is right there, you have to be here for three hours, you sit in here and talk it up, and I'll be in my office, and I'll come in at 9 and let you out. So I go into my office, and pretty soon they come in, they said, you can't do that, I said, you can't tell me what to do, you're barely participating. And they said, you can't do that, you can't leave us in there. I said, I can hear the doors, and pretty soon they're all in my office talking about me not helping them. So they started to want help, that's all I needed. Okay, what can I help you with? Well, I'm having a problem with my wife, right? And then we never met in the group room again, we met in my office, and I usually had snacks for them, because they always came from work. It was a very unique group because it was just men. But see, that's the factor X, it's your intuition. Yeah, and something's got to change here. And there was a book back in the day, it was called Uncommon Therapies, and that was one of them, was okay, if you can't get a group to participate, abandon them, tell them, okay, how, when you get it your way. The intuition thing's super interesting, because you know, my brother, and you know me, right, and you can imagine, I'm more ethereal and kind of out there, Clayton's more the logical and analytical type, and I've been telling him for years, like, my gut feeling is this, you know, and he struggled with that because he doesn't like that. But then he heard this TED talk, and there was a woman, she was the youngest ever CIA operative. So she was like an actual spy, like, battled against al-Qaida and all this, and she married a Kennedy, she's a famous girl, Amaryllis Fox is her name, or Emma Rose Kennedy. And she did a talk on intuition, and she said that intuition, she said it was a supercomputer, and she explained how intuition had served her through her career. And she's a very bright woman, it was the best explanation, and I've now been using it, and I use it when I talk to analytical people, to get them to trust their intuition. So instead of intuition being like this mystical thing, I say, you have your frontal cortex, you have your logical, one plus one, math mind, and behind that you have this supercomputer that can calculate things far beyond, way faster. Way faster, and it can do it through so many different variables that your frontal cortex could never do the math, and it can't, because it doesn't even have like a one plus one equals two sort of structure to it. It will never communicate logically, so it has one way to communicate, which is through feelings. And it'll tell you through a feeling and an experience what to do. And so I've been using that way of talking about it with Clayton, and it's changed our relationship.

[2:40:33] Justin McMillen

Yeah.

[2:40:33] Karen Willock

I'm like, it's my brain, I go to Clayton, I can't get to the math on this, but the back of my brain is telling me exactly that. We need to go here. He's like, oh, okay, supercomputer, it's just refreshed, which is right, because that part of us, its job, that's that limbic, Neanderthal brain that was existing and has so much in it from all kinds of, years back. I tell people in my family group, one of the reasons we have trouble sleeping at night, and why things always appear worse at night, is it's way back to Neanderthal days, when they used to come in at night and steal your food and your weapons and your women. Yep. And so our brain is half awake, kind of on alert, and we want to quiet that central nervous system down, quiet that limbic system down. And so because it sees, that's why snake, and I jump before I can say snake. See, that, when we harness that, and it's not all mucked up with bad experiences and trauma and the addiction, and all these, you know, and it's self-critical, how we talk to ourselves, being mean spirited to our own self. I wouldn't talk to a friend like I've talked to myself. Sometimes when we get all that muck out of there, then that thing is your friend. I swear to God, I'm alive many times because I wouldn't step through the door, I mean, something, there's a hiccup there. I used to walk in where I work, and I know somebody was using, they'd all laugh at me. I said, I swear to God, somebody... I walk in that back door, walk by all the patients' rooms, I oh, we got high people here, and they'd laugh at me. I said, drug screening right now, drug screening everybody, and yeah, there was always somebody using.

[2:42:32] Justin McMillen

Yeah, it's crazy, there's, I recently been through this with it personally, where it was like a 3am wake up, like a pop awake at 3am, and I'm thinking about the same person and going through this whole experience. And it's in my gut, just this screaming at me that something's wrong, or a specific situation. And, yeah, I'm learning to read it more. I think it's a great reason to be sober, because I think the quickest way to get rid of that is to be intoxicated.

[2:43:03] Karen Willock

I think you lose, you get better, yeah, you get better and better reading it. I mean, certainly there's like a preservation piece when you're loaded, to, you know, like this. Yeah, but there's something really much higher, where you can get into sophisticated Q&A, like, should I do this? And it's always a yes or no with your gut, it's not like there's no reasoning, listening.

[2:43:25] Justin McMillen

Yeah.