Sobbing In The Grocery Store With Heather Kelly

Heather Kelly of "Money Making Sense" was suddenly terminated from her stable, full-time job, leaving her with tons of questions and emotional whiplash in the form of PTSD. How can we become grateful for an experience we didn't want to happen in the first place?

Transcript

I'm so excited to have you on the show today.

I want to start where we start all of our interviews and ask you to tell us your lost story.

Well,

This relates to a job that I lost,

And it started about nine months before I was actually laid off.

My manager,

My direct manager,

I showed up one day for work and she wasn't there.

There was a note that says,

You're in charge till further notice.

Two weeks after,

Yeah,

Literally,

Like literally.

Like,

Okay.

And she and I had become really good friends as well.

She was somebody I really leaned on to,

You know,

Just bounce ideas off of.

So I felt like I was sort of mourning for her because to this day,

It's been five and a half years,

Still have not heard from her.

I've left messages,

Emailed her,

Like,

Are you okay?

Nothing.

Not one word.

So it was almost like,

You know,

She died and left my life.

And then two weeks after she left and I was put in charge of the department,

We went 24-7.

We had been Monday through Friday,

5 a.

M.

To 10 p.

M.

And then we went 24-7 and I was all of a sudden thrust into hiring people,

Interviewing them,

Hiring them,

Getting them trained,

And had been going,

Doing that for about a month.

And I got a phone call from my dad saying my mother was in the hospital and she may not make it.

So within a few weeks,

I had like,

You know,

Some of the top five things that are the worst things that can happen to you all happen to me.

And then nine months later,

Or seven,

Actually seven months by that point,

Seven months after I got the call that my mother almost died,

Corporate execs walk in,

9 a.

M.

,

Just,

All right,

Denver is taking over your department and all of you are out of work effective now.

They wouldn't let us walk back to our desks to get our personal property.

We were escorted out of the building.

They had somebody else go get our car keys and our purse and our jacket so that we could go home and then they,

Like two weeks later,

All of our personal items that had been in our drawers or desks or whatever were boxed up and mailed to us.

So that was my loss.

And it was even worse for me,

I think,

To see all the people that I had just spent six months interviewing and training and our department was running like a well-oiled machine lose their jobs.

And they were counting on me for their livelihoods and then they all lost their jobs.

I lost mine.

And it was just a complete devastation.

This was a job I thought I was going to keep for at least 25 more years.

I was going to retire from this job.

And it was just,

It was gone.

And I kind of,

I was so angry.

I mean,

I am a pacifist.

I believe in gun control.

And all I could think about was getting machine guns and gunning the people down who did this to me.

I mean,

It was,

I was,

Had gone kind of off the deep end.

I started drinking excessively just because I,

It hurt,

Like the feeling,

The anger and the sadness and the disappointment was just so much I couldn't deal with it.

So I just started drinking.

And the times that I was sober,

I remember going into the grocery store one time and I was just sort of aimlessly walking up and down the aisles and I reached for a loaf of bread once and just started sobbing uncontrollably.

And I had to leave the cart where it was and just walk out the door and sit in my car for 10,

15 minutes until I could control myself enough to drive.

So it was,

It was nuts.

And after about four months I finally realized,

Like I came to the conscious decision that I wasn't actually going to move through all these stages of grief.

And actually after sobbing in the grocery store,

I kind of figured out,

I think I was suffering from PTSD from everything.

And so that was about the time I drank for a couple more weeks after that.

But then,

Um,

I finally went,

You know what,

It's not like it was a coping mechanism and I probably needed it the first month,

But it's been three more months and maybe you should just stop drinking and deal with these emotions and get through it.

And that's when I kind of,

When I stopped drinking,

Cried a lot more and yelled at a bunch of people.

I didn't mean to yell at them,

But it just,

You know,

Just yelled at them.

That's about the time that I started climbing out of that hole and coming back to the land of the living.

I am trying to wrap my head around the picture you have just painted because it looks like total,

I don't know how to describe this,

But it's like,

I said this in one of my videos in the past where you take this fully grown tree and it's like when a bulldozer,

Like a crane or something just totally like uproots it and tosses it to the side.

Like all that stuff you've worked so hard to grow in the root systems and like so hard in the leaf and like all of this stuff and it's been established for so long and you just get uprooted and just like tossed to the side and you're like,

What the hell am I supposed to do now?

Like what,

Where is,

So you described for us like what happened,

Like the logistics of what happened,

But it seems like this whole time in your life was a period of you having to act without answers.

Did you ever get more answers as to what happened?

Well,

I was a traffic reporter and the company is nationwide and they decided at that time to just,

To me it seemed arbitrary.

I'm sure,

You know,

Book wise they had their reasons,

But they consolidated,

They had probably 40 different markets that were reporting traffic and they decided to consolidate them into 25 markets.

So 15 of us of the markets were just like,

Oh,

Denver is going to report the traffic for Salt Lake City.

Now the reason Denver got it is because they were already reporting traffic not only for Denver,

But for Seattle and Phoenix as well.

So they're like,

Well,

They're already reporting for three different markets,

So we'll just add another market to them.

So bye bye Salt Lake.

There's this total feeling of being blindsided and even not being able to go back to your desk.

There's like this element of not feeling human in this.

Like really you're just going to shuffle us out of here like a cattle line.

Really that is what it felt like.

We were just,

It was very unceremonious.

In fact,

They even said,

Okay,

Here's your severance package and if you don't agree to what's in it,

Then you don't get anything and you have no recourse.

Like you couldn't even object or question what they might've put in that severance package.

I mean,

This might be a dumb question,

But like,

Was this legal?

Supposedly,

I went to a lawyer,

I had seven days.

I had seven days to sign it.

Oh my God.

No pressure.

Yeah,

No,

It wasn't.

So I went to learn like,

Okay,

Is this legal?

And they went through it and they go,

Well,

Yes,

The way they've worded it and yada,

Yada,

Yada,

Yes.

And I'm like,

Okay.

So your choices were no job and no severance package or no job and a severance package.

So of course,

Which one are you going to choose?

Exactly.

Oh my goodness.

Oh my gosh.

This is just incredible and wrapping my head around it is so like,

Yeah,

I'm sitting here speeches because I'm like,

We don't treat people this way or we're not supposed to treat people this way.

I want to go into now,

Like in the immediate aftermath of this,

You talked a little bit about drinking and screaming and being full of anger,

But like,

Where was your heart in all of this?

I literally shut down.

I mean,

That's what the drinking was for,

Was to shut down because I've never experienced that intense of emotions in my entire life.

And I thought I was going,

I really thought I was going to either harm myself or someone else if I stayed in that state of anger and hurt and disappointment.

And that's when I started drinking.

And so when I started drinking,

All my emotions kind of went away.

And so I really detached from everything.

So I,

It's hard for me to describe my feelings while all this was happening because all I can tell you was that pretty much for the most part I was sloshed for about four months.

Turned them off.

Yeah.

Where did that come from?

Was that a societal thing?

Were other former co-workers doing that?

No,

It was me.

I was,

All my,

My family does not live here in Salt Lake City and my best friend in the entire world,

I actually think of her as a sister.

She had just moved two years ago to Nevada.

So she was very far from me.

And my closest coworker at that time was the boss who had left seven months earlier that never,

I had never had contact with since.

And so I just like,

There was nobody there.

There was nothing there.

So I just started drinking.

Although I was,

I will say I was very aware of my,

I mean,

I knew that I was drinking to escape.

And one reason I knew that is because my father and his parents were both alcoholics.

And I,

I had,

I saw that growing up and I,

And I always told myself,

If you need a drink,

Walk far away.

And so up until this point,

Anytime I said,

Oh,

I need a drink,

I'd be like,

Oh,

No,

You don't.

And I would walk away until this moment in my life.

And I just drank.

So were you afraid of yourself at all or afraid of like what might happen into the future,

Like if it kept going?

Yes.

So my friend who lives in Nevada,

I actually told her,

I said,

Okay,

Her name is Heather as well.

Oh,

That's so funny.

That's too funny.

No,

So you don't think I'm talking about myself in the third person.

But I said,

I said,

Heather,

If I am still drinking six months after this date,

You need to do an intervention for me.

And so I gave her permission to save me essentially if I hadn't managed to save myself.

So four months in,

I probably would have still been drinking actually up to that six month point if I hadn't had the complete breakdown in the grocery store and realized,

Okay,

Well,

Everyone's not working because you're drinking all these emotions away and yet you go to reach for a loaf of bread and you just sob hysterically.

Like,

Okay,

That's not working for you.

And it's funny now to think about it.

But in that moment,

It seems like,

Oh my gosh,

This is everything.

This is my – I want to know,

Because that seems like the bread in the grocery store seems like this pivotal moment of choosing to come back to consciousness and choosing to come back to your life and like really look at it.

So what was going through your head then?

Was it something about the bread itself or you were just like,

This is a routine in my every day and I'm not happy or like you were just literally reaching for a loaf of bread and we don't know what happened?

I was literally reaching for the loaf of bread and I started sobbing.

I had no thought because all I can tell you about that trip to the grocery store is there wasn't very much in my cart.

I'd been in the grocery store for at least 10 or 15 minutes and I maybe had four other items.

Like I was just wandering.

I didn't know what I was doing.

I knew I had to have food but I didn't know what type of food I was supposed to get.

I mean this is how out of it I was.

Just like,

You know,

I kept waiting for divine,

You know,

Like I kept waiting for the food to just jump into the cart itself,

I think.

Maybe if I stand here long enough.

Right.

And so then I get down,

I'm like,

Oh yeah,

Bread.

And I reach for it and just start crying.

I know what's going on in my life as far as my emotions go for the most part,

Except for this four months in my life where all I can tell you is there was blankness and anger and despair and drinking.

Where did that anger go?

Like where did you put it?

I yelled a lot,

Unfortunately,

Even with my cats who were my babies.

Before I got into broadcasting,

I worked at a veterinary clinic.

And so for me,

Animals are everything.

I treat animals like other people would treat their human children.

And so it's never appropriate to yell at them.

It's never appropriate to discipline them physically as far as I'm concerned.

And yet here I was for months and my cats were like,

As soon as I walk in the door,

They started hiding from me.

Yeah,

It wasn't good.

That's kind of where the anger just sort of started spewing outwards when I stopped drinking.

And that took a little while to keep under control.

And how did you do that?

I had a lot of talks with not only myself,

But my friend Heather in Nevada.

And I would,

Oh,

Let me tell you,

Having a friend that you have the most trust in or a family member,

It doesn't have to be a family member that you know,

First of all,

They know your deepest,

Darkest secrets.

They're going to love you no matter what is essential if you're going through any type of grieving process,

I believe,

At least from my experience.

And I would call her up and she would just let me cry or scream and tell her,

You know,

Everybody's against me and how dare they and this,

That,

And the other.

And she just let me do it until I,

Not right at the very beginning of the process,

But as time went on and then I'd say like things like,

Everybody hates me.

I'm just going to go eat some worms or whatever.

That little song from a movie.

I don't remember what movie it's from.

Nobody likes me.

Everybody hates me.

I'll just go eat worms.

Yes.

And she would call me on my BS when it was,

When I needed it.

And she could tell when I was just starting to do the self wallowing thing.

It's one thing to be mad and rightfully so and be angry at the world.

It's another to just start doing the self pity thing.

And so she called me on it.

She would,

She was like,

Uh-uh,

No.

And so even though I didn't want to hear it and I was mad at her for a little bit for,

You know,

How dare you Heather tell me that I,

You know,

Shouldn't be wallowing.

Like don't you know what I've gone through?

And she's like,

Yes.

It's like,

Yes,

I know what you've gone through Heather.

I've been listening to it for four months now.

You know,

But she was a wonderful,

Wonderful help bringing me back to seeing what was reasonable for me to be upset about and what wasn't.

Ooh.

Can you give us an example of that?

So about six or seven months after I'd stopped drinking,

I was getting,

I was starting to get a little bit better.

I had just gotten a job on call.

I wasn't permanent employee at that point.

I was just on call.

And so basically that come,

The new company could just call me whenever they needed me,

Sick or vacation or whatever.

And after a couple of months I felt like,

Well,

I've been filling in.

I do the job great.

And how dare you not give me a permanent position.

And it's all this other company's fault for firing me that I'm not permanent this other place and Heather stopped me right there.

She's Heather really?

It's your company that let you go.

It's their fault that this other company won't give you a permanent position.

Come on.

Like get over yourself.

She's like,

I'm going to hang up if you don't see reason right now.

And she did one time.

I'm not sure it was that.

She hung up on you?

She hung up on me.

And so then I had to,

Like after,

You know,

Few hours of stewing in my own juices and then figuring out like you have to think about it.

You have to go back and go over the conversation.

And hopefully most people can be enough self-aware that they can see that point in the conversation where they go,

Oh yeah,

That really probably wasn't fair or that's not right.

Or now I've crossed the line or whatever it was.

Sometimes when you're in the moment and you're just spewing off stuff,

You don't realize when that spewing starts crossing the line.

And so for me,

Heather was that,

Okay,

That's it.

I'm done.

And she would hang up and then it was up to me to figure it out because she wouldn't call me back.

She'd be like,

When she's ready to calm down and she's going to talk to me,

She'll call me.

And then I'd be like,

Okay,

Heather.

All right,

I get it.

Can we talk about this now so that I can get your perspective on why this is happening to me?

And it's tricky because grief is not really rational.

Grief is not rational at all.

We can be upset about all kinds of things and especially projecting forward into the future in our lives,

Everything can be traced back to that one bad thing that happened.

And if that one bad thing never happened,

Then our lives would not look this way.

And that makes perfect logical sense in our brains.

But when we try and apply it to new people,

New situations,

Especially if they've never been exposed to our grief story before,

Your friend Heather is kind of right in the sense that like,

Really?

They don't know your whole backstory and they're not the reason that they're not full time.

That's interesting that she was kind of a voice of reason that kept you in check.

But also,

It seems like or it sounds like she was somebody that urged you to get a broader perspective on your emotions and your grief in this process.

Yeah,

She did.

I mean,

The very beginning,

The first few months,

She was great about just,

Okay,

I gotta let her go.

It was after I stopped drinking and then we start talking enough,

I was getting angry yelling.

And if she felt I crossed the line,

That's when she just,

She was like,

Nope,

Not going there.

Did you always trust her judgment in that?

Yes,

I did.

I want to rewind actually a lot and go back to what you said.

There was a blip in your first question about having PTSD and having that recognition come to you.

Was that something that somebody else pointed out to you,

Like a therapist or counselor,

Even like a friend through observation?

Or is that something you kind of stumbled upon for yourself?

Because this does seem like a traumatic experience.

And of course,

You would have PTSD after that.

That makes perfect sense to me hearing this for the first time.

Yeah,

It's something I stumbled on myself.

In the different jobs that I have had,

I've come across some people with PTSD.

Working at the veterinary clinic,

We dealt with a lot of animals who were companion animals,

Service animals,

To people who had PTSD.

So we had,

As a veterinary technician and as a manager of a veterinary hospital,

I had to go through a lot of training,

Understanding.

And just bringing their pet in was a bit of a stressor for them because they were worried about their pet.

Like,

Oh,

What are you doing?

And if the dog,

It was usually dogs,

If the dog didn't like having their blood drawn or something like that and maybe yelped a little bit or something like that,

That could cause stress in the person who had PTSD.

So we went through a bit of training just in my different careers that I've had.

And so all of a sudden,

I realized,

Oh,

I think that's what I have.

How did that present for you in day-to-day life?

Would you have run-ins with new bosses and be like,

Oh,

I'm upset about something that's not this.

I think it's PTSD.

Or did it come through nightmares or interactions with yourself in your head?

How did that crop up for you?

A little bit of everything.

But I would say the two of the biggest ones were I,

At my new job,

Was learning,

I was trying to learn a concept that was a little bit difficult for me.

And I had four or five different people try to explain it to me at different times.

And by the time the fourth person came,

What that fourth person said just sounded completely different than what the other three people said.

Like they were talking about something.

I was like,

Are we even talking about the same thing here,

The same project?

Why are you,

This just seems brand new.

And I just started crying.

I just started crying right then and there.

I felt inadequate.

I just had these,

It was this,

That feeling that I had right after I was let go of I'm inadequate.

Nobody would want me as an employee.

Because there's the thing,

I'd never been written up.

We'd never,

There was no discussion about,

Oh,

Your numbers and the ratings are going down,

Heather.

We're going to have to look at nothing.

It's like the executives walked in,

They're like,

You're gone.

And so you're left to go,

The initial part,

Now I found out later about all the other departments that they also got rid of at the same time.

But before you find that out,

You've got this couple of weeks where your psyche is just going,

Oh my God,

What did I do?

Did I not hire the right people?

Did I,

Were my numbers wrong?

Did I,

Was I over,

I charged too much money for payroll.

Did I get too many full timers on there?

So we're paying too many benefits.

Like what is going on?

And so it just felt like I'm a bad employee.

There's nothing I can,

You know,

No matter what I do,

I'm going to get fired.

Was basically what I was walking around feeling.

So here I am,

I'm not understanding a concept.

I can't get it down.

I've got a fourth person,

You know,

The fourth person trying to explain it to me.

And they,

It sounded to me like they were speaking a completely foreign language.

And I just,

I completely lost it because I felt like,

Oh my God,

This is it.

I like,

I'm never going to get this and they're going to fire me.

Mm hmm.

Because it's interesting after like when tragedy happens,

A lot of times the first,

If we can't find enough answers,

We look to ourselves and people are like,

Oh,

Well,

That's good.

We must have some answers.

And no,

We just heap,

Heap blame and heap shame and heap the cause of everything onto ourselves and kind of take that on as our own.

Yeah.

Yeah,

Totally.

And it,

And then it happened a second time at work,

Not in front of the first time when that,

When the fourth employee was trying to,

Playing it to me and I burst into tears.

I was in front of everybody in there.

And then there was another time about a month or so later,

I went into the supervisor's office and we were discussing the schedule and I was trying to explain,

I cannot pay the mortgage just being an on call person.

And I understand that on call is very up and down.

It depends on who's going to take their vacation.

And you,

And I had,

At that point I had to hope people were sick so that I could come in.

But I was like,

I can't rely on that.

I can't pay my mortgage not knowing how much money I'm going to make.

So I've gotten us another job,

A second job,

But I'm hoping to work something out here where I'm telling her what my hours were going to be.

And I just started crying again because I think in that moment I thought,

Okay,

She's going to tell me that I'm no longer worthwhile as an on call person because I'm not available at a certain amount of hours of the day because of this other job.

So have these mindsets started to shift at all for you?

They have.

I have,

This is the company that I now work at permanently.

I'm still part time.

And I don't have full time status there yet,

But I,

Because I was on call when I started there,

I'm not only a news reporter,

I learned how to be a news reporter.

I've learned how to be an associate producer.

And of course they use me as traffic reporter because that's what I was doing at my old job.

And this also is the company that gave me the opportunity.

They came to me and said,

Hey,

How would you like to host a show?

And that's when I started doing the money making sense show.

So they saw,

Even though I burst into tears at a couple of times at the beginning of my not so illustrious career there,

They told me that they trusted me and like what I'm doing by asking me to do a show.

Because that's an investment.

Yeah,

Exactly.

So that has helped a lot helping my insecurities.

Now I do find that they creep up from time to time.

That's really weird because I didn't have those insecurities before I lost my job.

Of course not.

Of course not.

I mean,

I'd switched careers a couple of times,

But it was on my terms and I knew what I wanted.

I was kind of looking for the place where I wanted to be and I found broadcasting is it.

But then I lost that job with no notice whatsoever.

And I still,

It's been five and a half years and I still every once in a while feel like I'm looking over my shoulder going,

Oh my God,

Are they going to come in and fire me?

It still happens once in a while.

And that's like one of those lingering elements of grief that's like really irritating and really terrifying and just still just like,

Okay,

Who's going to die?

Or like,

When are they going to come in and fire me?

Or do they want to break up with me?

Like it's all these things that like,

Oh my gosh,

There's still that slight feeling sometimes in the back of your head that's like,

I see another shoe in the air.

When's it going to drop?

And sometimes they're shoes that we create for ourselves and they're just like hanging out in the air and like nobody put them there except for us.

But you know,

Sometimes there's things that start to look eerily similar to the last time and you're like,

Wait,

Wait,

Wait,

Wait,

Wait.

So how do you make peace with that feeling of things being out of your control and things could be taken from you at any moment?

How has that mindset or mentality changed for you since all of this has happened?

Well,

I've always believed even before all this happened that everything happens for a reason.

But I never had to actually put that into practice until I lost my dad.

I just walked around like,

Oh,

Everything happens for a reason.

You know,

It's one of those things that somebody tells you something bad happened to him and you go,

Oh,

Everything happens for a reason.

And people who like when bad things happen,

People are like,

This is such garbage.

How dare you say this to me right now?

It's the same thing you said to your friend,

Heather.

It's like,

Do you even know what I've been through?

So I owe it.

But I did.

I mean,

I truly did believe that.

I just didn't know it from experience until this.

What I have discovered is,

Yeah,

I was willing to retire from that other job.

I would have stayed there for 30 years,

Been perfectly content being the manager of that department,

Doing my traffic reports,

All of that.

And I liked the job.

It was perfectly fine.

But what I've discovered being in the job I'm in now,

I love my job.

I am joyous.

I wake up every morning.

I have to be to work at 4 a.

M.

And I wake up before my alarm goes off.

I love every,

I love the people I work with.

I love the corporate concept that they get.

Now,

They still haven't hired me full time.

That's one of the things I'm not thrilled about.

But how they treat their employees and the type of work they want from their employees,

They're very,

Very adamant that we,

As a news company,

That we tell the facts.

We do not lean one way or the other.

Any time you're doing any type of a story,

It's this person said this,

But this person disagrees and this is why.

We never ever do a one-sided story.

This company I work for refuses to go down that road.

And I love it.

That's quite refreshing.

Yeah.

It's really easy to see one side of your grief story,

Of this job loss,

Of being made a victim,

Of being thrown out and experiencing this trauma that just totally blindsided you.

So how have you,

What has changed in your life and what has changed in your picture to allow you to incorporate the other side of the story?

What is the other side of the story for you in this?

The other side is I have been able to grow.

I've learned so many more skills and not just job skills.

I have learned life coping skills because once I got rid of the alcohol and stopped drinking,

I had to learn how to cope with my emotions.

These are emotions that I'd never really been confronted with before.

And so I think that will do me very well moving forward,

Especially,

You know,

Some relationships aren't always rosy.

Not just work relationships,

But personal relationships.

And now if I'm very angry or sad or distraught or something,

I know I have the strength to get through it and not by drinking.

That's power,

Isn't it?

Yeah,

That is total power.

Could you do this again?

Could you go through something like this again?

Could I?

Yes,

I could.

Do I ever want to?

No.

Well,

Of course.

Yeah,

That's never the question.

But grief doesn't really care what we want in terms of when it swoops into our lives.

Yes.

But yeah,

That's a good answer to that is could I?

Yes.

Do I really want to?

No.

Because at the end of the day,

Grief is this,

It's not something we really willingly go into.

No.

And I hate to use the term I'm glad I went through it because I don't even know that glad is the appropriate term to put on all this that happened.

Maybe grateful.

I think I'm very grateful that I went through this experience because if I hadn't,

Like I said,

I would never know what true love and joy of life is.

Not just my job,

But my life.

Because I was happy,

I was fine,

I was content.

I was that was it.

I was a content person before this,

But I don't know that I was ever happy and joyous.

And now I am.

That's awesome.

That sounds like you're very more aligned today than you felt in the past and needed this to know that.

Yeah,

True.